Real Letter From CEO To His Employees

This is a legitimate letter — the company actually exists.
1-7-9

To All My Valued Employees, There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is the changing political landscape in this country. Of course, as your employer, I am forbidden to tell you whom to vote for — it is against the law to discriminate based on political affiliation, Race, creed, religion, etc. Please vote who you think will serve your Interests the best. However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help you decide what is in your best interest. First, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to understand that for every business owner there is a back story. This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You’ve seen my big home at last years Christmas party. I’m sure all these flashy icons of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life. However, what you don’t see is the back story. I started this company 12 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living space was converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you. My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a defective transmission. I didn’t have time to date. Often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business — hard work, discipline, and sacrifice. Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. Instead of hitting the Nordstrom’s for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the Goodwill store extracting any clothing item that didn’t look like it was birthed in the 70’s. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to afford these luxuries my friends supposedly had. So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9am, mentally check in at about noon, and then leave at 5pm, I don’t. There is no “off” button For me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom. I eat, ****, and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this business is attached to me like a 1 day old baby. You, of course, only see the fruits of that garden — the nice house, the Mercedes, the vacations… You never realize the back story and the sacrifices I’ve made. Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to bail-out all the people who didn’t. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life for. Yes, business ownership has is benefits but the price I’ve paid is steep and not without wounds. Unfortunately, the cost of running this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit and let me tell you why: I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don’t pay enough. I have state taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and use taxes. Payroll taxes. Workers compensation taxes. Unemployment taxes. Taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him. Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting that goes with it, now occupy most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my “stimulus” check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch. The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check? Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country. The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck you’d quit and you wouldn’t work here. I mean, why should you? That’s nuts. Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, I agree which is why your job is in jeopardy. Here is what many of you don’t understand; to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I didn’t need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now. When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don’t defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the mud of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change you can keep. So where am I going with all this? It’s quite simple. If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your child’s future. Frankly, it isn’t my problem any more. Then, I will close this company down, move to another country, and retire. You see, I’m done. I’m done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship. While tax cuts to 95% of America sounds great on paper, don’t forget the backstory: If there is no job, there is no income to tax. A tax cut on zero dollars is zero. So, when you make decision to vote, ask yourself, who understands the economics of business ownership and who doesn’t? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those questions and you should know who might be the one capable of saving your job. While the media wants to tell you “It’s the economy Stupid” I’m telling you it isn’t. If you lose your job, it won’t be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, steamrolled the Constitution, and will have changed its landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me in South Caribbean sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about. Signed, Your boss, Michael A. Crowley, PE Crowley, Crisp & Associates, Inc. Professional Engineers 1 906 South Main Street, Suite 122 Wake Forest, NC 27587

The Gaza Slaughter Is Premeditated Genocide

By Karl Schwarz
1-7-9

 

It is time to call a spade a spade. Israel is a nation of terrorists. The US has become a nation of terrorists.   For those readers who do not know what ‘anti-Semitism’ looks and smells like, they should pay close attention to the Israeli butchery in Gaza.   Since 9-11, and even before then through the auspices of US, UK, NATO sponsored terrorism in Operation Gladio, the US, UK and Israel have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world’s preeminent terrorists are those three nations.   I see the constant brainwashing mantra of “terror” spewing out of the criminals in DC and from the MSM, knowing full well that my nation is, directly or indirectly, now the leading cause and support mechanism of global terrorism.   The slaughter of 1.5 million Iraqis was terrorism. The annihilation of 2-3 million Afghanis is terrorism. This latest Israeli massacre in Palestine with US weapons and support is terrorism.   Turn back the clock to August, 2008 and we have the US-Israel sponsored and condoned genocide of the citizens of South Ossetia. Mick ‘The Tie Eater” Saakashvili has now admitted that Georgia attacked first and Russia responded in force.   Go back a little further to 2006, and there is the Israeli attack on Lebanon, fully-armed with American weapons. The US and Israel clearly think there is no accountability for butchery and human sacrifice.   This is an action-reaction universe and for any action there is and will always be an reaction in reverse. Especially, when the initial action is pure evil.   I have been watching this ‘Hamas fires rockets at poor little Israel’ vomit and there many grievous things wrong with Israel’s whining and victimhood.   I have seen bigger and more deadly fireworks displays in the US and EU. These Hamas pipe bomb rockets are essentially toys to shout out the disgust Palestinians feel for their hostile, hateful neighbors in Zionist Israel.   News has now surfaced that this ‘defensive attack’ by Israel was in planning up to 18 months ago, just like the post 9-11 attack on Afghanistan. This is not self-defense; it is willful genocide of Palestinians. It is an unarguable fact that the Jews themselves refuse to make peace with the Palestinians they hold hostage in the world’s largest outdoor prison.   The Israelis have intentionally, willfully turned the lives of the Palestinians into a living Hell…or death…for DECADES. Every basic human necessity is denied by the Zionist Jew jailers in Tel Aviv who demand that everything has to be the Zionist Jew way…and to Hell with fairness, equity or humanity. It is sheer elitist, evil Talmudism.   Never have I seen such a psychotic, racist, bigoted little state pretend that they have some moral high ground yet prove time and time again that they are nothing less than thugs, gangsters and killers. I have been watching closely for over 30 years and it is apparent to me that Israel does not want peace. Period. It wants the Palestinians to go away and DIE.   What is one Israeli life worth? Is it ten dead Palestinians, or 100 dead women, children and complete annihilation of families? One ‘great’ Israeli statesman said, and I paraphrase, “All the Arabs in the world aren’t worth one Jewish fingernail.”   The Viasat History channel ran a special over the holidays about how the 20th Century was the bloodiest in recorded history of mankind. One part of that special was particularly disgusting as the narrator and story producers attempted to completely re-write history as to what World War I and World War II were all about.   I about gagged when they addressed the post-World War II matter of Israel. This is a quote from that special: “Following the Holocaust in Europe many of the Biblical Jews longed to return to their home in Israel. After all had suffered so much from World War II no one had enough energy left to object to their wishes.”   Folks, that is unadulterated total HORSESHIT. First, there was no “Israel” to return home to. It was Judea, remember? It was Palestine for about close to 2,000 years and the Jews and Arabs who lived there did so in peace. Most of them had never lived in ‘Israel’ and most of them did not return there as the great Exodus it was billed to be.   This is the same Holocaust crowd that does not want to openly discuss or research their claim of 6 million dead. No, they want the world to accept that as Gospel. Nor do they wish to discuss historical records that indicate that there were more Jews in Europe after World War II than preceding World War II, or that Zionist Jews financed the very Nazi Germany that supposedly sought to exterminate the Jews from Europe. They get very upset when someone brings up the fact that around 150,000 Jews served, often with great bravery and distinction, in the German military in World War II.   This is basically the same bunch that whips out the ‘anti-Semite’ label even though they are as far from being genuine Semitic people as are most of the people on the planet. The Khazar Zionist Jews are NOT SEMITIC, nor did they even come from that part of the world.   ‘Semite’ is not a race, it is a language group that includes the original Jews of Judea, many of the Arabs of that immediate area and even some of the original Ethiopians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages   Did you read that link? There are over 450 million Semitic language speaking people and the largest group is THE ARABS.   It therefore suggests that the most ANTI-SEMTIC people on the face of this planet are the white-skinned Khazar Zionist Jews and their White Cracker supremacists who control the UK and US governments.   It was not until the UN, the US, the UK, and the Zionist Rothschild family and their henchmen forced Israel upon the world that there was any problem whatsoever in that part of the world.   Most of these ‘Biblical Jews’ that longed for their homeland were not Jews by birth. They were from Khazaria which was in the Caspian Sea area far from Europe and far from Israel too. Since they had never lived in Israel it is sort of hard to long for a homeland that not only never existed, but that they never lived in…nor did any of their forefathers. They were not born of the 12 Tribes of Israel, they just decided to call themselves Jews about 740 AD, choosing that religion over Islam and Christianity.   These same Khazars then fled into Russia, Poland, Hungary and other areas to avoid meeting their doom when Genghis Khan shredded their Khazarian Empire. If you missed my past article ‘Long Live the Khazaria Empire, Not!’ it is posted on Rense at this link.   http://www.rense.com/general83/khaz.htm   Many years ago, I heard that Zionist Jews do not like actress Kelly McGinnis. She has starred in some memorable movies such as Top Gun, Witness, etc. I was curious as to why but did not know until recently. Kelly, it seems, starred in a 1988 movie titled “The House on Carroll Street”.   http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3181812736/tt0095333   What the movie was about is how our US government snuck Nazis into the US and hid them behind the names of dead people, many of them Jews living in the US who had died of natural causes in the early 1950s.   The deceit from Washington, DC never ends.   I suspect part of the reason Israel refuses to permit the duly, legally elected Hamas government to rule is that it will not move   inland to the Palestinian Ghettos and let the greedy Jew real estate developers have that choice beach front Mediterranean property. And then there is the quiet story of the substantial amounts of oil and natural gas in and offshore of Gaza.   The former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had to resign in disgrace due to a real estate scam, bribery, and scandals involving his buddies. My shit detector says that Zionist Jews want the Gaza Strip and that prime Mediterranean beach property for more Zionist Israel settlements. And perhaps a Las Vegas style ‘entertainment’ and gambling, prostitution, drugs, money laundering mecca.   I bet Bernie Madoff has already purchased a nice flat there with a great ocean view. Current news says Bernie has already violated his parole by trying to hide jewelry and other assets from prosecutors. Now, finally, they are insisting that he be held without bond. Don’t hold your breath.   This is, indeed, the latest in a long series of massacre/holocausts of Palestinian ‘Semite’ Arabs and Christian ‘Semite’ Arabs, etc, perpetrated, as always, by Zionist Khazar Jews who own and operate the House of Rothschild’s ’shitty little country’ (as top French Government official said a few years ago).   It is time for the good people of this world, this entire sorry planet, to stand up to the US, the UK and Zionist Israel and say ‘NEVER AGAIN!’   Karl kwschwarz@chello.sk Karl’s Datapage Archive

Obama Selects CFR Member Sanjay Gupta to be Surgeon General

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
January 7, 2009
“America’s most famous television surgeon, Sanjay Gupta, is poised to take his black bag and microphone to the White House as President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for U.S. surgeon general,” reports the Washington Post. “A neurosurgeon who is also a correspondent for CNN and CBS, Gupta was chosen as much for his broadcasting skills as for his medical résumé, suggesting that the incoming administration values visible advisers who can drive a public message.”

Gupta was not only chosen for his “broadcasting skills,” but also because he is a trusted insider. Not surprisingly, Gupta is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Part of Gupta’s “public message” is that thermersol and its mercury-based preservative has nothing to do with autism. In 2007, Gupta went on CNN to state there appears to be no relationship between thimerosal and autism (see video).

Gupta does not mention a study published in the March 10, 2006, issue of American Physicians and Surgeons that reveals that since mercury was removed from childhood vaccines, the alarming increase in reported rates of autism and other neurological disorders in children dropped sharply. Independent researchers used the government’s own databases on childhood neurological disorders, including autism, before and after removal of mercury-based preservatives. 

Mr. Gupta appears to be part of an effort to deny there is an epidemic and try to hide the data from public scrutiny, while at the same time secretly putting in an addendum in to the Homeland Security Act specifically to prevent parents from suing vaccines companies for vaccine damage (see the Autism Mercury Link page on the Autism Couch web page).

Sanjay Gupta, as a member of the CFR and the Mockingbird corporate media, is part of the ongoing eugenics vaccination effort, thus his appointment as surgeon general makes perfect sense.

In addition, he was a White House Fellow in 1997 and served as special advisor to then-first lady Hillary Clinton. “We are told that the pitch to him has been that health care reform will be a top priority, that wellness, fitness, obesity, the issues he has focused on often here at CNN, will be a top priority,” reports John King.

In other words, Gupta will be Obama’s point man on the “continuum of care, basically from birth to death,” as fellow CFR member John Edwards put it, that is to say government micromanagement of “wellness, fitness, obesity” and other health issues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2007, CFR member Gupta ignored research indicating that thermersol and its mercury-based preservative did indeed cause autism.

Alex Jones Tv:2009 Police State “RANT” of the New Year!!!

Pat Robertson’s NWO God: U.S. Will Embrace Socialism

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
January 4, 2008

On December 23, the “conservative” preacher Pat Robertson told CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux that he was pleased as punch with the election of Barack Obama. “I am remarkably pleased with Obama. I had grave misgivings about him. But so help me, he’s come in forcefully, intelligently. He’s picked a middle of the road cabinet. And so far, if he continues down this course, he has the makings of a great president,” said Robertson.

	Robertson gets his flock ready for a future of socialist servitude.

Obama’s “middle of the road cabinet” consists of people hailing from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the secretive Bilderberg group. Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick to head up the Treasury, is head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is the Fed’s main liaison with Wall Street. Obama’s so-called Economic Recovery Advisory Board will be chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Obama has outlined his geopolitical plans in Foreign Affairs, the mainstay periodical of the Council on Foreign Relations, and his wife, Michelle Obama, is a member of a branch of the CFR in Chicago.

The CFR has only one purpose and that is to push for world government. Carroll Quigley, the Georgetown University history professor and historian for the CFR wrote the following: “The Council on Foreign Relations is the American Branch of a society which originated in England… (and) …believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established.”

It would seem Pat Robertson does not have a problem with any of this. Last week, Robertson claimed to have a conversation with God and in this revelation — Robertson makes predictions based on his supposed conversations with God at the start of the new year — the preacher was told the “people will welcome socialism in order to relieve their pain. Nothing will stand in the way of a plan by Obama to restructure the economy in the same fashion as the New Deal in the ’30s.”

Obama will restructure nothing and Robertson knows it. Barack Obama is a cigar store Indian propped up to placate the people. He is window dressing for the New World Order. “The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes,” Felix Frankfurter, Justice of the Supreme Court, told FDR, the man credited with the first New Deal. “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” Obama has stacked his administration with representatives from these financial elements.

Robertson knows this. He wrote a book entitled the New World Order. In the book he stated that Colonel Edward M. House, along with other internationalists, realized that America would not embrace world government without a change in public opinion.

Economic depressions, as Henry Kissinger and others have eluded, have a way of not only changing public opinion, but reducing the public to abject groveling and welcoming dictatorial government with open arms.

In an interview with Terry Meeuwsen, Robertson’s co-host on CBN’s The 700 Club, the preacher said Obama’s socialism “will be the largest transfer of power to Washington since the ’30s. But people are willing to accept it because the pain has been so bad.”

Socialist policies and massive government spending, Robertson told Meeuwsen, will lead to hyperinflation. These policies will send prices skyrocketing through the stratosphere and the value of the dollar will go down the tubes. “The Lord said the dollar is going to go down dramatically,” Robertson said in the interview. “If I’m hearing him right, gold will go to about $1900 dollars an ounce and oil to $300 a barrel.”

It is interesting how Robertson’s “prediction” follows the global elite script so closely. The international bankers are engineering a financial crash on a scale never before witnessed. The U.S. economy has now entered a deflationary spiral that closely resembles the one that occurred during the Great Depression, a process facilitated by the Federal Reserve as it prints an unlimited supply of fiat money and drastically cuts interest rates, thus speeding up inflation and the devaluation of the dollar. Obama’s proposed new taxes — that is to say, taxes to be imposed by the global elite — and his socialist policies will kick this process into overdrive. Expect Obama to call for a one-world currency in order to deal with this manufactured problem.

As Rear Admiral Chester Ward, a former member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has warned, the elite, led by the international banking cartel, “have one objective in common — they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty of the national independence of the United States. A second clique of international members in the CFR comprises the Wall Street international bankers and their key agents. Primarily, they want the world-banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government.”

It is interesting Pat Robertson issued his prediction without reaching the obvious conclusion. Robertson did this because his assignment is to get his flock and the rest of us ready for the impending global financial crash, an engineered destruction designed to usher in the sort of global government long planned by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg group. The elite are fond of telling us how they are going to reduce us to serfs and Pat Robertson is merely doing their bidding.

Mahatir’s Counsel To Obama

By Dr. Mahathir Mohamad
Former Prime Minister of Malaysia
1-2-9

 

Dear Mr. President,   I did not vote for you in the Presidential Election because I am Malaysian.   But I consider myself one of your constituents because what you do or say will affect me and my country as well.   I welcome your promise for change. Certainly your country, the United States of America needs a lot of changes.   That is because America and Americans have become the best hated people in the world. Even Europeans dislike your arrogance. Yet you were once admired and liked because you freed a lot of countries from conquest and subjugation.   It is the custom on New Year’s day for people to make resolutions. You must have listed your good resolutions already. But may I politely suggest that you also resolve to do the following in pursuit of Change.   1) Stop killing people. The United States is too fond of killing people in order to achieve its objectives. You call it war, but today’s wars are not about professional soldiers fighting and killing each other. It is about killing people, ordinary innocent people by the hundreds of thousands. Whole countries will be devastated.   War is primitive, the cavemen’s way of dealing with a problem. Stop your arms build up and your planning for future wars.   2) Stop indiscriminate support of Israeli killers with your money and your weapons. The planes and the bombs killing the people of Gaza are from you.   3) Stop applying sanctions against countries which cannot do the same against you.   In Iraq your sanctions killed 500,000 children through depriving them of medicine and food. Others were born deformed.   What have you achieved with this cruelty? Nothing except the hatred of the victims and right-thinking people.   4) Stop your scientists and researchers from inventing new and more diabolical weapons to kill more people more efficiently.   5) Stop your arms manufacturers from producing them. Stop your sales of arms to the world. It is blood money that you earn. It is un-Christian.   6) Stop trying to democratize all the countries of the world. Democracy may work for the United States but it does not always work for other countries.   Don’t kill people because they are not democratic. Your crusade to democratize countries has killed more people than the authoritarian Governments which you overthrew. And you have not succeeded anyway.   7) Stop the casinos which you call financial institutions. Stop hedge funds, derivatives and currency trading. Stop banks from lending non-existent money by the billions.   Regulate and supervise your banks. Jail the miscreants who made profits from abusing the system.   Sign the Kyoto Protocol and other international agreements.   9) Show respect for the United Nations.   I have many other resolutions for change which I think you should consider and undertake.   But I think you have enough on your plate for this 2009th year of the Christian Era.   If you can do only a few of what I suggest, you will be remembered by the world as a great leader. Then the United States will again be the most admired nation. Your embassies will be able to take down the high fences and razor-wire coils that surround them.   May I wish you a Happy New Year and a great Presidency.   Yours Sincerely,   Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad

The Real Goal of the Gaza Assault

Jonathan Cook
Counterpunch
January 2, 2008

Ever since Hamas triumphed in the Palestinian elections nearly three years ago, the story in Israel has been that a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip was imminent. But even when public pressure mounted for a decisive blow against Hamas, the government backed off from a frontal assault.

Now the world waits for Ehud Barak, the defence minister, to send in the tanks and troops as the logic of this operation is pushing inexorably towards a ground war. Nonetheless, officials have been stalling. Significant ground forces are massed on Gaza’s border, but still the talk in Israel is of “exit strategies”, lulls and renewed ceasefires.

Even if Israeli tanks do lumber into the enclave, will they dare to move into the real battlegrounds of central Gaza? Or will they simply be used, as they have been in the past, to terrorise the civilian population on the peripheries?

Israelis are aware of the official reason for Mr Barak’s reticence to follow the air strikes with a large-scale ground war. They have been endlessly reminded that the worst losses sustained by the army in the second intifada took place in 2002 during the invasion of Jenin refugee camp.

Gaza, as Israelis know only too well, is one mammoth refugee camp. Its narrow alleys, incapable of being negotiated by Merkava tanks, will force Israeli soldiers out into the open. Gaza, in the Israeli imagination, is a death trap.

Similarly, no one has forgotten the heavy toll on Israeli soldiers during the ground war with Hizbollah in 2006. In a country such as Israel, with a citizen army, the public has become positively phobic of a war in which large numbers of its sons will be placed in the firing line.

That fear is only heightened by reports in the Israeli media that Hamas is praying for the chance to engage Israel’s army in serious combat. The decision to sacrifice many soldiers in Gaza is not one Mr Barak, leader of the Labor Party, will take lightly with an election in six weeks.

But there is another concern that has given him equal cause to hesitate.

Despite the popular rhetoric in Israel, no senior official really believes Hamas can be destroyed, either from the air or with brigades of troops. It is simply too entrenched in Gaza. 

That conclusion is acknowledged in the tepid rationales offered so far for Israel’s operations. “Creating calm in the country’s south” and “changing the security environment” have been preferred over previous favourites, such as “rooting out the infrastructure of terror”.

An invasion whose real objective was the toppling of Hamas would, as Mr Barak and his officials understand, require the permanent military reoccupation of Gaza.

But overturning the disengagement from Gaza — the 2005 brainchild of Ariel Sharon, the prime minister at the time — would entail a huge military and financial commitment from Israel. It would once again have to assume responsibility for the welfare of the local civilian population, and the army would be forced into treacherous policing of Gaza’s teeming camps.

In effect, an invasion of Gaza to overthrow Hamas would be a reversal of the trend in Israeli policy since the Oslo process of the early 1990s.

It was then that Israel allowed the long-exiled Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to return to the occupied territories in the new role of head of the Palestinian Authority. Naively, Arafat assumed he was leading a government-in-waiting. In truth, he simply became Israel’s chief security contractor.

Arafat was tolerated during the 1990s because he did little to stop Israel’s effective annexation of large parts of the West Bank through the rapid expansion of settlements and increasingly harsh movement restrictions on Palestinians. Instead, he concentrated on building up the security forces of his Fatah loyalists, containing Hamas and preparing for a statehood that never arrived.

When the second intifada broke out, Arafat proved he had outlived his usefulness to Israel. His Palestinian Authority was gradually emasculated.

Since Arafat’s death and the disengagement from Gaza, Israel has sought to consolidate the physical separation of the Strip from the much-coveted West Bank. Even if not originally desired by Israel, Hamas’s takeover of Gaza has contributed significantly to that goal.

Israel is now faced by two Palestinian national movements. The Fatah one, based in the West Bank and led by a weak president, Mahmoud Abbas, is largely discredited and compliant. The other, Hamas, based in Gaza, has grown in confidence as it claims to be the true guardian of resistance to the occupation.

Unable to destroy Hamas, Israel is now considering whether to live with the armed group next door.

Hamas has proved it can enforce its rule in Gaza much as Arafat once did in both occupied territories. The question being debated in Israel’s cabinet and war rooms is whether, like Arafat, Hamas can be made to collude with the occupation. It has proved it is strong, but can it be made useful to Israel, too?

In practice that would mean taming Hamas rather than crushing it. Whereas Israel is trying to build up Fatah in the West Bank with carrots, it is using the current slaughter in Gaza as a big stick with which to beat Hamas into compliance.

The ultimate objective is another truce stopping the rocket fire out of the Strip, like the six-month ceasefire that just ended, but on terms even more favourable to Israel.

The savage blockade that has deprived Gaza’s population of essentials for many months failed to achieve that goal. Instead, Hamas quickly took charge of the smuggling tunnels that became a lifeline for Gazans. The tunnels raised Hamas’s finances and popularity in equal measure.

It should come as no surprise that Israel has barely bothered to hit the Hamas leadership or its military wing. Instead it has bombed the tunnels, Hamas’s treasure chest, and it has killed substantial numbers of ordinary policemen, the guarantors of law and order in Gaza. Latest reports suggest Israel is now planning to expand its air strikes to Hamas’s welfare organisations, the charities that are the base of its popularity.

The air campaign is paring down Hamas’s ability to function effectively as the ruler of Gaza. It is undermining Hamas’s political power bases. The lesson is not that Hamas can be destroyed militarily but that it that can be weakened domestically.

Israel apparently hopes to persuade the Hamas leadership, as it did Arafat for a while, that its best interests are served by co-operating with Israel. The message is: forget about your popular mandate to resist the occupation and concentrate instead on remaining in power with our help.

In the fog of war, events may yet escalate in such a way that a serious ground invasion cannot be avoided, especially if Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel. But whatever happens, Israel and Hamas are almost certain in the end to agree to another ceasefire.

The issue will be whether in doing so, Hamas, like Arafat before it, loses sight of its primary task: to force Israel to end its occupation.

How Hypocrisy on ‘Terrorism’ Kills

Since the classic definition of ‘terrorism’ is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal, Israel would seem to be inviting an objective analysis that it has chosen its own terrorist path, says Robert Parry.

 

Israel, a nation that was born out of Zionist terrorism, has launched massive airstrikes against targets in Gaza using high-tech weapons produced by the United States, a country that often has aided and abetted terrorism by its client military forces, such as Chile’s Operation Condor and the Nicaraguan contras, and even today harbors right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in blowing up a civilian airliner.Yet, with that moral ambiguity excluded from the debate, the justification for the Israeli attacks, which have killed at least 364 people, is the righteous fight against “terrorism,” since Gaza is ruled by the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.

Hamas rose to power in January 2006 through Palestinian elections, which ironically the Bush administration had demanded. However, after Hamas won a parliamentary majority, Israel and the United States denounced the outcome because they deem Hamas a “terrorist organization.”

Hamas then wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group that once was considered “terrorist” but is now viewed as a US-Israeli partner, so it has been cleansed of the “terrorist” label.

Unwilling to negotiate seriously with Hamas because of its acts of terrorism – which have included firing indiscriminate short-range missiles into southern Israel – the United States and Israel sat back as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza worsened, with 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians packed into what amounts to a giant open-air prison.

When Hamas ended a temporary cease-fire on Dec. 19 because of a lack of progress in those negotiations and began lobbing its little missiles into Israel once more, the Israeli government reacted on Saturday with its lethal “shock and awe” firepower – even though no Israelis had been killed by the post-cease-fire missiles launched from Gaza. [Since Saturday, four Israelis have died in more intensive Hamas missile attacks.]

Israel claimed that its smart bombs targeted sites related to the Hamas security forces, including a school for police cadets and even regular policemen walking down the street. But it soon became clear that Israel was taking an expansive view of what was part of the Hamas military infrastructure, with Israeli bombs taking out a television station and a university building as well as killing a significant number of civilians.

As the slaughter continued on Monday, Israeli officials confided to Western journalists that the war plan was to destroy the vast support network of social and other programs that undergird Hamas’s political clout.

“There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel,” a senior Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post.

“Hamas’s civilian infrastructure is a very, very sensitive target,” added Matti Steinberg, a former top adviser to Israel’s domestic security service. “If you want to put pressure on them, this is how.” [Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2008]

Since the classic definition of “terrorism” is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal, Israel would seem to be inviting an objective analysis that it has chosen its own terrorist path. But it is clearly counting on the US news media to continue wearing the blinders that effectively limit condemnations about terrorism to people and groups that are regarded as Washington’s enemies.

Whose Terrorism?

As a Washington-based reporter for the Associated Press in the 1980s, I once questioned the seeming bias that the US-based wire service applied to its use of the word “terrorist” when covering Middle East issues. A senior AP executive responded to my concerns with a quip. “Terrorist is the word that follows Arab,” he said.

Though meant as a lighthearted riposte, the comment clearly had a great deal of truth to it. It was easy to attach “terrorist” to any Arab attack – even against a military target such as the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 after the Reagan administration had joined hostilities against Muslim forces by having US warships lob shells into Lebanese villages.

But it was understood that different rules on the use of the word “terrorism” applied when the terrorism was coming from “our side.” Then, no American reporter with any sense of career survival would think of injecting the word “terrorist” whatever the justification.

Even historical references to acts of terrorism – such as the brutal practice by American revolutionaries in the 1770s of “tar and feathering” civilians considered sympathetic to the British Crown or the extermination of American Indian tribes – were seen as somehow diluting the moral righteousness against today’s Islamic terrorists and in favor of George W. Bush’s “war on terror.”

Gone, too, from the historical narrative was the fact that militant Zionists employed terrorism as part of their campaign to establish Israel as a Jewish state. The terrorism included killings of British officials who were administering Palestine under an international mandate as well as Palestinians who were driven violently from their land so it could be claimed by Jewish settlers.

One of the most famous of those terrorist attacks was the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where British officials were staying. The attack, which killed 91 people including local residents, was carried out by the Irgun, a terrorist group run by Menachem Begin who later founded the Likud Party and rose to be Israel’s prime minister.

Another veteran of the campaign of Zionist terrorism was Yitzhak Shamir, who also became a Likud leader and eventually prime minister.

In the early 1990s, as I was waiting to interview Shamir at his Tel Aviv office, I was approached by one of his young female assistants who was dressed in a gray and blue smock with a head covering in the traditional Hebrew style.

As we were chatting, she smiled and said in a lilting voice, “Prime Minister Shamir, he was a terrorist, you know.” I responded with a chuckle, “yes, I’m aware of the prime minister’s biography.”

Blind Spot

To maintain one’s moral purity in denouncing acts of terror by US enemies, one also needs a large blind spot for recent US history, which implicates US leaders repeatedly in tolerance or acts of terrorism.

For instance, in 1973, after a bloody US-backed coup overthrew the leftist Chilean government, the new regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet joined with other South American dictatorships to sponsor an international terrorist organization called Operation Condor which assassinated political dissidents around the world.

Operation Condor mounted one of its most audacious actions on the streets of Washington in 1976, when Pinochet’s regime recruited Cuban-American terrorists to detonate a car bomb that killed Chile’s former foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt. The Chilean government’s role immediately was covered up by the CIA, then headed by George H.W. Bush. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Only weeks later, a Venezuela-based team of right-wing Cubans – under the direction of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles – blew a Cubana Airliner out of the sky, killing 73 people. Bosch and Posada, a former CIA operative, were co-founders of CORU, which was described by the FBI as “an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization.”

Though the US government soon learned of the role of Bosch and Posada in the Cubana airline attack – and the two men spent some time in a Venezuelan jail – both Bosch and Posada since have enjoyed the protection of the US government and particularly the Bush Family.

Rebuffing international demands that Bosch and Posada be held accountable for their crimes, the Bushes – George H.W., George W. and Jeb – have all had a hand in making sure these unrepentant terrorists get to live out their golden years in the safety and comfort of the United States.

In the 1980s, Posada even crossed over into another US-backed terrorist organization, the Nicaraguan contras. After escaping from Venezuela, he was put to work in 1985 by Oliver North’s contra-support operation run out of Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council.

The Nicaraguan contras were, in effect, a narco-terrorist organization that partially funded its operations with proceeds from cocaine trafficking, a secret that the Reagan administration worked hard to conceal along with the contras’ record of murder, torture, rape and other crimes in Nicaragua. [See Parry’s Lost History.]

President Reagan joined, too, in fierce PR campaigns to discredit human rights investigators who documented massive atrocities by US allies in Central America in the 1980s – not only the contras, but also the state terrorism of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan security forces, which engaged in wholesale slaughters in villages considered sympathetic to leftist insurgents.

Generally, the major US news outlets treaded very carefully when allegations arose about terrorism by “our side.”

When some brave journalists, like New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner, wrote about politically motivated killings of civilians in Central America, they faced organized retaliation by right-wing advocacy groups which often succeeded in damaging or destroying the reporters’ careers.

Double Standards

Eventually, the American press corps developed an engrained sense of the double standards. Moral outrage could be expressed when acts of terrorism were committed by US enemies, while studied silence – or nuanced concern – would be in order when the crimes were by US allies.

So, while the US news media had no doubt that the 9/11 terrorist attacks justified invading Afghanistan, there was very little US media criticism when President Bush inflicted his “shock and awe” assault on Iraq, a war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.

Though many Muslims and others around the world have denounced Bush’s Iraq invasion as “state terrorism,” such a charge would be considered far outside the mainstream in the United States. Instead, Iraqi insurgents are often labeled “terrorists” when they attack US troops inside Iraq. The word “terrorist” has become, in effect, a geopolitical curse word.

Despite the long and bloody history of US-Israeli participation in terrorism, the US news media continues its paradigm of pitting the US-Israeli “good guys” against the Islamic “bad guys.” One side has the moral high ground and the other is in the moral gutter. [For more on the US media’s one-sided approach, see the analysis by Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.]

Any attempt to cite the larger, more ambiguous and more troubling picture draws accusations from defenders of US-Israeli actions, especially the neoconservatives, of what they call “moral equivalence” or “anti-Semitism.”

Yet it is now clear that acquiescence to a double standard on terrorism is not just a violation of journalistic ethics or an act of political cowardice; it is complicity in mass murder. Without the double standard, it is hard to envision how the bloodbaths – in Iraq (since 2003), in Lebanon (in 2006) and in Gaza (today) – would be possible.

Hypocrisy over the word “terrorism” is not an innocent dispute over semantics; it kills.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.

 

From Hiroshima To Iraq-Uranium Wars: A Suicidal, Genocidal and Omnicidal Course

By Leuren Moret
12-28-8

 

EXCERPT:   Genocidal Racism   From the beginning of the Atomic Age, the genocidal aspects of racism were part of the legacy of the Manhattan Project. Native Americans were heavily exposed to uranium mining, nuclear tests, and permanent uranium contamination of their groundwater and reservations from mining. Henry Kissinger expressed U.S. National Security Policy very plainly over concerns about Pacific Islanders exposed to US nuclear tests in the Pacific:   “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn!” –Henry Kissinger   PINE RIDGE RESERVATION:  WW II “DIRTY BOMB” GENOCIDE   On June 22, 2004, a secret meeting was held, by representatives of the NRC and the Department of Defense (DOD), with Lakota tribal members of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. A small muckraker newspaper editor discovered that drums of uranium and unexploded bombs were on the Badlands Bombing Range after the DOD had completed a $2.5 million cleanup of the range. The large drums had “1945″ stamped into the metal, were full of gunshot holes and were full of “natural uranium.” At the meeting, a representative from the NRC was there with DOD Officers, and the Lakota tribal members present were informed that the drums had natural uranium in them. When the Lakotas asked what they were doing with the drums, they were told by NRC/DOD officials that the drums had been piled up and shot at, or sacks of uranium hung from drop towers were shot at, to study the dispersal patterns of the uranium “downwind, downstream, and in the groundwater”. A Native American village was a few miles downwind and downstream from the uranium drums and drop tower experiments, and the tribal members in the village had been drinking the groundwater from wells in the village. This Army experiment was conducted without informing them and without their consent.   The editor had first heard about the story from a military officer, and about a planned meeting “with an NRC representative from Utah”. When the editor made a call to the NRC headquarters in Washington DC, trying to find out where and when the meeting was, he was told “We don’t have anyone in Utah” and that “the DOD has jurisdiction there [Badlands bombing range], we wouldn’t send anyone.” The Lakota Indians contacted the DOD trying to find out the location of the meeting, and a woman on the phone at the DOD told them “there was not a meeting”, but when the editor stated the name of the military officer who had informed him, the woman at the DOD broke down and told him where the meeting was.    The whole affair was an NRC, DOD, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Parks Service, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) nexus of lies, intrigue, and cover-up of a horrendous WW II experiment to study uranium as a genocidal weapon used on unsuspecting Native American communities. The 1943 Groves memo recommending developing uranium as a radioactive poison gas weapon, as well as the 1950 U.S. Army pamphlet on nuclear weapons makes it very clear that the Army was fully aware of the danger of internal uranium exposure, which exposes the genocidal intent of the Badlands experiments on the Lakotas. The Badlands experiments would have provided excellent data on the genocidal effects of the new NWO effort to promote in situ leach mining of uranium, which poisons the environment, especially rivers, lakes, and groundwater.      EXCERPT:   IN SITU LEACH MINING: NWO URANIUM GENOCID     The new and improved NWO genocide agenda marches more efficiently into the future, with the introduction of in situ leach (ISL) mining:   ISL uranium mining involves massive pumping of oxygenated water into aquifers to dissolve and strip uranium from sandstone particles at the bottom of the aquifer. The process removes most of the uranium and then pumps toxic water back into the aquifer where it can mix with drinking water aquifers, rivers and streams.   The mined water is then stored above ground in evaporation ponds or dumped into a deep disposal well under the drinking water aquifer.    Uranium Resources, Inc. (URRE) is a uranium mining corporation with large holdings in Texas and New Mexico, and ties to international mining interests:   Since its incorporation in 1977, URI has produced over 7 million pounds of uranium [3,490 tons of DU] by in situ recovery (ISR) methods in the state of Texas where the Company currently has ISR mining projects. URI also has 183,000 acres of uranium mineral holdings and 100 million pounds [49,850 tons of DU] of uranium in New Mexico.   How many hundreds of billions of gallons of precious groundwater have been contaminated in two arid states, the cost that is never factored into the mining process. That is the highest cost, passed on to the public and the environment.   Foreign mining companies (almost all owned by City of London international financiers through “fronts”) using ISL on Indigenous lands, guarantees an escalation of the extermination of Indigenous people. At Pine Ridge and other reservations in South Dakota, and for tribes in Nebraska, the Native Americans face a greater threat than before with new in situ leach mining that threatens to further poison their aquifers and rivers. A new ruling on a relicensing application by Cameco Corporation, the largest uranium mining company in the world, came out in favour of the protesting Native Americans:   Following the recent Sept 30 [2008] hearing, the ALB [Atomic Licensing Board of the NRC] judges admitted nine contentions including the:   failure to disclose non-radiological impacts,    failure to consult regarding cultural resources,    failure to disclose impact on surface waters, including The White River,    failure to disclose fractures and faults connecting the mined aquifer and drinking aquifers,    failure to disclose that wastes are released on-site,    failure to include recent research,    failure to account for the value of non-degraded wetlands, and    failure to disclose foreign ownership.   On the issue of foreign ownership of the mine and the concealment of that fact, the Commission ruled, “its resolution in this proceeding is potentially fatal to Crow Butte’s proposed renewal of its license. The Board is of the opinion that it is in the best interest in the management of this proceeding that this issue be segregated from the other contentions and briefed on the merits up front.”   “Here at Pine Ridge, we have widespread Arsenic contamination and a rate of diabetes 800 times the national average, so it is clear to me that we have to continue to fight to make the water safe for our children and grandchildren,” says White Plume.   “We will appeal aspects of the Board’s ruling such as their refusal to admit our contention about the spiritual value of pristine water for traditional Lakota medicines and cultural ceremonies such as the inipi (sweat lodge)”    Foreign ownership in the eyes of the court is a legitimate legal challenge to relicensing, but health issues and cultural practices and values are not. As a consequence of such bias in JudeoMasonic U.S. courts, the health effects have been genocidal. Studies have shown that populations exposed to environmental uranium, below the EPA drinking water standard, have increased infertility, reproductive cancers of the breast, ovaries and uterus, and caused large increases in diabetes. Poorly controlled diabetes during pregnancy, has been found to contribute to foetal malformations. Exposure of the pregnant female to xenobiotics such as uranium oxide can cause embryonic death, lethal foetal malformations or birth defects. Biochemical abnormalities in the foetus can cause an increased risk of cancer development if the mother has been exposed to certain compounds.   KOYAANISQATSI   ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.   The Hopi believe this is the Fourth World. There were seven worlds created at the beginning. The first three were each destroyed in turn because the humans inhabiting them had diverged too far from their original sacred path of connectedness with and respect for all life on Mother Earth. Their prophecies (see Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters) describe the possibility of such a destruction of the Fourth World (in the forms of uranium mining, the existence of power-lines, and the atomic bomb):   If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.   Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.   A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.       “Nuclear Energy” sculpture by Henry Moore dedicated in 1967 to Fermi’s experiment releasing nuclear energy for the first time in Chicago on December 2, 1942. http://physics.uchicago.edu/moore_sculpture.html Pasternak, J., “A peril that dwelt among the Navajos”, Los Angeles Times, Nov 19, 2006. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-navajo 19nov19,0,1645689.story?coll=la-home-headlines   See the award winning Uranium Mining series by Kathy Helms in the Gallup Independent 2007-2008 archives. http://www.gallupindependent.com   Personal communication June 23, 2004, with Paul Trachtman, former Chief Editor Smithsonian Magazine. http://www.paultrachtman.net   This has been confirmed on Dec. 8, 2008, by Major Doug Rokke who wrote the U.S. Army Environmental Regs. for the cleanup at Pine Ridge and the Badlands Bombing Range. He has the U.S. Army documents on this cleanup.   White Plume, A., “Activists Granted Standing To Oppose World’s Largest Uranium Producer”, December 1, 2008, Native Unity blogspot.. http://nativeunity.blogspot.com/2008/12/activists-granted-standing-to-oppose.html   “Stocks That Standout Newsletter”, Dec. 16, 2008. http://stockreads.com/Stock-Newsletter.aspx?id=5914   White Plume, A., (2008).   Moret, L., (2008).    ibid.   Halliwell, B., J.M.C. Gutteridge, Free Radicals in Biology and Medicine 3rd Edition, Oxford Univ. Press NY (1999), p.526.   Xenobiotic definition: Any substance that is foreign to living systems, including drugs, pesticides, and carcinogens. Uranium is a xenobiotic.   Halliwell (1999), p.526.   KOYAANISQATSI http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/DDBEIRV.txt   Waters, F., Book of the Hopi, Penguin, NY (1977).   Waters, F., (1977).

The Federal Reserve Abolition Act

By Stephen Lendman

<!– –>December 28, 2008 “Baltimore Chronicle” — On June 15, 2007, Ron Paul introduced HR 2755: Federal Reserve Abolition Act. There were no co-sponsors, no further action was taken, and the legislation was referred to the House Committee on Financial Services and effectively pigeonholed and ignored.

It’s a bold and needed measure to “abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.”

The bill provides for management of employees, assets and liabilities of the Board during a dissolution period, and more as follows:

• it designates the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to liquidate Fed assets in an orderly and expeditious manner;
• transfer them to the General Fund of the Treasury after satisfying all claims against the Board and any Federal reserve bank;
• assume all outstanding Board and member bank liabilities and transfer them to the Secretary of the Treasury; and
• after an 18-month period, submit a report to Congress “containing a detailed description of the actions taken to implement this Act and any actions or issues relating to such implementation that remain uncompleted or unresolved as of the date of the report.”

On November 22, “End the Fed” protests were held in 39 or more cities nationwide (including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, DC), but you’d hardly know it for lack of coverage. Attendee demands were simple and emphatic:

• end a private banking cartel’s illegal monopoly control over the nation’s money supply and price;
• return that power to the US Treasury as the Constitution mandates;
• end a fiat currency system backed by the waning full faith and credit of the government; and
• return the country to a sound, hard currency monetary system.

“End the Fed! Sound Money for America!” is their slogan, and writer and US policy critic Webster Tarpley puts it well:

“….the privately owned central bank….has been looting and wrecking the US economy for almost a hundred years. We must end a system where unelected, unaccountable cliques of bankers and financiers loyal to names like Morgan, Rockefeller, and Mellon set interest rates and money supply behind closed doors, leading to de-industrialization, mass impoverishment, and a world economic and financial depression of incalculable severity.”

In theory, the Fed was established to stabilize the economy, smooth out the business cycle, manage a healthy, sustainable growth rate, and maintain stable prices. In fact, it failed dismally. It contributed to 19 US recessions (including the Great Depression) and significantly to the following equity market declines that accompanied them as measured by the Dow or S & P 500 average – the S &P’s inception was 1923; it became the S & P 500 in 1957:

• 40.1% (Dow) from 1916 – 1917;
• 46.6% (Dow) from 1919 – 1921;
• the 1929 (Dow) crash in two stages – 47.9% in 1929 followed by a strong, temporary rebound; then – 86%; an 89% peak to trough total from October 1929 to July 1932;
• 49.1% (Dow) from 1937 – 1938;
• 40.4% (Dow) from 1939 – 1942;
• 25.3% (S & P) from 1946 – 1947;
• 19.8% (S & P) in 1957;
• 26.8% (S & P) from 1961 – 1962;
• 19.3% (S & P) in 1966;
• 32.7% (S & P) from 1968 – 1970;
• 45.1% (S & P) from 1973 – 1974;
• 20.2% (S & P) from 1980 – 1982;
• 32.9% (S & P) in 1987;
• 19.2% (S & P) in 1990;
• 18.8% (S & P) in 1998;
• 49.1% (S & P) from 2000 – 2002; and
• about 50% (S & P) and counting (excluding a bear market rebound) from October 2007.

The Fed is also directly responsible for monetary inflation and the decline in the US standard of living since its year end 1913 inception and especially since the 1970s. From the late 18th century to 1913, virtually no inflation existed under the gold standard except during times of war. Using government data, it now takes over $2000 to equal $100 of pre-Fed purchasing power. In other words, a 1913 dollar is worth about a nickel today.

At that time, a dollar was defined as 1/20 of an ounce of gold or about an ounce of silver. The Fed then changed the standard away from precious metals to the full faith and credit of the government. Ever since (except for periods such as the 1930s) inflation eroded the currency’s value and (more than ever) continues to do it today.

It’s why one analyst calls the dollar “nothing more than a popular symbol for the tangible substances it once represented – gold and silver.” Its true value represents the world’s waning confidence in America’s ability to honor its debt obligations, and with good reason.

Under the Federal Reserve System (besides inflation), we’ve had rising consumer debt; record budget and trade deficits; a soaring national debt; a high level of personal and business bankruptcies; today, millions of home foreclosures; high unemployment; the loss of the nation’s manufacturing base; growing millions in poverty; an unprecedented wealth gap between the rich and all others; and a hugely unstable economy now lurching into crisis mode.

In a November 24 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Hong Kong-based author and equity strategist Christopher Wood believes “The Fed Is Out of Ammunition.” With trillions in personal wealth erased, “there is little doubt that we are witnessing a classic debt-deflation bust at work, characterized by falling prices, frozen credit markets and plummeting asset values.”

He notes how “over-investment and over-speculation” on borrowed money got us here. Today, the Fed can control the supply of money but not its velocity or the rate it turns over. The current collapse set it in reverse with no signs of an impending turnaround.

Wood believes monetary and fiscal measures won’t work. There are no easy solutions – “not as long as politicians and central bankers (won’t) let financial institutions fail,” and let market forces wash out excesses over time.

The Fed and Treasury will spend trillions of dollars to correct things, “but will merely compound (the problem) by adding debt to debt.” The current crisis will end up “discrediting mechanical monetarism – and with it the fiat paper-money system….The catalyst will be foreign creditors fleeing the dollar for gold. That will in turn lead to global recognition of the need for a vastly more disciplined global financial system” with gold very likely playing a part.

Absent a hard money currency has led to the kind of monetary madness that Nouriel Roubini calls “crazy” policy actions – an explosion of quantitative easing in the trillions with no end of it in sight.

Absent a hard money currency has led to the kind of monetary madness that Nouriel Roubini calls “crazy” policy actions – an explosion of quantitative easing in the trillions with no end of it in sight.

Roubini: “The Fed Funds rate has been abandoned…as we are already effectively at (zero interest rates) that signal a liquidity trap….Even (a sharp) fall in mortgage rates….will be of small comfort to debt burdened households as only those (that) qualify for refinancing will be able to” net out a “modest” monthly mortgage saving of about $150.

The Fed’s “desperate policy actions….will eventually lead to much higher real interest rates on the public debt and weaken the US dollar (the result of a) tsunami of implicit and explicit public liabilities and monetary debt.” It will get foreign investors to “ponder the long-term sustainability of the US domestic and external liabilities,” and why not. They keep growing exponentially, and with nothing restraining a runaway Fed, dollar debasing may continue to the point where no one will want to hold them. It’s gotten some analysts to recommend moving a portion of savings out of them into gold – the ultimate safe haven in times of crisis.

Abolish the Fed and Return the Nation’s Money Creation Power to Congress Where It Belongs

Ron Paul has been in the vanguard of the Abolish the Fed movement, and on September 10, 2002 on the House floor said:

“Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy. In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people….”

“It is time for the Congress to put the interests of the American people ahead of the special interests. Abolishing the Federal Reserve will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy.”

“Abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to a constitutional system (as mandated) will enable America to return to the type of monetary system envisioned by our nation’s founders: one where the value of money is consistent because it is tied to a commodity such as gold….I urge my colleagues (to co-sponsor) my legislation to abolish the Federal Reserve.”

Paul introduced his legislation in the 106th, 107th, 108th, and 110th Congresses. Each time, it died in committee. On November 22, he attended the End the Fed rally in Houston and addressed the crowd.

He called the current economic crisis as bad or worse than in the 1930s and said: “we know who caused it. It was the Federal Reserve that gave us all this trouble.” He explained that we had a “free ride for decades because we’ve had a system that was devised where the dollar could act as if it were gold.”

Not after August 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window, ended the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, and no longer let dollars be backed by gold or converted into it in international markets. A “new economic system” was created. It let us “spend beyond our means, live beyond our means, print money beyond our means,” and it caused our current dilemma.

We created “an appearance of great wealth. But it was doomed to fail,” and it became apparent in the past year: “the failure of the dollar reserve standard that was set up in August of 1971. It has ended. The only question” is what will replace it?

There’s all kinds of talk, including setting up a new international fiat currency “with the loss of US sovereignty in total. We have to stop this move towards one world government and a one world currency.” Otherwise our freedom and Constitution will be lost. When it was written, it contained prohibitions.

Article I, Section 8 gives Congress alone the right to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof. The founders also wanted gold and silver to be legal tender, not fiat money, nor should there be a central bank. In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot constitutionally delegate this power to another body. By creating the Federal Reserve System in 1913, Congress violated the Constitution it was sworn to uphold and defrauded the American public. Today’s crisis is the fruit of its action, but watch out.

“The writing is on the wall, and the end of this system” approaches. “They cannot patch it up, they can’t up it back together again. They know it and we know it. The only argument is what is it going to be replaced with?”

For now, “Central banks in the West especially have been dumping gold to artificially lower (its price) to pretend the dollar is of great value. They’re still doing it, but they’re running out of time (and) out of gold.” It’s shifting to stronger economic powers, ones who’ve been saving money, loaning it back to us, “and are ready to buy up America if we continue to do this. So it is a contest (between fiat) money and hard money, and that is such an important issue.” It reflects what Daniel Webster once said:

“There can be no legal tender in this country….but gold and silver. This is a constitutional principle….of the very highest importance.” Gold, however, wasn’t the original monetary system standard. Silver was, the silver dollar, and only a constitutional amendment can change it.

Paper currency as well, whether backed by gold or not, wasn’t the hard money authorized by the Constitution. Honest money is honest weights and measures of silver and gold. Federal Reserve Notes are paper fiat debt obligations. Fiat currency of any kind is a mechanism of wealth transference from the public to a privileged elite – through inflation and loss of purchasing power. It creates debt for the many and wealth for the few, especially when a private banking cartel controls it.

Our existing monetary system combines money, credit and debt into a dishonest system of empty promises in exchange for future ones. There is no eventual payment, only unfulfillable assurances to new generations that will be forced to pay for the debt now accumulated. It’s a moneychangers dream – ever-expanding debt and a continuing interest rate stream, masquerading as wealth creation for the people. It’s in fact a system of bondage and indebtedness benefitting the few at the expense of the many, a modern-day feudalism. It’s how an elite 1% got to own 70% of the nation’s wealth.

In the 1920s, Josiah Stamp, Bank of England president said:

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with a flick of the pen (today a computer keyboard) they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.”

Creating the Federal Reserve System to let bankers and not the government control the price and amount of fiat money debased the currency and is the root cause of today’s financial problems. A return to honest gold and silver weights and measures is needed. The Constitution states that nothing but these metals are money and that paper bills of credit (like Federal Reserve notes) aren’t allowed. Even ones backed by gold as the Constitution doesn’t grant Congress the power to be bankers. It may only coin (create) and borrow money, not loan it out or give it away – and certainly not to bankers at the expense of the public interest.

Further, the Constitution contains no provision allowing Congress to enact legal tender laws. Article I, Section 10 forbids the individual states from making “anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts.” However, US Code, 31 USC 5103, establishes US coins and currency, including Federal Reserve notes, as legal tender and has been used to debase the currency ever since – the way Gresham’s Law works: bad (or debased) money drives out good (the kind with little difference between its nominal and commodity values).

For example, until 1964, US coins (except pennies and nickels) contained 90% silver. Starting in 1965, dimes and quarters were converted to their current nickel – copper composition. Half-dollars (now produced in limited quantities) had 90% silver. It then dropped to 40% in 1965 and by 1971 all US coins (except pennies and commemorative mintings) contained nickel and copper and no silver – a good example of debasing. As for paper currency, it’s just paper.

Under a private banking cartel’s control, it’s been misused, stolen, and corrupted the way New York Times columnist Floyd Norris suggests in his November 24 article headlined: “Another Crisis, Another Guarantee.” First the banks, then the auto companies, and who knows who’s next in line for theirs. “As the nation’s obligations rise into the trillions, at some point investors (and the public) may begin to question whether a government running huge deficits can also credibly promise that the dollar will not lose its value.” How can there be any faith and credit left when it’s vanishing and the Fed and Treasury operate like giant hedge funds.

It got UK-based Eclectica Asset Management chief investment officer, Hugh Hendry, concerned enough to say: “All (US) financials will be owned by the government in a year. I bet you. It’s not good,” but it’s coming. US taxpayers will be “paying for this for a long time,” and it’s deeply concerning considering the amount of money creation – with no end in sight as problems keep mounting and limitless amounts keep being thrown at them.

On November 25 the Financial Times associate editor, Wolfgang Munchau, also worries about the Fed’s “weapon of mass desperation” (so-called quantitative easing); focusing only on deflation and risking a currency crisis. He calls it a flawed, dangerous and shocking oversight – the possibility of “a mass flight out of dollar assets (at some point) and a large rise in US market interest rates, followed by a huge recession.”

A Bloomberg.com November 24 headline highlights the problem: “US Pledges Top $7.7 trillion to Ease Frozen Credit,” and it might as well have said there’s plenty more where that came from if needed. With another $800 committed to two new loan programs the total reached $8.5 trillion, according to Bloomberg or nearly 60% of US 2007 GDP of $14 trillion, and the numbers keep rising exponentially because the problems continue to mount.

Bloomberg puts it in perspective saying “the (current) commitment dwarfs (TARP and puts) Federal Reserve lending last week (at) 1900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis,” and with the added $800 billion it’s about 2100 times pre-crisis levels.

In addition, the Fed refuses to identify recipients of about $2 trillion of emergency handouts or what troubled assets (if any) it’s accepting as collateral. Call it lending or spending. They’re public tax dollars being spread around like confetti and debasing it all as a result.

The Free Lakota Bank

On November 21, this writer discussed how Lakotahs are treated in an article titled “Fate of Lakotahs Highlights America’s Failed Native American Policies.” On November 24, the following press release and follow-up information announced:

“People of Lakota Launch Private Bank for Only Silver and Gold Currencies.” All deposits are “liquid, meaning they can be withdrawn at any time in minted rounds. Some may confuse our economic system with isolationism….which it is not. Since we currently produce much more than we consume, we have the right to decide what medium of exchange to accept for our effort. And so we accept only value for value. Across our great land, over thousands of tribes and merchants participate in our system of trade. We invite others to trade with us and bring value back into our transactions.”

This is the world’s first non-reserve, non-fractional bank that accepts only silver and gold currencies for deposit. The Lakotas “invite people of any creed, faith or heritage to unite in an effort to reclaim control of wealth. It is our hope that other tribal nations and American citizens recognize the importance of silver and gold as currency and decide to mirror our system of honest trade.”

The bank states that it issues, circulates and accepts for deposit “only AOCS – Approved silver and gold currencies.” It calls paper not real money but “merely a promise to pay – a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Since we deal only in real money, we do not participate in any central bank looting schemes.” When corruption is rewarded and “honesty becom(es) self-sacrifice….you may know that your society is doomed.” Even as victims of adversity, Lakotas are working to prevent it.

End the Fed

Privatized money control is the single greatest threat to democratic freedom. As former lawyer, economist, academic, and Canadian prime minister (from 1935 – 1948) William Lyon Mackenzie King once said:

“Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile….Once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes (its) laws….Usury once in control will wreck any nation,” and indeed it has, far more now than ever.

It worried Thomas Jefferson enough to call banking institutions “more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies” at a much simpler time in our history. The right to create and control money belongs to the people through their elected representatives. For the past 95 years, powerful bankers accountable to no one have had it. They effectively run the country (and own it), and unless We the People change things, we’ll continue to be victimized by economic tyranny and the eventual political kind that’s coming.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national topics. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Mr. Lendman’s stories are republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.