Through The Glass Darkly

[XenaLives]

Flashback city here... In 2007 , the night before the election, I started researching Obama's cabinet choices. I decided that they were all Zionist puppets and spies.... I stayed home.

[otraque]

INSTITUTIONAL ADVISORS

May 14, 2009

BOB HOYE

Great Depressions Are So Methodical

One of the features of a great boom is the excitement of shared convictions about eternal prosperity. One of the features of the consequent contraction is bewilderment about how suddenly the bust arrived. Beyond those directly hit, the establishment becomes perplexed by the loss of liquidity and wonders where the money went.

With the 1980s crash in oil and property deals, a hearing run by offended politicians asked a particularly aggressive Oklahoma banker about "just where did the money go?". And as the Wall Street Journal faithfully reported "We spent it on wine, women and song – the rest we just pissed away."

As flippant as this may be, it is accurate and could be suitable in any example in any century. Fortunately, for consistency in any century, there is the classic definition of inflation that it is an "inordinate expansion of credit". In the 1930s, Keynes in a number of letters to the Fed twisted this around to mean that inflation was simply rising prices that had very little to do with central bank manipulations.

Fortunately, Keynes is not around to provide official confusion to the description that deflation is an inordinate contraction in credit. Relentless credit deflation started in 2007, and this implacable force has been part of every long depression.

Clearly, the title of this address puts me firmly in the bear camp. Just as clearly, the possibility of another great depression is highly controversial, particularly when such magnificent efforts are being made to restore the prosperity of a financial mania, which have always been ephemeral.

Perhaps my credentials should be reviewed. Everything I needed to know about the markets I learned on the old and notorious Vancouver Stock Exchange. For example, in a world of extravagant claims from big government, big academe and big Wall Street the old definition of a promotion is useful: "In the beginning the promoter has the vision and the public has the money. At the end of the promotion the public has the vision and the promoter has the money."

In 2006 to 2007 the public had the vision that policymakers could depreciate the dollar forever and were positioned accordingly. And for a moment the promoters looked brilliant as everyone thought they were wealthy. Moreover, as with any promotion the bigger it is – the bigger the crash.

There are two failures going on. The most obvious is in the financial markets and the other is in interventionist economics. The latter failure is in theory as well as in practice, and can be described as the greatest intellectual failure since the Vatican insisted that the solar system revolved around the earth, more particularly, Rome. Too many still believe that the financial world revolves around the Federal Open Market Committee.

Last year's disaster fit the pattern of the 1929 fall crash with remarkable fidelity. Such a crash was obvious and as the train wreck in the credit markets continued through the summer of 2008 the Fed continued its recklessness. But with some marketing skills, the objective of "stimulus" changed from keeping the boom going to the absurd notion that bailing out one insolvency, Bear Stearns, would revive the boom. As usual with a bubble, it was not just one bank that had been imprudent – most had been.

The establishment missing this recurring event was bad enough but there is another clanger and that is the hopeless notion of a national economy. Even in ancient times, Cicero knew that the prosperity of Rome was vulnerable to the credit conditions in the Middle East. In this regard, Mother Nature has again been providing some harsh lessons, and history suggests she and Mister Margin will ultimately be successful in teaching markets 101 to many policymakers.

In the meantime, coming out of the classic fall crash orthodox investments such as commodities, stocks and bonds were expected to rebound out until April-May. Until this hooked up, the typical GDP forecast was tentative in looking for the recovery to begin "by mid-2010”, but our "model" needed forecasts of the recovery starting much sooner. Then, thanks to the "Green Shoots" that began to appear with the rebound in March, confidence was gradually restored in high places such that the miracle of recovery would happen sooner. The higher the stock market gets the more popular this idea becomes.

And this gets us to another lesson from the old Vancouver Stock Exchange. "So long as the price is going up – the public can believe the most absurd story." This has been the best explanation of why Wall Street, the supposed bastion of capitalism, focused on every utterance from central planners in a central bank. Then when the price breaks, the vision disappears along with liquidity.

The next phase of the contraction has been expected to start after mid-year.

For most participants, post-bubble bear markets have been sudden and severe. The 1929 example ran for three years and the post 1873 example lasted for five years. The latter has been the best guide for our recent mania and its bust, but this will be expanded in a few minutes as it is worth reviewing the excuses offered by many in not anticipating that short-dated interest rates as well as gold would plunge in a classic fall crash. This was the pattern with the 1929 and 1873 crashes and knowledge of such a plunge in short rates should have ended conventional wisdom that a Fed rate cut would have prevented crashes from 1929 to 2008.

The quickest sign of a gold bug forecast going wrong is "Conspiracy!". With their latest disappointment Wall Street strategists described it as a "Black Swan" event, and therefore unpredictable. That has been a cheap out as each transition from boom to bust has been methodical. Others called it a "Minsky Moment". Minsky accurately described the mechanism of a crash, but being a Keynesian he also wrote that "apt intervention" could keep the economy on a successful path.

Actually, financial conditions reached the perfect "Keynesian Moment". As we all know, Keynes said "If you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day." As part of the greatest mania in history the savings rate plunged to zero – Keynesian perfection had finally been accomplished. Many in the street, but only a few economists, knew this was dangerous. Econometric modelers, who still believe in the powers of regression equations, have long had their out, which has been "Exogenous", and in one memorable paper of 1983 there was "Super-Exogenity". This arrived in May 2007 when the yield curve reversed from inverted to steepening. Our research expected it to occur around June. By July of that fateful year, there was enough deterioration to conclude that "This is the biggest train wreck in financial history". It is not over.

Although crashes are grisly events, they share a common response from the establishment. No matter how shocking, bloody, expensive, ruinous or just plain shattering a crash is – within a week, there is no one in the street who didn't see it coming. As ironical as this is, there is a critical link from the stock market to the economy.

On the usual business cycle, the peak in stock speculation typically leads the peak in the economy by about a year. On the previous example, stocks set their high in March 2000, and the NBER set the start of that recession in March 2001. Using their determination this has been the case for most cycles back to 1854. But, at the conclusion of each great bubble in financial and tangible assets things change from normal. The failure in the financial markets and the economy beginning in 2007 have been virtually simultaneous.

As we all know, in 1929 the Dow made its high in September and the recession started in August. In 1873 the bear started in September, and the recession in October. This time around, the stock market high was in October 2007 and this recession started in December of 2007. Close enough to fit the post-bubble model, with implications that financial history is now in the early stages of another Great Depression.

This melancholy event is being confirmed by the behaviour of politicians and policymakers. After swanning around claiming credit for the boom politicians panic and then find scapegoats. Remember the "Goldilocks" celebration of perfect management of interest rates, money supply and the economy. Well, all five great bubbles from the first in 1720 to the infamous 1929 have been accompanied by such boasting, followed by what can best be described as frenzies of recriminatory regulation. If the political path continues – protectionism – will follow.

One of the worst such examples was called, in real time, the Tariff of Abominations. But, this is enough of dismal events and it is time to turn to irony for amusement and enlightenment. The clash between the establishment and financial history is rich with irony. Beyond that, financial history, itself, should be considered as an impartial "due diligence" on every grand scheme promoted during a financial mania by the private sector as well as by policymakers. Let's use a good old fashioned term – policymakers have been financial adventurers.

One of the richest ironies occurred with the 1873 mania and its collapse. With typical strains developing in the credit markets during a speculative summer, the leading New York newspaper editorialized:

“but while the Secretary of the Treasury plays the role of banker for the entire United States it is difficult to conceive of any condition of circumstances which he cannot control. Power has been centralized in him to an extent not enjoyed by the Governor of the Bank of England. He can issue the paper representatives of gold, and count it as much as the yellow metal itself. [He has] a greater influence than is possessed by all the banking institutions of New York.”

In so many words, because the treasury secretary was outstanding and had the benefit of unlimited issue of a fiat currency – nothing could go wrong. But it did; the initial bear market lasted for five years and the initial recession ran a year longer. The pattern of severe recessions and poor recoveries continued such that in 1884 leading economists began to call it "The Great Depression", that endured from the 1873 bubble until 1895.

An index of farm land value in England fell almost every year from 1873 to 1895. Of course, academic economists were fascinated and for a couple of decades wondered how such a dislocation could have happened, or even worse, discussed how it could have been prevented. Ironically, this debate continued until as late as 1939 when another Great Depression was belatedly discovered.

Naturally the long depression was blamed upon the old and unstable Treasury System, and at the height of the "Roaring Twenties" John Moody summed it up with:

"The Federal Reserve Law has demonstrated its thorough practicality, and thus secured the general confidence of the business interests. The breeder of financial panics, the National Banking Law, which had been a menace to American progress for two decades, has now been replaced by a modern scientific system which embodies an elastic currency and an orderly control of money markets."

The probability of a depression has been discussed in the media. It seems that both sides have yet to provide adequate research, with the establishment's response limited to a classic non sequitur. "This is nothing like the Great Depression, where we had 25% unemployment". That was just the most recent example and sound research would compare unemployment numbers from the first year after the crash. In 1930 the number was around 8%, and in noting that there could be some difference in methodology today's number is an 8 percenter.

Will it get to 25 percent? This remains to be seen, but unemployment in the private sector will be the worst since the last great depression.

By way of a wrap we will take it from the top. In late 2007, Gregory Mankiw, boasted that the US had a "dream team" of economists as advisors, and as with all claims at the top of six previous bubbles "Nothing could go wrong". And even if things went only a little wrong there were the "safety nets" that Krugman claimed would prevent serious deterioration. Our view on Keynesian safety nets has always been that in a bust they would be about as useless as a hardhat in a crowbar storm.

In the post-1929 bust policymakers were realistic enough to know that the boom caused the bust. The SEC was established to prevent another hazardous 1929 mania. Also, one of the promoters of the SEC boasted that the SEC would put a "Cop at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets". Without much doubt the SEC has failed to live up to its billing. The discovery of malfeasance always accompanies the discovery of malinvestment.

Of course, the other act passed to prevent another 1929 mania was Glass-Steagal, which separated commercial banking from the evils of Wall Street. This was taken off the books in 1999 as too many banks were participating in the high-tech frenzy.

Has this happened before? I'm glad I asked the question. With the financial violence of the South Sea Company in 1720, the House of Commons passed the "Anti-Bubble" Act, which was taken off the books in 1771 – just in time for the full expression of the 1772 bubble. As with the climax of the 1720 bubble the Great Depression ran for some twenty years. This was also the case for the bubbles that blew out in 1825, 1873, and 1929.

This ominous sequence of financial excess and consequent disaster brings us to 2007, which will soon have the connotation of "1929", as the world experiences the sixth Great Depression. Quite likely, the only offsetting event could be the collapse of interventionist policymaking, that would eventually be seen as a blessing.

The title of this address, "Great Depressions Are So Methodical" is intended to be ironical, but some may be startled by the audacity of the statement. Actually it is the conclusion that anyone would make after a thorough review of market history. The real audacity is in the claims of charismatic economists that their personal revelations can provide one continuous throb of happy motoring. As Hayek said – Keynes, as a young scholar, was absolutely ignorant of financial or economic history. Only someone who was ineffably ignorant of financial history would claim that it can arbitrarily be altered.

The next Oscar in audacity goes to Paul Samuelson, who, in the 1960s, boasted that the business recession had been eliminated. Right!

Another such example was recently provided by Gregory Mankiw when he condemned the “old” Fed with "When you look at the mistakes of the 1920s and 1930s, they were clearly amateurish." Any impartial review of market history would conclude that the "Roaring Twenties" and the contraction was the way financial history works, after all it was the fifth such example. It is worth recalling that at the height of the 1929 mania John Moody had condemned the old Treasury System while reciting that the new Fed was the perfect instrument of policy.

Mankiw then bragged "It is hard to imagine that happening again – we understand the business cycle better".

The Harvard professor topped this late in 2007 with: "The truth is that Fed governors, together with their crack staff of Ph.D economists, are as close to an economic dream team as we are ever likely to see."

Now it is time to get into the way Great Depressions have worked. All six have started with soaring prices for tangible and financial assets that, typically, run against an inverted yield curve for some 12 to 16 months.

Then when the curve reverses to steepening it is the most critical indicator that the credit contraction is starting. This time around, the sixteen-month count ran to June 2007 and the curve reversed by the end of May. Our presentations in that fateful month stated that the greatest train wreck in the history of credit had begun. Deterioration through July prompted the advice that most bank stocks were a nice "widows and orphans" short.

Beyond the raw power of speculation, one of the key features is each mania has been accompanied by a remarkable decline in real long interest rates, sometimes to zero, and sometimes to minus. In our case the decline was to around minus 1.5% in January and the increase so far has been 5 percentage points. In five previous examples, the typical increase has been twelve percentage points, which has been Mother Nature's way of correcting untempered expansion of credit. And - in our times, untempered policymaking.

Lower-grade corporate bonds, have already suffered an increase of some 25 percentage points, which suggests that the 12 point potential for treasuries is possible.

There is another important distinction. At the peak of a great bubble, the stock market peaks virtually with the business cycle. In 1873, the stock market blew out in September and the recession started in that October. As noted above, a fiat currency with the potential of unlimited issue was not proof against yet another Great Depression. In 1929 stocks peaked in September and the economy peaked in August. This time around stocks set their high in October, 2007 and according to the NBER, the recession started in that December.

Since 1937 the average length of recession has been ten months, with six in the order of 8 months. This one has run for 17 months, which breaks a long-standing pattern. Following 1873, the initial recession lasted 65 months, and following 1929, it ran for 43 months. NBER data starts in 1854 and these were the longest recessions, with no others in this league. This one has the potential of being a long one.

This is a lot of history, but what is happening in the markets right now? Well, then the Green Shoots have finally encompassed chairman Bernanke. On May 5, Bernanke observed that the "broad rally in equity prices" is indicating that "economic activity will pick up later in the year."

At the height of a similar rebound to April-May of 1930, Barron's wrote:

“It is thus apparent that the public preference for stock is not only as marked as ever, but also the will to speculate is still a speculative factor not to be overlooked. The prompt return of huge speculation and the liberal manner in which current earnings are again being discounted indicate that it will be difficult to quench the fires of stock-market enthusiasm for long.”

Prompted by an animated stock rally, the Harvard Economic Society, but with more gravitas, concluded that it "augured" a recovery by late in the year. As we all know this did not last and what we should understand is that it is the dynamics of a crash that sets up the exciting rebound. Not policymakers.

Let's look at a classic fall crash, which we expected. The pattern is interesting. The 1929 crash amounted to 48%. The decline to the low in November 2008 was 47%, and within this the hit to October 27 amounted to 42%. In 1929 the initial plunge amounted to 40% to October 29.

The rebound was to November 4, in both examples, with 2008 gaining 17% and 1929 gaining 12%. The final slump into each November was 22% and 23%. Is it important to identify it as 1929 or 2008?

Our "historical" model expected the crash and the rebound, as well as the nature of the establishment's utterances. Another usual event is a frenzy of recriminatory regulation – all supposedly new, but delivered without knowing that their counterparts over the centuries have made the same futile gestures.

Ironically, today's excitement in the markets and convictions in policymaking circles are important steps on the path to a great depression. As disconcerting as this may be, it is worth reviewing another cliché of policymaking, which is the notion that lowering administered rates will restore the momentum of a boom. Massive declines in short rates, such as Treasury Bills have only occurred in a post-bubble crash. In 1873 the senior bank rate plunged from 9% to 2.5%, as the stock market crashed. In the 1929 example the fed discount rate plunged from 6% to 1.5%, as the stock market crashed.

This is getting a little heavy. Not so long ago, but in another world, financially speaking, when an economist would change a forecast on GDP from 3 % to 3.25% it was only done to display a sense of humor. Now policy wonks seriously debate whether the Fed target rate should be zero or a quarter of one percent (that’s 0% to 0.25%). It is patently absurd to debate what the rate should be or whether it would have any effect on financial history.

It won't, because we are in a world of financial violence that is not random, and not due to the Fed not making the perfectly-timed rate cut. Instead it is due to a natural accumulation of private speculation, as well as a chronic experiment in policy by financial adventurers – to accurately use a Victorian term.

There are some early terms to describe the sudden loss of liquidity that marks the end of a bubble. In the 1561 crash Gresham wrote the “Credit cannot be obtained – even on double collateral.”.

Another term goes back to the 1600s when Amsterdam was the commercial and financial center of the world. The Dutch described the good times as associated with "easy" credit and the consequence as "diseased" credit. I'm sure that all in this room would agree with the accuracy of the latter description. Diseased credit.

What can be done about it? Nothing – since the 1500s the literature is complete with many comments that someone, or some agency can set interest rates – either high or low depending upon the personal concerns of the writer.

Misselden in the 1618 to 1622 crash earnestly believed that throwing credit at a credit contraction would make it go away. Despite all this history, Keynes and his disciples cannot be accused of plagiarism.

What's next?

Virtually, all of the "good stuff" likely to be revived into May is being accomplished. This includes investments such as commodities, junk-bonds and stocks, as well as positive statements from the establishment. Both technical and sentiment measures on the stock market are at "tilt" levels.

Because it is up at the right time, the conclusion is that the down will come in on time as well. This would be the next step on the path towards another Great Depression.

Of course, there is no guarantee that events will continue on the path. But, then there is no guarantee that it won't. Best to consider the odds.

BOB HOYE, INSTITUTIONAL ADVISORS

E-MAIL [e-mail]

WEBSITE: www.institutionaladvisors.com

[otraque]

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The New Plan

Executive Summary

As the market wends its way higher, the Secretary of the Treasury in the U.S., along with the FDIC and the Fed are trying to obtain from Congress new powers of regulation that arguably could have prevented the current crisis and may be necessary to solve it. This opens up the possibility of an efficient public-private partnership to address the persisting financial disarray. Off balance sheet "assets" that will be returning to the banks ledgers via defaults, however, may delay or derail the anticipated recovery, and securitization of debt, one of the underlying causes of the current crisis, appears to be getting a boost in the proposed solution, instead of being euthanized.

Meanwhile, some Consensus companies are barely feeling the effects of the recession. International Business Machines (IBM) posted a record quarter in Q4 of 2008. PetMed Express (PETS) is growing nicely, as well. Additionally, Sunoco Logistics Partners (SXL) is another high-yield pipeline company you should know about. All have PWR ratings above 60 and are profiled below.

The Best 4 Quants Model Portfolio finished last week at -5.9% vs. the S&P's +1.6%. So far this week the Best 4 Quants Model Portfolio has a return of +30.5% vs. the S&P's +6.7%. Since Inception 3/14/2003 the model has a return of +167.5% vs. the S&P 500's -1.7%. The Best 4 Quants Model has ten picks this week: MUR, LECO, DRQ, TRA, ACL, WBD, GTI, SSL, INFY, ZEUS.

For those who do not follow the Best 4 Quants model portfolio, we offer our TSR Timing Model as general guidance on the relative safety of the current market. On 3/23/09, the Timing Model went from +175% invested to +200% invested.

Detail

The S&P 500 advanced 7% last Monday in anticipation of a more detailed plan from Treasury Secretary Geithner to reverse the financial crisis. At the close of trading on Monday, the market had posted its largest two-week gain since 1938. We have already cited quite a number of parallels between this market and the 1930s, not all of them positive.

One characteristic to keep in mind is that the strongest rallies occur in bear markets. The bigger the bear, the bigger the rally. We did not have a single 6% up-day during the 2000-2003 bear market. During this decline, however, we have already had three days in which the market has advanced more than 6%. Our conclusion: a bigger bear does not a bull make.

The New Plan

That cautionary preamble notwithstanding, the good news is that a number of very smart uber bears, including Professor Nouriel Roubini of NYU, the well-regarded prophet of doom, have expressed positive comments on the Public Private Partnership concept proposed by the Obama administration. The plan is an alternative to continuing on the path of indiscriminant bailouts, which, after the AIG bonus scandal, are no longer politically feasible.

The New Plan creates a government partnership with bond funds such as PIMCO, mutual funds, hedge funds, private equity funds and pension funds to redistribute the toxic assets (what an oxymoron!) on banks' balance sheets to the private sector. The assumption is that a fair market price can be achieved that is higher than the current marks at the banks, and yet low enough to provide an attractive return for the investors. Commentators such as Bill Gross at PIMCO have long criticized the Shadow Banking system, which originally referred to the massive unregulated derivative market. Now, functioning as collective undertakers, Mr. Gross and his cohorts will have the job of performing an autopsy on the system and recycling its viable parts to healthier bodies.

The government will probably end up holding the worst of the loans to maturity, while letting private interests cherry-pick. Additionally, the plan will be implemented by the Treasury without having to bother with congressional approval in the form of a bill or other specific authorization, because most of the funds will come from the Fed and the FDIC. The plan also includes new powers to take over giant financial institutions whose condition pose a risk to the financial system. Approval from Congress for these powers is being requested and guidelines within that legislation would spell out under what circumstances the powers could be used.

We have no problem with increasing regulation over what is ultimately a public financial system in private hands. What worries us, however, is the lack of any proposals to fix the underlying problems within that system, one of them being the securitization of debt, which is not only being left alone for the moment, but is actually being used in the plan as a means to solving the crisis. Debt will be moved from the books of the banks and insurance companies to private and public hands via the same kinds of instruments, with the same kind of unrealistic valuations, as got us into this mess in the first place. Who, besides the taxpayers, are the chumps who will buy this junk, and what are they being promised to get them to do so?

Enron Redux

The stock market is reflecting some optimism about the Geithner proposal, but there is a particularly large and dark cloud on the horizon in the form of off-balance sheet "assets" at the major U.S. banks that is not being addressed by the Geithner partnership. At the end of 2008, the four largest U.S banks (Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo) held $5.2 trillion of asset-backed securities and other obligations off their balance sheets. These assets included mortgages, auto loans, credit card debt and commercial loans that were repackaged, securitized and sold by the banks.

We don't know which rating agencies, if any, rated these securities. They were originally created to make the balance sheets of the banks look healthier, which contributed to fueling the credit bubble. It is, of course, a myth that no one expected real estate to fall. Everyone I know did, it was just a question of when, and people kept betting that it would be after their next deal, or that it would fall and rebound again before they needed to sell. In fact, the end came when more and more people realized that prices had just gone too far, too fast, so they began being justifiably shy about buying. Then they began to wait for what they believed was an inevitable correction, and the more people waiting, the more demand dried up, and the correction began. Now, these are "retail" home-buyers who knew prices were too high and who knew a correction was coming. Who can believe that actuaries of Citibank and AIG didn't know? They knew, and like the retail home-buyer did until just before the end, they continued to bet that they could make their next big buck before it came. The risks they took, and convinced others to take, with their highly leveraged securitization of debt that they knew very well was doomed, must be considered criminal, and it is hard to imagine going too far in regulating this kind of behavior in the future.

There are approximately $2 trillion in subprime-backed mortgage securities on the banks' books right now that are expected to default in the next two years. If the banks are low-balling the off-balance-sheet risk, then the $1 trillion Public Private Partnership starts to look awfully puny. It may need to be 5 times as large.

Bye Bye Greenback

Concerns about the true magnitude of the debt crisis is one reason gold is rallying this week. The larger the hole in terms of dollars, the better gold looks. In fact, both the U.N. and China floated proposals this week to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency and Secretary Geithner publicly endorsed the idea for about 5 minutes until he thought better of it. Geithner told the Council on Foreign Relations that he would be "quite open" to superseding the U.S. dollar as the primary global reserve currency. The alternative would be a hybrid currency such as the one developed by the IMF in 1968.

Devaluing the dollar is certainly not official U.S. policy by any means, but it is a direction that Geithner would presumably like to take because it would help stimulate exports and allow the U.S. to pay back debt in "smaller" dollars. In a deflationary environment, such as we have today, currency devaluation is not likely to boost inflation much at all, so this is the perfect time to quietly let the dollar fall.

We think the Chinese Yuan, which is pegged to the dollar, will fall along with it, which in the currency game of musical chairs means that the euro will probably rise. A research agency associated with China's most important economic-planning body said the government should permit an appropriate depreciation in the value of the Yuan as a strategy for increasing the nation's growth. The State Information Center made a statement advocating the devaluation of the currency enough to counter the effects of plummeting foreign demand for the country's products.

Bottomline: Consider protecting your assets from a devalued dollar by owning gold and/or gold miners, which we have recently profiled. Below, you will find some additional alternatives.

International Business Machines (IBM), P/E 11, Market Cap $132 billion, Yield 2%

"Breaking news. IBM just reported earnings that were up 26% year over year to $2.3 billion on an 11% revenue rise to $24 billion."

That was our lead line in our April 2008 profile of the company known affectionately as Big Blue. We noted in that profile the fact that IBM's shares were still trading slightly below where it was in 1999, but we nevertheless touted the company for a number of reasons, all of which still apply.

We noted its relative strength, which means it had not fallen with the rest of the tech sector. We identified it as an anti-financial defensive play, which proved to be the case. We remarked on the company's ability to deliver consistent earnings and noted that 18% earnings growth in a global economy that is expected to only grow 4% is an impressive accomplishment, especially for a large and mature company. Indeed, while many tech companies have disappointed analysts, IBM has exceeded earnings guidance for each of the past five quarters.

We also highlighted the fact that with 58% of its revenue coming from outside the U. S., IBM would be at least partially insulated from the slow-down in the U.S. economy. This has also proven correct. We commented favorably on the fact that IBM still had pricing power in its services segment, something that was rare in 2008 and even rarer today. Amazingly, IBM had a $118 billion services backlog a year ago and still does, give or take a billion.

We wrote then, "If the U.S. is headed for a recession, which we think is the case, it's time to think outside the box and recognize safe havens when they arise. We think Big Blue is a good port during the coming storm."

IBM UPDATE: The company has a take-no-prisoners attitude when it comes to the global recession. In fact, for IBM, there has barely been a recession. Chief executive Sam Palmisano wrote in this year's letter to shareholders, "We will not simply ride out the storm... rather we will go on offense." It already has. Earnings per share rose 17% in 2008 and the company set records for quarterly revenue, profits, earnings, and cash flow in Q4 of 2008, which was a horrendous quarter for most international companies. Big Blue is also sitting pretty with nearly $13 billion of cash equivalents, so it does not need to borrow.

One measure of the company's commitment to technological leadership is that fact that in 2008 IBM was the #1 patent filer, applying for more patents than Microsoft, Cisco and HP combined. Specifically, IBM wants to be the leading global "smart" infrastructure company and is already working to manage traffic in Stockholm, water systems in Brazil, power grids in emerging economies and automating health records in countries with aging populations such as the U.S.

Globalization in production, not just in market expansion, has been a key part of Palmisano's strategy. IBM has been steadily increasing its workforce in India while downsizing the U.S. contingent. Foreign workers now account for a whopping 71% of Big Blue's nearly 400,000 employees. In January, IBM laid off 4,600 people in the U.S. and this week added another 5,000 pink slips.

At $98, shares of IBM are trading mid-way in the recent range from $70 to $130. We suggest accumulating IBM at these levels and below. It will be a premier play on the global recovery, whenever it finally happens.

Petmed Express (PETS) P/E 17, Market Cap $383 million

You've probably seen the ads on your favorite cable channel: a simple low key comparison of the cost of pet medications purchased from a vet and the same meds purchased from PetMed Express. The difference in cost is substantial and shipping is free. So what are you waiting for?

Founded in 1996, PetMed Express is America's largest pet pharmacy, delivering prescription and non-prescription medications and other health products for dogs, cats and horses. Slacking on medical care for one's pets is not an option for most owners, but offer someone an alternative to high priced meds in today's recessionary environment and customers will beat a path to your door. The company acquired 154,000 new customers in the fourth quarter of 2008, a 21% growth rate year over year.

Net sales were $43 million last quarter, up 16% year over year. Net income was $4.9 million or $0.21 per share, a 15% increase. These are not stellar numbers in ordinary times, but you probably remember that Q4 of '08 was the quarter during which retail spending bit the dust.

Shares of PetMed Express have been trading sideways for several years, which in this market climate is an indication of tremendous relative strength. One reason for the stock's stability is that management repurchased 336,000 shares last quarter. About 25% of the outstanding shares of PETS are sold short, which bodes well for an eventual breakout to new highs

Sunoco Logistics Partners (SXL), P/E 10, Market Cap $1.5 billion, Yield 7.4%

Like Buckeye Partners (BPL), which we profiled last week, Sunoco Logistics Partners, founded in 2001 and based in Philadelphia, is an MLP, which means it pays out most of its profits to shareholders in the form of quarterly distributions. The company buys, sells, transports and stores refined products and crude oil in 13 states in the Northeast, Midwest and Southwest. Its Eastern pipeline system operates about 1650 miles of pipe, while its Western network owns 3200 miles of pipeline outright and has ownership interests in 1500 additional miles of pipe, along with a fleet of tanker trucks, truck loading facilities and 36 refined product terminals with an aggregate storage capacity of 6.2 million barrels.

We like the simple strategy of the logistics business: generate stable cash flows, increase pipeline and terminal throughput, pursue complementary strategic acquisitions and all the while improve operating efficiencies. SXL is not as acquisitive as Buckeye and has completed only five acquisitions in the last three years, but the company managed to grow 2008 revenues 36%, while net income almost doubled to $214 million. SXL has demonstrated pricing power, has enjoyed increased volumes within its Western pipeline system in 2008 and managed to decrease interest expenses.

The credit-worthy company has no trouble borrowing. SXL has a five-year $400 million credit facility and last month issued $175 million of 8.75% senior notes, due February, 2014. The company has increased its cash distributions each quarter during the last three years. In Q4 of 2008, SXL boosted its distribution to $0.990 per unit, a 13% annual increase in payout.

There are 28 million shares outstanding, with a mere16 million in the float. A full 42% of outstanding shares are held by insiders, which fully aligns management with shareholders. Only 28% is owned by institutions, which means a transfer of ownership from insiders to institutions is likely over time. This process would be very beneficial for the share price. We consider SXL one of the premier Consensus dividend plays.

TSR Timing Model

Our timing model is a purely mechanical system that follows the momentum of the NASDAQ Composite index. The table below shows the triggers that would cause the investment level to change. Please note that our Model Portfolios are not affected by the Timing Model. The Models are always 100% invested.

Last Changes: On 3/23/09, The Timing Model went from +175% invested to +200% invested.

Current level is +200% invested.

Triggers for Increases or Decreases in Model's Investment Level Investment Level will go to:
First Upside Trigger: A new close at or above Nasdaq 1607.2 +200% (Maximum level)
Second Upside Trigger: A new close at or above Nasdaq 1645.2 +200% (Maximum level)
Downside Reversal Trigger: A closing price in the Nasdaq that is 6% below the highest intraday level since 3/25/2009. Note that this trigger cannot be anticipated as new highs in the market would continue to raise this reversal trigger. In the event of a reversal, the Model will decrease its investment level to -25% invested. Each additional 3% decrease in the Nasdaq would cause the model to decrease its investment level in 25 percentage point increments. If a reversal is in turn reversed again before it is "confirmed" by another 3% move in the same direction, then the second reversal returns the model to the same position as before the first reversal -25%

[otraque]

3/27*****************************************8

The Spear Report
Professional Edition for 03/27/2009
Vol. 6 Number 56

Breaking 800

COMPANIES MENTIONED TODAY

Symbol  Company Name           PWR     #Recs   Close$   
 AMD     Not in Consensus       NA      NA      3.56     
 APA     Not in Consensus       NA      NA      68.31    
 APOL    Apollo Group           4.25    2       77.83    
 COP     Conocophillips         4.0     2       40.31    
 CVX     Chevrontexaco          55.75   6       70.17    
 CX      Cemex SA ADR           29.0    4       6.47     
 DELL    Not in Consensus       NA      NA      10.35    
 JNJ     Johnson  Johns         55.25   6       52.90    
 MCD     Mcdonalds Corp         78.0    8       56.06    
 MS      Morgan ST Dean         11.0    2       25.65    
 NFLX    Netflix Inc            41.0    5       41.75    
 STP     Not in Consensus       NA      NA      11.29    
 WFMI    Not in Consensus       NA      NA      18.23    
  
 MODEL PORTFOLIO 
  
 Todays Trades 
 Sym      Action   Limit     Trigger   Stop     Stop Type   Current 
 STP      BUY      NA        NA        NA       Intra       11.29 
 Notes: Chinese solar half position 
  
 Current Holdings 
 Sym      Ent Date   Dir**   Entry    Current  Perf %   Stop     Stop Type 
 RGLD     01/26/09   L       48.86    46.22    -5.4     NA       Intra-day 
 Notes: general gold play 
 DGP      01/26/09   L       19.39    20.52    5.8      NA       Intra-day 
 Notes: Double Gold ETF 
 IAG      01/26/09   L       7.01     8.54     21.8     NA       Intra-day 
 Notes: NA 
 AMD      03/25/09   L       3.21     3.56     10.9     2.65     Intra-day 
 Notes: the other chip maker 
 MS       03/25/09   L       25.75    25.65    -0.4     19.95    Intra-day 
 Notes: anticipating a breakout 
 STX      03/25/09   L       5.85     6.56     12.1     4.25     Intra-day 
 Notes: disc drive maker 
  
 **Direction: L = Long,     SS = Short Sale **

TRADE NOTES

OVERVIEW: The S&P 500 appears to have successfully tested the
800 level and it should now function as a technical floor for a further
advance. We think the Dow can get up to 8250 and possibly above
9000.

OPEN POSITIONS:

Gold was flat on Thursday, as were the miners.

Much to our delight, (AMD) resumed its advance, adding 12%.
STX scooted up 10%, but (MS) stalled.


NEW BUYS/SHORT SALES:

Suntech Power (STP) is our pick for the Chinese solar fest. We will take
only a half position as these stocks were up 40% yesterday (see
discussion below).

WATCH LIST:

We present our Watch List stocks as potential trade ideas for
aggressive traders who wish to do more research on the stocks.

POTENTIAL WATCHLIST SHORTS:

None.

POTENTIAL WATCH LIST LONGS:


Apache (APA), Apollo (APOL), Cemex (CX),
Conocophillips (COP), Chevron (CVX), Dell (DELL),
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), McDonalds (MCD), Netflix
(NFLX) and Whole Foods Market (WFMI).

COMMENTARY

The S&P 500 added another 2% yesterday, making this the best
monthly advance since 1974. By the way, 1974 was a bad bear
market year. The largest advances tend to occur after the worst
drawdowns.

The Nasdaq did better than the Dow or the S&P yesterday, advancing
3.8%. One reason is that virtually every Chinese solar play was up
40% after China announced that it would support its burgeoning solar
industry with a massive subsidy program. Our pick is Suntech Solar
(STP), which is an established player, but not in Consensus. China
wants to help support the growth of domestic solar demand. There is
a fair amount of solar water heating in China, but very little
electricity production.

Speaking of China, the Shanghai bourse may be outperforming other
countries, but there are deep problems in the Chinese economy that
while different from those in the U.S., are nevertheless systemic.
The U.S. has a liquidity problem, whereas China is floating in cash,
but the excess liquidity in the Chinese financial system is unlikely to
translate into an increase in GDP because most Chinese industries,
especially the capital intensive ones, have overbuilt and suffer from
excess capacity. The Chinese steel industry may be as much as 30%
overbuilt. The country’s burgeoning ship building industry is seeing
such massive cancellations on orders that many shipbuilding firms
are on the brink of bankruptcy. Semiconductor factories are operating at 80% of capacity, which
destroys profits in an industry where margins are razor thin.

So while some observers celebrate the recent surge in Chinese bank
lending, it is unlikely that increasing liquidity in the businesses sector
is an efficient use of capital. China needs to grow domestic consumer
demand, while reducing property values to affordable levels. This is
a process that will take years. We have high hopes for the eventual
turnaround of the country, but the economic challenges are not
insignificant.

The government stimulus program will be needed to stabilize the
economy, but in itself it will not be able to restart high growth. More
than 40% of China's gross domestic product has been tied to capital
spending on factory construction and other fixed-asset investment.
Industrial production, which has risen an average of 16% annually
for five years, but is tracking at less than 4% annualized so far this year.

Last year, China's private sector accounted for half of the country’s
$4.4 trillion GDP, but this portion of the economy will not benefit
from government stimulus spending on infrastructure. We suspect that China will
have to downshift from targeting 10-11% GDP growth to accepting a
more sustainable pace in the 5-7% range and the country’s ability to
meet the stated 8% output growth target for the next few years is
very questionable in our view.

Bottomline: we are not buying China yet.

MARKET CALLS

The S&P 500 inched above the 72-ema resistance (cyan line) on
Thursday. A more convincing close above this level will put the 162
ema (red line) into play as the next target.

This is yesterday’s chart. Charts will be updated over the weekend.

http://www.spearreport.com/update/3.25.09_SPY.gif
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MARKET DIRECTION

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Rydex) the following information may be useful. Just to clarify, our
market direction indicators are trend followers, not predictors.

SML- S&P SmallCap600; MDY= S&P MidCap 400 tracking stock;
SPY= S&P 500 tracking stock; QQQQ= Nasdaq 100 tracking stock.

(+) or (-) signifies a change in status today.

Short-term Market Direction:

S&P 500: Up

Intermediate-term Market Direction:

S&P 500: Up

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[otraque]

<<2. Israel cannot be trusted. In desperation at having lost its myth of invincibility she might try to strike at anyone to justify her continued existence. The possession of a huge nuclear arsenal makes such a pariah state highly dangerous.>> The Samson Option is, i feel, a real possiobility--not a certainty , but a real possibility. Max

[Ace Hanlon]

Lessons learned from Gaza
Posted: 2009/01/19
From: Mathaba

The Israeli Defence Force is NOT invincible. Having changed the rules of engagement might still come to haunt both Israel and her Western allies.



by Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher

After a halt (or pause) in the carnage wrought by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) on the helpless people of Gaza (essentially a large open prison camp completely unprotected against the onslaught by the Israeli military hardware (paid for by the West), it is time for an initial assessment of what has happened. A number of pertinent conclusions arise:

1. The IDF is NOT invincible. In spite of being armed to the teeth with the latest technology, Israel did not achieve its only stated war objective of stopping the firing of rockets from the Gaza strip into Northern Israel. It's withdrawal after three weeks of continued bombardment and losing more than a dozen soldiers to the comparatively unarmed Gazan population rising in the defence of its territory is Israel's second major defeat in as many years. The war against Lebanon two years ago was also unsuccessful in its declared objective of returning two captured IDF soldiers. Nor has the political and military structure of either Hamas or Hizbullah been destroyed, leaving nothing but widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and heavy losses in civilian lives as the end result of those two military operations.

2. Israel cannot be trusted. In desperation at having lost its myth of invincibility she might try to strike at anyone to justify her continued existence. The possession of a huge nuclear arsenal makes such a pariah state highly dangerous.

3. Terrorism has been provided with official sanction: Since Israel has justified (state) terrorism and the indiscriminate killing and wounding of defenceless men, women and children as long as some kind of greater military objective is being pursued, the argument for not involving civilians in political and military conflicts has ultimately been lost. Any group with whatever perceived greater objective can now cite the Israeli attacks against Lebanon and Gaza as justification for causing widespread damage amongst civilians. Having thus changed the rules of engagement might still come to haunt both Israel and her Western allies.

4. There are no Islamic states or governments in the world. Any state wanting to be called Islamic would have intervened to liberate Gaza from the destruction brought upon it by Israel. Historically and under international war such intervention would have been justified in the face of Israeli war crimes. Numerous Arab and other Muslim nations have large standing armies (e.g. Turkey has at least a million soldiers in active service at any one time) and expensive military hardware; the case that they are powerless against Israel can, therefore, not be made, particularly given the inability of Israel to even win a war initiated by herself against peoples without a standing army (Lebanon and Gaza). Nor can the moral case of Israel merely defending her borders and "right to exist" be made any more after the indiscriminate targetting of civilians. Given that the majority of citizens all across the world objected to and abhorred the Israeli war crimes, the regimes imposed upon Muslim nations do not represent their people.

5. Western governments are more answerable to Israel than to their own people who voiced clear objection to the war against Gaza, hence the myth of democracy has once more been exposed as a farce. Foremost amongst those are the United States of America whose new president Obama has been discredited even before taking office by trying to cleverly not be drawn on the issue. In America the right to wrestle power back from from an unrepresentative and oppressive state by popular uprising is enshrined in the constitution, and similar notions exist in most other Western nation states. That the people, permanently enslaved by debt financing, will ever renegotiate the social contract is, however, highly questionable both in the West and in the Muslim world.

6. The UN is utterly useless. Its buildings and institutions can be attacked with impunity.

7. If there ever was a right for Israel to exist on land appropriated from other people without their consent, this right has now been eternally forfeited.

8. The current rulers of the world - Israel, the US and their subordinates amongst the nations - are more likely to be defeated by the outcome of their own arrogance and false sense of invincibility than an external conqueror. It is a rule of history that all empires will come to an end. Western economies are already imploding and Western armies are overstretched in unwinnable wars. The targetting of a perceived weak enemy, as in the case of Gaza, is a sign of increasing desparation heralding the quickening of this inevitable end.

P.S. I expect to be inundated with outraged, emotional and defamatory comments. They do not detract from the factuality of the above.

-- Mathaba Author Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher is a German living in England, a Muslim and a pilot - in the oppressive neo-fascist climate of today, this means walking a tight rope. And it requires speaking out. He has done so through articles, pamphlets and books, many of which are available via his FlyingImam web site. #

[otraque]

<<They also need to understand that they need to leave Palestinians alone to establish their own independent state, which will then negotiate coexistence with Israel through giving Palestinians their inalienable rights, as stated in UN resolutions.>> Any such state would also require many many many billions to Palestine for reparation for their 61 years of suffering and for payment for that land that remains as Israel and this would allow to build their infrastructure for a future.


Max

[Ace Hanlon]

Initial Assessment of the Israeli Terrorist War on Gaza

By Hassan El-Najjar

Editor
ccun.org, January 20, 2009



The 22-day Zionist Israeli terrorist war on the Gaza Strip resulted in killing 1,350 Palestinians and injuring more than 5,450 the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians. Among the martyred (killed unjustly in a war of aggression) Palestinians residents were 417 children, 108 women, 120 elderly, 14 medics, 4 reporters and 5 internationals.

The human suffering by subjecting 1.5 million people to a continuous war for 22 days cannot be expressed in words. in addition to deaths and injuries, Gaza has been subjected to extensive campaign of destruction of its buildings, stores, schools, mosques, and utilities.

By the end of the war, more than 80% of Palestinians in Gaza are living now below the poverty level. Billions of dollars are needed for reconstruction and starting the economy. Immediate relief and aid of food, medicine, fuel, and building materials are needed.

Al-Qassam Brigades announced that 48 of their fighters were martyred, including one self-sacrificing martyr, who attacked an Israeli tank with his bomb. Palestinian resistance fighters also managed to confront the Israeli invading forces with fierce fighting which stopped them from entering innercity Gaza neighborhoods. They also managed to launch about 900 rockets and missiles at Israeli targets, 60 of which were grads reaching cities of Isdood, Asqalan, and Be-er Al-Saba'a. One of the Grad missiles hit a chemical factory in Isdood, causing explosions and fires. Another hit a major military air base in Be-er Al-Saba'a.

Al-Qassam Brigades announced that their rocket power is still intact despite the 22-war by 8 Israeli army brigades, or one-third of Israeli forces. They demonstrated their steadfastness and determination by launching 8 Grad missiles at Israeli targets after the Israeli unilateral ceasefire announcement. The Israelis themselves admitted that Hamas still has 10,000 fighters and 5,000 rockets. This means that the main announced objective of the Israeli war has not been accomplished. The democratically-elected Hamas government is still in control of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian resistance is still intact. However, the Israeli brutality is most likely to force them to seek to acquire far more fire power for their rockets and missiles, in preparation for the future inevitable confrontations imposed on them by the Israelis.

Despite all the casualties and destruction of property, the Israeli brutality does not deter Palestinian fighters. Actually, Israelis have still demonstrated a miserable lack of understanding of their enemies. Devoted Muslim fighters cannot be deterred by death. Period. Death in the battlefield means martyrdom, which leads to Paradise. They know that they are oppressed by the Israelis, who evicted their parents and their grandparents from their homeland. As a result, they have a just cause, which is gaining support all over the world, particularly from Arabs and Muslims.

These are simple facts, Israelis and their Zionist supporters need to understand. They also need to understand that they need to leave Palestinians alone to establish their own independent state, which will then negotiate coexistence with Israel through giving Palestinians their inalienable rights, as stated in UN resolutions.

The Israeli terrorist forces used US-made weapons, particularly F-16, Apache helicopter, DIME bombs, phosphorus bombs, and other military equipment, together with EU-made equipment and naval vessels to commit their war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

Without this US-EU military and financial support, the Israeli aggressors could not have launched all those wars against Palestinians and other Arab neighbors. That's why US-EU governments share the responsibility with the Israeli terrorists for the innocent Palestinian blood shed by their weapons.

Official Israeli military casualties included 10 deaths and 130 injuries. However, Palestinian resistance sources announced that there were 33 deaths among Israeli soldiers and about 320 military injuries.

Are we going to hear wise voices in Israel and the US speaking about an end to the conflict, through enabling Palestinians to establish their state and realizing their rights?

I'm not holding my breath!

[otraque]

excellent item. i agree with it.
When Olmert bragged that he had Bush "Going , yes anything you say SIR!" i can only imagine the FURY over that boasting arrogance of that megalomaniacal pig Olmert and the really now nazi like arrogance of the Israeli Lobby.
You hear that and one can NOT dismiss Patrick Buchanan saying that the U.S.is now Israeli occupied territory.
i have no doubt about this either <<The point that I am making is that privately, official Washington almost to a man and woman agreed with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’ Israel Lobby – and everybody read it. But they agreed quietly, while openly condemning it.>>

[Ace Hanlon]

A most interesting comment posted on Glen Greenwald's site by an apparent Washington insider.


One point that is not widely known, because people are too [scared] discreet to say it out loud

How deeply official Washington, London, Brussels, Europe hates the Israelis. I am not talking a little annoyance – they outright hate the Israelis. The reason is the craven and servile behaviour demanded by the Israelis and their shills. I remember a late Pentagon General Counsel, the top career attorney for the US DOD who had been their through Reagan, Bush I and Clinton telling me how annoyed he was that the early Clinton administration had not yet learned about Netanyahu –dating back to Reagan he kept a list of every US soldier whose death could be directly attributed to Netanyahu (and Pollard continued presence in Jail is because of this) -- and I recall it was over 30. Diplomats who dealt with Netanyahu in DC and Europe described him as an almost compulsive liar - and I know this from people who were in meetings with him where they describe people as struck dumb by his outrageous mendacity, his bald faced lying (and Israelis I know wonder if he is in fact sane, since some of it is pointless.) By the way, he has made this lying part of the Israeli diplomatic culture, another reason they are detested.

Now you have the juvenile boast by an Israeli Prime Minister that demanded that Bush interrupt a speech to get him to overrule Rice and stop the US voting for the UN Cease Fiore resolution (showing that the President of the United States carries his spittoon.) A story that is almost certainly true, and that probably left her and numerous people in DC spitting mad. I have heard so many stories about the appalling Wurmsers, husband and wife, and their behavior -- they are hard to describe.

The point that I am making is that privately, official Washington almost to a man and woman agreed with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’ Israel Lobby – and everybody read it. But they agreed quietly, while openly condemning it.

Meanwhile around the world, government after government deeply resents the pressure brought through Washington for them to tone down criticism of the Israelis. The way in which stories are whipped up of anti-Semitism in this country or that country (always front page in a US newspaper) – noting of course that whipping up ideas of anti-Semitism creates a solidarity effect so that the 70% odd of US Jews that disagree with Israeli policy and AIPAC, and almost 90% or Europeans feel obliged to toe the party-line.

The real issue though is that you cannot be so hated as the Israelis are in DC, bully so many politicians, be regarded as complete liars, without their being an eventual backlash. The day that Israel loses seriously its support in US public opinion, it will quite literally reap the whirlwind. There is an astonishing level of anger in DC at the way the Israelis behave, and deep anger in capitals all around the world. They are on a precipice here.

[otraque]

Israeli Arab Parties React to Election Ban


Left claims ban is 'patriotic'
by Jonathan Cook
The only three Arab parties represented in the Israeli parliament vowed yesterday to fight a decision by the Central Elections Committee to bar them from running in next month's general election.

In an unprecedented move signaling a further breakdown in Jewish-Arab relations inside Israel, all the main Jewish parties voted on Monday for the blanket disqualification. Several committee members equated the Arab parties' vocal support for the Gazan people with support for terrorism.

The decision follows the arrest of at least 600 Arab demonstrators since the outbreak of the Gaza offensive and the interrogation by the secret police of dozens of Arab community leaders. The three parties – the National Democratic Assembly, the United Arab List and the Renewal Movement – have seven legislators out of a total of 120 in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.

The elections committee barred all three from putting up candidates for the Feb 10 election on the grounds that they had violated a 2002 law by refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and by supporting a terrorist organization.

Ahmed Tibi, the leader of Renewal, denounced the decision as "a political trial led by a group of fascists and racists who are willing to see the Knesset without Arabs and want to see the country without Arabs."

A petition against the disqualification will be heard by a panel of Supreme Court justices this week.

Hassan Jabareen, the director of the Adalah legal rights group, which represents the Arab parties, noted that the disqualification motion had been introduced by far right-wing parties.

Such parties include Yisrael Beiteinu, which campaigns for the country's 1.2 million-strong Arab minority to be stripped of citizenship.

"It is absurd that the committee is backing a motion from racist parties in the Knesset to exclude the Arab parties whose platform is that Israel must be made into a proper democracy treating all its citizens equally."

The elections committee is composed of representatives from all the major parties. Although it has voted for disqualification of Arab candidates before, it is the first time both that the left-wing Labor Party has backed such a motion and that all the Arab parties have been included in the ban.

Mr Jabareen accused the right-wing parties of exploiting the war atmosphere. Labor's secretary general, Eitan Cabel, called his party's conduct in voting for the disqualification "patriotic."

All the Arab parties have harshly criticized the attack on Gaza. This week Mr Tibi described Israeli actions as "genocide", while Ibrahim Sarsour, of the United Arab List, said Israel was seeking to "eliminate the Palestinian cause."

In the past, Arab Knesset members have also upset their Jewish colleagues by traveling to neighboring Arab states, defying a change in the law to prevent such visits.

Following the vote on the ban, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, suggested his party had additional goals: "The next battle is making [the National Democratic Assembly] illegal because it is a terrorist organization whose objective is harming the state of Israel."

Mr Lieberman and other legislators have been hounding the NDA for years, chiefly because it is led by Azmi Bishara, an outspoken proponent of equal rights for Arab citizens. Israeli secret police forced Mr Bishara into exile two years ago, accusing him of treason after the 2006 Lebanon war.

During the 2003 election, when the committee barred the NDA and Mr Tibi from running, the decision was overturned by a majority of the Supreme Court. But few of the justices from that hearing are still on the bench.

"There are reasons to be fearful," Mr Jabareen said. "The Supreme Court is also susceptible to the current war atmosphere and its authority has been greatly eroded over the past year. It has been forced on to the defensive over claims from the Right that its decisions support the Left."

If the ban is upheld, some Arab representation in the Knesset is likely to continue. The joint Arab and Jewish Communist Party is allowed to stand, and the three major Jewish parties include one or two Arab candidates on their lists, though not always in electable positions.

Meanwhile, Israeli police admitted they arrested about 600 people involved in protests against the Gaza offensive, some of them for stone-throwing. Adalah lawyers said more than 200 people, most of them Arab, were still in jail.

"We're talking about mass arrests," said Abeer Baker, adding that Israel was exploiting a 30-day window before an indictment had to be filed to hold suspects without producing evidence.

In addition, the Shin Bet, Israel's secretive domestic security service, has called in dozens of Arab leaders for interrogation. Ameer Makhoul, head of the Ittijah organization, which promotes Arab causes in Israel, was detained last week. He said a security official who interrogated him threatened to jail him over demonstrations he helped to organize in support of Gaza.

"The officer called me a rebel threatening the security of the state during time of war and said he would be happy to transfer me to Gaza," Mr Makhoul said.

Haaretz, a leftist Israeli daily newspaper, has called the interrogations "intimidation tactics to prevent legitimate protest."

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

[Ace Hanlon]

Academics against murder

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=2481

[otraque]

Who will save Israel from itself?

By Mark LeVine

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/2009110112723260741.html

[Ace Hanlon]

Martial law, the bailout, and war

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11681

[otraque]

Obama same old sh-t:Obama won't deal with Hamas, 'Post' told
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231424907657&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The incoming Obama administration will not abandon President George Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas, the Obama transition team's chief national security spokeswoman has told The Jerusalem Post.


The next US president will not break the policy of isolating Hamas, an Obama spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post.


President-elect Barack Obama "has repeatedly stated that he believes that Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel's destruction, and that we should not deal with them until they recognize Israel, renounce violence, and abide by past agreements," said Brooke Anderson in a statement to the Post.

Those conditions match the international Quartet's long-standing demands from Hamas, shared by Israel.

The Obama spokeswoman was responding to an article in Britain's Guardian newspaper on Friday.

The report asserted that three people with knowledge of discussions held in the Obama camp said that while the president-elect would not approve direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, his advisers were urging him to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, in light of the growing belief in Washington that ostracizing the terror group is a counterproductive policy.

"The president-elect's repeated statements [about not dealing with Hamas] are accurate," Anderson said. "This unsourced story is not."

The US State Department designated Hamas a terrorist organization, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

[otraque]

Iranians' hope for U.S. policy shift dims
Initial optimism falling
Hadi Nili (Contact)
Sunday, January 11, 2009

TEHRAN | President-elect Barack Obama has not yet been inaugurated, but some Iranians are already losing their optimism that he will change policy toward Iran after 30 years of estrangement.

An initial groundswell of enthusiasm among some Iranians has been replaced by caution and concern.

"Obama" means "he is with us" in Persian. But an Iranian weekly tabloid recently ran a headline saying "He is not with us."

"Nothing will basically change with Obama," said a foreign editor for one of Iran's most prominent newspapers, who asked that only his first name, Reza, be used. "He is one of them; someone from the system, despite his slogans."

The reported choice last week of Dennis Ross as the Obama administration's Iran coordinator also is likely to be unpopular in the Iranian government. Mr. Ross is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that Iranians regard as extremely close to Israel. Israel has described Iran's nuclear program, which Iran maintains is for peaceful purposes only, as a threat.

Keyhan, a hard-line newpaper close to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has called Mr. Ross, a former Middle East negotiator, "a Zionist lobbyist in the U.S. administration."

"Iranians have serious misgivings about Dennis Ross because of his close ties to the pro-Israel lobby ... not to mention Ross' recent writings that push for tough actions against Iran while de-prioritizing the Israel-Palestinian issue," said Kaveh Afrasiabi, a former Iranian nuclear-issues negotiator.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama promised to open direct talks with Iran without preconditions. However, foreign-affairs specialists here predict he will focus first on domestic issues, particularly the economic crisis.


"To the extent that Obama is willing to devote energy to Iran, he will certainly consider the issue of how to respond to signals being sent by the current government," said Nasser Hadian, a professor of international relations at Tehran University and a former lecturer at Columbia University in New York. "This will certainly take time, and he is in no hurry to respond to a request for talks."

Mr. Ahmadinejad, like many other Iranians, publicly expressed doubts before the election that a black man could win the presidency. However, after the Nov. 4 vote, the Iranian leader sent the president-elect a letter of congratulations, which also reminded Mr. Obama of his "chance for change, which is given to him by the vote of American citizens."

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Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC

[otraque]

Demonsrations world wide against both Israel and U.S. are gaining some strength, especially in being widespread.
Abbas and a PA security forces are getting denounced in The West Bank as they are now glaring exposing they are low life quislings in the employ of U.S. and Israel.
So far the agony of Gaza is building strength towards Israel--- and the likes of King Abdullah of Jordan and Mubarak have the majority below them against them.
My hatred of Mubarak knows no limit, and he will just escalate his policcies of savage repression.
King Abdullah , he could be turned, i feel.
in the Wast Bank>
<<What are you doing?" an onlooker shouted, demanding that the police stop beating a flag-waving Hamas supporter. "It's only a flag. We are all one people!" But soon packs of casually dressed security officers - many of them wearing Fatah baseball caps - surged through the crowd, harassing almost anyone who complained, and beating those suspected of supporting Hamas, oblivious to the irony that their makeshift plastic whips were fabricated from cheap Palestinian flags. "Animals!" someone shouted at the officers. "Collaborators! Jews!" screamed an elderly woman at the police.


Similar scenes - which have been occurring almost every day in every major city in the the West Bank since fighting in Gaza began almost two weeks ago - are the most visible example of the political blowback created by the Gaza violence. While Israeli and U.S. officals have suggested that pounding Hamas in Gaza would strengthen Fatah and those Palestinian moderates willing to engage in the peace process, the opposite is occurring on the ground. The rolling demonstrations in the West Bank, which have drawn supporters of both Hamas and Fatah, have become expressions of popular anger not just at Israel and America, but also at President Abbas and his security apparatus. >>

[Ace Hanlon]

Israel Mudering Captured Palestinians?


Dr. Barghouthi: “Israel is executing civilians in Gaza, committing war crimes”
Saed Bannoura - IMEMC

Saturday January 10, 2009

Palestinian Legislator, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, stated in a press conference on Saturday at the Watan Media Center in Ramallah that Israel continues its crimes in Gaza for the fifteenth day, and is committing war crimes by shelling civilian homes and killing children, women and elderly.

Dr. Barghouthi added that the large number of civilian casualties proves that Israel’s claims of targeting the fighters are false and outrageous.

He demanded all statistics and cases be documented in preparation for an international criminal investigation, and he also demanded the formation of an international committee which would be in charge of prosecuting Israeli officials responsible for war crimes.

The Palestinian Legislator also said that Israel is not only targeting civilians, but is also targeting medical personnel, as 13 medics and physicians were killed by the Israeli Army during the ongoing offensive.

He added that the Israeli Army has shelled hospitals, schools and mosques, which has increased the number of civilian casualties.

Dr. Barghouthi further said that Israel’s statements that the fighters the Israeli Army is kidnapping in Gaza are illegitimate are very serious claims which are considered an approval to kill them after they are captured.

Commenting on Jordan’s decision to withdraw its ambassador to Israel, Dr. Barghouthi said that this is a positive step that should be followed by other Arab and Foreign countries.

He slammed the Pentagon’s decision to transfer weapons to Israel, and considered this decision as an active American participation in the war crimes carried out by the Israeli Army against the Palestinian people. "It is a blow to the upcoming Obama Administration which is preparing to move into the White House", Dr. Barghouthi added.

Qaddoura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Society, said that Israel’s kidnapping of civilians in Gaza and the media blackout on the issue is very serious, as it gives the Israeli Army a free hand to assassinate kidnapped residents.

Fares added that the army is not providing any information about the number of kidnapped residents or their whereabouts "Which gives the army the opportunity to execute them, throw their bodies in the streets, and claim that they were killed in during clashes".

The Society demanded the Red Cross to perform its duties in the Gaza Strip and to act in order to attain information on the abducting of residents.

Doctor Moawiya Hassanen, of the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reported Saturday that 804 Palestinians, including 230 children, 92 women, and 92 elderly have been killed, and more than 3,300 were wounded; 400 seriously.

[otraque]

Thanks.Max

[Ace Hanlon]

The blogger Larsi Alexandrova is the one speaking out.

Scroll down to the EVIL post

[otraque]

Corrected:<<Who is it CG???? That link doesn't lead to THAT story, just a lot of stories, and not one disclosing "Another Jewish voice against the massacre"| Max

[otraque]

Who is it CG???? That link doesn't lead to THAT story, just a lot of stories, and not one disclosing "Another Jewish voice against dissent|" Max

[Ace Hanlon]

Another Jewish voice against the massacre.

http://www.atlargely.com/

[otraque]

The West Bank: We're all Hamas now - supporters of Fatah unite behind enemy

Mahmoud Abbas's popularity has been caught in the crossfire of the Gaza invasion

By Ben Lynfield in Ramallah
Friday, 9 January 2009

(edit: it is my hope that the populace of the West Bank revolts against the quislings, Abbas and al Fatah. Max)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-west-bank-were-all-hamas-now-supporters-of-fatah-unite-behind-enemy-1242606.html


Even if Israel wins on the battlefield or in the diplomatic corridors it is already paying the price of its Gaza onslaught in intensified hatred in the hearts of its Palestinian neighbours in the West Bank. The campaign also appears to be increasing public scepticism about the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's chosen path of negotiations as the way to establish an independent state alongside Israel.


The diplomacy championed by Mr Abbas has for years been difficult to sell to Palestinians because it has brought little or no relief from occupation or improvement in their daily lives, only the expansion of Israeli settlements. This existing frustration –which helped Hamas defeat Mr Abbas's Fatah movement in the 2006 elections – is now combined with popular anger and dismay at the carnage among fellow Palestinians in Gaza.

Palestinian Authority security forces are keeping a tight lid on protests, preventing confrontations with Israeli troops and arresting anyone raising Hamas banners at rallies. [b[But displays of identification with the beleaguered Gazans are everywhere. Nine-year-old green-kerchiefed girl Scouts, their foreheads marked with the word Gaza in red ink, were among those who marched through the main al-Manara square in a protest. They held up pictures of bandaged toddlers, and dozens of demonstrators chanted, "With blood and spirit, we will redeem you, O Gaza".

Leaders of Fatah, which lost control of Gaza to Hamas fighters in June 2007, are torn between their own hopes that Hamas, which they view as a usurper and agent of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, is defeated, and the people's anger over the Israeli campaign. There is a great deal at stake for them. "If Hamas is victorious and the Israelis raise the white flag there will be a problem in the West Bank, more people will support Hamas, and the Arab regimes will have problems too," said Ziad Abu Ein, the deputy minister of prisoner affairs and a veteran of 13 years in Israeli prisons.

Bassem Khoury, the president of the Palestinian Federation of Industries, launched the PA-supported National Palestinian Campaign to Relieve Gaza by holding up a picture from the al-Ayyam daily newspaper showing the head of a Palestinian girl buried in the rubble of an Israeli attack. "This is unbelievable," he said. "How will this help the Israelis? It only generates more recruits for Hamas."

Unlike the people, who seem less concerned as yet with apportioning Palestinian blame, some Fatah leaders couple calls for national unity with accusing Hamas of causing the suffering in Gaza. Tawfik al-Tirawi, an adviser to Mr Abbas and a former security chief, said: "The political leadership that miscalculated has brought catastrophe on itself and its people."

Palestinians in the West Bank have their own long-standing grievances against Israel: the ongoing occupation, checkpoints Israel says are needed for security but that hamper their movement, often humiliate them and paralyse economic life, the expropriation of Palestinian land, and the threat of Israeli army incursion or arrest. The images from Gaza are being layered onto a collective memory of being expelled at Israel's creation in 1948.

A teacher in a PA school talked of the Israeli attack on a UN school in Gaza that killed at least 40 people and other killings of civilians. "The feeling is of severe anger," he said. "We are angry at the Jews and the hatred of them inside of us has increased. This is more than people can bear. We are mad at the Palestinian Authority and we are mad at the Arab regimes. When there is a call to convene an Arab meeting it looks like they are giving Israel a free hand to do whatever it wants"

Another PA employee, from the northern West Bank city of Nablus, said: "I want to educate my kids to hate Israel. If I can't do something maybe my kids can. I will educate them to fight the Israelis."

[otraque]

RedCross: Israeli Behavior in Gaza Shocking
Officials Spell Out "Unacceptable" Israeli Conduct
Posted January 8, 2009



In what Red Cross chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories Pierre Wettlach described as “a shocking incident,” relief workers found four starving children next to their mothers and other corpses in a neighborhood of Gaza City which Israel had denied them access to for days.

“The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation,” Wettlach added, “but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded.” The action appears, according to the agency, to have violated international humanitarian law.

The young children were too weak to stand, and the Israeli army erected large earthen barriers and denied ambulances access to the neighborhood for four days. After discovering yet more bodies in another house in the neighborhood, the Israeli military ordered the rescue team to leave the area immediately.

The Israeli military declined to comment on the specifics of the latest atrocities, but insists that it “in no way intentionally targets civilians and has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives.” The claim carries considerably less weight after the Israeli military intentionally attacked a UN-run school full of civilians on Tuesday and unsuccessfully tried to blame Hamas.

[otraque]

excellent article that, Here i post an item showing what a slippery smoothy shallow worthless politician Obama is .
i like to see how all those stooges that hailed Obama in messianic terms react now.
Will they wake up?????????????
Will Bruce Springsteen ever apologize for making Obama out for something he never was?????????

Will Bruce Springsteen be one of the BrainDead and be a performing lackey to our new leader at the Inaugral Party???
Enough time has passed since the election to reveal the real Obama, Bruce doesn't get it by now he is just one more of the just to damn dim to recognize Democracy is Dead, it is now , as i wrote earlier but a one party system in the U.S., the NCNLU Party(made of both right leaning, to very far right, republicans and democrats.)
The NeoConsNeoLibsUnited Party.

News Item:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090107/ap_on_go_pr_wh/the_presidents__club

Obama hails 'extraordinary' moment with presidents
By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer Ben Feller, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jan 7, 5:56 pm ET



WASHINGTON – Confronting a grim economy and a Middle East on fire, Barack Obama turned Wednesday to perhaps the only people on the planet who understand what he's in for: the four living members of the U.S. presidents' club. In an image bound to go down in history, every living U.S. president came together at the White House on Wednesday to hash over the world's challenges with the president-elect. There they stood, shoulder-to-shoulder in the Oval Office: George H.W. Bush, Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

"This is an extraordinary gathering," Obama said, looking plenty at ease in the humbling office that will soon be his.

"All the gentlemen here understand both the pressures and possibilities of this office," Obama said. "And for me to have the opportunity to get advice, good counsel and fellowship with these individuals is extraordinary. And I'm very grateful to all of them."(edit:beyond sickening, and the only one of them i would note is a decent human being, is likely Jimmy Carter.Otraque)

Bush, blistered without mercy by Obama during the campaign season, played the role of gracious host.(edit: he was just playing the Shallow Politics Game, Obama has no strong feelings against the evil Bush, Obama is just another Bourgeois Plastic Man to take "The Crown" of state, and is just another devout member of America is next to Gawd, an American Exceptionalism propagandist.Max

[Ace Hanlon]




A SATANIC GENOCIDAL ISRAEL
Khaled Amayreh


Jan 7, 2009

For years, I have been warning that Israel is psychologically and morally capable of carrying out a holocaust or a genocide against the Palestinian people.

Needless to say, the horrible events of the past two weeks in Gaza seem to have enforced and vindicated my convictions in this regard.

Israel, government and people, seem to possess the psychological propensity that would make her embark on such a monstrosity. Yes, there is a minority of Israeli Jews and non-Israeli Jews who say "No" to all the evils and crimes Israel is doing in the name of their name.

However, let us be honest and realistic. These people are a small minority and have very little influence if any on the Israeli government and army.

Today, what many people had thought would be unthinkable or far-fetched in terms of the extent to which Israel would be willing to go in savaging the Palestinian people seems quite possible in light of the Jewish state’s Nazi-like behavior in the Gaza Strip.

Given the Israeli mindset, Israel may well be hoping the latest genocidal onslaught could have a certain desensitizing and de-mystifying effect on people’s perceptions and attitudes.

The logic is quite simple. If the world can be bullied or cajoled into silence and apathy when Gaza is ravaged and thousands of its inhabitants are slaughtered en mass in full view of humanity, the same world can likewise be manipulated in similar fashion to come to terms with a greater genocide.

On Tuesday, 6 January, one Israeli official, Eli Yeshai, called for the total extermination of Gaza. The leader of the ultra Orthodox Shas party argued that "extermination of the enemy is sanctioned by the Torah."

Other Israeli political and religious leaders have lately spoken enthusiastically of the need for "wiping off Gaza from the face of earth" and "annihilating of every moving thing there."

Interestingly, this is by no means a minority opinion in Israel. Indeed, one could safely argue that the "ideology of annihilation" now represents the mainstream in the Israeli society.

As we all know, Israel heavily employs mendacity, deception and disinformation to conceal, or at least blur, its criminality and barbarianism.

The Israeli hasbara machine’s main job has always been and continues to be to turn the black into white, the white into black and the big lie into a "truth" glorified by millions, especially in the west.

To effect these obscene lies and "virtual realities," the Israeli government counts heavily on the Jewish-controlled or Jewish influenced media in the western world, especially in North America where telling the truth about Israel is the ultimate taboo.

In truth, what has been happening in Gaza is a huge massacre of genocidal proportions as many conscientious Jews have testified.

What else can be said of this wanton, deliberate and indiscriminate blanket bombing of densely-populated neighborhoods and refugee camps?

I believe terms such as "huge massacres" and "genocidal onslaught" used in reference to the Gaza nightmare cannot be dismissed by Israel and her supporters as merely overstatements or rhetorical exaggerations.

This is unless Israel views non-Jewish pain and suffering as disingenuous, probably because non-Jews or "goyem" are actually considered "human animals" by a large and growing class of fanatical rabbis, politicians and military leaders.

So far, more than 4000 Gazans have been mercilessly killed or badly mutilated or incinerated in less than two weeks of intensive indiscriminate aerial and artillery bombing targeting everyone and everything.

Mosques, homes, public buildings, shelters, schools, colleges, dormitories, factories, cultural institutions, businesses, even hospitals and drug stores as well as the entire civilian infrastructure have been bombed and reduced to rubble.

The rabid bombing from high altitudes has exterminated numerous whole families and destroyed entire neighborhoods. This is probably what Israeli leaders had in mind when they spoke earlier about a "shock and awe" campaign against Gaza.

On 6 January, Israeli tanks fired several artillery shells at a school at the Jabalya refugee camp, killing more than 40 civilians, mostly children and women, who had sought shelter at the UNRWA-run facility. Dozens others were injured, many critically.

Israeli army spokespersons, who are actually professional liars, claimed that Palestinian fighters were seen in the vicinity of the building and that some of these actually fired on Israeli troops from the school.

However, UN officials in Gaza strongly denied the Israeli account, with one UN official saying that he was "99.99%" that the Israeli army was lying.

Earlier, the Israeli air forces hit a mourning reception, killing 15 members of the same family.

The pornographic killing of civilians has no explanation other than the ostensible fact that Israel is adopting a no-holds-barred approach toward Gaza, which is still under effective Israeli occupation despite the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the coastal enclave more than three years ago.

Well, if we are to accept this logic, namely that everything is fair in war, then Jews should stop complaining about what the armies of Hitler did to them during World War II.

It is just unacceptable to apply two standards of morality, one for Jews and another for non-Jews. For if what Israel is doing in Gaza is right, as Israel and her supporters maintain, then what the Nazis did in Europe several decades ago must have been right as well. And vice versa.

After all, crime doesn’t become kosher when committed by Jewish hands.

Colossal crime

The enormity of the present holocaustic assault is undoubtedly a colossal crime against humanity.

In proportion to the size of population, the murder and maiming of 4000 Gazans (the number keeps rising) is like the US having at least a million of its citizens killed or badly injured as a result of a foreign aggression.

As to the utter destruction of Gaza, it is equally shocking. Some American expatriates here in occupied Palestine have spoken of a double holocaust in Gaza, one targeting humans, and another targeting civilization.

Facing their crimes, pornographic and outrageous as they are, many Israelis, probably the majority, are simply so gleeful that they think Israel is doing the right think and that God is standing on the side of Israel in this war and every war.

Some religious Israelis have become so euphoric, thanks to the Gaza blitz, that they think the Messiah’s coming imminent.

Other "religious" Israeli Jews, including rabbis, readily justify the wanton slaughter by quoting biblical verses justifying genocide.

One Israeli settler leader recently argued during a conversation with a visiting American peace activist that "if it was right to commit genocide during Biblical time, why can’t it be right to commit genocide now . Has God changed his mind," the settler wondered sarcastically.

As to Israeli leaders and officials, they simply indulge in what they have always been indulging in, namely "denial" and "self-righteousness" or simply playing the role of victim.

Thus behaved Shimon Peres, the Israeli President, when he told al-Jazeera during a live interview on Monday, 5 January.

" We don’t kill and we have not killed any children in Gaza. We are the victim of Hamas aggression," said the pathological liar and certified war criminal rather shamelessly.

Peres’s pornographic lies don’t need any further comment. They speak for themselves.

Zionist Jews may very well think that might is right, and that morality is unneeded and unnecessary as long as they possess overwhelming material strength.

They may think that the rivers of blood the "only democracy in the Middle East" has been shedding will strengthen Israel and terrorize its neighbors.

Well, it may in the short run. However, in the long run, Israeli criminality and evilness will make it sterile from within to the point of death.

Like evil people, evil states shall not prosper.

[otraque]

<< am doing my best to support the lobster industry.>>Thanks:)Max

[Ace Hanlon]

I am hearing runors that Obama will appoint Dennis Ross as point man re: Iran.

Ross is a Clinton retread and Zionist fanatic who has written that the US should threten to attack Iran if that nation refuses to bow down to international Zionism by scrapping its perfectly legal nuclear program.

So much for "change you can believe in" if this rumor is true.

PS

I am doing my best to support the lobster industry.

Averaging about one a week

[otraque]

Save your candles – the Dark Ages are coming
by Justin Raimondo 1/7/2008
(Edit; on this note i will say Dr.Marc.Faber on Bloomberg TV yesterday stated there is an EXTREME likelihood we are heading directly towards WWWIII--max/otraque)

A new year, and a new president – plenty of grist for my prediction mill, or, at least, for the obligatory January "predictions" column. Not that there's anything special, really, about it: all punditry is prediction, in an important sense. Every time a writer advocates a particular policy or decries another, the author is predicting a certain outcome, good or bad. The question is, which policies will win out in the battle of ideas? As we look at the incoming administration, especially in the context of trends that have been building over time, a certain scenario begins to emerge, with the first act unfolding on the domestic stage:

Hyperinflation and the collapse of the dollar. The trillions President-elect Obama plans on spending to "cure" [.pdf] our economic malaise will prove poisonous to the dollar, with hyperinflation an inevitability. Whether this reaches Weimar levels remains to be seen, but one can easily imagine all sorts of unpleasant, Weimar-like consequences.
A barrage of legislation that aims to stop capital flight, including draconian economic controls on the movement of money across borders and the erection of a steep tariff wall in the name of "national economic security." By the end of the year, we will have so many economic czars, each in charge of their own economic fiefdom, that Obama will have to appoint a czar-of-czars.
More Israeli aggression. The Israeli offensive in Gaza is but a prelude to a series of IDF military actions, possibly including a third Lebanon blitz and an attack on Syria, the weakest link in the chain of pro-Palestinian regional actors. The whole point of this extended exercise is to involve the U.S. militarily. This will lead logically to the fourth not-so-great expectation.
The return of military Keynesianism. To hear Paul Krugman and the other left-liberal economic gurus tell it, all we have to do is spend our way out of the doldrums, and that will do the trick. It doesn't matter what we spend it on – it could be pyramid-building, for all they care – just as long as we "jump-start" the economy with a "stimulus" of freshly-printed greenbacks. That's the ticket! And in the meantime, there will be plenty of jobs in Washington for ambitious young "planners" and other disciples of Saint Keynes, whose purview will be devising imaginative methods of expanding the ranks of government workers. As Pat Buchanan pointed out, this is the dreaded "earmarks" raised to a way of life. Inevitably, this orgy of spending will include – and perhaps even come to be dominated by – increased military appropriations. After all, there are only so many bridges one can build across the same river, and the accompanying rash of corruption sure to ensue is going to put a cap on this kind of spending. One can always cloak cronyism and $200 wrenches under the general rubric of economic collateral damage, a regrettable but necessary byproduct of ensuring the national security.
War. Preparations for war usually result in war, and there are several candidates for 2009. The first is Iran, which will undergo a prolonged diplomatic, political, and economic assault before facing the prospect of American bombs falling on its cities. This, however, may not turn out to be the main theater of American aggression in the coming year: Afghanistan and Pakistan will see major efforts by the U.S. to complete a mission that has already failed and that no one is quite clear about any longer. The U.S.-Indian relationship will grow, perhaps formalized by a pact and, in all likelihood, a visit by Hillary Clinton – not Obama – to the region.
What the situation requires, however – the economic situation, that is – is the invention of another Major Threat. Whether that turns out to be Russia, as the neocons would like; China, as the labor unions would prefer; or al-Qaeda, again, pulling off some spectacular 9/11-like operation, is an open question. Throw in the prospect of another non-state actor usurping al-Qaeda's role as global villain, and the possibilities are manifold – and frighteningly plausible. As for me, I'd place my bets on Russia. As in the Clinton era, expect large-scale U.S. government-sponsored efforts to penetrate Central Asia.

An increasingly antagonistic relationship with China is also in our future, especially after the Chinese government orders state-owned enterprises to call in their American debt and offload all those T-bills. If and when it comes, that is the conflict that will see the AFL-CIO, the neocons, both major political parties, and a good proportion of the paleoconservatives in the ranks of the War Party. The Taiwan lobby, an old mainstay of the Cold War conservative movement, will make a comeback, as the Republican Party "mainstream" makes a completely implausible and unsuccessful effort to win over "working class" voters.

By the end of the year, plans for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will be put on indefinite hold, as it's "discovered" that Iran has infiltrated the Iraqi government at the highest levels, and U.S. soldiers are called in to halt an alleged coup attempt by pro-Iranian officers and militiamen. Iraq will increasingly become a battlefield in an ongoing proxy war between the U.S. (and Israel, operating in Kurdistan) and Iran. Allegations of Iranian interference in Pakistan and even Afghanistan will be raised by the Clinton State Department, and we'll be subjected to another long campaign by the War Party to target Tehran for destruction.

All in all, the prospects for liberty and peace in 2009 might be charitably described as dim, although bleak seems more precise. My advice to my readers: save your candles. The Dark Ages are coming. But, hey, I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.

As I sit here, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the cities, gazing up at a redwood whose tip is lost in swirling mist, the illusion of my own exemption from the onrushing disaster persists. Perhaps it's just a defense mechanism imposed by the structure of the human mind, the same safety valve that blocks out the certainty of death and the ultimate tragedy of human existence. In any case, whatever it is, it feels right – and that's all I can ask for the moment. So, in spite of my rather grim prognosis of the future we face, I can say, with equanimity, Happy New Year, Antiwar.com readers! May the gods protect you from the coming dark age, as they have so far – thank Fortuna! – spared me.

~ Justin Raimondo

[otraque]

i quote Mike Leigh a Pro-Palestinian Jew from Manchester England of the Socialist Party , and one the best movie directors in the world. His last movie is expected to be of the 5 pictures to be nominated for Best Picture by the Academy(named "Happy Go Lucky").
i don't have the interview right here.
But i paraphrase accurately,
He was asked about his jewishness.
Said he was raised in the Manchester Jewish "hood", that has a long history in England so naturally he has a lot jewishness just like someone that would be raised in dense Italian "hood", they got a lot of Italianess, that is a part of being human, you absorb the culture your born into.

And then he was asked did he consider people anti-Israel as anti-semitic and said NO as Israel's fate is Israel's fate, their actions will judged on their behavior, jews need realize they have to know they do NOT have an obligation to be supportive of Israel simply because it is Israel.
**********************************************

The last polls i could get were what i would place at about 80% hawks among Israeli Jews.

i find this to be the common precentage among all nations when they get in a war frenzy.

i will continue highlight the brave dissenters.


Ace/CG, i have chosen to scan and highlight jews that are now stepping out and taking a stand against Israel.

i feel this published by Wallce Shawn in The Nation statement one of the best made coming out the NYC theatre world.(and i am sure he is now getting calls saying "You will never work in NYC again!!!")
So i post again to highlight.

Also from end of this article " Certainly nothing our new president could do would be of greater value to the world--and greater value to the Jews--than to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing habit of supporting an irrationality which was born in tragedy and will end in more tragedy."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090112/shawn

This i OF COURSE what Obama SHOULD do!!!!!! But he isn't, and we know bloody hell why!!!!
And that is a bloody disgrace on the the head of Obama.

But Wallace Shawn has put in a nutshell all that need be done "to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing" pof Israel, pull the rug of the U.S. that they walk over, from under their criminal feet, and say, NO MORE SUPPORT!!, or on your own.
It would right and so simple and would be a huge step towards a major and FAIR PEACE for the palestinians.
i remain in DISGUST the U.S. Government, i have thus far noted only one member of Congress to actually attend a protest against Israel, only one.
That was Dennis Kucinic. Max

i , on MySpace Blog site i created a new acronym for the One Party that now RULES the U.S.

It is The NCNLU Party that has taken OVER the United States.

It stands for NeoConsNeoLibsUnited Party, now headed by Barack Obama.

Pat Buchanan has been attacked for calling The U.S. as an Occupied Territoty of Israel.

Well , it only happens to be true, as Israel has had control of the U.S Congress and the White House for a long time.
And that is all they need to control the U.S. Max

[Ace Hanlon]

I note that most of the mainstream critics of Israel make the point that Israel's policies will not work. Very few say that these policies of murder and aggression policies are WRONG even if they do work.

I also note that most Israelis support these genocidal policies. No need for Zionist leaders to lie their people into war as Bush did here. So the Israeli people (or most of them anyway) are fully complicit with and supportive of a host of war crimes.

They deserve whatever dark fate the Gods have in store for them.

[otraque]

One thing positive i am noting The Nation is more and increasingly slanting articles critical to quite critical of Israel
i post this one as it is written by Wallace Shawn, a fine playwrite and actor whose biggest success in the movies was the production of his "Dinner With Andre" play in which he, Wallace Shawn played the person having dinner with Andre.

This is bit convoluted but it in the end proves true to its title, Israel is Irrational, they have going bokers in other words.
Of note, Wallace Shawn, who is jewish, has been a fixture for decades now in the NYC theatre community.
Wallace Shawn: "It is not rational to believe that the Palestinians in the occupied territories will be terrorized by force and violence, by cruelty, by starvation or by slaughter into a docile acceptance of the Israeli occupation."
Fragments From a Diary George W. Bush Administration

Wallace Shawn: "Soothed by calm words, we are about to be driven into the flames of hell."
From the The Dangerous Restaurant
Also from end of this article " Certainly nothing our new president could do would be of greater value to the world--and greater value to the Jews--than to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing habit of supporting an irrationality which was born in tragedy and will end in more tragedy."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090112/shawn
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Israel in Gaza: Irrationality
By Wallace Shawn

December 29, 2008

Jews, historically, have been irrationally feared, hated and killed. Given that background, it's not surprising that the irrationality which surrounded them for so long, the fire of irrationality in which they were almost extinguished, has jumped across and taken hold of the soul of many Jews and indeed dominates the thinking of today's Israeli leaders and their American supporters.


Israel in Gaza: Irrationality Israel

Wallace Shawn: It is not rational to believe that the Palestinians in the occupied territories will be terrorized by force and violence, by cruelty, by starvation or by slaughter into a docile acceptance of the Israeli occupation.
Fragments From a Diary George W. Bush Administration

Wallace Shawn: Soothed by calm words, we are about to be driven into the flames of hell.
The Dangerous Restaurant George W. Bush Administration

Wallace Shawn
Recent history shows that the Jews, as a people, have found few friends who are honest and true. During World War II, when Hitler's anti-Semitism was responsible for the murdering of the millions of Jews, the world and the United States expressed their own anti-Semitism by refusing to house and welcome the tortured race, preferring instead to let it be exterminated if need be. After the war, the world felt it owed the Jews something--but then showed its lack of true regard for the tormented group by "giving" them a piece of land populated and surrounded by another people--an act of European imperialism carried out exactly at the moment when non-European peoples all over the world were finally concluding that European imperialism was completely unacceptable and had to be resisted. And now we have the spectacle of American politicians encouraging and financing Israeli policies which will ultimately lead to more disaster and destruction for Jews.

It is not rational to believe that the Palestinians in the occupied territories will be terrorized by force and violence, by cruelty, by starvation or by slaughter into a docile acceptance of the Israeli occupation. There is no evidence that that could possibly happen and mountains of evidence to the contrary.

Many right-wing Israelis and American Jews clearly believe that Jews have always had enemies and always will have enemies--and who can be shocked that certain Jews might think that? To these individuals, a Palestinian throwing stones at an Israeli soldier, even if his life has perhaps been destroyed by the Israeli occupation, is simply part of an eternal mob of anti-Semites, a mob made up principally of people to whom the Jews have done no harm at all, as they did no harm to Hitler. The logical consequence of this view of the world is that in the face of such massive and eternal opposition, Jews are morally justified in taking any measures they can think of to protect themselves. They are involved in one long eternal war, and a few hundred Palestinians killed today must be measured against many millions of Jews who were killed in the past. The agony the Israelis might inflict on a Palestinian family today must be seen in the perspective of Jewish families in agony all over the world in the past.

It is irrational for the Israeli leaders to imagine that the Palestinians will understand this particular point of view--will understand why Jews might find it appropriate, let us say, to retaliate for the death of one Jew by killing a hundred Palestinians. If a Palestinian killed a hundred Jews to retaliate for the killing of one Palestinian--for that matter, if a Thai killed a hundred Cambodians to retaliate for the killing of one Thai--which, from the point of view of the Israeli leaders, would of course be unjust, that would be racist, as if one Palestinian or one Thai were worth a hundred Israelis or a hundred Cambodians. But if a Jew does it, it's not unjust and it's not racist, because it's part of an eternal struggle in which the Jews have lost and lost and lost--they've already lost more people than there are Palestinians. Well, it's not surprising that certain Jews would feel this way, but no Palestinian will ever share that feeling or be willing to accept it. What the Palestinians see is an implacable and heartless enemy, one that considers itself un-bound by any rules or principles, an enemy that can't be reasoned with but can only be feared, hated and, if possible, killed.

As poor and oppressed people around the world are very well aware of the events in the occupied territories, and as they strongly identify with the Palestinian struggle and point of view, the future of the Jews looks increasingly dim.

Consequently it is disgraceful and vile and no favor to the Jews for American politicians--for narrow, short-term political advantage, for narrow, short-term global-strategic reasons and, yes, also in expiation of the residual guilt they feel over what happened to the Jews in the past--to pander to the irrationality of the most irrational Jews.

Actions based on irrational premises inevitably fail in their purposes--they fail, and if the premises don't change, then the actions are inevitably repeated, in forms which are more and more grotesque. It is unbearable to think that the new American administration would begin with more American dollars being poured into what is unjustifiable. It is also unbearable to think that among the first words we would hear from our new, clearly rational president would be preposterous sentences trying to persuade us that Israeli policies which seem to be appalling are actually quite normal and acceptable. Certainly nothing our new president could do would be of greater value to the world--and greater value to the Jews--than to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing habit of supporting an irrationality which was born in tragedy and will end in more tragedy.

[otraque]

Yes all this Petras writes should be done, but it can't be as long as the media and are politicians march in goosestep to the Israeli Hawks drumbeat , and i just don't see how that can be changed--who will do it??? Where is this leading??? This is a dark time
Petras writes, in part <<US religious institutions should forcefully denounce Israel’s crimes against humanity, including its demolition of 5 mosques, uniting all faiths (Christian, Moslem, Buddhist) and especially reaching out to the tiny minority of rabbis and observant Jews willing to forthrightly denounce the totalitarian practices of the Israeli state.
Port and long shore workers, sailors and other maritime workers and officials should boycott the handling of all trade with Israel and denounce its Navy’s violent illegal assault, in international waters, of civilian fishing boats and vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. No ships carrying Israeli products should be loaded or unloaded as long as Israel maintains its criminal military blockade of the port facilities of Gaza.
Tens of millions of US citizens subject to the one-sided pro-Israel bias of the electronic and print media, the lop-sided presentations of Zionist ‘op-ed’ writers, ‘news’ reports and the self-styled Middle East experts, should demand equal time, coverage and reportage for non-Zionist specialists, analysts and commentators. We should demand the end of euphemisms and fabrications, which convert victims into aggressors and exterminators into victims.>>

[Ace Hanlon]

The Politics of An Israeli Extermination Campaign:
Backers, Apologists and Arms Suppliers

James Petras
January 2, 2009


Introduction
Because of the unconditional support of the entire political class in the US, from the White House to Congress, including both Parties, incoming and outgoing elected officials and all the principle print and electronic mass media, the Israeli Government feels no compunction in publicly proclaiming a detailed and graphic account of its policy of mass extermination of the population of Gaza.
Israel’s sustained and comprehensive bombing campaign of every aspect of governance, civic institutions and society is directed toward destroying civilized life in Gaza. Israel’s totalitarian vision is driven by the practice of a permanent purge of Arab Palestine informed by Zionism, an ethno-racist ideology, promulgated by the Jewish state and justified, enforced and pursued by its organized backers in the United States.
The facts of Israeli extermination have become known: In the first six days of round the clock terror bombing of major and minor populations centers, the Jewish State has murdered and seriously maimed over 2,500 people, mostly dismembered and burned in the open ovens of missile fire. Scores of children and women have been slaughtered as well as defenseless civilians and officials.
They have sealed off all access to Gaza and declared it a military, free fire zone, while expanding their target to include the entire population of 1.5 millions semi-starved prisoners. According to the Boston Globe (December 30, 2008): Israeli military officials said their target lists have expanded to include the vast support network on which the Islamist movement relies to stay in power “…we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel (my emphasis)”. A top Israeli in its secret police apparatus is quoted saying, “Hamas’ civilian infrastructure is a very sensitive target” (ibid). What the Israeli Jewish politicians and military planners designate as “Hamas” is the entire social service network, the entire government and the vast majority of economic activity, embracing almost the entire 1.5 million imprisoned residents of Gaza.
Israel’s ‘target’ list thus involves the ‘total population’, using the totality of its non-nuclear weaponry and for an unlimited time period (until the ‘bitter end’ according to the Israeli Prime Minister). Israel’s defense ministry spokesman has emphatically reiterated the Jewish’s state’s totalitarian war concept emphasizing the targeting of civilians: “Hamas has used ostensibly civilian operations as a cover for military activities. Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target.”
Like all totalitarians in the past, the Jewish state boasts of having systematically pre-planned the extermination campaign – months in advance – up to and including the precise hour and day of the bombing to coincide with inflicting the maximum murder of civilians: The rockets and bombs fell as children were leaving school, as graduating police cadets were receiving their diplomas and as frantic mothers ran out from their homes to find their sons and daughters.
The mass military extermination campaign was a follow up of its non-stop total economic embargo and unremitting selective assassination campaign of the previous two years: Both were designed to purge Palestine of its Arab population, first via mass hunger, disease, humiliation and violent intimidation and the proxy power grab by the PLO Quislings under Zionist puppet Abbas. When they discovered that mass hunger and selective Israeli murder only strengthened the population’s links to its democratically elected government and the resolve of the Hamas government to resist Israel, the Israeli regimes unleashed its entire arsenal of weapons, including its new ‘American gifts’ up-to-date 1000 pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs and high tech missiles to incinerate large numbers of human beings within their deadly radius and to obliterate Palestinian civilization.
Moving directly from its totalitarian vision to its military blueprint to the savaging of Palestinian population centers, the Jewish state destroyed the principle university with over 18,000 students (mostly women), mosques, pharmacies, electrical and water lines, power stations, fishing villages, fishing boats and the little fishing port that provided a meager supply of fish for the starving population. They destroyed roads, transport facilities, food warehouses, science buildings, small factories, shops and apartments. They destroyed a women’s dormitory at the university. In the words of the Israel leader: “…because everything is connected to everything…” it is necessary to destroy each and every facet of life, which allows humans to exist with some dignity and independence.
The Israeli totalitarian leaders knew with confidence that they could act and they could kill with impunity, locally and before the entire world, because of the influence of the US Zionist Power Configuration in and over the US White House and Congress. They knew they had the full backing of all the major Israeli political parties (Right, Left and Center), trade unions, mass media and especially public opinion. Israeli state terror is backed by 81% of Jewish Israelis according to a poll taken by Israel’s Channel 10 (Financial Times December 30, 2008). Israeli totalitarian violence and extermination of Palestinians is extremely popular among the Jewish electorate, especially in raising support for the Labor Party candidate Minister Ehud Barak. They knew they would ‘succeed’ with virtually no casualties because they bombed, burned and dismembered a defenseless population totally lacking the minimum means to defend themselves from F16 bombers, helicopter gun ships and missile assaults. The vile depravity of the assault on the defenseless population is matched by the utter cowardice of the Israeli military command and its cheering bloodthirsty public ensconced behind their aerial monopoly. They suffered no threats of aerial retaliation, no wounded or dead pilots, helicopter gunners, as wave after wave swept in and over a defenseless imprisoned population in a crowded and besieged ghetto.
Hundreds of tanks and armored carriers are prepared to invade once the cities and towns have been leveled, once the population is too weakened by starvation to resist, once the leaders and fighters have been murdered and the normal Palestinian institutions of law and order have been pulverized, making way for the corrupt thuggish collaborators of the so-called Palestinian Authority…then and only then, will the Israeli General staff risk the skin of a precious Jewish ‘soldier’ and risk the anxiety and worry of their kin in Israel and the US.
Overseas Allies: The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO)
From the moment that the Israeli Government decided it would destroy the newly elected Hamas government and punish the democratic electorate of Gaza with starvation and murder, the entire Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the US, including the PMAJO, pulled all stops in implementing the Israeli policy. The PMAJO encompasses the fifty-two Jewish organizations with the largest membership, with the greatest financial clout and the most influential backers. The most prominent lobbyist within the PMAJO is AIPAC, which has over 100,000 members and 150 full-time operatives in Washington actively pressuring the US Congress, the White House and all administrative agencies whose policies may relate to the interests of the State of Israel. However Israeli political extends far beyond its non-governmental agencies. Over two score legislators in the Congress and over a dozen senators are committed Zionists who automatically back Israel’s policies and push for US funding and armaments for its military machine. Top officials in key administrative positions, in Treasury, Commerce and the National Security Council, senior functionaries in the Pentagon and top advisers on Middle East affairs are also life-long, fanatically committed Zionists, who consistently and unreservedly back the policies of the State of Israel.
Equally important, the majority of the largest film, print and electronic media are owned or deeply influenced by Jewish-Zionist media moguls who are committed to slanting the ‘news’ in favor of Israel. The composition and influence of the ZPC is central to understanding three main characteristics of Israel’s power: (1) Israel can commit what leading United Nations and international human rights experts have defined as ‘crimes against humanity’ with total impunity; (2) Israel can secure an unlimited supply of the most technologically advanced and destructive weapons and use them without limit on a civilian population in violation of even US Congressional restrictions and (3) scores of almost unanimous United Nations condemnations of the construction of genocidal apartheid barriers against a native population, starvation embargoes and the current extermination campaign in Gaza are always vetoed by the US representative.
Many critics of Israel’s genocide in Gaza also condemn what they call ‘the complicity’ of Washington or ‘the United States’ without clearly identifying the actual socio-political forces influencing policy-makers or the ‘dual’ political loyalties and identities of the ‘American’ politicians who have long-standing and deep allegiances to Israel. As a consequence, most critics fail to counter, protest or even identify the ideology and politics of the organized power configurations which define US complicity with Israel, who intimidate potential critics, who write and mouth the pro-Israel editorials in the mass media and who filter out any criticism, any truth…even when Israel engages in sustained bloody extermination campaigns.
The ZPC and the Israeli War of Extermination in Gaza
The ZPC played a major role in all stages of Israel’s extermination campaign against Gaza including a sustained propaganda effort. The ZPC orchestrated a massive successful campaign through the extensive network of American mass media, which it controls and influences. It fabricated an image of the Hamas administration in Gaza as a terrorist organization, which allegedly seized power through violence – totally denying its rise to power through internationally supervised, democratic elections and its defense of its electoral mandate against a US-Israeli backed PLO military takeover. The entire Zionist Jewish leadership backed Israel’s land grabs, its ghetto wall around Palestinians, the hundreds of road blocks, the Jewish settlers violently taking over Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the criminal, genocidal Israeli economic embargo on Gaza designed to systematically starve the Palestinians into submission. Throughout the two years of this Israeli extermination campaign, American Zionists played a major role in leading the servile US government at home and abroad in backing each totalitarian measure: The vast majority of local synagogues became bully-pulpits defending the starvation and degradation of 1.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza caged on all sides by deadly force and the ‘walling off’ into economically and socially devastating cantons of the 4.5 million West Bank Palestinian population under foreign occupation. The US Congress shamelessly followed the Zionist lead, backing every single criminal measure taken by the State of Israel and approving dozens of resolutions, which in most cases were entirely written by AIPAC lobbyists acting as unregistered agents of the Israeli government (contrary to US federal statute, which requires foreign agents and lobbyists to be registered as such). Israel’s demands for the most up-to-date US warplanes, including F-16s, Apache helicopter gun ships, and 1,000 pound bombs were secured by dint of effort of the AIPAC lobbyists and their clients in the US Congress. In other words, the American ZPC created the ideological cover and military instruments for Israel’s ‘total war’ against the defenseless Palestinian population. Equally important, prominent Zionist leaders in the US Congress and members of the foreign policy establishment blocked or vetoed any international criticism of Israel – securing its impunity and immunity from any of the Congressional sanctions usually enacted against criminal states. In other words, Israeli policy makers operated with the knowledge that there would be no negative economic, diplomatic and military repercussions to their launching the planned Gaza extermination campaign because they knew, in advance, that ‘their people’ were in total control of US Middle East policy to the extent of actually repeating verbatim each and every propaganda lie in defense of Israel’s total war against the entire population of Gaza.
In Defense of Israel’s War of Extermination
The Zionist-controlled US print media, in particular the New York Times and the Washington Post, systematically fabricated an account that fit perfectly with Israel’s official line defending its massive assault on Gaza: Omitting any historical account of the hundreds of Israeli armed incursions and ‘targeted’ assassinations of Palestinian leaders and officials (even in their own homes) which repeatedly violated the ‘cease fire’ agreed by Hamas and provoked its retaliation in self-defense of its people; omitting the years of an Israeli enforced starvation embargo of food and essentials that threatened the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians and led to the desperate efforts of the elected Hamas leadership to secure supplies for the people’s survival via tunnels across the Egyptian border and through missile attacks against Israel to pressure the Jewish state to negotiate an end of the criminal blockade.
The Conference of President of the Major American Jewish Organizations, and the vast majority of Jewish communal groups and congregations, gave enthusiastic and unanimous support to Israel’s total war, its extermination campaign against the captive Palestinian population of Gaza. Even as images and reports of the massive destruction, killing and wounding of over 2,500 defenseless Palestinians filtered in the mass media, not a single major Jewish organization broke ranks; only individuals and small groups protested. All the ‘Majors’ persisted in the politics of the Big Lie: the destruction of hospitals, mosques, universities, roads, apartments, pharmacies and fishing ports were all labeled ‘Hamas targets’. The systematic all-out assault by uncontested helicopter gunships against 1.5 millions civilians was erased by tendentious accounts of Hamas’ homemade missiles falling ineffectively near Israeli towns.
A close reading of the most important propaganda organ of the PMAJO, The Daily Alert (TDA), during the first 5 days of Israel’s assault, reveals the propaganda tack taken by the leadership of the pro-Israel power configuration. TDA systematically worked to achieve the following:
Exaggerate the threats to Israel by the Palestinian missiles from Gaza, citing 4 Israeli deaths, while omitting any mention of the 2,500 Palestinian dead and wounded and the total destruction of their economy and living conditions (without safe water, electricity, food, cooking fuel, medicine and heat in the winter).
Promote Israel’s military assault as ‘defensive’, directed at eliminating Hamas rocket attacks while omitting mention of Israel’s clearly stated purpose of destroying all civil organizations, social welfare agencies, educational facilities, medical clinics and public security institutions connected in any way with the elected Hamas government and any auxiliary agencies.
Cite select statement from Israel’s allies and clients (Washington, the US media, Germany and the UK) blaming Hamas for the conflict without mentioning the vast majority of countries in the United Nations General Assembly condemning Israel’s brutality.
Reproduce Israeli slanders against any and all international human rights leaders and organizations that condemn the Jewish state’s policy of genocide against the native Palestinians. In this regard, TDA is the foremost ‘genocide denier’ in the United States and, perhaps outside of Israel, in the world.
Repeatedly cite Israeli political and military leaders’ claims of acting ‘with restraint’, ‘safeguarding civilians’, and ‘targeting military objectives’, even in the face of reports and images of mass civilian destruction and loss of life documented in the vast majority of (non-US) Western media.
Defend every Israeli bombing mission, every day, every hour, of every building, every home, and every economic, religious and educational institution in Gaza as ‘defensive’ or a ‘reprisal’, all the while quoting some of the most notorious, unconditional, perennial apologists of Israeli violence as if they were unbiased intellectuals, including Benny ‘Nuke Tehran’ Morris, Marty Peretz and Amos Oz.
The Daily Alert quotes US writers, journalists and editors who praise and defend Israel’s ‘total war’ without identifying their long-standing affiliation and identification with Zionist organizations, giving the false image of a wide spectrum of opinion behind the assault. Never has even the most moderate Jewish or Gentile critic of Israel’s massive extermination campaign appeared in any issues of The Daily Alert.
The principle American Jewish organizations have bombarded the US Congress, influencing, intimidating and purchasing the craven so-called ‘representatives’ of the American people, the media and public notables with lies in defense of Israel’s total war to exterminate a people. Their public, brazen, open complicity in genocide can be considered crime against humanity: The willful promotion of acts of a state designed to destroy an entire people.
And yet these willing accomplices, these ‘willing executioners’ of state mass murder go uncontested within the US political class. One of their leading mouthpieces in the incoming Obama Administration, Chief Presidential Adviser David Axelrod, even cites an Obama campaign speech defending Israeli assaults on the people of Gaza.
Israel arrogantly repudiates all calls to end this mass murder, because Israel knows that ‘its people’ are still in control of US policy toward the Middle East and will use their power in the new president’s administration to block any condemnation of this crime.
To date the entire human rights and anti-war movements have failed to even mention, let along challenge, the most powerful propaganda and political organizations, which influence US policy and manipulate the mass media in favor of Israel’s extermination campaign. They will play no restraining role on Israel’s totalitarian policies as long as its principle US backers are free to lie, manipulate and defend each and every crime.
There is little hope for an independent US Congressional policy as long as Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza can be defended by the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (and Zionist zealot) Congressman Howard Berman in the following terms: “Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week. No government in world would sit by and allow its citizens to be subjected to this kind of indiscriminate bombardment. The loss of innocent life is a terribly tragedy and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas.” Thus Congressman Berman cynically omits the 2 years of Israel’s embargo, the daily ‘targeted’ assassinations of Palestinians, the ‘targeted’ missile attacks against civilians, the land, sea and air blockades and the blatant ‘targeted’ destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza. No government, indeed a democratically elected Islamist government, can stand by while its people are starved and murdered into submission. But according to the respected Congressmen Bermans of the world, only the lives of Jews matter, not the growing thousands of murdered, dismembered and mutilated citizens of Gaza – they do not count as people!
What is to be Done
Israel’s crimes against humanity demand a public response: social action, which will force it to cease and desist from its campaign to exterminate the people of Gaza. Because the Jewish state has assaulted a vast array of Palestinian social institutions, which resonate with those in our own society, we can and should mobilize them to condemn and boycott their counterparts in Israel:
We should urge the entire academic community to denounce Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza and the total destruction of all of its science facilities. An organized boycott of Israeli universities and all academic exchanges, especially scientific, should become university policy throughout the country. Special attention should be paid to the 450 US university presidents, who in the recent past, denounced a call by British academics for a boycott and who remain silent and complicit in the face of Israel’s total physical annihilation of all ten faculties for 20,000 Palestinian university students.
All American health workers, doctors, nurses, technicians, should organize and denounce Israel’s medical embargo against the 1.5 million Palestinians crowded into the Gaza Strip. They must condemn Israel’s bombardment of Gaza’s Children’s Hospital, the neighborhood pharmacies and the attacks on any transport of those critically wounded Palestinian victims of its aerial and missile attacks. Medical personnel should raise the fundamental ethical issues regarding the collaboration of US medical personnel and programs with the Jewish State’s ‘total war’ policies of extermination.
All citizens should demand the end of all US military aid to Israel, especially F-16 fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, missiles, 1000 pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs used by the Israeli armed forces on the civilian infrastructure of Gaza and the murder and maiming of over 2,500 Palestinians, civilians, civil servants, police and national militia. In pursuit of a cutoff of US military aid to Israel, every effort should be made to target and denounce the most forceful, aggressive and successful Zionist advocates and lobbyists who influence the elected members of the US Congress and White House on foreign military aid budgets. No progress in ending US military aid for Israel’s ethnic cleansing will succeed unless the peace movement and others appalled by Israel’s mass murder tackles the Zionist lobby head on. This includes boycotts, rebuttals and demonstrations against the AIPAC, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the other 50 leading American Jewish organizations, which initiate and secure US governmental endorsement of Israel’s extermination policies.
US religious institutions should forcefully denounce Israel’s crimes against humanity, including its demolition of 5 mosques, uniting all faiths (Christian, Moslem, Buddhist) and especially reaching out to the tiny minority of rabbis and observant Jews willing to forthrightly denounce the totalitarian practices of the Israeli state.
Port and long shore workers, sailors and other maritime workers and officials should boycott the handling of all trade with Israel and denounce its Navy’s violent illegal assault, in international waters, of civilian fishing boats and vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. No ships carrying Israeli products should be loaded or unloaded as long as Israel maintains its criminal military blockade of the port facilities of Gaza.
Tens of millions of US citizens subject to the one-sided pro-Israel bias of the electronic and print media, the lop-sided presentations of Zionist ‘op-ed’ writers, ‘news’ reports and the self-styled Middle East experts, should demand equal time, coverage and reportage for non-Zionist specialists, analysts and commentators. We should demand the end of euphemisms and fabrications, which convert victims into aggressors and exterminators into victims.
We should wage a battle of ideas everywhere (in every public forum) against the efforts by the Zionist Power Configuration to monopolize discussion over the Israeli policy of genocide, to censor, intimidate and slander critics of Israeli apartheid – as UN General Assembly President Manuel d’Escoto so aptly calls Israel’s Ghetto Wall surrounding Palestinian villages. The outpouring of public protest over Israel’s war of extermination is an enormous step forward in countering the Zionist monopoly of the mass media and encouraging the tens of millions of Americans who clearly recognize and privately despise Israel’s crimes against humanity and resent the local Zionist elite’s thuggery against those who speak out. Mass pressure on elected representative may sway some to reconsider their abject servility to their Zionist ‘contributors’ and their ‘Israel First’ Congressional colleagues.
A patriotic nationwide campaign should demand that the Israel lobby, especially AIPAC, come clean and register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. This might undermine the Lobby’s appeal to American Jews, reduce its influence over Congress and open up judicial processes and investigations over its abuse of tax-exemptions, money-laundering and lead to revelations over its treasonous procurement of confidential US state documents for a foreign power. There is a powerful political and legal basis for such a denial of the ‘Lobby’s’ tax-exempt status and legality, apart from the transparent and overwhelming evidence that all Zionist organizations act as transmission belts for Israeli state policies: In the early 1950’s up to 1963, the forerunner of AIPAC was obligated to register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. More recently, an Israeli prosecutor presented evidence that the Israeli-Jewish Agency and its US counterparts were laundering billions of dollars especially for the funding of Israeli colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian land, condemned as illegal under international law. Congressional hearings, law suits and further published research would reveal the role of the Lobby as a Fifth Column for the State of Israel against the interest of the people of the United States.
Until we neutralize the pervasive power of the Zionist Power Configuration in all of its manifestations – in American public and civic life – and its deep penetration of American legislative and executive offices, we will fall short of preventing Israel from receiving the arms, funding and political backing to sustain its wars of ethnic extermination.
When told that the great majority of the world’s people are sickened and incensed by Israel’s mass murder of the citizens of Gaza, we can easily imagine the contemptuous dismissal by Israel’s top leaders, paraphrasing Joseph Stalin: How many bombers, missiles, fighter planes and powerful lobbies do they (the outraged people of the world) have?

James Petras is the author of Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power, Clarity Press 2008.

[Ace Hanlon]

President-elect Barack Obama plays a little golf during his vacation last week in Hawaii. Al Jazeera contrasted footage of Obama on vacation with scenes of the carnage in Gaza, noting what it called "the deafening silence of the Obama team." (Tim Sloan / Getty-AFP / December 29, 2008)

Israeli ground troops have started to enter the Gaza Strip, Israeli military officials have confirmed, a week after the offensive against Hamas began.(...) Earlier, Israel intensified air and artillery attacks on the territory. (...) The UN has warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis, and believes 25% of more than 400 Palestinians killed by Israel so far were civilians.(...) there are said to be some 10,000 Israeli troops and hundreds of tanks massed on the border with Gaza. The office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has also announced that the government has ordered the urgent call-up of "tens of thousands" of extra military reservists. BBC News

"We want him to say something at least to stop the bloodshed," said Suhail Natour, a Palestinian activist who lives in the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. "Waiting until the 20th, with the bloodshed continuing, I don't think is an acceptable way of confirming a new policy in the Middle East. Silence on this means complicity." Chicago Tribune

David Seaton's News Links
Readers of mine will know that I am no fan of Barack Obama's, but I confess that I never expected him to prove me right by defining himself so quickly... even before being sworn in as President.

What is happening in Gaza is huge, grotesquely tragic... It is like watching a cat play with a small animal before killing it... endlessly mauling it... warming to its work.

People all over the world have placed great hopes in Barack Obama and his "yes we can - change we can believe in" and they are waiting for a word... only a word... and while people are dying horribly, he is playing golf.

Being photographed playing golf at a moment like this is as tone deaf as Bush looking out of plane at the ruins of New Orleans was... much more tone deaf in my opinion.

I'm sorry, but the "one president at a time" thing is not good enough. He had a lot to say about the Mumbai attacks:
"President-Elect Obama strongly condemns today's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and his thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the people of India. These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism." Brooke Anderson, Obama's Chief National Security Spokesperson
And he was positively loquacious when it come to the economy:
President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday said the struggling U.S. economy could face more challenges and urged lawmakers to act quickly on recovery proposals even as some Republicans expressed concerns about plans for a huge stimulus package. "As we mark the beginning of a new year, we also know that America faces great and growing challenges -- challenges that threaten our nation's economy and our dreams for the future," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. Reuters
But, when in their moment of agony, the Palestinians waited for a word from Obama and the word finally was:
FORE!
They say that first impressions are the most important... I doubt whether anyone in the Middle East will forget this one anytime soon. DS

David Seaton

[otraque]

deleted

[otraque]

Robert Fisk: The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act

Thursday, 1 January 2009






There was a day when we worried about the "Arab masses" – the millions of "ordinary" Arabs on the streets of Cairo, Kuwait, Amman, Beirut – and their reaction to the constant bloodbaths in the Middle East. Could Anwar Sadat restrain the anger of his people? And now – after three decades of Hosni Mubarak – can Mubarak (or "La Vache Qui Rit", as he is still called in Cairo) restrain the anger of his people? The answer, of course, is that Egyptians and Kuwaitis and Jordanians will be allowed to shout in the streets of their capitals – but then they will be shut down, with the help of the tens of thousands of secret policemen and government militiamen who serve the princes and kings and elderly rulers of the Arab world.


Egyptians demand that Mubarak open the Rafah crossing-point into Gaza, break off diplomatic relations with Israel, even send weapons to Hamas. And there is a kind of perverse beauty in listening to the response of the Egyptian government: why not complain about the three gates which the Israelis refuse to open? And anyway, the Rafah crossing-point is politically controlled by the four powers that produced the "road map" for peace, including Britain and the US. Why blame Mubarak?

To admit that Egypt can't even open its sovereign border without permission from Washington tells you all you need to know about the powerlessness of the satraps that run the Middle East for us.

Open the Rafah gate – or break off relations with Israel – and Egypt's economic foundations crumble. Any Arab leader who took that kind of step will find that the West's economic and military support is withdrawn. Without subventions, Egypt is bankrupt. Of course, it works both ways. Individual Arab leaders are no longer going to make emotional gestures for anyone. When Sadat flew to Jerusalem – "I am tired of the dwarves," he said of his fellow Arab leaders – he paid the price with his own blood at the Cairo reviewing-stand where one of his own soldiers called him a "Pharaoh" before shooting him dead.

The true disgrace of Egypt, however, is not in its response to the slaughter in Gaza. It is the corruption that has become embedded in an Egyptian society where the idea of service – health, education, genuine security for ordinary people – has simply ceased to exist. It's a land where the first duty of the police is to protect the regime, where protesters are beaten up by the security police, where young women objecting to Mubarak's endless regime – likely to be passed on caliph-like to his son Gamal, whatever we may be told – are sexually molested by plain-clothes agents, where prisoners in the Tora-Tora complex are forced to rape each other by their guards.

There has developed in Egypt a kind of religious facade in which the meaning of Islam has become effaced by its physical representation. Egyptian civil "servants" and government officials are often scrupulous in their religious observances – yet they tolerate and connive in rigged elections, violations of the law and prison torture. A young American doctor described to me recently how in a Cairo hospital busy doctors merely blocked doors with plastic chairs to prevent access to patients. In November, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm reported how doctors abandoned their patients to attend prayers during Ramadan.

And amid all this, Egyptians have to live amid daily slaughter by their own shabby infrastructure. Alaa al-Aswani wrote eloquently in the Cairo paper Al-Dastour that the regime's "martyrs" outnumber all the dead of Egypt's wars against Israel – victims of railway accidents, ferry sinkings, the collapse of city buildings, sickness, cancers and pesticide poisonings – all victims, as Aswani says, "of the corruption and abuse of power". Opening the Rafah border-crossing for wounded Palestinians – the Palestinian medical staff being pushed back into their Gaza prison once the bloodied survivors of air raids have been dumped on Egyptian territory – is not going to change the midden in which Egyptians themselves live.

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah secretary general in Lebanon, felt able to call on Egyptians to "rise in their millions" to open the border with Gaza, but they will not do so. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the feeble Egyptian Foreign Minister, could only taunt the Hizbollah leaders by accusing them of trying to provoke "an anarchy similar to the one they created in their own country."

But he is well-protected. So is President Mubarak.

Egypt's malaise is in many ways as dark as that of the Palestinians. Its impotence in the face of Gaza's suffering is a symbol of its own political sickness.

[Ace Hanlon]

Mearsheimer: Like Bush and Clinton before him, Obama will fail at creating a viable Palestinian state
Interviewed on Channel 4 in England last week--not here of course--John Mearsheimer said "I don't see Obama being successful [on Israel/Palestine] in the years ahead." His analysis:

George W. Bush and Condi Rice actually tried to do something in the last year or so--Annapolis--and got nowhere, because an American president is incapable of putting pressure on the Israeli government, and no deal is possible without pressure.

It's fine to talk about What Jimmy Carter did, but Carter merely brokered a deal on the Sinai, which was a whole lot easier than Israel giving up the West Bank with all the colonies. "We're talking here about cutting a deal with the Palestinians, and the fact is that most Israelis are interested in creating a greater Israel. They're willing to give the Palestinians a state, but that state is really just a handful of bantustans around which Israel controls the borders and control the air above."

As long as the Israelis are not willing to give the Palestinians a viable state, no president will be successful. Clinton demonstrated that. The key factor here is the Israel lobby. Obama can't be different than Bush "because the Israel lobby in this country won't allow him to be any different."

Mondoweiss

[otraque]

Israel Invades the Gaza Strip
January 3rd, 2009
(edit: The cowards, blockade them for 6 months,, cut of power and supplies and bring them to being weakened by malnutrition, then bomb them for two weeks and THEN send in the the "brave troops"---Warsaw Ghetto, slow motion, step by sinister step.Utterly diabolical. Well the jews of Warsaw fled to the underground sewers and fought. Well by G-d i will not weep one fucking tear for any IDF soldier that gets killed, not one damned tear. No Tears!!!!!Max
Updated 1/3/09 3:15 PM EST

After an initial salvo of artillery fire and increased air strikes earlier this morning, the Israeli military has begun its long-promised invasion of the Gaza Strip. The initial strikes included the destruction of another mosque in the strip, in which at least 10 worshippers were killed and scores were wounded.

As the invasion commences, Israeli planes continued to drop leaflets ordeing the civilians to flee the area. But with both the Israeli border and Egyptian border closed to them, the strip’s 1.5 million residents don’t really have anyplace to go.

The tanks and ground troops poured into the tiny strip, and there are already reports of them engaging in firefights with Hamas gunmen, who claim to have killed a number of Israeli soldiers.

The invasion had been expected since the attacks began a week ago, and the military’s press unit has promised “incredible footage” of the ground assault will be made available at some point. Reuters quotes the Israeli military as saying the attack will last “many long days.” Updates will be made as they are available.

[Ace Hanlon]

2009 is Starting Off with a Shameful and Criminal Bang
Thu, 01/01/2009 - 17:09 — dlindorff
The deafening silence from American government officials and from the US media regarding the criminal Israeli assault against civilians in Israel’s ghetto of Gaza, where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are trapped every bit as brutally as were the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, is beyond unconscionable.

` As Israeli shells and bombs and rockets rain down on university buildings, clearly marked ambulances, and homes, it has to be pointed out that much of the ammunition being used, as well as the planes that are delivering this death and mayhem, are provided by the United States and by American taxpayers—with no strings attached.

Media outlets like the New York Times may call “evenhandedly” for a cease-fire by “both sides,” as though the handful of home-made unguided rockets fired into Israel by Hamas are in any way comparable to the massive assault by the IDF. But the reality is that it is the Israeli forces, which, thanks to their overwhelming US-supplied and financed firepower, are killing Palestinians on purpose, at a rate of 100:1 compared to Hamas.

It is true that Hamas has been firing its rockets at Israeli towns. These rockets cannot be aimed except in the crudest fashion. Whether Hamas rockets hit a house or a school or a military installation is a matter of chance. And as observers of the conflict have pointed out, the cities being targeted by Hamas pretty much all have military installations located in them, which by the logic of US military strategists, makes them legitimate military targets. This is not to justify the killings of civilians by Hamas rockets—all such killing is evil and tragic—merely to point out that Hamas is not doing anything that American military forces haven’t done routinely in places like Vietnam, or, more recently, in cities like Baghdad and Fallujah.

Israel, however, does not have the excuse of poor technology to justify its atrocities. Israel is using the same “smart” bombs that American forces use. It has elaborate satellite and aerial surveillance images to work with. The same military technology that can pinpoint the location of Hamas commanders and hit them with precise rocket fire, is clearly able to identify whether a vehicle is an ambulance before blasting it with a rocket or a bomb, as the Times reports was done yesterday, killing a Palestinian doctor on a mercy mission. So let’s be honest here. The goal of Israel’s attack on Gaza (like America's attacks on Fallujah and the Sadr City slum in Baghdad) is a terrorist one—to frighten the population of Gaza into rejecting the Hamas government that they elected in the last free and fair elections there.

Israel has gone to great lengths to ensure that the world does not know the extent of its crimes against humanity inside of Gaza. Reporters have been barred from the 10-mile-by-1-mile walled-off ghetto. Israeli gunboats, patrolling off the coast of Gaza, have driven off boats that have sought to bring reporters and other witnesses to the assault.

In Israel itself, there are protests against this war on a captive people. Thousands have gathered to protest in Tel Aviv. Citizens called up as reservists to prepare for a possible land assault on Gaza have refused service, risking jail. None of this is being reported in the American corporate media, which is largely cheerleading the Israeli attack, primarily by “evenhandedly” reporting on the attacks in Gaza and the rockets launched by Hamas into Israel.

As Dov Khenin, an Israeli Knesset member from the leftist Jewish/Arab opposition political party Hadash stated in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, “Well, the most important thing to realize is that there is an opposition inside Israel to the war and to everything going on around right now in Gaza. This position is a Jewish-Arab one. On Saturday night, we had a demonstration in Tel Aviv of 2,000 young people, mainly Jews, and there are a lot of demonstrations all over Israel of Jews and Arabs opposing the war policy of the current government. This opposition is growing steadily. It is very important to know this and to understand that there are other voices in Israeli society who (oppose) a war, and they believe there is a better alternative for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

The ludicrous claim by Israel that its assault on the people of Gaza is justified by the “right of self-defense” is absurd on its face. Gaza is not a foreign country attacking another sovereign nation. It is a ghetto, maintained by Israel, which controls the walled-in community’s very life—the flow of fuel for its electric generators, its water, its food, and its medical supplies, and which determines who can enter and who can leave. Granted, there is a narrow border with Egypt, but Israel, backed by the US, has also used diplomatic efforts to keep that border tightly controlled too, with the complicity of an autocratic Egyptian regime not anxious to be flooded with Palestinian refugees.

It is as if some of the long-suffering poor of Detroit, MI or of Newark, NJ, were to begin firing rockets into the suburbs, and the US were to cordon off the downtowns of those cities, and then launch a weeks’-long aerial assault on them by the USAF.

Perhaps Americans would be as silent about such a domestic atrocity as they are being about the one Israel is visiting on Gaza today, but I doubt it. The national outrage at what was done, by acts of commission and omission, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to the poor residents of the city of New Orleans suggests not. That we remain callously silent at the ongoing crime against humanity being perpetrated by Israel today on the people of Gaza, with weapons that we have provided, is, I hope, more a reflection of the failure of our jingoistic media to do its job honestly, than of a blind support of those attacks.

The American government—including the government in waiting which, from Barack Obama on down, has maintained a shameful silence over the attacks, with Obama himself even offering support for the Israeli attacks—has no such excuse.

2009, and the new Obama administration, are off to a terrible start.

[Ace Hanlon]

Just as the Jewish establishment's role in the crucifixtion of Jesus 2000 years ago led to many centuries of anti-semitism, their slow motion crucifixtion ot the Palestinians is bound to lead to a repeat IMHO.

[otraque]

"They are only doing their job, as the saying goes, only following orders like bombing machines"

GIDEON LEVY / The IAF, bullies of the clear blue skies

By Gideon Levy

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051317.html

Our finest young men are attacking Gaza now. Good boys from good homes are doing bad things. Most of them are eloquent, impressive, self-confident, often even highly principled in their own eyes, and on Black Saturday dozens of them set out to bomb some of the targets in our "target bank" for the Gaza Strip.

They set out to bomb the graduation ceremony for young police officers who had found that rare Gaza commodity, a job, massacring them by the dozen. They bombed a mosque, killing five sisters of the Balousha family, the youngest of whom was 4. They bombed a police station, hitting a doctor nearby; she lies in a vegetative state in Shifa Hospital, which is bursting with wounded and dead. They bombed a university that we in Israel call the Palestinian Rafael, the equivalent of Israel's weapons developer, and destroyed student dormitories. They dropped hundreds of bombs out of blue skies free of all resistance.


In four days they killed 375 people. They did not, and could not, distinguish between a Hamas official and his children, between a traffic cop and a Qassam launch operator, between a weapons cache and a health clinic, between the first and second floors of a densely populated apartment building with dozens of children inside. According to reports, about half of the people killed were innocent civilians. We're not complaining about the pilots' accuracy, it cannot be otherwise when the weapon is a plane and the objective is a tiny, crowded strip of land. Our excellent pilots are effectively bullies now. As in training flights, they bomb undisturbed, facing neither an air force nor defense system.

It is hard to judge what they are thinking, how they feel. It's unlikely to be relevant, anyway. They are measured by their actions. In any event, from an altitude of thousands of feet the picture looks as sterile as a Rorschach inkblot. Lock onto the target, press the button and then a black column of smoke. Another "successful hit." None see the effects on the ground of their actions. Their heads must surely be filled with Gaza horror stories - they themselves have never been there - as if there aren't a million and a half people living there who only want to live with a minimum of honor, some of them young like themselves, with dreams of studying, working, raising a family but who have no chance to fulfill their dreams with or without the bombing.

Do the pilots think about them, the children of refugees whose parents and grandparents have already been driven from their lives? Do they think about the thousands of people they have left permanently disabled in a place without a single hospital worthy of the name and no rehabilitation centers at all? Do they think about the burning hatred they are planting not only in Gaza but in other corners of the world amid the horrific images on television?

It was not the pilots who decided to go to war, but they are the subcontractors. The real accounting must be with the decision makers, but the pilots are their partners. When they return home they will be welcomed with all the respect and honor we reserve for them. It appears that not only will no one try to provoke moral questioning among them, but that they are considered the real heroes of this cursed war. The Israel Defense Forces spokesman is already going over the top with praise in his daily briefings for the "wonderful work" they are doing. He too, of course, completely ignores the images from Gaza. After all, these are not sadistic Border Police officers beating up Arabs in the alleys of Nablus and the center of Hebron, or cruel undercover soldiers who shoot their targets point-blank in cold blood. These, as we have said, are our finest young men.

Maybe if they were to confront the results of their "wonderful work" even once they would regret their decisions, they would reconsider the effects of their actions. If they were to go just once to Jerusalem's Alyn Hospital Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Center, where for nearly three years Marya Aman, 7, has been hospitalized - she is a quadriplegic who runs her wheelchair, and her life, with her chin - they would be shocked. This adorable little girl was hit by a missile in Gaza that killed almost her entire family, the handiwork of our pilots.

But all of this is well hidden from the pilots' eyes. They are only doing their job, as the saying goes, only following orders like bombing machines. In the past few days they have excelled at this, and the results are there for the entire world to see. Gaza is licking its wounds, just like Lebanon before it, and almost no one pauses for a moment to ask whether all this is necessary, or unavoidable, or whether it contributes to Israel's security and moral image. Is it really the case that our pilots return safely to base, or are they in fact returning to them as callous, cruel and blind people?

[crusader4truth]

i was and am already pissed off, what u tryin to do? make matters worse, is that even possible?

[otraque]

The Huffington Post: Israeli-Occupied Territory
Why is the Huffington Post carrying water for the IDF? Follow the money …
by Justin Raimondo
Pat Buchanan was widely vilified by the neocons and the politically correct left when he famously described the Congress of the United States as "Israeli-occupied territory." Oh, what a conniption the liberals and the Commentary crowd had! That was during the countdown to the first Gulf War, when almost no one rose to object – and those who did, like Pat, were smeared for their trouble. Today, such an observation is hardly considered controversial: it is simply a known fact.

There is more discussion in the Knesset over the pros and cons of US intervention in the Middle East on Israel's behalf than there is in on Capitol Hill. There's a sense in which this sort of uniformity must be a little embarrassing for the Lobby, in that it underscores their fear that a real debate will suddenly break out. The regularity with which the American Congress endorses every fresh Israeli atrocity has a certain deadening metronomic quality about it – and, while we're on the subject of monotony, the American media, too, plays an identical role as advocate and staunch defender of the Israeli case, as a matter of course. The "mainstream" televised and dead-tree-media has historically been a reliable "reporter" of the merits of the Israeli case. Now, the wannabe "alternative" online media is following suit, with an alacrity that is none too surprising.

It is especially unsurprising in the case of the Huffington Post, which founder Arianna Huffington touts as a "people's media" in which "truth" is the highest value. As she put it to the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

"Our highest responsibility is to the truth. The truth is not about splitting the difference between one side and the other. Sometimes one side is speaking the truth ... The central mission of journalism is the search for the truth."

Taking Ms. Huffington at her word, one can only conclude that, when it comes to Israel's rape of Gaza, the Huffington Post is siding with the rapist. Their "news" coverage of the ongoing devastation is heavily slanted toward the Israelis, with those journalistically unique paragraph-long lead-story headlines never mentioning Palestinian casualties (a number would suffice). When a genuinely antiwar voice is allowed on the site, it is prefaced by an apologia, as our own Jeremy Sapienza reports:

"Huffington Post was so very kind this week to give space to almost frustratingly moderate Palestinian intellectual Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi. In his well-reasoned article, ‘Palestine's Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood,' he supplied all the basic facts behind the problems in Palestine. … But what gives with the long disclaimer marring the top of Barghouthi's article?

"HuffPo runs all kinds of commentary from all over the political spectrum (or at least its leftish side), but only those who dare speak against the sainted Israelis seem to require an editorial explanation that resembles an apology.

"Shame on Huffington Post for its disgusting lack of integrity."

Shame? Jeremy is a fine lad, and very smart, but perhaps a bit naïve in believing these people even accept the concept of shame, applied to themselves: indeed, they oppose it as a matter of high principle. There's a ready explanation of why, as the Israelis pound Gaza, the formerly antiwar Huffington Post has become a cheerleader for the IDF: it is due entirely to this.

When Arianna nabbed $25 million from Oak Investment Partners, of Palo Alto, California, she was acquired by a financial network that also has significant investments in the Israeli arms industry – an industry, I might add, directly subsidized and controlled by the Israeli government. For example, Oak Investment has invested in IET/Intelligent Electronics, now morphed into Clickservice Software, an Israeli-based company that makes sophisticated weapons systems and sells them to clients such as "an unnamed Far Eastern country." Oak Investment partner Fred Harman now sits on the Huffington Post's board.

Case closed. Mystery solved.

Since Arianna is so into "truth," how about a little when it comes to how she's financing a $25 million media gig that still refuses to pay bloggers! Not only that, but they were recently forced to apologize to a Chicago media outlet for brazenly stealing content. Whatever her contributions to the journalistic profession, let alone the pursuit of "truth," Arianna is sure giving tackiness a bad name.

What's so galling is that the Huffington Post poses as an "alternative" media outlet, the virtual embodiment of the new online populism that gave rise to the blogosphere. The nerve it takes to pose as an opponent of "corporate greed," and war, while taking a $25 million "investment" from an exemplar of both is simply breathtaking – but about par for the course for Arianna. In her odyssey from the Newt Gingrich right to the Obama-ite left, the founder of the Huffington Post personifies the utter vacuity of our age, the emptiness that has nothing at its core but an ideological vacuum waiting to be filled by the dictates of fashion and commerce.

From her days as the high priestess of the "John Roger" cult in California – a New Age outfit grouped around a charismatic and controversial leader "John Roger" – Ms. Huffington has always been an ideological weathervane, taking on the colors of whatever ideological craze is in season. As a kind of Greek sibyl interpreting the divine zeitgeist, her style has lately become even more magisterial, now that she's getting closer to real power. "I only text three people," she boasted at a London dinner, "my two teenage children and Barack Obama."

God help us if that woman has the President's ear, if only because we'll have to endure four long years of relentless name-dropping.

More seriously, though, the Huffington Post's disgraceful performance on the Gaza issue is really just a reflection of the laughable uniformity of Western coverage of Middle Eastern issues, and this is especially true when it comes to Israel and its interests in the region. It's a widely-noted irony that the nature and extent of the "special relationship" is never discussed as openly in the US as it is in the Israeli media. How and why this came about is well-documented by professors John Mearshemier and Stephen Walt, in their book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy [short version here], but a new riff on their theme is the extent to which the online media have been co-opted by the Lobby – in this case, bought outright.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

I've gotten a couple of letters noting that, this very morning, the editors of Antiwar.com have chosen to link to an informative piece by Yale University professor David Bromwich on the Huffington Post that contradicts the above. Yet that does little to undermine my main point, which is that Ms. Huffington's alleged devotion to “truth” – as expressed in her declaration “the truth is not about splitting the difference between one side and the other” because “sometimes one side is speaking the truth” – is deemed as somehow not applicable to the Gaza massacre. In any case, please don't anyone try to tell me that the presence of a major investor in the rather extensive (and profitable) Israeli military-industrial complex doesn't have a major effect on the Huffington Post's editorial decisions. Of course it does, and the Bromwich piece doesn't change this – it is merely “splitting the difference between one side and the other,” as Arianna put it to the Bay Guardian – the difference between truth and lies.

Another point: by running the Bromwich piece – which didn't have the embarrassing and unnecessary editorial note attached to the Mustafa Barghouthi blog – we at Antiwar.com are hoping to encourage whatever advocates of editorial sanity remain on the Huffington Post staff. For the inside scoop on what those poor wretches have to endure, go here, here, and here.

~ Justin Raimondo

[otraque]

Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 16 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved

Please find below Stephen Lendman’s view on the Obama economic
dream team (I do not share his views on Paul Volcker). Also make sure
you read Madhav Napalat’s very disturbing report on Pakistan.
Stephen Lendman ([e-mail])Marc Faber
**********************
Obama's Economic "Dream Team"?
Dream on if you believe it, and something must be up if Karl Rove says
it. In a November 28 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he called it "a first-rate
economic team" while at the same time objecting to possible (not yet
announced) stimulus package elements not entirely to be the kinds
"conservatives" prefer like tax cuts for the rich. He nonetheless called
Obama's team "reassuring" and hopes it will leave a "market-oriented
imprint."
Not to worry, as that's what it's there for - the privileged elite and not the
other 90% or more who at best will be very stingerly aided, and as
economist Michael Hudson points out to let them repay their bank debts.
On November 24, Obama made his long-awaited announcement - his
economic team to lead the nation out of its worst ever economic crisis, a
task perhaps more than even Houdini could handle according to
economist and author F. William Engdahl.
Nonetheless and with fanfare, the major media highlighted them with
commentaries ranging from cautious to enthusiastic. The Wall Street
Journal for example as follows:
"The advisors Mr. Obama named on Monday hail from the centrist part of
the Democratic Party. During the Clinton years they played an important
role in turning a budget deficit into a surplus. Now they argue the
worsening economy requires steep deficit spending."
The New York Times stressed the ailing economy, prospective measures
to help jump-start it, and efforts to "inject confidence into the trembling
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 17 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
financial markets" that for the moment at least were reassured, or so it
seemed.
Not for long according to Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg in a
recent commentary. In January, he was the first Wall Street economist to
predict recession, called it an "epic event," and said it will be long and
painful as a result of at least three major shocks - credit, housing and oil.
He now sees the S & P 500 bottoming at around 660 or a 61.8% reversal
from its high. Others see it even lower given a policy response "to get
people to (spend more,) add to their debt burdens," and exacerbate the
very problem that created the crisis. Rosenberg says it's "like giving an
alcoholic another drink for his cure. We have a situation where Congress
(and the Obama administration) want more credit created, even though it
was excess (debt and) leverage that got us into this mess." In other words,
the cure may be worse than the disease if the Obama team continues the
same failed Bush administration policies, and it looks like they will.
In earlier comments, Rosenberg offered a different prescription in saying
for the US economy to expand, savings must rise to the pre-bubble 8%
level, housing stocks must come way down, and the household interest
coverage ratio must fall to 10.5%. The future he sees is "frugality" with
households having to make very different sorts of spending decisions than
the kinds they've been used to for years. Those days are over.
So is world stability according to UK Telegraph writer Ambrose Evans-
Pritchard in his latest November 30 commentary. He sees the "political
bubble bursting (with) spreads on geo-strategic risk now widening as
dramatically as the spreads on financial risk at the onset of the credit
crunch."
From Mumbai to worker unrest in China to Eastern Europe and Russia at
a time when it's "too early in this crisis to conclude whether Europe's
monetary union is a source of stability, or is itself a doomsday machine"
given the growing rift between "North and South" countries and
Germany's reluctance "to unpin the system with a fiscal blitz."
He compares today to the 1930s. After the crash, stocks rallied sharply
for months as though the worst was over. It was just beginning but who
could know at the time. "The crisis came in pulses, each followed by
months of normality - like today. The global system did not snap until
September 1931," after which one event led to another and they were all
bad, both political and economic. Who knows what's ahead today at a
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 18 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
time debt excesses are far greater than then, and this is what Obama's
team will confront.
According to Paul Krugman on December 1:
-- Today's economic indicators are worse than at any point during Japan's
1990s contraction;
-- All conventional policy tools aren't working;
-- Consumer spending is in free fall;
-- Investment spending is plunging;
-- Unemployment may top 10%; and
-- Recovery won't occur before 2011.
According to Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney, US credit
card lenders may withdraw over $2 trillion of lines (or about 45%) over
the next 18 months because of regulatory changes and to minimize risk.
She calls credit cards the key source of consumer liquidity after jobs. As a
result, she expects sharp consumer spending declines.
Millions of accounts will be closed, credit lines cut, and interest rates
raised to minimize a tsunami of expected defaults. Whitney also said that
"the entire mortgage market hit a wall, and we believe it will, for the first
time ever, show actual shrinkage over the next few months." The credit
card market is 18 months behind mortgages and will begin contracting in
2010. She also expects a further 20% drop in home prices, earlier called
Citigroup a goner, said it can't remain in its current form, and believes it's
in such a mess that even (distinguished mathematician and physicist)
"Stephen Hawking couldn't turn this company around."
She didn't say but may feel the same about most other major banks. In
early November she called the economy and financials "so far off the
tracks it's hard to see anything helping right now." Securitization isn't
coming back, the entire mortgage market is contracting, banks aren't
lending, loan balances are getting smaller, and bank earnings going
forward will be up to 70% less than consensus forecasts, and she calls this
conservative. Banks are in big trouble, and none are immune.
"Dream Team" Selections

Timothy Geithner
Currently the New York Federal Reserve Bank president and vicechairman
of the Fed Open Market Committee (FOMC), he'll head the
team as Treasury Secretary along with current Fed chairman Bernanke
whose term runs until January 31, 2010.
After his education, he joined (international consultants) Kissinger
Associates for three years and then the US Treasury's International
Affairs division in 1988. He remained at Treasury in various posts until
2002 when he left for the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior
Fellow in the international economics department. He also served at the
International Monetary Fund as director of Policy Development and
Review from 2001 - 2003 after which he was named New York Fed
president.
With these credentials, he's an insider's insider and hardly a surprising
pick. Wall Street approved with a sharp rally that continued through
Thanksgiving week as others on the economic team were also praised.
And why not, elitists all and assembled for a common purpose that hardly
needs explaining.
Geithner's been partnered with Paulson and Bernanke in their Treasurylooting
scheme. His appointment signals more of the same which is why
Wall Street approves. It's also reported that he was the principal architect
behind the Bear Stearns bailout, and various other deals, including Fannie
and Freddie, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, the demise
of Lehman Bros., Citigroup, and AIG.
It's gotten $150 billion so far (and counting) to buy some of its
collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to clean out its credit default swap
(CDS) insurance on them. But the effort only deals with a small part of
AIG's CDSs, and its woes are similar to what ails all of Wall Street. If
Geithner won't address them any differently, he's the wrong man at the
wrong time for a vital task to cure a very sick economy.
Take the $55 trillion CDS problem alone. If enough of them default in the
coming months, no amount of bailing will save things. Yet Paulson and
Geithner believe these levered bets should be paid in full.
With what, short of reckless amounts of currency debasing? The
alternative apparently is off the table - the fiscal sanity of letting
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 20 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
bankruptcy be the price for financial imprudence. In other words, take the
pain upfront and not let this monster of a problem drag out for a decade or
longer, leave much greater wreckage in its wake, and threaten world
economies with it. Geithner will apparently risk it, and even by Las
Vegas standards it's a very bad bet.
It affects the entire financial industry as well as companies with high-risk
debt like the auto giants. Even Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway
who's warned repeatedly about the problem, and this is only one among
others that would challenge the most dedicated and talented of policy
makers. Based on what he'll likely do, Geithner isn't one of them, but try
hearing that through the din of praise for him.
It remains to be seen but he'll likely continue the same failed bailout
policies, pile more debt on the current unsustainable amount, and add lots
of (real estate) infrastructure fiscal stimulus for the rich. As economist
Michael Hudson explains:
"To a mortgage banker, a commercial developer or real estate company is
a prime customer, the bulwark of bank balance sheets. It is hard to
imagine a new American infrastructure program not turning into a new
well of real estate gains for the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate)
sector. Real estate owners on favorably situated sites will sell out to
buyers-on-credit, creating a vast new profitable loan market for banks.
The debt spiral will continue upward" and make a monster of a problem
even greater.
Given how strapped state and city budgets are, "privatiz(ation) from the
outset" is planned and Geithner got the job to do it. He's not for "change
you can believe in" or what people voted for from Obama.
Hudson again: "The change that Mr. Obama is talking about is largely
marginal to (the top 1%'s) wealth, not touching its economic substance -
or its direction." He may give wage earners some relief (to pay off their
bank debts), but top earners "prefer not to earn income" and rely heavily
on capital gains. They try to avoid losses and when can't get the
government to bail them out. Obama supports it, so expect billions more
for the rich, crumbs for the many, and torrents of high-sounding
platitudes to soothe them.
Hudson compares Obama to Boris Yeltsin - a giver who kept on giving
"for the kleptocrats to whom the public domain and decades of wealth
were given with no quid pro quo." And he's assembled the same ("anti-

labor, pro-financial team") that empowered Russia's kleptocrats, let them
loot the country, and for the most part keep it.
His key economic advisor, Robert Rubin, was Clinton's Treasury
Secretary. After leaving, he helped manage Citigroup close to collapse
where it may end up anyway since its problems are so huge perhaps no
amount of billions may save it. Now he's manipulated his protege team
into top posts (including Geithner) with the rest of them profiled below.
Even the Wall Street Journal criticizes Rubin for defending his role and
taking no responsibility for Citigroup’s problems. The Journal asks:
"Why are Robert Rubin and other directors still employed? Another
Sunday night, another ad hoc bank rescue" with taxpayers footing the bill.
"Such a record of persistent failure suggests a larger, (perhaps) systemic
management problem. If taxpayers have to risk so much to save
Citigroup, then regulators should at least exert the discipline to break up
this behemoth so it is never again too big to succeed, much less fail."
What the Journal didn't say is that any bank or business too big to fail is
too big to exist, and anti-trust laws should never let them get this big in
the first place.
As for Rubin, are his choices right for high Obama administration posts?
Might they not wreck the economy the way Rubin & company hurt Citi.
Worse still, were picked to do it - to suck all possible trillions out of it,
then leave behind an empty hulk and mass human wreckage when they're
done. Under Bush, we're well along toward it, so maybe Wall Street
chose Obama to finish the job.
Lawrence Summers
Seeing how Wall Street loves him is reason enough to worry as he's
slated to be Obama's chief economic advisor as head of the National
Economic Council (NEC). This writer's November 10 Obama Mania
article said this about him:
"From 1982 - 1983, he served on the Reagan administration's Council of
Economic Advisors. Then he served in 1993 in the Clinton administration
as Under-Treasury secretary for International Affairs and as Treasury
Secretary from 1999 - 2001. Earlier from 1991 - 1993, he was chief
economist for the World Bank where he authored a controversial memo
stating that "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in

the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."
"Summers became later president of Harvard University from 2001 -
2006 where controversy again dogged him. For his contentious relations
with faculty members and for suggesting that the presence of few women
in upper-level science and math positions was because of innate
differences between men and women. The combination led to his 2006
resignation."
"He now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and is a
consultant to Goldman Sachs, and is a managing director of the DE Shaw
& Company hedge fund. His name is being floated as the leading
candidate for Treasury secretary, and as Michel Chossudovsky states:
"Putting a Hedge Fund manager (with links to the Wall Street financial
establishment) in charge of the Treasury is tantamount to putting the fox
in charge of the chicken coup," and more evidence that Obama plans the
kind of business as usual that he pledged to get rid of."
Treasury no, NEC yes where along with Geithner and Bernanke he'll be
foxy indeed, and look at his record. In the 1990s, he helped deregulate
financial markets with among other measures the 1999 Gramm-Leach-
Bliley Act that repealed (1933 enacted) Glass-Steagall. It let commercial
and investment banks and insurance companies combine and opened the
door to the kinds of rampant speculation, fraud and abuse that created
today's mess.
In 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) came next.
It was so odious it had to be tucked undebated into an appropriations bill
near the end of Clinton's tenure. It legitimized "swap agreement" and
other "hybrid instruments" at the core of today's problems. It prevented
regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging and turned Wall Street
sharks loose on unsuspecting investors.
It also contained the "Enron Loophole" for its "Enron On-Line" - the first
internet-based commodities transaction system, unregulated to let Enron
do as it pleased, and the rest, as they say, is history.
After his World Bank tenure, Summers joined the Clinton administration
in 1993 where he served as Treasury Under-Secretary for International
Affairs and later as Secretary. As a result, he played a major role in a
decade Professor James Petras calls "the golden age of pillage." Summers
was involved in all economic policy decisions ranging from fiscal ones to
NAFTA, WTO, and various neoliberal responses to the decade's financial
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
crises:
-- In 1995, the destruction of Mexico's economy by raising interest rates
to unmanageable levels and all of NAFTA's wreckage ;
-- Pillaging Russia that began before his tenure, continued throughout the
decade, and exploded during the country's 1998 financial crisis; and
-- The 1997 Asian crisis; manufactured in Washington; debt bondage and
open markets became the solution, and human wreckage the price for
resolution.
At the end of his tenure, Summers was awarded the Alexander Hamilton
Medal, the Treasury department's highest honor.
Bill Richardson
He'll become Commerce Secretary, is currently New Mexico's governor,
and served earlier in the Clinton administration as Energy Secretary and
UN Ambassador. He's a former congressman, was Democratic National
Convention chairman in 2004, and Democratic Governors Association
chairman in 2005 and 2006. He also earlier worked for Kissinger
Associates and sat on various energy company boards of directors.
Peter Orszag
Another Rubin protege, he'll become Office of Management and Budget
director. He earlier was on the Council of Economics Advisors under
Clinton and has been Congressional Budget Office director since 2007. In
2004, he co-authored a book titled "Saving Social Security" in which he
predicts its insolvency and advocates a revamping by a combination of
payroll and "benefits adjustments" - meaning slow destruction by cutting
retiree payouts.
Jason Furman
Reportedly to become a senior economic adviser, he also wants Social
Security benefits cut and the System privatized for Wall Street. Under the
Clinton administration, he served as a special assistant to the President for
Economic Policy and on the Council of Economic Advisors staff. He also
headed the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, a Robert Rubinfounded
economic think tank advocating the policies he supported as
Treasury Secretary that left human wreckage everywhere.
Christina Romer
A University of California Berkeley economist, she's been a career
academic thus far and will become Council of Economic Advisors (CEA)
chairperson. She's a student of the Great Depression, a monetarist,
reportedly centrist, and according to UC Berkeley Professor Brad
DeLong she's receptive to short-run fiscal stimulus but believes that large
deficits are harmful.
Paul Volker
Now age 81, he's a Trilateralist, corporatist, former (Rockefeller) Chase
Manhattan Bank executive, and ideologically far to the right of center. He
earlier served as Fed chairman from 1979 under Jimmy Carter and
Ronald Reagan until Alan Greenspan replaced him in 1987. He's been a
key Obama economic advisor and will head a special Economic Recovery
Advisory Board to oversea financial markets stabilization policies.
He's no friend of working people and proved it during his tenure as Fed
chairman. In fighting high 1970s inflation, he engineered the 1981 - 82
recession by raising the Fed funds rate to 20% in June 1981 (compared to
1% currently and nominally near zero).
In fact, his role was far more than fighting inflation. It was to destroy
family farms, crush labor, reduce wages, lower living standards, send
unemployment soaring, rev up deindustrialization, and supercharge the
early years of financialization and casino capitalism. In August 1981, he
openly praised Reagan's firing of 11,000 striking PATCO air traffic
controllers, an act that told business that the day of worker demands was
over and corporate
interests above all others would be served.
Volker's been out of Washington for a while, and as one observer puts it:
He's "like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime." He'll continue
bailing out bankers, the auto giants as well, aggressively serve business
interests overall, and do it at the expense of working people who'll end up
worse off than ever under him and the entire Obama economic team. It's
not "change to believe in" unless you're a Wall Street banker assured of
getting no other kind.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on
Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 25 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
[e-mail].
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The
Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from
11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with
distinguished guests on world and national issues.
Mumbai Aftermath

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=268&page=7

Building war hysteria to cover up failure on home front
By Madhav D Nalapat

That an attack on Mumbai was being planned within the highest echelons
of the Pakistan military was no secret to the US, Saudi Arabian and
Chinese secret services. The Saudi state has traditionally valued the
interests of the Pakistan army above those of the 156 million Muslims of
India, while the PLA has since 1958 been in favour of any action by any
source that it sees as weakening India.
Indeed, even these days, it is mainly affluent Saudis who fund the opulent
lifestyles of jehadi terrorists such as those belonging to the LeT. Even in
the case of Mumbai, the Chinese and the Saudi secret services kept this
information of an impending attack on India to themselves. As for the
US, it acted in a half-hearted manner, passing on not the full situation
report but a confusing and non-actionable collage of bits and pieces of
intelligence on what its sources within Pakistan had learnt about the
impending attack.
As in the past, the prime consideration of the CIA was not the saving of
Indian lives, but the protection of their friends in Pakistan from exposure
as terrorist supporters. However, this time around, the CIA made a
mistake that cost several American lives. It assumed that the attacks
would once again be carried out in locations frequented only by Indian
vegetable sellers, unemployed youth and junior staff in nearby offices.
The ISI-friendly intelligence agency of the US did not forecast that the

Pakistan army's targets would this time be the business elite of India, the
very societal group that has driven forward the India-US alliance forged
during the latter phase of the Bush presidency. That in the process of
killing large numbers of the Indian elite, the Pakistani terrorists would
also identify, isolate and kill nationals of the US, the UK and Israel, for
the first time in India (outside Kashmir).
Why did the Pakistan army make its terrorist ancillaries go this far?
Clearly, the generals were determined to punish Washington for
continously prodding the Pakistan army to take action against its ally, the
Taliban. Angered by the constant US pressure to act in less than the
present deliberately ineffective way in FATA, senior generals within the
Pakistan services led by (the US-approved) Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
decided to take revenge on the US and its closest European ally, the UK,
by choosing locations where nationals of both countries congregated, the
Taj and Trident hotels on Mumbai's waterfront. The training of the "terror
commandos", their equipping and the entire logistics of the operation was
handled by the Pakistan army, acting through officers "on leave".
The expectation within the Pakistan military was that such a show of
vulnerability of their own nations would divert the attention of the US
away from its focus on the western border of Pakistan to fight the Taliban
towards the traditional Pakistan army project of creating a Talibanised
state in Kashmir with US-EU help. In other words, towards a repeat of
Kosovo. The Mumbai attacks would be used by the Pakistan
establishment to illustrate "the cost of not solving the Kashmir issue" to
the advantage of the Pakistan army, and would thus assist policymakers
in the US receptive to the Pakistan army in making President-elect Barack
Obama keep his promise of pressuring India to change the status quo in
Kashmir.
A statement that must rank as one of the most unwise ever made by this
otherwise brilliant and charismatic leader, in the context of stability in
South Asia. Indeed, a plausible case can be made out that Obama's
Kashmir-centric musings on India-Pakistan relations may have served as
a strand in the matrix of reasons for launching such a direct attack on the
West and friends of the West in India.
Unfortunately for the future trajectory of the battle against terrorism in
the region, President-elect Obama (with inputs from Pakistan Army
backer Shirin Taher-Kheli and pro-army academics such as Stephen
Cohen and Teresita Shaffer) injected himself into the Kashmir cauldron
to the satisfaction of the backers of jehad. Neither he nor his principal
foreign policy advisor Susan Rice seems to have studied the purport of
the numerous and consistent statements and literature of those active in
what is clearly a pan-Indian jehad. The jehadi groups operating within
Kashmir and now within the whole of India are transparent and consistent
in conveying their message: that Kashmir is but the appetizer. The main
course will be the rest of India, the population of which will have the
option of either converting to Wahabbism or surviving as serfs, as they
did during the reign of kings as enlightened and secular as Aurangzeb
Alamgir.
As part of their objective of diverting international attention away from
their own refusal to take on and help defeat the Taliban, the Pakistan
army expected that the Mumbai strike would ensure that Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh go the emotional way of Atal Behari Vajpayee in 2002
by responding to the November 26-28 Mumbai attack by another sham
mobilisation of troops on India's western frontier. Not only did the 2002
military mobilisation by India have zero impact on the Pakistan army's
determination to bleed India to extinction by multiple terrorist cuts, it
created an excuse for Robert Blackwill (the US envoy to Delhi at the
time) to demonise the country before the international business
community as an unsafe investment destination. Although he, as did most
other diplomats, were aware that Shri Vajpayee was bluffing and that war
was never an option, Blackwill engineered a pell-mell evacutation of tens
of thousands of US nationals from India, a step that was duplicated even
by the otherwise cool Israelis. By this single act of advertising India as a
likely theatre of nuclear conflict, Blackwill did yet another favour to his
friends in Beijing, through substantially weakening India's case as a
stable alternative investment destination to the PRC. Yet another war
scare this time around would have put the finishing touches to the
destruction of India's economic capability since 2005 that has been
carried out by Sonia Maino's men in the Finance Ministry, SEBI and the
RBI.
Fortunately for the country, Manmohan Singh's pacifist nature (which
renders him unable to respond with force even if faced with a nuclear
attack) for once proved to the correct medicine, as his spokespersons
made it repeatedly known that war was not on the table. A mobilisation of
troops towards the Pakistan border would have played into the hands of
the Pakistan army, which is eager for an excuse to move away from the
Afghan to the India border, aware that its policy of talking tough against
the Taliban while secretly helping them prevail in the field has become
visible even to the most moonstruck admirers in the US and the EU-and
these are many-of "Jehad" Kayani and his merry men. Given the
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 28 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
propensity of these self-proclaimed "pious Muslims" towards the
hedonistic lifestyle, had the US made the UN impose sanctions on the
pro-jehad generals in the Pakistan army, most would have abandoned the
path of terror rather than forsake the comforts of London and New York.
Sadly, rather than be reviled and shunned, "Jehad" Kayani and his team
are feted by their very victims.
Kayani wanted an Indian mobilisation. He should not get it. War is not
the option, at least for the present. And it is surprising that Senator John
McCain sought to generate the sort of hysteria that the Pakistan army was
seeking by claiming that the Manmohan Singh government was very
close to such a course, when no such impression was conveyed to him.
On the contrary, India needs to give upto 36 months (or 24, depending on
the frequency and scale of future attacks) to Washington in that ally's
efforts to steer the Pakistan military away from its policy of helping
jehadis attack India. Should the US fail to achieve such a result during
this timeframe, India should launch a war against the Pakistan army. This
can be initially confined to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the first
instance, and against military targets only, including of course terrorist
infrastructure. Should Pakistan respond by retaliating against India
beyond military targets in Kashmir, our counter-attack should be
expanded to cover the whole country, again initially with only military
targets being selected. Should the Pakistan military at any stage respond
with an attack on civilian areas, an all-out offensive should be launched,
designed to ensure the shutting down of rail, road, sea and air traffic in
Pakistan, to demonstrate the costs of nurturing terrorists. In the unlikely
event that a nuclear device will be deployed against an Indian target, the
top 10 cities in Pakistan should be automatically and repeatedly bombed
with nuclear weapons. Massive nuclear retaliation is the only sane
response to such an escalation of aggression by the generals in Pakistan.
While India needs to hold its military fire now, the entire country must
begin preparations immediately for war with Pakistan within 36 months,
should US effiorts fail.
Should Washington fail to defang the jehadi beast that it still believes to
be its ally rather than the single biggest present threat to international
security, there would be no other option other than war for India, if the
country is to avoid the deadly bleed caused by jehadist violence that has
been the country's fate since the 1980s, and which has accelerated since
Sonia Maino took over its fortunes (in some senses, literally) in 2004.
The public in India needs to be prepared for the prospect of a war that
could see the end of Pakistan, possibly at the cost of significant
destruction in India. However painful this may be, it is nevertheless
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
preferable to suffering jehadi terror indefinitely, and this time, the war
needs to end only with the dismantling of the terror camps (in the
scenario where the Pakistan army responds rationally to the limited
Indian offensive and conducts only a limited response) or the destruction
of Pakistan as a viable country (in the event that a nuclear device get used
by Pakistan). This has to be the final India-Pakistan war.

[Ace Hanlon]

Gaza Massacre: Enough is Enough
Posted: 2008/12/28


So long as Arab leaders are fearful for their lives and their royal lifestyles, Israel will continue to murder at will and so long Arabs like myself fail to put their leaders to account no Arab is safe and time will come where all of us in the region are under the full mercy of Israel.




by Ruharo Sadick

If there were any lessons from the 2006 Hezbollah strong showing against the Zionist state, it would have been that the nation state of Israel is not invincible. The bloodbath being perpetrated by Israel as I write this should not be seen as a sign of strength but rather the confirmation that Israel is good at picking easy targets and its miserable failure to dismantle Hezbollah speaks volumes.

Just looking at the map of Israel and you would know that Hamas cannot and would not be able to defend itself against Israel as Gaza is fully surrounded by Israel and where Gaza is bordering Egypt, Egypt is also practicing blockades as Israel wishes. Clearly Israel is fighting against an undersupplied group of fighters and thus manage to appear ever more powerful.

To hear Mahmood Abbas blame Hamas for the Israeli bombardment and its massacre of Palestinian children is shocking. Add to the fact that the Arab league is yet to even meet is a reaffirmation that the shoe shouldn’t have been thrown at Bush and rather at the Arab league headed by Egypt.

So long as Arab leaders are fearful for their lives and their royal lifestyles, Israel will continue to murder at will and so long Arabs like myself fail to put their leaders to account no Arab is safe and time will come where all of us in the region are under the full mercy of Israel.

Deducing from what Hezbollah managed to achieve in 2006, it is easy to see that all that is required is for Arab leaders to declare war on Israel and Israel would be put to check. That being a distant dream, then the only other alternative is for every Arab and indeed Muslim to take their nationalistic and religious duties to bear and fight against their own leaders in order to clear the ranks.

The situation where Israel can, at will, kill and destroy without any consequence is not only dangerous for Hamas but for all of us. Israel understands only power and Hezbollah stinging rockets will stand evidence to that fact for a long time to come. The truth is that Hezbollah did manage to defeat Israel despite the disproportionately in military might and if the 10,000 men group could achieve it the 200 million or so Arabs could do it with much more ease. All that is required is to declare war.

Today’s wars are mainly decided by rockets and one can only imagine where would Israel be when rockets rain in from every angle of the Arab world. If they have powerful jets, rockets are more than capable of providing a painful blow to Israel to counter them. If they have nuclear weapons, biological weapons are more than capable of bringing Tel Aviv to its knees.

To see Israeli officials kill and essentially bragging as they are committing these crimes while Arab leaders are watching in deafening silence leaves only one option. Arabs as a people must take a stance and if it means death and destruction then be it, we are already living under death and destruction. To put it in Israel’s foreign minister’s words, “Enough is Enough”

[Ace Hanlon]

World must say “No” to Jewish Nazism before it is too late

By Khalid Amayreh





The genocidal Israeli onslaught against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is strikingly similar to the German blitz in the initial stage of the Second World War. The pretexts are nearly the same and the behaviors of both Nazi and Israeli political and military leadership are nearly identical.

And as the German Nazis sought to justify their blitz against their neighbors to the east, using a plethora of carefully concocted lies and pretexts, Israel is doing virtually the same thing.

However, unlike the Nazis whose naked aggression was widely condemned around the world, the ongoing Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip is being condoned, even celebrated, by a huge media network throughout the western world from Sydney to Los Angeles.

Today, Israel is decapitating Gaza while claiming that it is only fighting Hamas. The Israeli air force is targeting and destroying schools, mosques, private homes, charities, public buildings, drug stores, colleges and universities, all under the false pretext of fighting Hamas.

This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinian people as is obvious from the fact that the bulk of the victims are innocent civilians.

And like all criminals, Israel is resorting to the fabrication of lies and half-truths to justify its genocidal blitz against an essentially unprotected people.

Many, probably most Jews in Israel and around the world, are bragging about the “heroic” Israeli army and its “achievements” against Hamas. Some Jews have described the slaughter as the “best Hanukah present ever.”

Well, I don’t really see any heroism in using state-of-the-art machines of death, such as the F-16 warplanes, apache helicopters and laser-guided bunker buster bombs against a people who don’t posses an army or an air force or anti-aircraft defenses. There is no heroism, but sheer cowardice, in launching these deadly bombs at unprotected civilian buildings just as there was no heroism in the targeting of unarmed civilians by the Nazi war machines.

For sure, even the weakest air-force in the world could bomb and destroy unprotected buildings and kill as many civilians as seen fit by morbid minds of Ehud Barak’s ilk.

In short, the Israeli onslaught against a people who don’t possess the means to defend themselves and can’t protect their children from Israeli brutality is an act of sheer cowardice. It can be compared with the Nazi SS strafing Jewish protesters with machine gunfire.

Israel and her mouthpieces in the West claim that Israeli army, a Jewish Wehrmacht by any standard of objective analysis, is merely reacting to Palestinian projectiles fired from Gaza onto Israeli settlements outside Gaza.

Well, this is only a pretext for two many reasons:

The so-called Qassam projectiles are symbolic and nearly innocuous weapons that make more noise than damage. During the past eight years, less than two dozen Israelis were killed by these projectiles. In the meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians, mainly children and other innocent civilians, were annihilated by the indiscriminate Israeli death machine. These are war crimes because even in war, there is proportionality and using excessive force, mainly against civilians, in reaction to minor provocation puts Israel on equal footing with Nazi barbarianism.

There are those who would argue that Israel has the right and duty to defend its citizens. Well, this is not the real issue, because one could argue that even the worst state in the world has the right to defend its citizens.

But Israel has been savaging an entire people by imposing a Nazi-like siege upon them on no other account than to punish them for electing a government that both Israel and her guardian-ally, the United States, didn’t like.

In short, Israel has been effectively telling the Palestinians, in word as well as in deed, that they face two choices: Either to starve to death, or be exterminated by the Israeli war machine. In other words, the Palestinians must die if they resist and die if they don’t. This is while the Israeli hasbara (propaganda) machine keeps telling the world that Israel is only fighting Hamas and defending its citizens.

Well, Hamas may not be completely blameless in a certain sense. However, it is imperative to remind the world that the Islamic movement repeatedly voiced its willingness to stop the firing of “all” projectiles from the Gaza Strip if only Israel would reciprocate and lift the Nazi-like siege.

And as we all know, Israel consistently refused, insisting rather arrogantly that it had the right to kill the Palestinians and invade their territories whenever it deemed fit.

Needless to say, this is exactly the same sort of arrogance, insolence and bellicosity that characterized Nazi behavior.

A few days ago, Israelis analysts described the genocidal onslaught against Gaza as the Israeli version of the American “shock- and –awe bombing” at the beginning of the American invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Shock and awe against a thoroughly tormented and completely savaged people who have been through a hateful blockade, unprecedented in its cruelty and wickedness.

I can’t understand why Jews are behaving the way they are. Do the scenes of havoc and destruction and death in the streets and refugee camps of Gaza give them self-confidence? Do they enjoy watching Palestinian kids mutilated to smithereens by these hellish missiles launched at apartment buildings and homes from high altitude.?

Does it make them feel that they are finally defeating Hitler?

I am asking these questions because I have seen Jews dancing and celebrating rather joyfully the carnage in Gaza. Indeed, a fleeting glance at the Israeli media these days reveals a sick and cannibalistic society that is as bestial as Nazi Germany was during the holocaust.

Perhaps I am doing some injustice to the Germans. After all, the Germans were living under a hateful and tyrannical dictatorship that would have brutally crushed any protests by conscientious citizens.

But, unlike Nazi Germany, Israel claims to be “a light upon the nations,” “the only democracy in the Middle East” and a civilized western nation.

Well, if such is the behavior of “democratic” Israel, just imagine how the Jewish state would behave once the terrorist entity fell in the hands of manifestly fascist forces and parties.

I have repeatedly warned in my writings that Israel is capable of committing a genocide or a holocaust against the Palestinian people and other peoples of the Middle East.

My warnings are not empty propaganda aimed at besmirching Israel’s image. Likewise, they are not motivated by anti-Semitism or hatred for the Jewish people, many of whom I respect and admire.

But the shocking slaughter in Gaza should be viewed as a clarion vindication of my warnings. Israel simply represents the Nazis of our time.

I know that many people around the world, especially in the West, realize the veracity of the analogy deep in their hearts. But they are afraid to call the spade a spade lest they be tarnished and hounded and harassed by the powerful Jewish media which more or less controls the public discourse in many western nations.

But the timidity of these cowards will not help them. Today, the Palestinians are the victims. But, surely, tomorrow will bring with it more victims, and Europeans and Americans in particular will not be immune.

Their lives may not be under an immediate threat now. But their freedoms certainly are.

Let us remember on this somber occasion the words of Martin Niemoller who lamented the bankruptcy of German intellectuals in the few years preceding the Second World War.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

For God’s sake, let us learn from history, because today’s Israel is strikingly similar to 1936’s Germany.

Please, say No to Jewish Nazism before it is too late.

[otraque]

As War Ravages Gaza, Silent Barack Works on Golf Game
20 Days Ahead of Inauguration, President-elect Seems Distant From Growing Crisis
Posted December 30, 2008

With the death toll in the Gaza Strip still rapidly rising, incoming President-elect Barack Obama’s initial reaction of “no immediate comment” has seamlessly segued into an official policy of no comment, period. As Obama and family continue to enjoy a luxurious vacation in Hawaii, his attention seems far more focused on his golf game than the foreign policy crisis he is poised to inherit.

The silence from Hawaii is almost deafening, with Obama’s staff using the oft-repeated excuse that the US “has only one president at a time” to justify his lack of commentary. The silence, combined with his cabinet choices, has punctuated what many already believe: that when the Obama Administration takes the White House next month, little will have really changed.

A small group of protesters at his rented vacation home hope to ensure that the President-elect is at least aware of what is going on. But if Obama saw the protesters as his motorcade took him to play a game of basketball, he didn’t show it. There was no word of how many points Obama scored, but it is unlikely to have rivaled the number of casualties in the Gaza Strip during the game. And the silence continues.


http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/30/as-war-ravages-gaza-silent-barack-works-on-golf-game/

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Obama's Gaza silence condemned

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/12/2008123101532604810.html

Despite growing pressure on Barack Obama to speak out on the crisis in Gaza, the US president-elect has remained silent on the issue.

Obama, holidaying in Hawaii, has made no public remarks on Israel's unrelenting military assault on the Palestinian territory, which has left more than 380 people there dead.

The former Illinois senator spoke out after last month's attacks in Mumbai and has made detailed statements on the US economic crisis.

But some fear that the US president-elect's reluctance to speak out on the Gaza raids could be sending its own message.

"Silence sounds like complicity," Mark Perry, the Washington Director of the Conflicts Forum group, told Al Jazeera.

"Obama has said that Israel has the right to defend itself from rocket attacks but my question to him is 'does he believe that Palestinians also have the right of self-defence?'"

Support for Israel

Israel says the operation is necessary to prevent Palestinian rocket attacks on the south of the country.

And Obama repeatedly spoke out in support for Israel during his election campaign, describing the country as one of the US' greatest allies and has vowed to ensure its security.



He caused anger in the Arab world when he told a pro-Israel lobby group in June that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel.

He also visited Sderot, the Israeli town close to Gaza regularly targeted by Palestinian rocket fire, in July, to show his support for residents.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, has cited comments Obama made during that visit in his own justification for launching the assault.

"Obama said that if rockets were being fired at his home while his two daughters were sleeping, he would do everything he could to prevent it," Barak was reported as saying on Monday.

Obama's aides have repeatedly said he is monitoring the situation and continues to receive intelligence briefings but that he is not yet US president.

But George Bush, the current US leader, has also remained silent on Israel's attacks although the White House has offered its support to Israel.

Arabs pessimistic


Many Arabs were cautiously optimistic about Obama's election victory in November, in the belief that a fresh face in the White House would be better than Bush, who invaded Iraq and gave strong support to Israel.

But his choice of a foreign policy team, especially Hillary Clinton as US secretary of state and Rahm Emanuel as his White House chief-of-staff, have raised doubts that much will change.

But some see his see his silence as symptomatic of caution over his own position and the power of the Israel lobby.

"He wants to be cautious and I think he will remain cautious because the Arab-Israeli conflict is not one of his priorities," Hassan Nafaa, an Egyptian political scientist and secretary-general of the Arab Thought Forum in Amman, told Reuters.

"Obama's position is very precarious. The Jewish lobby warned against his election, so he has chosen to remain silent (on Gaza)," added Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut.

Protests demand change

However many in the US have called on Obama to speak out personally on events in Gaza.

Protesters gathered at Obama's transition office in Washington DC on Monday, and outside his holiday residence in Hawaii on Tuesday, to demand he do more.

"The Obama administration is working hand in glove with the Bush administration and...there is no reason that they can't work together to get something done," Mike Reitz, a federal government worker, told Al Jazeera at the transition office protest.

At another protest against Israel's actions in Gaza outside the White House on Tuesday, some were sceptical about Barack Obama's commitment to Middle East peace-making.

"Is this the change that you were talking about?," said Reza Aboosaiedi, a computer specialist from Iran.

"If this is the change, you have a very, very deep problem, because if you add them up with the other economic problems and other problems in America, having this kind of problem in the Middle East, I don't think he can manage it."

But others at the protest still saw some hope that the former Illinois senator could make a difference.

"I would like to think that he would be more active than Bush in trying to push an agenda to bring Israel and Palestine together to have peace talks, but I don't know," said Bob Malone, a lawyer.

"But I'm an optimist, so I hope so."