Les dessous de l’information mondiale-Downside World News

By Mike Whitney

07/23/07 “ICH” — – Americans don’t believe in revolution anymore. It has become a meaningless event in the distant past. But we need a revolution and we need it now. We need to remove the present administration and restore the people’s confidence in government.

The Bush administration is not a government at all. We all know that. It is a crime family—an oligarchy of racketeers. They have no moral authority, no legitimacy, no right to govern. They’re criminals.

Who doesn’t know this?

And, yet, our congressmen and senators refuse to do their jobs. They’ve “taken impeachment off the table”. They have agreed that Bush is above the law. Fine. Then we’ll have to persuade them that they’re wrong or find another way. But Bush has to go. How else can we re-establish democracy in America? How else can we reinstate the legitimate power of congress?

Every day we read about some new attack on our freedom. Every day our constitution is further trashed. This week Bush banned public demonstrations against the war. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6377 . Last month he issued an executive order that makes himself dictator if another terrorist attack takes place inside the US. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6134 . The month before that the Congress passed a law that makes it easier for Bush to declare martial law and militarize the country.

We’re not asleep. We know what’s going on. We know they won’t stop until someone stops them. Why would they? They love power.

Look at Iraq. The millions of protestors in the streets had absolutely no effect. The congress had no effect. World opinion had no effect. The United Nations had no effect.

So what happened?

They were stopped in Iraq by men with guns. End of story.

Will it be different at home? I hope so, but who knows?

Leftists, liberals and Libertarians are great at pointing out the details of Bush’s attack on the Bill of Rights—but to what end? For more recriminations and hand-wringing?

We don’t need that. We know the problem and we know the solution—Bush must go.

I could be wrong, but I think that revolution is coming—and it’s coming sooner than you think. The American people have been hoodwinked and intimidated for a long time, but we’re reaching a tipping point where public outrage will overpower fear. And that’s what revolution is—organized rage directed at the government. That’s why they want to keep us apart, and spy on us, and follow our every movement. They want absolute power. It’s their dream. It is the dream of evil men everywhere. But it will fail—because everything they’ve tried so far has failed. And because the culture of freedom is stronger than the cynical schemes of demagogues.

We need to see we’re not alone. We need to understand that 70% of the American people feel just like us. They’re mad. Mad at the war, mad at congress, mad at Bush. And we need to stay mad—mad as hell until things change. And they’ll only change if we work together.

But first we have to get mad.

Peter Finch points the way in his prophetic movie “Network”: -

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18060.htm

The kiwi Dollar rises to new high
Tuesday, 24 July 2007

The kiwi dollar hit a 25 year high of US81c this afternoon as policy makers and lobby groups puzzled about ways to contain
the runaway currency.

In hectic trading, the kiwi hit US81.08c at 2.20pm and closed on US80.87c, over a cent higher that yesterday’s US79.88c
close.

The kiwi is rising on expectations Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard will hike interest rates again on Thursday and possibly again for a fifth time this year next month.

Expectations payouts to dairy farmers in the coming season will pump an extra $3 billion into the economy are also fuelling buying.

Online currency trading company CMC Markets said it had noted a huge upturn in kiwi dollar trading online.

General manager Sargon Elias said the kiwi dollar had become the most actively traded of 18 instruments it traded.

Many traders were taking short positions on the expectation the kiwi would fall, with a level around US82c a popular punt.

However, Mr Elias warned amateur speculators about attempting to cash in on the wayward kiwi.

“It may seem like an easy way to make a quick buck, but we would strongly suggest to anybody looking to trade the markets to spend time doing their homework before placing a real trade.”

The Canterbury Manufacturers Association (CMA) pleaded with the Reserve Bank not to hike the official cash rate (OCR) again, having six months ago called for an increase in the hope that things would rapidly come to a head and the political need for change would crystallise.

“Unfortunately, that never happened, but the NZD is now over US80c and if that is not enough of a disaster for immediate action, what is?” chief executive John Walley said.

“A hike in the OCR on Thursday is further confirmation that current monetary policy is in meltdown – right now a failed experiment.”

Mr Walley said there was no reason to expect that the New Zealand dollar would reverse its upward course and the inflow of money that was driving house prices up and fuelling inflation would continue.

“The Government remains on the sidelines pushing the same old buttons that have long since failed to work.”

Mr Walley said the goal of killing domestic inflation needed revision if it meant killing the export sector.

“Those who argue that exporters can live with the dollar at these levels, or can plan around it, don’t fully understand exporting.
They certainly do not live in the same world as the people I talk to.”

National Party leader said John Key said homeowners and exporters were paying the price of economic mismanagement.

“Having warned his colleagues that a big budget spend-up would put more pressure on inflation and the exchange rate, Michael Cullen went ahead and signed off on a budget spend that was 30 per cent larger than expected. It was a calculated decision.”

Export New Zealand chief executive Bob Walters today said the level of the currency had been bad for quite some time.

“At these levels there’s just very little profitability for most exporters. The few that are profitable are dairy, of course, and maybe some ICT etc,” he said.

Despite that, businesses were continuing to supply exports because they knew how hard it was to return to markets.

But exporters were unable to develop markets because of insufficient profits.

“We don’t necessarily see a drop off in sales instantly now but we will pay for this in the next two to three years coming.”

He called on the central government and local authorities to rein in spending.

“That way you have everything working in alignment and pulling in the same direction. But both Government and particularly councils are spending like there’s absolutely no tomorrow.”

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Cullen blames dollar’s strength on US slide

Finance Minister Michael Cullen has blamed the New Zealand dollar’s rise on the weakness of the US dollar and to some extent the Japanese yen.

As the kiwi rose to new records above US80c against the US dollar and on its trade-weighted index, which measures the kiwi against those of its five main trading partners, he told reporters today exporters were feeling the pain.

“The story of the last couple of days is very much the story of the US dollar continuing to decline. We really haven’t changed much against currencies like the Australian and so on over that period of time and nothing we can do can affect the United States dollar in coming down.”

The New Zealand dollar has actually in the last year made its largest gain against the Japanese yen – up 34 per cent against the 31 per cent rise against the greenback.

The kiwi is up 18.5 per cent against the euro, 10.5 per cent against the Australian dollar and 16.4 per cent against sterling.

The trade-weighted index is up 22.6 per cent since July 24 last year.

Dr Cullen said nobody could make predictions over whether the trend would continue.

“The story’s around the US and to some extent the yen and you’ve heard commentary this morning around prospects maybe of people starting to move money into the yen. Who knows?”

Dr Cullen said his position remained the same on section 12 of the Reserve Bank Act where he has the power to suspend monetary policy targets agreement and incorporate other objectives.

He said he would never rule out using it.

Export New Zealand chief executive Bob Walters today said the level of the currency had been bad for quite some time.

“At these levels there’s just very little profitability for most exporters. The few that are profitable are dairy, of course, and maybe some ICT etc,” he said.

Despite that, businesses were continuing to supply exports because they knew how hard it was to return to a market after pulling out.

“What they’re not able to do because there’s no cash in the business, they’re not able to put any money into research and development, innovation, new product development, design.

“All of those things which we need to do in New Zealand, in order to add value and help us get good profit margins,” Mr Walters said.

“We don’t necessarily see a drop off in sales instantly now but we will pay for this in the next two to three years coming.”

Export businesses were selling quite well and getting good prices in the offshore markets, but transferring the income into NZ dollars was the problem.

If this country was to continue with its current inflation target, then government spending and, in particular, local and regional government spending had to be inside the inflation target, he said.

“That way you have everything working in alignment and pulling in the same direction. But both Government and particularly councils are spending like there’s absolutely no tomorrow.”

www.stuff.co.nz/4138258a10.html

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US dollar plummets to record low against euro

THE US dollar touched a new record low against the euro in Asian trade today, hit by jitters about the US housing market troubles and recent falls in global share prices, dealers said.

The euro rose to as high as 1.3845 US dollars in early Tokyo trading, just beating its previous all-time best of 1.3843 seen on Friday.

By late morning in Asia, the euro stood at 1.3830 US dollars, up from 1.3820 on Friday in New York.

The dollar was at 120.93 yen, close to a six-week low, after 121.26 in New York. The euro eased to 167.21 yen from 167.70.

“The dollar remains weak because of concerns about the US housing market and worse-than-expected corporate earning
reports which weighed on stocks,” said Kikuko Takeda, currency research manager at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

Disappointment over company results and worries about problems in the US sub-prime mortgage sector – loans to homeowners with patchy credit histories – caused sharp falls on global equity markets on Friday.

Dealers said the falls were affecting carry trade as investors grow more risk averse.

Carry trade is a risky but popular practice of borrowing money in countries with low interest rates such as Japan and investing in countries with high interest rates such as Australia or Britain.

Many Japanese have also been sending their savings overseas in search of higher returns than at home where interest rates remain very low.

Some analysts expect this trend to continue and see the recent rise of the yen against the dollar as a temporary correction, while others believe the outlook for the greenback is worsening due to the sub-prime woes.

Japan’s financial markets are keeping a close watch on political events this week ahead of Sunday’s upper house election, with polls showing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling party heading for heavy losses.

A bad result would not automatically cost Abe his job as the ruling coalition enjoys a majority in the more powerful lower house, but it would likely bring pressure on the premier to step down.

ht tp://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,22119413-31037,00.html

By: Richard C. Cook

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., has joined the chorus of those in high places who are warning of a major worldwide economic downturn.

Paulson was quoted at length in a July 23, 2007, article in Fortune by Rik Kirkland entitled, “The Greatest Economic Boom Ever: Enjoy It While It Lasts.” Paulson’s remarks came in the context of assessing the ability of the highly-leveraged equity, hedge, and derivative markets to withstand the shocks to come. He told Fortune in an interview:

“We haven’t had a global financial shock since 1998. I believe that these large and dramatic increases in private pools of capital and in the credit derivatives markets since then have helped manage and disperse risk and make the economy more efficient. When we do have one—and it’s when, not if; that’s not me being negative, it’s just that we’re not going to defy economic gravity—we’ll be seeing for the first time how some of these instruments perform under stress.”

The Fortune article notes that the fate of the global economy depends in large measure on the ability of the U.S. consumer to continue to buy what the rest of the world produces. But, as Fortune indicates, the economic fundamentals continue to move in the wrong direction.

The U.S. current account deficit, they point out, continues to plunge, heading toward the $900 billion mark, almost nine percent of GDP. U.S. household debt as a percentage of personal income has shot up almost thirty-five percent since 2000. While real income stagnates for the U.S. middle class, asset and commodity prices are surging, with gasoline prices leading the way and the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index doubling since 2001. Financing in the business world is increasingly shaky, with loans to companies with “junk” credit ratings soaring from under $50 billion a year in 2001 to over $200 billion in 2006.

What are the politicians saying? Both President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney, who may be hoping to escape in one piece after eight years of economic malpractice, are silent on the subject of a possible downturn. Also silent, unfortunately, are Republican and Democratic front-runners Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton.

So obsessed with his image of having been in the vicinity of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, Giuliani seems blissfully unaware that there is such a thing as an economy.

Though Clinton speaks of the need for economic fairness, she has few concrete proposals for getting us there. She must also bear some degree of association with the failed policies of her husband’s administration which brought us the strong dollar, the dot-com bubble, and NAFTA, all of which led to the bust of 2000-2002 and the outsourcing of huge numbers of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

The only Republican who speaks to broad economic issues is Ron Paul, who has called for the Federal Reserve to be abolished as a step toward financial sanity. We’ll see how Dr. Paul, a long-shot to say the least, fares in the Republican primaries. Party kingmakers are terrified of his rising grassroots support.

On the Democratic side, John Edwards has established his credentials in speaking for the millions of Americans in poverty who have been left out and is broadening his message to include the middle class as well. At the end of a three-day poverty tour to Appalachia, Edwards said in a July 18 speech in Prestonburg, Kentucky, “This cause, this march we’re on, is not just about the poor. Everybody’s at risk. Everybody’s vulnerable.”

Candidate Barak Obama has also discovered the anti-poverty theme, while Congressman Dennis Kucinich has consistently been emphasizing ideas of economic reform while proposing the creation of jobs through such proposals as a Federal Infrastructure Modernization Bank.

So there is hope that the 2008 presidential campaign may focus on real issues. In fact, as of this writing, it would seem that a Democratic ticket consisting of Edwards-Obama or Edwards-Kucinich could bring the urgency of change to the forefront, especially if the economy slips in a big way over the next several months.

How deeply any candidate will penetrate in his or her analysis is another question. The U.S. economy is groaning under a total societal debt load for individuals, households, businesses, and government of over $45 trillion. There is a gap between personal income and GDP of more than $3.5 trillion per year, with people having to run up ever-more household debt just for the necessities of life. With so many jobs outsourced, our population no longer even comes close to being able to purchase the amount of goods and services needed to sustain the economy.

The real answer is wholesale monetary reform.

Since the 1970s, the Federal Reserve, acting as an agent for the banking system, has been trying to manage affairs under the rubric of “monetarism.” This is the system whereby the Federal Reserve attempts to regulate the economy by raising and lowering interest rates.

We take this system for granted, even though, historically speaking, it is a fairly recent innovation and despite the fact that it has been a total failure. Monetarism replaced a production-based economy with a debt-based one. This has caused growth of the financial industry to outstrip all others, with profits exceeding $500 billion in 2006.

Also, interest rates, on average, have been generally higher under monetarism than in previous eras. The Federal Reserve’s claim that higher interest rates stem inflation is contradicted by the fact that during the monetarist “reign of error,” inflation has eroded the value of the dollar by over 80 percent.

Also, since the Federal Reserve-induced recession of 1979-1983, every period of economic “growth” under the monetarist system has been a bank-created bubble.

We had the buyout-acquisition-merger bubble of the 1980s, ending in the 1987 stock market crash and the recession which lasted the entire term of President George H.W. Bush. Next we saw the dot-com bubble of the 1990s under President Bill Clinton, ending in the 2000-2002 recession.

Then, under George W. Bush, came the housing bubble, which is now deflating with the exposure of the fraud-infested subprime market. The current equity-asset bubble, with an overpriced stock market setting ever-new records, will likely be the next to pop.

Meanwhile, with the crumbling of our private and public infrastructures, there is no bona fide economic driver left in the U.S. economy, except the little plastic cards in consumers’ wallets. The fact that expendable cash and checking accounts, measured by the Federal Reserve as M1, has been declining for the last year, shows that the consumer economy is already in a recession.

It is past time for monetarism to be recognized as the flop it truly has been and thrown on the junk-heap of history where it belongs. It should be replaced by a mixed program of credit management reminiscent of the New Deal but with additional features suited to today’s vastly changed reality.

A truly comprehensive program of monetary reform, as I have described in other articles, would provide purchasing power to consumers, businesses, and government at a rate that would match the incredible productivity brought into existence by modern science and technology. This injection of purchasing power, over and above earnings, should no longer be carried out through the unfair and outmoded methodology of bank-created debt.

In other words, there should be enough cash and credit in circulation to purchase what industry can produce, and for people to obtain what they need for a decent life, without our economy constantly having to go deeper and deeper into the red.

To accomplish this, the government can and should make direct cash allocations to individuals without recourse to taxation or borrowing. This infusion of purchasing power is needed because income from jobs cannot keep up with total production when a large portion of industrial earnings is withheld for future innovation, as must be done in today’s technology-rich environment.

For a business entity to remain profitable, it must save and reinvest. These savings are recovered through prices that exceed purchasing power distributed through wages, salaries, and dividends. This leaves a “gap” which today is filled by bank-credit. But it’s the wrong way to run an economy. The gap, which is a normal feature of industrial production, should instead be filled by free government-distributed credit through what has been called a National Dividend.

A National Dividend should not be tied to employment. It should be obvious that as fewer workers are needed to produce more and more goods and services, the benefits of rising productivity can only be realized if the government provides purchasing power to individuals and families whether they are working at the moment or not. Such allocations could be made without inflationary pressures as long as they did not exceed the economy’s producing potential.

Similarly, the system of public finance whereby the banking system creates credit out of nothing in order to lend money back to the government has never made sense. As Thomas Edison and others in U.S. history have pointed out, the government can just as well create and spend interest-free money directly into circulation as was done successfully with the Greenbacks during the nineteenth century.

A comprehensive system of reform measures suitable to today’s conditions would include 1) cancellation of substantial portions of existing debt; 2) direct issuance by the government of a guaranteed basic income/National Dividend that would average at least $12,500 per person per year; 3) direct spending by government on infrastructure improvements; 4) a new system of low-cost credit for consumers and small businesses; 5) abolishment of the Federal Reserve as a bank of issue with its retention only as a financial transaction clearinghouse; and 6) elimination from the capital markets of all bank lending for financial speculation through return to the “real bills” doctrine of lending.

These provisions would acknowledge the awesome power of credit creation as a public utility as provided for by the U.S. Constitution in the section that grants Congress the authority to regulate the money supply. Such a program would also allow a significant reduction in taxation. Day-to-day responsibility should be vested in a Monetary Control Board reporting to the executive branch, as provided for in the model American Monetary Act drafted by the American Monetary Institute.

These may seem like radical measures, but they are ideas that have been discussed for years by monetary reformers worldwide. They would recognize the fact that the private banking system, acting through the Federal Reserve under the philosophy of monetarism, has totally failed. The system has not produced the economic democracy which the global economy makes possible and has brought us to the brink of a worldwide financial catastrophe.

As New Zealand monetary reformer William Hugh McGunnigle wrote recently on an internet discussion site, “Basically today we are attempting to run a 21st century economy using financial tools that are five centuries out of date. It is like trying to control a sophisticated modern jumbo jet using the control mechanisms appropriate to the machines of World War I. The whole system is unstable, and the larger it becomes the more likely it is that it will collapse, simply because those controlling it have no inclination to prevent that collapse. We have learned nothing from the financial disaster of 1929-1934.”

Richard C. Cook is a retired federal analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, and NASA, followed by twenty-one years with the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on monetary reform, economics, and space policy have appeared on Global Research, Economy in Crisis, Dissident Voice, Atlantic Free Press, and elsewhere. He is also author of “Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age.” His website is at www.richardccook.com . He will be speaking at the national conference of the American Monetary Institute in Chicago in September.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6401

Only Impeachment, Removal or General
Strike Can Stop Him
By Webster G. Tarpley
7-21-7

The greatest threat now is “a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities.”
– Dick Cheney on Face the Nation, CBS, April 15, 2007

A few days ago, a group of lawyers from western Massachusetts met with the local congressman, Democrat John Olver. Their request was that Olver take part in the urgent effort to impeach Bush and Cheney. Olver responded by saying that he had no intention of doing anything to support impeachment. He went further, offering the information that the United States would soon attack Iran, and that these hostilities would be followed by the imposition of a martial law regime here.

According to reports in the British press, the Cheney war party has gained the upper hand in the secret councils of the Bush White House, pushing aside the purported hesitations of Miss Rice, Secretary Gates, and the NATO allies to chart a direct course towards war with Iran:

‘The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned. The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: “Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.” at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. “The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern,” the source said this week. “Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact,” said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.’ (“Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran; Military solution back in favour as Rice loses out; President ‘not prepared to leave conflict unresolved’”, Guardian, July 16, 2007.)

Deluded supporters of the Democratic Party may soon have to throw away their pathetic countdown clocks, those self-consoling little devices that remind them of how much time remains until noon on January 20, 2009, the moment when it is thought that Bush will finally leave office. These countdown clocks make no provision for the Cheney doctrine, which calls for a new super 9/11 with weapons of mass destruction in the US, to be used as the pretext for a nuclear attack on Iran and for martial law at home. Those who think the Republicans cannot hold the White House in 2008 have forgotten that neocons always prefer a coup d’etat to an election. As Cheney told Bob Schieffer of CBS’s Face the Nation on April 15, 2007:

‘The greatest threat now is “a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities.”‘

Pelosi and Reid need to toss out their fatuous countdown clocks, and get out their impeachment stopwatches ­ fast.

CHERTOFF’S GUT FEELING FOR TERRORISM

Integral to the Cheney strategy has always been to orchestrate a climate of public terror. As Cheney told WLS in Chicago on Friday April 13: It’s important that people remember 9/11.” 9/11 remains the basis of every one of Cheney’s intrigues. One of Cheney’s terror facilitators in this sense is Michael Chertoff, the cadaverous Secretary of Homeland Security. Although an experienced bureaucrat, Chertoff is now contemplating his navel as he searches for new ways to intimidate the American people, who have essentially no natural enemies at all, into the hallucination that they face an acute existential threat of being wiped out from one moment to the next. Chertoff told the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune ­ once the voice of isolationism ­ that the US faces an increased danger of attack in the summer of 2007. This wild fabrication, not based on any specific information of any kind that he could cite, Chertoff called his “gut feeling the nation faces a heightened chance of an attack this summer.” “I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk,” said Chertoff. “Summertime seems to be appealing to them. … We worry that they are rebuilding their activities.” The desperate demagogues of the Republican Party are facing a hecatomb at the polls in November 2008. Their idea seems to be that of the fascist Prime Minister Aznar of Spain in March 2004: if you are sure to lose an election, stage a terror attack, declare martial law, and perpetuate your power that way. Aznar was stopped by a general strike of about one third of the entire Spanish people. If all else fails, would Americans be capable of a mass strike against war and dictatorship? We may soon find out.

Chertoff’s troubled gut has already given rise to a White House interagency group of top intelligence and law enforcement functionaries that meets every Friday afternoon at 1PM. Will this committee run the coup? Reports followed of dozens of FBI agents fanning out to pursue a “worry list” of some seven hundred alleged leads, including 100 in the New York area. Some of these derived from the recent British terror stunts in London and Glasgow used by MI-5 and MI-6 to smooth the transition from the Tony Blair quasi-police state to the Gordon Brown version of the same thing. MI-5 and MI-6 displayed the same mixture of comic ineptitude and phlegmatic homicide which was their hallmark during the long years when London was the prey of bombs by the “Irish Republican Army,” now revealed to have been top-heavy with government intelligence agents who called the shots. The Glasgow airport event consisted of a burning car crashed into a building, the films of which were shown all afternoon the by the US cable news networks. One was tempted to propose a caption: “Only one burning car ­ a good day on the Cross-Bronx Expressway.” Yet for one burning car, the world was supposed to stop. These British events had been preceded by several weeks of hysteria about allegedly looming terror attacks against US installations in the Rhein-Main area of Germany, featuring the Wiesbaden spa, all based on CIA claims made to the government in Berlin and relentlessly trumpeted through the controlled media.

A NEW 9/11 THE KEY TO BOLSTERING WESTERN RESOLVE

Chertoff’s rationale was illuminated by an interview with Lt. Colonel Doug Delaney, the chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, a NATO intelligence center. Delaney was addressing the problems raised by the rising Canadian losses in Afghanistan, but he provided a valuable window into the minds of military planners when he observed, in the words of the interviewer: “It may well be that the key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like 9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago, he says. If nothing happens, it will be harder still to say this Canadian meddling in Afghanistan is necessary.” In other words, it may be time for a new false flag synthetic terror operation to gin up hysteria in North America to permit the present bankrupt elites to retain power and further grind down any spirit of popular resistance to such irrational rule. Chertoff’s fear-mongering was backed up by ousted Republican senator and notorious scoundrel Rick Santorum, who told a radio interviewer that “between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public is going to have a very different view of this war.” Chertoff’s reckless and inflammatory ventriloquism was the harbinger of the new US National Intelligence Estimate issued on July 17.

THE BOOZ ALLEN NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE: “AL QAEDA” THREAT TO USA LOOMS

This pitiful NIE ranks with the lying NIEs issued before the attack on Iraq in 2003 as a tissue of lies and prevarications. The main thesis is that al Qaeda branches around the world are striving to infiltrate more operatives into the US for terror attacks on the US “homeland:” “Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al Qaeda senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here,” opines the declassified summary of the underlying secret screed. “As a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment.” (cnn.com, July 17) The new faked NIE has been produced under the supervision of Admiral Michael McConnell, the current US intelligence czar, whose credentials include ten years at Booz Allen Hamilton, the premier private military firm. Some analysts have asked what was going on at Booz Allen on September 11, 2001, and in the days leading up to that event, and what McConnell personally might have been working on. Back on January 7, 2007, Raw Story had portrayed the newly-nominated McConnell as a Cheney asset, and quoted CIA old boy Vince Cannistraro calling the McConnell nomination “a disaster.” In the same article, CIA vet Larry Johnson predicted that McConnell, a weak manager, would cave in to Bush-Cheney on key issues. The fabrications of the new NIE have been assisted by Cheney’s office, by convicted Iran-contra felon Elliot Abrams (now a dominant personality inside the Bush White House), by Abrams’ military aide Gen. Kevin Bergner, and by other neocon assets.

Intelligence community veteran Philip Giraldi of the CIA has dismissed the new NIE with its talk of “high impact plots” against the US as “a tour de force of misinformation disguised as fact.” Giraldi also noted: “It is possibly no coincidence that there has been a significant increase in the anti-Iran rhetoric emanating from both the Bush administration and Congress over the past few weeks, mostly seeking to establish a casus belli by contending that Iran is masterminding lethal attacks against US troops in Iran and NATO forces in Afghanistan.” (antiwar.com, July 17)

CHENEY’S PERSIAN ADVENTURE

A nuclear attack on Iran remains the central obsession of the George Shultz-Rupert Murdoch-Cheney faction. On July 10, the Pentagon announced that it would be sending another aircraft carrier battle group, this time that of the USS Enterprise, to the waters off Iran. This means that whenever that carrier joins the two already there, three US attack carriers will be within striking range of Iranian targets. The Pentagon followed up shortly thereafter with another statement, assuring the world that soon only one carrier would patrol off Iran. But that was only a dubious promise, and in the meantime the three carriers would shortly be ready to attack.

On July 10, the Washington Post and Reuters stoked international hysteria with reports that mysterious and sinister tunnels were being built by the Iranian authorities near one of the suspected nuclear facilities of Natanz. These reports were accompanied by aerial photographs and satellite imaging that has been gussied up with labels to make them look as much as possible like the famous U-2 photographs of Soviet medium-range missiles in Cuba back in October 1962. The claim was that the supposed tunnel “could be used to hide and protect key nuclear components.” The implication was that the Iranian atomic bomb could not be far off, a notion for which there is no proof.

In the late winter, Pelosi, House Majority Leader Stenny Hoyer and Reid had bowed to the demands of AIPAC, the subversive pro-Israeli lobbying organization whose employees have been implicated in espionage, and removed from the defense bill a provision warning Bush that he was required to consult Congress before attacking Iran. A similar provision pushed for a while by Senator Webb of Virginia has also disappeared from view. As for the Republican presidential candidates, on June 7 they ­ with the solitary exception of maverick Ron Paul ­ outbid one another in enthusiasm for a nuclear attack on Iran. These ultra-Hitlerian outbursts occurred in response to manipulation by Wolf Blitzer, an obvious asset of the war party. For the good of the American people, the warmonger GOP candidates, along with Blitzer, should have been hauled away at once in a net by burly orderlies in white coats.

CHENEY’S BREAKAWAY ALLY CHARADE

A key component of Cheney’s argument is that Israel may soon strike unilaterally against Iran with a sneak attack deploying nuclear weapons, breaking the post-1945 taboo on atomic bombs. This would represent the old “breakaway ally” scenario, by which Israel presents the US with such an attack as a fait accompli, and then expects Washington to enter the war on the side of the Israeli aggressors. Cheney’s talking point is that the US must be ready to strike because the Israelis are going to act on their own anyway. The lying nature of Cheney’s line is shown by Bush’s remark to Chirac at the St. Petersburg G-8 summit in July 2006, when Bush was adamant that the Israeli aggression against Lebanon then ongoing was not an Israeli-conceived war, but rather a US war which had been assigned to Israel as a proxy and surrogate for the US. According to Will Thomas, a dress rehearsal for the breakaway ally charade occurred on January 7, 2007 when Israeli warplanes flew over Iraq and manifested the intention to “go downtown” ­ meaning an apparent nuclear strike into Iran. At some point the Israelis were allegedly told by the US to go back, and they desisted from the attempt. This reported incident came shortly before the US raided the Iranian consulate in Irbil in northern Iraq, illegally arresting Iranian diplomats. Around the same time, reports that an Iranian missile had hit a US ship caused a stir on Wall Street, while Iran reported shooting down another US drone over its territory. (infowars.com, willthomas.net)

The Israeli war party is represented first of all by Avigdor Lieberman, the Minister of Strategic Threats who is himself a strategic threat. On Friday July 13, a day of ill omen, Lieberman boasted before a group of NATO and European Union officials that Israel had received a green light from the U.S. and Europe for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “If we start military operations against Iran alone, then Europe and the U.S. will support us,” said Lieberman. According to Israel Today magazine, Lieberman argued that ongoing hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan are “going to prevent the leaders of countries in Europe and America from deciding on the use of force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities,” so they are telling Israel to “prevent the threat herself.”

Another Israeli incendiary is Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of the Research Division of Israeli Military Intelligence. On July 10, Kuperwasser told the Jerusalem Post that economic sanctions alone will not stop Iran, and that the window of opportunity to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations was running out. Kuperwasser claimed that Iran is “very close” to the technological threshold for enriching uranium at an industrial level. The Iranians will then be able to manufacture a nuclear device within two to three years, according to Kuperwasser. “The program’s vulnerability to a military operation is diminishing as time passes,” Kuperwasser said, “and they are very close to the point that they will be able to enrich uranium at an industrial level.”

EL BARADEI WARNS AGAINST NEOCON “NEW CRAZIES”

This kind of thinking in the US, UK, and Israel was what Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had in mind when he issued his famnous June 2, 2007 warning about a coming attack on Iran: “I wake every morning and see 100 Iraqis innocent civilians are dying …I have no brief other than to make sure we don’t go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say ‘let’s go and bomb Iran.’ ” And who are the “new crazies”? “Those who have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force.” It is not possible to “bomb knowledge.”

A grave doubt casts its shadow over any scenario of US nuclear attack on Iran: as William Thomas reported last February, the fuses of cheap Chinese silicon chips now being used by the US military in ships, tanks, planes, and other applications may be too weak to resist the high levels of electromagnetic pulse (emp) which would be unleashed by a nuclear bombardment of the Iranian nuclear sites. The outsourced chips, coherent with the Rumsfeld “war on the cheap” strategy, could cripple a large proportion of the US Central Command’s military hardware, with disruptive effects that would reach back to the command’s Florida headquarters and possibly to the Pentagon. (rense.com, February 21, 2007, and willthomas.net) If these report are correct, US nuclear bombers might crash, the the carriers that launched them might suddenly find themselves dead in the water, quite indepen dent of what the Iranians might do.

CHENEY’S LEBANON-SYRIA GAMBIT

In addition to the hypothesis of an attack on Iran, there is also the immediate threat to Iran’s ally, Syria. According to a UPI dispatch dated July 9 under the byline of Claude Salhani, numerous signs currently point towards hostilities between Israel and the Damascus government, with a renewed Israeli attack on Lebanon a likely element in this strategy. According to former State Department official Dennis Ross, “there is a risk of war” between Syria and Israel in the summer. Ross told YnetNews, Yedioth Ahronoth’s Internet edition: “no one has made any decisions, but the Syrians are positioning themselves for war.” The neocon exoteric New York Sun claimed to cite a supposed Syrian official saying that added that, by allegedly pulling Syrian nationals out of Lebanon by mid-July, “Damascus is preparing for Israeli retaliation following Syrian guerilla attacks and for a larger war with the Jewish state in August or September.” “If Israel doesn’t vacate the strategic Golan Heights before September, Syrian guerillas will immediately launch ‘resistance operations’ against the Golan’s Jewish communities,” the alleged Syrian added. These remarks reflect scenarios being developed by the Israelis.

But the Masada party of national suicide is not the only game in town for Israelis. On July 11, an anonymous leaker from inside Israeli Military Intelligence warned his associates to remember their ignominious defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in last summer’s war. According to this source, “war with Syria would be ten times worse than with Hezbollah.”

THE ATTACK ON PAKISTAN: MIDSUMMER OF NEOCON MADNESS

Cheney also has the option of attacking into Pakistan. Cheney had visited Pakistan at the end of February with an obvious ultimatum to General Musharraf to get ready to mount a land war against Iran this summer. Equally and immediately obvious was the fact that Musharraf, who considers himself the heir to the great Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, had told the Vice President to go Cheney himself. With Pakistan refusing to attack its neighbor, Cheney suddenly discovered that Osama bin Laden was being protected by Musharraf! The US-UK destabilization of Pakistan began in grand style, with the New York Times helpfully publishing lists of generals whom Washington would be delighted to see take power in a putsch in Islamabad. Pawns of the destabilization included the Chief Justice of Pakistan, reputed to be a British agent, and riots by lawyers in business suits. Then came the slaughter at the Red Mosque, staged by the usual CIA/MI-6 fundamentalists. Pakistan, under tremendous pressure from the US, has announced a military crackdown on so-called Taliban forces in the northern tribal areas of Waziristan, an enterprise sure to stir up a hornet’s nest of resistance even if none had been there before. The neocons demanded that the US invade Pakistan, under the pretext of looking for Osama bin Laden. On July 12, neocon fascist madman William Kristol told Fox News: “I think the president’s going to have to take military action there over the next few weeks or months…. Bush has to disrupt that sanctuary. I think, frankly, we won’t even tell Musharraf. We’ll do what we have to do in Western Pakistan and Musharraf can say, ‘Hey, they didn’t tell me.’” Ironically, bin Laden’s second in command, reputed MI-6 speaking tube Ayman al Zawahiri, at around the same time issued a fatwa declaring jihad against Musharraf’s Pakistani regime. If Musharraf was haboring Osama, why would al Qaeda declare war against Musharraf? The answer is what it has always been: “al Qaeda” is a troupe of agents provocateurs founded by the CIA and the British, and remains so until this day. As for the neocon plan to attack Pakistan, it is the very midsummer of madness: if Iran has three time the population of Iraq, Pakistan with 164 million is more than five times more numerous than Iraq. If the neocon plans succeed, the US would soon be at war with almost 300 million people ­ far too many for the hollow US force of 10 divisions, whatever technology they might possess.

WARNINGS: RON PAUL, PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, CINDY SHEEHAN, PAT BUCHANAN

Among other authoritative voices across the political spectrum warning of an imminent Bush-Cheney attack on Iran:

Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul commented to Alex Jones: “I think we’re in great danger of it. We’re in danger in many ways, the attack on our civil liberties here at home, the foreign policy that’s in shambles and our obligations overseas and commitment which endangers our troops and our national defense.”

Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under the Reagan Administration, wrote in his latest column: “Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran. Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of ‘executive orders’ that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, ‘terrorist’ events in the near future.” (Paul Craig Roberts, “Impeach Now or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy,” Counterpunch, July 16, 2007) In a July 19 interview with Thomm Hartmann of Air America, Roberts cited Bush’s July 17 executive order, which allows the US regime to seize the property of anyone found to be interfering with the reconstruction of Iraq. This radio warning was reported by the RIA-Novosti news agency of Moscow in numerous languages. The Moscow summary, dated July 20, begins: “A former Reagan official has issued a public warning that the Bush administration is preparing to orchestrate a staged terrorist attack in the United States, transform the country into a dictatorship, and launch a war with Iran within a year.”

Pat Buchanan is convinced that the danger of a new war provocation by Bush-Cheney will come in August, when the Democratic Congress will conveniently be out of Washington and on vacation. Buchanan asks important questions:

Is the United States provoking war with Iran, to begin while the Congress is conveniently on its August recess? One recalls that it was in August 1964, after the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, that the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred.

Has Bush secretly authorized covert attacks inside Iran? Are U.S. and Israeli agents in Kurdistan behind the attacks across the border to provoke Iran? On July 11, Iranian troops clashed with Kurd rebels inside Iran, and the Iranians fired artillery back into Iraq.

Is this yet another abdication by Congress of its moral and constitutional duty to decide when and whether America goes to war?

Why is Congress going on vacation? Why are a Democratic-controlled House and Senate not asking these questions in public hearings? Why is Congress letting Bush and Vice President Cheney decide whether we launch a third war in the Middle East? Or is Congress in on it?” (“Tonkin Gulf II and the Guns of August?,” World Net Daily, July 17, 2007)

Based on the John Olver remarks, the Democrats are in on it. As for Buchanan, he should say these things on MSNBC.

Also warning of new war provocations was Cindy Sheehan, who was traveling towards Washington DC to declare her challenge to failed House Speaker Pelosi. She commented that there was a “distinct possibility” that America will be hit with another staged terror attack that will allow Bush to enact the martial law provisions he recently imposed by executive order. These measures allow Bush to declare a domestic state of emergency in response to virtually any minor incident anywhere in the world. (Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet, July 12, 2007, “Sheehan: Distinct Chance Of Staged Attack, Martial Law; Peace Mom warns of false flag terror as she prepares to take on sell-out Pelosi.”)

BUSH ANTICS STUN REPUBLICANS FROM THE HILL

This past week, the tenant of the White House showed new signs of mental instability by barging in to a routine meeting between White House communication director Ed Gillespie, spokesman Tony Snow, and a group of Republican congressional leaders. Bush was there to insist that everybody stay the course of Iraq.

“It was stunning,” said one GOP aide who attended the meeting. “We couldn’t believe he came in.” “We kept looking at each other, amazed he came in,” said another Republican colleague. According to one press account, “Bush was described as folksy, adamant and mildly profane as he interrupted the meeting. His message: the policy on Iraq isn’t changing. He is not backing down and no one on Capitol Hill should be confused into thinking he is letting up.”

A new threat to US policy comes from the formidable Turkish military establishment, which is sick and tired of constant cross-border attacks by PKK Kurdish terrorists operating from the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. The US, UK, and Israelis are using the PKK for terror operations into Kurdish territories of Iran. These PKK terrorist are paid and armed directly by the US military, bringing any notion of a US “war on terror” to a new nadir of absurdity. For some time, the Turks have been lobbing shells and raiding into Kurdish Iraq. 140,000 Turkish troops are massed along the border in question, and if Turkish patience runs out, the Kurds will be crushed.

US IRAQ SUPPLY LINES IN GRAVE DANGER

Washington still cultivates delusions of grandeur: the moment of truth for Iraq will be in mid-September, or perhaps in November or December. But, as one British writer once put it, what if the bear blows first? What if US forces in Iraq experience catastrophic military defeat at some point in the future? What if it takes the form of pocketing or encirclement, the “Dunkirk if you’re lucky, Stalingrad if you’re not so lucky” outcome?

It is not clear whether or when Iraqi resistance forces will move decisively to attack the Achilles heel of the US occupation forces, the 400-mile truck convoys between Kuwait City and Baghdad, but the longer the US forces continue their present futile efforts, the more likely this tragic outcome will become. These are trucks driven by Pakistanis, Turks, Bangladeshis, and Filipinos, and protected by private military contractors ­ by poorly armed mercenaries. A recent report by Jim Michaels in USA Today indicates that the strategy most dangerous to the US forces is indeed gaining ground among the resistance: Michaels writes that “attacks on supply convoys protected by private security companies in Iraq have more than tripled as the U.S. government depends more on armed civilian guards to secure reconstruction and other missions. There were 869 such attacks from the beginning of June 2006 to the end of May this year. For the preceding 12 months, there were 281 attacks.” Of all the news coming out of Iraq, this is perhaps the most ominous. Any military debacle by the US forces in Iraq would be immediately blamed on Iran, and would infallibly be seized upon by Cheney as a pretext for massive retaliation against Iran.

DOLLAR HYPERINFLATION A FACTOR

An important contributing factor in the Cheneyac war hysteria is the beginning of dollar hyperinflation. Two Bear Sterns hedge funds have blown up, wiping out $9 billion of capital in a few days, and Helicopter Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve says that the subprime mortgage bubble meltdown will lead to $100 billion in losses by US banks, and this is clearly a lowball figure. Two analysts quoted by the Toronto Globe and Mail on July 19 suggest that the entire US banking establishment may now be looking at a 15% to 20% devaluation because of mortgage-related losses. Only frenetic pumping in of new dollar liquidity by Helicopter Ben and his men is staving off big bankruptcies, but this sloshing liquidity spells hyperinflation . The Dow has passed 14,000, but the dollar has also reached an all-time low of almost $1.40 to a euro, with a 26-year low against the British pound. With oil well above $75 and gold above $680 per ounce, while raw materials and food prices skyrocket, the US may soon resemble Germany of 1923, when people took their money to the grocery store in a wheelbarrow, and brought home their purchases in their pocket. Small wonder that the worldwide dumping of the bankrupt US dollar continues apace, with Iran now asking Japan to pay for oil transactions in yen, cutting Wall Street out of another lucrative commodity flow.

US SITUATION TRAGIC

These points bring into sharp relief the dire predicament of our tragically drifting country in the summer of 2007, a summer which Cheney’s backers and controllers are determined to transform into the Summer of Fear. Skeptics may object that they have heard all this before ­ in the spring and the autumn of 2004, in the late summer of 2005, and in March-April of 2007 ­ and that so far the general war with Iran had not occurred. This is true, but it is no argument against the urgency of the warnings that the present writer and others have issued from time to time over the last three years. It only shows that the world has been lurching and careening along the edge of a much wider war in the Middle East since about May of 2004 at the latest. For much of this time we have lived in the shadow of the Cheney doctrine, which calls for a nuclear attack on Iran in the wake of a new super 9/11 terrorist provocation (coming from the bowels of the US intelligence community) ­ as revealed by Philip Giraldi in The American Conservative in August of 2005. Each time some combination of internal US institutional resistance and inertia, objections by NATO allies, and foreign threats or pressure have somehow avoid the worst. So far we have muddled through. But Cheney’s backers and controllers ­ the ones designated as the Cheneyacs in this analysis ­ have unfailingly pulled themselves together after each rebuff, and have marshaled their forces for a new drive over the brink of the abyss. As long as Bush and Cheney are in power, as long as the 9/11 rogue networks in the US intelligence community continue their work unpurged and undisturbed, we will face one war emergency after another, until the likely moment when humanity’s luck runs out. Under any political system committed to its own survival, each of the Cheneyac war drives over the past three years should have lead to the impeachment, removal from office, and indictment of the dour and snarling old reprobate himself, and a general mop-up of his followers. It is the fact that the corrupt and cowardly parliamentary cretins of the Democratic Party have failed to impeach and oust Bush-Cheney over the last six months since they took power which represents the most immediate cause of the fix we are now in. Congressman Kucinich has introduced the needed articles against Cheney, but the Pelosi-Reid opportunists have been hostile to this needed measure. It is time for honest activists to join with the Philadelphia Platform to get on with the business at hand before martial law is imposed by these neocon fascist madmen, since by then it may be too late.

BRZEZINSKI: “A TERRORIST ACT IN THE US BLAMED ON IRAN”

The Democratic Party Congressional leadership has known all about Cheney’s plans for six months or more, as can be shown from the public record. On February 1, 2007, Zbigniew Brzezinski warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of ongoing machinations designed to procure war with Iran and beyond: “A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran; culminating in a ‘defensive’ US action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.” Over the past half year, events have followed Brzezinski’s scenario closely. Blaming Iran for the missed benchmarks in Iraq is now the daily stock in trade of the Bush administration and the US Central Command, who whine continuously about Iranian interference in Iraq. There have been several military provocations in Iraq which the US has tried to pin on Iran, most notably March 23, 2007 incident involving 15 British Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel who were taken into custody by the Iranians. This incident was a part of Cheney’s winter-spring war drive, which peaked with two US B-1 bombers deliberately violating Iranian airspace over the city of Abadan in oil-rich Khuzestan province on March 31. This crisis was defused by a mobilization of persons of good will around the world, with Russian President Putin and the RIA-Novosti news agency playing a critical role. In particular, a pointed March 28 warning from Putin to Bush about attacking Iran created enough uncertainty in Washington about how Moscow might respond to nuclear aggression against Iran so that cooler heads than Cheney’s prevailed.

FIGHT BACK WITH THE PHILADELPHIA PLATFORM

That leaves us with Brzezinski’s third scenario point: a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran. What Brzezinski is talking about here is high treason, insurrection , genocide, high crimes against humanity under US law and the Nuremberg Code. Why has he not been called upon to tell all he knows about this sinister plot, so obviously operating through the Cheney-Addington office, and through Eliot Abrams at the White House? Because the Democrats who heard that warning ­ Senators Biden, Dodd, and Obama on the committee, plus Hillary Clinton ­ have done nothing to raise a hue and cry, hold hearings, issue subpoenas, demand documents, or begin impeachment hearings against those involved. The Democratic Party must therefore be seen as fully complicit under the Nuremberg Code in any future crimes by Cheney regarding a wider war in the Middle East. The Democratic Party has failed, and the viable peace movement must now organize independently on a multi-issue basis including 9/11 truth, as called for in the July 4, 2007 Philadelphia Platform, which can be seen at actindependent.org.

rense.com

Seoul: Korea will withdraw its peacekeeping Forces from Afghanistan by the end of this year.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed that a medical and an engineering unit will pull out by year’s end.

The pullout will involve two units that operate in the same area.

The Dongui, a medical unit arrived in September 2002. The Dasan engineering unit touched down at Bagram air base about five months later, joining multinational troops some 50 km north of the Afghan capital Kabul.

Since arriving, the medical unit with its 60 personnel has treated over 200,000 Afghans for a range of conditions.

The 150-strong Dasan unit, meanwhile, has been partaking in reconstruction efforts together with U.S. and French forces to rebuild roads, buildings and schools destroyed in the war.

It was at Bagram that the Korean military recorded its first casualty since the Vietnam War.

Sergeant Yoon Jang-ho, a translator with the engineering unit, was killed last February, a victim of a suicide bomb attack.

In addition to their standard duties, both Korean units run programs to promote friendship with local residents.

They lead classes in the Korean language and in the Korean martial art of taekwondo.

http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?184897

Shameful vendetta against Galloway
Linda S. Heard, Special to Gulf News

July 23, 2007, 00:06

They’re at it again. The British anti-war MP George Galloway is once again being targeted by the establishment on both sides of the pond. Both the British Parliament’s watchdog and the US Justice Department are behaving like dogs salivating over the same juicy bone labelled “Get Galloway”.

You’ve got to feel sorry for the man. How many times is he going to be investigated for the same “crime” when until now there’s not a shred of proof against him?

How many more times will the right-wing press seek to libel him and subsequently have to shell out huge sums in damages? How many more fake or unsubstantiated documents are going to turn up?

Galloway faces an 18-day suspension from the House of Commons following his vigorous defence when faced with a report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

The report suggests that Galloway had failed to investigate the source of funds donated by a Jordanian businessman to his Mariam Appeal anti-Iraq sanctions charity and alleges that some money was derived from Saddam Hussain’s dodgy oil-for-food dealings.

Galloway admits this may be true since his wealthy Jordanian friend conducted regular business with Saddam’s Iraq but says he has no knowledge as to whether monies paid to his charity were originally derived from Iraqi oil sales.

He says he was grateful for all donations and it was no business of his to question donors whether or not the cash was kosher. Moreover, the Charity Commissioners have already delved into the matter and found that no money was ever diverted into Galloway’s personal accounts.

When Galloway was accused by a Senate Sub-Committee of receiving under the table Iraqi oil allocations, he volunteered to fly to Washington for the purposes of clearing his name. It transpired that the committee had nothing of substance. Galloway trashed their flimsy “evidence” and gave the US a resounding ticking off for going to war on a pack of lies.

Let’s be realistic. They’re not after him because they think oil for food money took a circuitous route into Galloway’s appeal. If that were the case they would have to go after every charity on earth.

Who knows how many murderers, thieves, rapists and mafia bosses have salvaged their consciences by giving to Oxfam? Who can assure us that the Red Cross or the Red Crescent has never received a cent from nasty dictators or unscrupulous oligarchs?

If every recipient of charity monies were duty bound to check on their source there would be a lot more hungry and homeless people in the world. First of all most of the money would go on administration costs and secondly privacy-conscious donors would head for the hills rather than have their bank accounts scrutinised.

Galloway says he should be honoured not hounded. And he’s absolutely right. The Mariam Appeal was set-up to get treatment for a little Iraqi girl suffering from cancer and to fight for the end of US-led sanctions against Iraq, responsible for the deaths of millions of Iraqi children.

Moreover, the colourful MP was the first to speak up loudly against the invasion of Iraq and was booted out of the Labour Party for calling George W. Bush and Tony Blair “wolves” while urging British troops not to obey illegal orders.

As Galloway says himself, he was right and they were wrong.

If they had listened to Galloway there would have been no limbless victims of cluster bombs or babies born with deformities due to depleted uranium tank shells.

If they had listened to Galloway, Iraqis would still be Iraqis not Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. There would be no civil war. There would be no millions of displaced persons. There would be no stateless Palestinian refugees from Iraq subsisting behind barbed wire near the Jordanian border.

And there would be no Turkish threats to invade the north and no Sunni concerns about a growing so-called Shiite crescent.

Skewed intelligence

Let’s talk guilt. Ask yourself just who are the guilty ones? Those people who skewed intelligence and rapped up the fear factor in order to persuade their publics to accept their ruthless, self-interested agendas or Galloway who cared enough about Iraqi children to risk his career; perhaps even his life? “I have the most powerful enemies of all,” he recently declared. No one could argue with that.

It’s shameful that the British establishment saw fit to gloss over the whitewashing of the strange death of Dr David Kelly, another man whose words didn’t support their warmongering fabrications.

And now it has seen fit to exonerate all those in the cash for honours scandal because of lack of evidence, they say, although just a few weeks ago the police were confident someone would be charged.

But when it comes to their nemesis Galloway it’s a different story. There may be no meat on the bone of their allegations but they’re determined to chew on it until it breaks, while the Senate Committee hopes to be able to gloat over a shard.

If anyone should be investigated it should be Blair for manipulating and hyping intelligence so as to take his country to war without a UN mandate, against the wishes of many of his cabinet colleagues (as we recently learned) and 80 per cent of his people.

You’re a better man than the lot of them Galloway. Keep fighting! Keep safe and God bless you!

www.uruknet.info/?colonna=m&p=34756&l=e&size=1&hd=0

___________________________________________________________

After Galloway made a statement harranguing British MPs for giving a standing ovation during the resignation of a man who most of the world considered to be a war criminal. Great Stuff, George.

And good for the BBC for providing the video recording which was highly embarrassing to the government of the UK. Same recording as spidered news, but available at:
http://ews.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6900000/newsid_6902700/6902706.stm?
Galloway ordered out for “attacking the integrity of MPs”
WATCH STREAMING VIDEO: http://www.spiderednews.com/GeorgeGalloway.htm?vid=139917

Sham trial by Parliament (why ended prematurely… listen to the last few minutes – link below)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-TAypia32E

Sham trial by Parliament
Press release on Parliament suspension debate
Tuesday, July 24, 2007

“At least the United States Senate gave me an uninterrupted hearing,” said an outraged George Galloway as the Speaker threw him out of the Commons less than one third of his way through his speech of defence against the so-called Standards and Privileges Committee.

“It has come to something,” he continued, “When the leading anti-war MP could get a fairer hearing in the Republican Senate than in the British House of Commons.

“I was thrown out of Parliament this evening just as I had given one example of the double standards that go to the heart of this matter. Anyone watching this would have seen Parliament plunged into disrepute as it absurdly decided – through agreeing my exclusion – that I am not permitted to point to those double standards or to criticise those who have produced this unjust report about me.

“We now have the absurdity in which the House of Commons has convinced itself, or at rather pretends that it has, that 10 MPs sat in a committee room somehow cease to be what they by definition are – highly political people who together constitute a political tribunal.

“The public know that is so; MPs, if they were being honest, know it; it’s only in the chamber of the House of Commons that you are not allowed to say so.

“I had much, much more to say about the report and the overarching question of who it is in this Iraq affair who has brought Parliament into disrepute. Instead, by voting to throw me out, the MPs present this evening chose to conduct a kangaroo court in my absence.

“They may be happy to close their ears to the truth. Most people in Britain – and abroad – are not.

“They will be outraged at this sham in what is supposed to be the highest court of the land.”

http://www.georgegalloway.com and scroll down a little

An executive order signed by US President George W Bush July 17 and presented to Congress as fait accompli is worrying on two fronts: Firstly, that its wording appears calculated to block all forms of protest against the conduct of the Iraq war and secondly, that the implications of this EO have provoked deafening silence among the mainstream media outlets, both print and broadcast.

The order ostensibly seeks to expand Presidential powers as defined by earlier such orders, and to block funding of terrorists.

“I hereby report,” says Bush in the opening paragraph of this order, “that I have issued an Executive Order blocking property of persons determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.”

External Link: The full text of the executive order

The problem lies in the second half of that statement — ‘Undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq’ could, by extension, include public protests in the US over the conduct of the war, which the Administration can claim is undermining its efforts.

A little further down, comes this additional bit: “The order further authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, to designate for blocking those persons determined to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person designated pursuant to this order, or to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.”

Stripped of verbiage, this part of the order permits the Secretaries of State and Defense to block the assets (that is to say, your bank accounts, your property) of anyone who is deemed guilty of undermining such US efforts in Iraq – again, by natural extension, it means that a protestor’s assets can be blocked by the US government, under the terms of this order.

Bloggers, who have picked up on this order and have begun pointing out its inequities, point out that the wording of this EO is so deliberately vague that theoretically, the writing of an editorial that is critical of the war in Iraq could be deemed a `service’ that is supportive of the violence in that country.

Thus, it could be argued by the Administration that by criticizing the US war effort, you are supporting or even creating the conditions for the perpetuation of violence.

The single biggest danger in this order, as bloggers see it, is that the government has left the wording unclear, thus allowing them to apply the terms in any way they like.

The order further says “Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.”

Also, “Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.”

Again, the unclear wording lends itself to multiple interpretations: for instance, a donation to a group opposed to the war prima facie violates these provisions, and hence the donor’s assets could be frozen; similarly, any attempt to rally a group for a mass protest could be deemed a `conspiracy’, thus entailing all participants to punitive action.

Not only does the EO deny American people the fundamental right to protest, the fact that it empowers the Secretaries of State and Defense to take punitive action goes against the Fifth Amendment, which holds that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The amendment is violated on two counts: per this executive order, action can be taken without indictment by Grand Jury and secondly, a person can under the provisions of this executive order be deprived of his liberty and property without due process of the law.

Section 8 of the draconian EO provides the clincher: “This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.”

Translated from the legalese, this effectively means that if action is taken against an individual under the provisions of this EO, that person has no recourse in law against the government, or any branch thereof.

http://ia.rediff.com/news/2007/jul/23bush-eo.htm

Bush orders seizure of assets from those threatening Iraq “stabilization efforts”By Joe Kay
24 July 2007
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In an extremely broad executive order issued on July 17, President Bush authorized the Treasury Department to freeze the property of anyone determined to be hindering US actions in Iraq and the stability of the US-backed regime in Baghdad. The wording is vague enough to encompass not only those resisting the occupation directly, but also US citizens involved in antiwar activity.

The executive order, issued under the headline, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq,” cites powers granted to the President under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). That act was originally intended to regulate the power of the US president to declare trade embargos on other countries. Beginning with the Clinton administration, powers under IEEPA have been expanded to include blocking financial assets of individuals targeted by the US, including “designated terrorists” and “designated terrorist organizations.”

The July 17 order is more broadly written than previous orders. It begins with the declaration that there is an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.”

Following from this declaration, the order grants the government the authority to block “all property and interests in property” of “any person” determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, “to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of (a) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or (b) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.”

The inclusion in this group of those who “pose a significant risk of committing” acts of violence is particularly significant. It is left to the government to decide who poses such a risk. What is meant by “economic reconstruction and political reform” is also ambiguous. “Economic reconstruction” is no doubt meant to include, among other things, the determination by the US to push through a law opening up Iraqi oil fields to the exploitation of US companies.

Also threatened with having their property frozen are all those who are determined “to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.”

In other words, it is not just those who commit or pose a risk of committing acts of violence that can have their assets frozen, but also anyone who is determined to have supported such a person in some way. This includes anyone who is found to be “owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.”

Who might fall under this extremely broad category? “Goods or services in support of” a person accused of destabilizing Iraq could include everyone from the barber, the doctor, or the lawyer defending his client against the imposition of the order.

Moreover, the term “person” is defined to include any “entity”—that is, any “partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization.” Therefore, any individual, party or organization, including an antiwar organization, that is determined either to pose a threat of carrying out an act of violence in Iraq, or is determined to be in one way or another “supporting” another individual, party or organization that poses such a threat, could have their assets blocked.

The order would also prohibit any individual under the jurisdiction of the US from donating funds to, or receiving funds from, any individual or organization that is subject to the order. Under the IEEPA statute, a person violating the order could be subject to up to 10 years in jail, and tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

There has been very little comment or media focus on the order. When probed, however, the Bush administration has insisted that it is intended to cover a narrow range of individuals in Iraq. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said, “What this is really aimed at is insurgents and those who come across the border” of Iraq.

Picking up on this line, an AP story from July 17 said that the order is “a new tool … aimed at putting a financial squeeze on people who run networks that recruit and send would-be terrorists into Iraq.”

This is a completely false presentation, however. First, the order is not limited to “would-be terrorists” in Iraq and surrounding countries, but applies to anyone who is determined by the US government to be working to destabilize the US-backed puppet regime and oppose the occupation.

Second, as Washington Post columnist Walter Pincus noted in a July 23 column, “the text of the order, if interpreted broadly, could cast a far bigger net to include not just those who commit violent acts or pose the risk of doing so in Iraq, but also third parties—such as US citizens in this country—who knowingly or unknowingly aid or encourage such people.”

Indeed, the only reference to US citizens in the order is intended to specifically deny any additional rights. It holds that for anyone “who might have a constitutional presence in the United States … prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual,” and that therefore no prior notice is required.

The July 17 executive order is the latest in a series of orders intended to block financial assets as part of operations in Iraq. These are all based on a state of national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 on May 22, 2003. The IEEPA can be invoked only with the declaration of a national emergency under the National Emergency Act of 1976. The main function of order 13303, however, was to protect US contractors and oil companies working in Iraq. (See “Bush grants permanent legal immunity to US corporations looting Iraqi oil”)

This order was subsequently expanded. EO 13315 (August 28, 2003) was issued to allow the Secretary of the Treasury to seize the assets of former members of the Saddam Hussein regime and their family members. EO 13364 (November 29, 2004) expanded the scope of the declared national emergency to include “the extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” posed by any judicial processes against the Central Bank of Iraq.

These orders are part of a broader attempt to target anyone providing “material support” to alleged terrorists or Iraqi insurgents.

A similar executive order passed shortly after September 11, 2001 applied very broadly to anyone determined by the president to be “specially designated global terrorists” or to be supporting or “otherwise associated” with terrorist individuals or organizations. In November 2006, a federal judge in Los Angeles struck down the order in a case brought by the Humanitarian Law Association and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The judge ruled that the order was unconstitutionally vague because it gives the president “unfettered discretion” and because someone may be “subject to designation under the President’s authority for any reason, including for … associating with anyone listed” as a terrorist. The case is still under litigation and appeal.

A similar power is included in the “material support” statute, which dates back to 1994, but was broadened by a section of the USA Patriot Act. The law makes it a crime to provide “material support” to organizations declared to be terrorist.

Shane Kadidal, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents plaintiffs challenging these provisions, told the WSWS that they give the president broad discretion not only to determine what organizations and individuals are covered, but also what defines “material support.”

“A crime of association” has been created, Kadidal said, “and all these statutes are worded very broadly.” The measures can criminalize such actions as providing humanitarian goods and services.

Kadidal called attention to the section of the July 17 executive order that prohibits individuals from receiving funds from designated organizations. “Obviously this has nothing to do with cutting off resources to the group in question,” he sad. “It is an attempt to block free association.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/aset-j24.shtml