Archive for October 2008
Cleric blames CIA for Bali bombing
Cleric blames CIA for Bali bombing
There is speculation the government is preparing to execute the three bombers by firing squad next week.
An Indonesian Islamic cleric linked to the three extremists awaiting execution for the Bali bombings said the 2002 attack which killed more than 200 people, including 88 Australians, was the work of the CIA.
Abu Bakar Bashir says the US intelligence agency had fired a nuclear missile at the Bali tourist strip from a ship off the coast.
“It has been mentioned as being a micro-nuclear bomb, not a regular bomb… The bomb was made by the CIA, it could be no one else,” he said in his house at the Al-Mukmin Islamic boarding school on Indonesia’s Java island.
He said the attack was a conspiracy between “America, Australia and the Jews” and the three convicted bombers – Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Ghufron – had been framed.
“The bomb Amrozi set off, the first one, at most it shattered glass and didn’t wound people, or at most wounded them a little,” he said.
Amrozi had been “used by the CIA in coordination with America, Australia and the Jews. The police and the prosecutors aren’t brave enough to prove it.”
The coordinated October 12, 2002 bomb attacks ripped through packed nightspots on the holiday island’s main tourist strip and killed 202 people, mostly foreign visitors including 88 Australians.
Radical Islamist preacher Bashir, aged around 70, served almost 26 months for conspiracy over the attacks before being cleared and released in 2006.
He had been accused of providing spiritual leadership to the Jemaah Islamiah regional terror group, a claim he denies.
His comments come amid speculation the government is preparing to execute the three bombers by firing squad next week, in line with their 2003 convictions.
The executions have been put off by a series of failed appeals and most recently by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, raising questions about the government’s willingness to kill the men ahead of elections in April.
More than 90 per cent of Indonesia’s 234 million people are Muslims, but most follow a more moderate version of Islam.
Dismissing Indonesia’s Islamic groups as “Jewish organisations,” he said he would split from the Indonesian Council of Mujahedin which he had led and form a new group to push for pure Islamic law.
He said he would launch the new group, Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (“partisans of the oneness of God”), on October 25.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/17/2393548.htm
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the 2002 Bali Bombings as yet another case of False Flag Terror.
Using a formula that has worked so well for the Loose Change crew, the filmmaker has crafted a very watchable piece that flows well, with interesting visuals, a soundtrack that moves from hip to emotionally engaging, and most importantly, and most damaging of all to the powers that be… the Truth.
“Fool Me Twice” examines well-known examples of False Flag terror, and adds an excellent new sequence about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that leaves the viewer with no doubt that Emad Salem was a controlled asset. Utilizing audio that features Salem covertly recorded while talking with FBI agent John Anticev, “Fool Me Twice” cuts to the chase regarding the 1993 bombing, and goes deeper, examining the CIA’s links to this milieu.
The Bali bombings are dissected with a healthy dose of newly gathered evidence that shows what the real effects of ANFO car bombs are, what they do, and what they don’t do, like leave massive craters. The film argues that this is from high-intensity military-grade explosives, which the authorities declare were not used. At least not anymore. At first they claimed that Semtex and C4 were identified, but this didn’t fit the official story in the hopper, which required that the bombers be tied to the purchase of ANFO making materials. This analysis of the bombing is brilliant indeed. (In a short but unfortunate detour, the film explores evidence that some sort of nuclear device may have been used, however, no physical evidence is produced that could definitively prove that a nuclear device was used. This small detour is something of a waste of time in my opinion, although the segment in question is well done. Please don’t let this stop you from examining this film, skip over the segment if you wish, but this documentary is important and should not be overlooked. At the very least check out this report cited in the documentary by Robert S. Finnegan.)
The film closely examines the Jemaah Islamiyah and it’s links to the CIA and other intelligence agencies that used this radical group. A very welcome and valuable analysis. This film reveals extensive connections between JI, the Bali Bombings and military and intelligence circles.
I rank this film among the most important and valuable of the year, packed with valuable information, bolstered by new analyses, and accompanied by a familiar pattern: violent extremists are targeted, infiltrated, aided, and ultimately directed by the very intelligence services that should be protecting innocent civilians from the extremists.
The Bali bombings were used to usher in tons of “anti-terror” legislation in Australia. Highly recommended viewing.
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Below is the Press Release from the film-maker;
BALI BOMBINGS COVER-UP: New documentary
Released on Youtube and Googlevideo this week, FOOL ME TWICE, exposes the cover-up of the Bali bombings and provides evidence that it was a Falseflag Operation.
The film begins by documenting the Australian government’s prior knowledge of the Indonesian military’s plan to use violence to maintain autonomy over East Timor. Contrary to The Howard Governments claims they argued against peacekeeping forces allowing the Indonesian Special Forces to carry out their campaign of fear and suppression.
Within 24 hours of the 2002 Bali bombings a team of FBI, UK special agents and Australian federal police started arriving in Bali. The investigation team continuously claimed different explosive devices were responsible for the main blast. Days after the attacks, Indonesian Police Chief, General Dai’ Bachtier, announced that the FBI had discovered C4 pointing the blame towards Jemaah Islamiah, JI (“SE Asia wing of Al qaeda”). Eventually, investigators concluded that the main explosive device was a potassium chlorate car bomb. C4 was never included in final reports.
The main explosive device was so powerful it seriously damaged buildings in a 2/400 metre radius and left a 1 metre deep, 10 metre wide crater. 202 people perished in the blasts, the majority incinerated from the main explosive device. Investigators quickly excavated the crater contents and dumped the remaining debris off the coast of southern Bali, including completely stripped concrete reinforcing bars. Potassium chlorate is a low velocity explosive and does not have the overpressure force to create a 1 metre deep crater or completely incinerate humans, let alone strip concrete. Only a high-tech explosive device has the power to strip concrete.
FBI claims of C4 announced by General Dai’ Bachtier, ensured Jemaah Islamiah was immediately blamed for the Bali bombings. All prior intelligence of the Bali bombings came from so called JI leader, Omar Al-Faruq. Omar Al-Faruq was secretly handed over to the US by Indonesia months prior to the bombings under the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Australian intelligence agencies reported that intelligence obtained from captured “JI suspect”, Omar Al-Faruq, warned of possible terrorist attacks in Bali. After the attacks the Bush administration denied access to Al-Faruq for questioning in the Bali bombing trials. When Omar Al-Faruq was suddenly called by US court to provide evidence in a trial of another terrorist suspect – he had “escaped high security prison”. No JI leaders have ever been brought to trial.
Prior to the Bali bombings the Indonesian government denied the existence of terrorists within Indonesia and opposed US anti-terror operations in Afghanistan. After the bombings President Megawati signed a joint statement – “Agreeing that terrorism poses a continued threat to international peace and security, and that the two Presidents are committed to enhancing their bilateral cooperation in the fight against terrorism”. The Bush administration provided funds to the Indonesian police and military and setup a national terrorism unit under the control of national police chief, General Dai’ Bachtier.
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Islamabad Hotel Bombing:
A CIA/MI6/MOSSAD false flag like Bali and Jakarta
ELECTION WAR PLAN COLLAPSES – Bush Crushed By Failure
ELECTION WAR PLAN COLLAPSES
Bush Crushed By Failure
A plan to ignite nuclear war in the Middle East a week before U.S. elections collapsed on Friday in a crushing defeat for George Bush, Dick Cheney and their Big Oil masters in Houston. The mission was the invasion of Iran and the seizure of Iranian oil fields triggered by false-flag nukes blamed on Iran. This has been Houston’s ultimate objective since installing Bush and Cheney in the White House eight years ago.The plan surfaced only four weeks ago as outlined in our last report, Gambit Reloaded – All Set to Nuke Iran
In that report, we saw the first evidence of the new power structure which will control the U.S. after January, as the great Rothschild Banking Leviathan forced the White House to delay implementation of the war plan until the Banker Bail-Out was approved by Congress. (Yes, Obama is the Rothschild candidate, just like FDR, as history repeats itself.)
A Bush speech reversal, DOSE THE WIN, had indicated that he was hoping that nukes popping off in the Middle East would influence the November voting or perhaps poison the whole electoral process in some way. But in the cloud of near-total illusion that dominates world affairs today it is rarely easy to identify true objectives, or even the players themselves. Bush may have been hoping to retain the White House and Pentagon for the Oil Cartel or he may have been instructed to honor some previous agreement between Houston and London (?) to help with an Obama landslide victory – a possible backlash against Bush’s fondness for war. The White House certainly did all it could to protect and foster the long-running plot to turn the financial world upside-down, so there is reason to believe that cooperation between these two great monopolies is relatively high.
I. Cancelled!
The war plan was cancelled shortly after noon on Friday, October 24th, as Bush, Cheney, and intelligence director Mike McConnell met with military leaders via the global ultra-secure video conferencing channels at the National Security Agency. Junior provided us with the Admirals’ and Generals’ negative verdict when the stunned Big Oil team emerged from the “briefing.”
Truth be told, Iraq is still a living hell
Truth be told, Iraq is still a living hell
John McCain likes to say, “we’re winning in Iraq, and we’ll come home with victory.”
Maybe so, but it depends on how you measure victory.
Without question, violence in Iraq has declined. Sectarian violence has diminished, fewer people are dying, the number of deadly bombings has dropped. But let’s put this in perspective.
I was first posted to Iraq for several months at the end of 2003. And beginning that November, a loud bomb blast jolted me out of bed almost every morning. Over the next few weeks, insurgents began killing foreigners they happened to see on the streets. At about this time, the end of 2003, Iraq came to be seen as the most dangerous place in the world.
Of course, in the following years the violence increased manyfold. Particularly after the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra two years ago, Iraq fell into a state something close to hell on Earth.
But then, after the American troop escalation early this year, violence dropped precipitously. Today it’s at about the level I endured in 2003, when a bomb blast woke me up almost every morning – only now the streets are even more dangerous for foreigners. It’s been frozen at that level for months.
Public attention to Iraq has plummeted, as has press coverage. The number of American correspondents based there has fallen from 219 a year ago to 39 today. In recent election-related polls, only about 20 percent of those questioned said Iraq remains a top priority.
Economic concerns are trumping the war, as they should, while McCain’s, and President Bush’s, descriptions of the status quo in Iraq are serving to anesthetize the electorate so that no one seems to know or care about what’s really going on.
A few days ago, I spoke to an Iraqi journalist about life in Baghdad right now.
“You can’t ever trust the relative sense of security because it may be different for you,” this journalist said. “After 6 or 7 p.m., you can’t be outside. It’s not safe. After dark I go inside and hide somewhere. I fall asleep very frightened.” The journalist cautioned me not to use her name. If it got out that she was consorting with foreigners, insurgents “would kill me and my family.”
Neither the White House nor the McCain campaign will tell you any of this. Without saying so explicitly, the Republicans leave the impression that Iraq is now a nearly pacific place. But let’s look at the actual statistics for September — as compiled for the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index.
Last month, 98 Iraqi policemen were killed. On about two days out of every three, a bomb killed two or more people. Over all, those bombings killed 164 people and wounded 366 others. These and other attacks killed 500 Iraqi civilians, about 17 a day. Seventeen American soldiers died; 102 were wounded.
About 19,000 Iraqis remain in American military prisons. Almost 3 million Iraqis driven from their homes still are not willing or able to return. Even now, almost five years after the invasion, Baghdad residents get just over 11 hours of electricity each day, compared to 20 hours before the war.
At the same time, no one is kidnapping foreigners any longer. Helicopters aren’t being shot down. Attacks on oil pipelines have virtually ceased. As for the carnage, while the violence remains frighteningly high, in January of 2007 there were at least two bombings every day, and more than 3,700 Iraqi civilians died.
The big news stories in Iraq today tell of the bustling street life, children playing in the parks, schools reopening, some blast walls in Baghdad coming down. That is a welcome change — so it is news. The run-of-the-mill violence is no longer news. But it continues, relegated to one-paragraph news stories. Here are headlines from a sample of these stories from the first three days of this week:
Seven killed, 20 injured in three separate attacks in Iraq; Two killed in Baghdad bombings; Police defuse roadside bomb in central Baghdad; New wave of violence against journalists in Iraq; Bombs strike bus, taxi in Baghdad, killing 4; Iraqi police kill female suicide bomber; 15 killed, 44 wounded in violence by Tuesday afternoon.
My point is not to diminish the genuine accomplishments of the U.S. military. Iraq is less violent. But it remains so far from the ostensible goal — a unified, democratic, safe and stable nation, as Bush, McCain and Sarah Palin put it — that when the Republicans suggest it’s just within reach, they are foisting a lie upon the American people.
Joel Brinkley is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now teaching at Stanford University.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/columnists/story/521793.html
Russia to continue arms sales to Iran
Russia to continue arms sales to Iran
President Medvedev (R) says US echelons failed to consider the implications of imposing sanctions against Russia. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says US sanctions will not stop Russia’s state arms trader from selling defensive weapons to Iran.
The US State Department announced on Thursday that it had taken punitive measures against 13 companies in China and Venezuela as well as the Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport for allegedly providing sensitive technology to Iran.
On Tuesday, the Russian president said in televised comments that the US decision was simply an attempt to sideline a successful competitor on the global arms market.
“We will continue to sell arms and military equipment exclusively to maintain the defense potential of our partners,” Medvedev affirmed.
Moscow has recently delivered 29 Russian-made Tor-M1 air defense missile systems under a $700 million contract signed in late 2005 and trained Iranian Tor-M1 specialists, including radar operators and crew commanders.
The US sanctions ban any government body from doing business with the Russia company – which is known for selling defensive weapons to countries that the US considers its adversaries.
Warning that the White House had failed to fully consider the implications of taking such measures, President Medvedev said, “Whoever is responsible for the sanctions should know that we consider such actions as short-sighted.”
Russia ‘will practically not feel’ the sanctions, he added.
The US and Israel have pressed Russia not to provide Iran with the sophisticated anti-aircraft S-300 system (seen here).
Shortly after the introduction of the sanctions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticized Washington, saying that there is no ‘international legal foundation’ for justifying the White House action.
“We will take this into account in our affairs, in our relations with the United States,” said Lavrov, warning that the sanctions could not undermine Moscow’s relations with Tehran.
The US accuses Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of conducting nuclear activities directed at developing a nuclear weapon. Iran says it only seeks the civilian applications of the technology.
Washington has slapped unilateral sanctions on Tehran, urging allies to follow suit. The UN Security Council, meanwhile, has also imposed sanction resolutions against Iran, demanding a halt in nuclear activities of the country.
The UN nuclear watchdog, which has extensively monitored Iran’s nuclear activities, says it is not a position to fully clarify the nature of the Iranian program.
The agency, however, said in its latest report on the issue that it has not found any ‘components of a nuclear weapon’ or ‘related nuclear physics studies’ in the country.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=73531§ionid=351020602
What “incredibly tough” foreign policy actions is Obama preparing?
What “incredibly tough” foreign policy actions is Obama preparing?
Here is the voice of a longtime representative of the financial aristocracy, voicing his contempt for public opinion—”if decisions are popular, they’re probably not sound”—and warning his wealthy audience that the new Obama-Biden administration will have to defy public opinion to carry out its policies. Biden’s language suggests that the ferocity of the new administration’s response will shock not only public opinion, but even its own supporters.
In remarks made over the weekend in Seattle, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden warned that Barack Obama, if elected president, would be compelled to take deeply unpopular actions in both domestic and foreign policy within months of taking office.
In closed-door gatherings with two audiences of Democratic Party insiders and fundraisers, Biden forecast a major international crisis in the first six months of an Obama administration.
He compared Obama to John F. Kennedy, the last senator to be elected president. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,” Biden said. “The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Watch. We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
Biden mentioned the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and Russia as potential points of conflict, but did not spell out the exact nature of such a crisis, observing, “I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate.” He made it clear that Obama would respond forcefully: “They’re going to want to test him. And they’re going to find out this guy’s got steel in his spine.”
The most politically significant portion of Biden’s remarks came when he admitted that the decisions of an Obama-Biden administration were likely to be deeply unpopular, and he called on the Democratic Party regulars to stand behind the new president even when public opinion turned against him.
“He’s going to need help,” Biden said. “He’s going to need you—not financially to help him—we’re going to need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not going to be apparent initially, it’s not going to be apparent that we’re right.”
He continued, “There are going to be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision.’ Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”
Here is the voice of a longtime representative of the financial aristocracy, voicing his contempt for public opinion—”if decisions are popular, they’re probably not sound”—and warning his wealthy audience that the new Obama-Biden administration will have to defy public opinion to carry out its policies. Biden’s language suggests that the ferocity of the new administration’s response will shock not only public opinion, but even its own supporters.
In that context, one must point out Biden’s suggestions that nuclear weapons might play a role in one or more of the potential crises. A nuclear-armed Korean Peninsula could lead to “Japan as a nuclear power,” he said, which could push China into expanding its nuclear weaponry. The Pakistan-Afghanistan border is “crawling with Al Qaeda” and “Pakistan is already bristling with nuclear weapons, all of which can hit Israel.” Biden also noted Iran’s alleged drive to build a nuclear weapon.
Foreign policy journals and pundits linked to the Democratic Party have undoubtedly been discussing many such doomsday scenarios, and Biden’s language suggests that the use of the US nuclear arsenal, the world’s largest, is under consideration by those who are formulating the foreign and military policy of an Obama-Biden administration.
Biden himself has been one of the most hawkish on foreign policy among leading congressional Democrats, backing the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and advocating a US-led military intervention in Darfur. During the Democratic presidential primary campaign, he was the most vociferous of all the candidates in denouncing antiwar protest groups seeking a cutoff of funds for the war in Iraq.
Biden’s expectation of widespread popular hostility to an Obama administration applies not only to foreign and military policy, but to domestic policy. He told the Seattle audience, “I promise you, you all are going to be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls, why is the polling so down, why is this thing so tough?’ We’re going have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years.”
The Democratic candidate did not spell out the exact nature of these “incredibly tough decisions,” other than to refer to the financial and economic crisis and two wars being bequeathed by the Bush administration to its successor.
In the wake of these blunt and ominous comments, there have been disingenuous attempts to explain them away from both parties.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain seized on the suggestion that foreign enemies might seek to test an inexperienced President Obama, citing his own military and foreign policy expertise going back more than 50 years. Right-wing pundits went further, suggesting, as one put it, that “Biden is forecasting inaction by Obama in the face of testing by a dictator.”
This interpretation is preposterous, especially given Biden’s own record as a fervent supporter of US military intervention. Obama’s selection of the Delaware senator as his running mate was itself an effort to reassure the political establishment of his commitment to defend the interests of American imperialism by military force.
The Obama campaign sought to shrug off Biden’s remarks as a mere historical generalization, triggered by the Obama-Kennedy analogy, not a prediction of impending crisis. A campaign spokesman said Biden was referring to Kennedy’s confrontation with Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev in summit talks in Vienna, a few months after he took office—although these talks took place after a US military provocation—the invasion of Cuba by US-trained exiles who were defeated at the Bay of Pigs.
An Obama administration would not be an “innocent abroad,” picked on by dictators out to “test the mettle” of a US president. American imperialism continues from administration to administration, Democratic or Republican. If elected, Obama will take office heading the world’s largest military machine, engaged in violent provocations in dozens of countries, any of which could flare up unexpectedly, especially under the impact of the deepening world economic crisis.
Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination by presenting himself as the more consistent antiwar candidate, and the Democratic ticket in public pledges to end the war in Iraq and adopt a less militaristic stance. But behind closed doors, before select audiences of the financial and political elite, Biden has given a glimpse of the real perspective of the Democratic wing of American imperialism.
http://wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/bidn-o22.shtml
Why Syria? Why now?
Why Syria? Why now?
By Ali Gharib
A cross-border raid into Syria by United States forces in Iraq, and a subsequent stonewalling by US officials unwilling to divulge details, has led to rampant speculation among US analysts about the origins and meaning of the attack.
“So the question is: Why?”, geostrategic analyst and journalist Helena Cobban wrote on her blog, wondering if the raid could have been pulled off without explicit permission from the highest levels of the President George W Bush administration.
“Why now at the end of the Bush administration, with Washington trying to play nice with Damascus and tensions easing throughout the region, would US forces stage such a gambit?” echoed Borzou Daragahi on the Babylon and Beyond blog at the Los Angeles Times website.
The questions started to swirl late on Sunday afternoon when US helicopters allegedly crossed eight kilometers over the desert border between Syria and Iraq. According to reports, eight US soldiers were deployed when a helicopter landed, attacking the al-Sukkari farm in the Syrian Abu Kamal border area.
The cross-border raid – the first of its kind involving a helicopter attack and US boots on the ground that far into Syrian territory – left eight dead, according to Syrian press reports.
The attack is especially curious since, according to a report this weekend in the New York Times, Bush appears to have rolled back his initiative of troop-driven cross-border attacks – initially approved this summer – by Afghan-based US forces into Pakistani territory.
The raid also comes as Syria is negotiating with Israel, through Turkish mediation, presumably in a calculated effort to alleviate tensions with the West and the US. The Bush administration’s take on the Israel-Syria talks has been lukewarm at best.
More immediately for the US, the raid could complicate negotiations on a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraqi authorities which would allow US forces to keep operating in Iraq after the United Nations mandate expires at the end of this year.
The talks on the SOFA have been bogged down, and a persistent Iraqi demand has been that Iraqi soil not be used as a launch pad for attacks on other countries.
“The Iraqi government rejects US aircraft bombarding posts inside Syria,” a government spokesperson, Ali al-Dabbagh, said on Tuesday. “The constitution does not allow Iraq to be used as a staging ground to attack neighboring countries.”
Dabbagh said Iraq had opened an investigation into the incident and urged US forces not to repeat it.
The US Department of Defense has repeatedly declined to comment on the Syrian incident, including to a direct request by Inter Press Service, but several press reports have quoted unnamed US officials confirming the attack, and saying that it was ordered by the Central Intelligence Agency.
One US official anonymously told Agence France-Presse that the strike was aimed at Abu Ghadiya, whom the official called “one of the most prominent foreign fighter facilitators in the region”. The official said he believed the target was killed.
The spokesman for the Syrian Embassy in Washington, Ahmed Salkini, told IPS that the name did not appear on the official Syrian list of those dead.
In retaliation, Syria has shut down a US school and cultural center in Damascus, and its United Nations envoy has requested that the Security Council intervene to prevent further incursions into Syrian territory.
“This act of aggression perpetrated by the US forces against Syrian civilians indicates the US administration’s determination to go on in its policies that brought nothing but killing and destruction to the region,” said Syria’s letter to the Security Council.
Neo-conservatives and hawks within the Bush administration have long clamored for expanding Middle Eastern conflicts into Syria, which was named as one of the three countries in Bush’s famous “axis of evil”.
Indeed, Bush’s neo-conservative deputy national security adviser, Elliott Abrams, told Israeli officials during a high-level meeting that the US would not object if Israel extended its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon into Syria.
But if the cross-border attack was an attempt by hawks to lure Syria into a war, it appears to have failed; Syria has engaged in a measured response, although it did call the act of aggression “a dangerous violation of the Syrian sovereignty and the UN principles and conventions”, in its letter to the UN.
Syria’s press attache in London, Jihad Makdissi, told the British Broadcasting Corporation that the US should have approach Syria first.
“If they have any proof of any insurgency, instead of applying the law of the jungle and penetrating, unprovoked, a sovereign country, they should come to the Syrians first and share this information,” he said.
Cobban, a well-respected commentator and veteran analyst, said on her Just World News blog that the Syrians had not responded, and are not about to respond, in any way that is violent or otherwise escalates tensions.
“I’ve been studying the behavior of this Ba’athist regime in Syria closely for 34 years now. They have steely nerves. They are just about impossible to ‘provoke’, at any point that they judge a harsh response is not in their interest,” she wrote.
While foreign fighters from Syria have long been problematic to the US occupation of Iraq, since 2006, US patrols along the border and some Syrian cooperation have dramatically reduced the number of foreign fighters flowing into Iraq.
Last December, the former US commander in Iraq and now the CENTCOM chief, General David Petraeus, said, “Syria has taken steps to reduce the flow of the foreign fighters through its borders with Iraq.”
Petraeus reiterated the notion this month when he reported that fighters from Syria moving into Iraq have had their monthly total reduced from about 100 to 20.
But last Thursday, the commander of US troops in western Iraq, Marine Major John Kelly, said that while there has been progress, it wasn’t enough.
The suspected involvement of some of the most vociferous anti-Syria hawks at the highest levels of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have combined with US silence on the matter to fuel a guessing game as to just exactly who ordered or approved Sunday’s cross-border raid.
“This operation was pretty clearly run by US special operations forces pursuing a terrorist target,” Colonel Pat Lang, a retired US military intelligence officer, told IPS. “Their sole mission is like a SWAT team to go around and hunt terrorists.”
Lang said that these special operations forces sometimes operate distinctly outside the normal military chain of command by design of hawkish former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.
“If left to themselves, they would do this kind of thing the Syria raid. That’s what they do,” said Lang. “They don’t follow policy, they carry out their assigned mission.”
Because the US commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, is dealing with mounting concerns about the SOFA, Lang suspects that he’d be hesitant to directly approve such a bold a provocative attack as Sunday afternoon’s.
“I haven’t established it yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the authority to do this came right out of the White House,” Lang told IPS.
Asked if the decision undermines pressing US goals for commanders in Iraq, Lang said that while the considerations are there, they don’t always filter up into decision-making in the executive branch.
“Usually command arrangements of various kinds are messy,” Lang said, “and this White House has shown a tendency to want to bypass the established chain of command and influence what’s going on in the field.”
But in addition to being a bold foreign policy move, the raid has also been interpreted by some as a political stunt, albeit one unlikely to succeed.
Some journalists and experts have speculated that the raid was a Bush administration attempt to deliver an “October Surprise” – a late game-changing development favoring one candidate – for Republican candidate Senator John McCain just over a week before the presidential election in which he badly trails Democratic rival Senator Barack Obama in most polls.
McCain has been seen as holding an advantage in issues of national security, but the strike does not appear to have made too much immediate impact, as on Wednesday the Democrat led McCain by 52-45% in the latest ABC News-Washington Post poll.
(Inter Press Service)
Germany Seeks to Block French Plans on Tackling Financial Crisis
Germany Seeks to Block French Plans on Tackling Financial Crisis
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:
Merkel is seen as the only leader in Europe able to stand up to Sarkozy French President Sarkozy’s advocacy of state intervention to tackle the global financial meltdown has raised hackles in Germany. Chancellor Merkel is leading efforts to stymie greater government control of money markets.
As EU governments scramble to shore up their teetering banks and reassure jittery investors and citizens amid a worsening credit crisis and looming recession, fears are growing of a widening rift between Europe’s largest economies, France and Germany, over how to handle the financial crisis.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the rotating EU presidency, has called for an “economic government” for the 15-nation euro zone and urged EU countries to take stakes in strategic industries as the financial crisis bites. The French president has also announced the creation of a sovereign wealth fund for France to protect key firms from hostile foreign takeovers.
Sarkozy is reportedly pushing his plans ahead of emergency talks on the global market turmoil in Washington on Nov. 15 between the world’s richest nations and largest emerging economies.
French plans alarm Germany
The French plans have sparked alarm in Germany. Berlin views the proposals as too interventionist and running foul of EU competition laws. German leaders have long seen French calls for greater government control of financial markets as an attempt to undermine the independence of the European Central Bank.
In addition, there are fears that coordinated action in the euro zone would put the 12 EU countries that do not use the common European currency at a disadvantage.
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Glos has been Germany’s most vocal opponent to French plans
German Economy Minister Michael Glos strongly resisted Sarkozy’s latest proposals, saying they “go against the successful principles of our economic policy.”
In a recent interview, Glos said most economic policy, including national budgets, should be the responsibility of individual states. The minister also ruled out a Europe-wide stimulus package, pointing out that the economic situation in each European country is different.
On Tuesday, Oct. 28, Germany’s Guenther Verheugen, vice-president of the EU Commission, became the latest to criticize Sarkozy’s plans for a partial nationalization of key industries.
“The experiment ended disastrously in Eastern Europe,” Verheugen told German daily Passauer Neuen Presse. He added that the French plan fundamentally contradicted the “European idea of free entrepreneurship.”
All eyes on Merkel
Germany isn’t the only country uneasy of French plans to handle the crisis.
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Klaus was critical of Sarkozy’s financial plans
Speaking in a television debate, Czech President Vaclav Klaus addressed speculation that France might try to extend its current EU presidency and not allow the Czechs to take over in 2009 as planned.
“I believe that if this government is in charge of the presidency (…) it will have a more rational opinion on the financial crisis than most other European countries,” said Klaus who had called Sarkozy’s steps in the crisis “old socialism” earlier this week.
In recent days, German media have also reported that Germany’s neighbors are looking to Chancellor Angela Merkel to rein Sarkozy in.
“Several influential politicians are counting on Germany to persuade Sarkozy to back off and agree emergency regulations for the euro zone instead,” newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said in an editorial. The paper added that Sarkozy’s euro zone “economic government” was yet another move that would bypass existing EU institutions.
Citing diplomatic sources, business daily Financial Times Deutschland said leaders including Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Spain’s Jose Luis Zapatero and European Commission cheif Jose Manuel Barroso tended to avoid confronting Sarkozy themselves.
“They prefer to seek out the (German) chancellor and ask her to talk Sarkozy out of one or two of his ideas,” it said.
German news weekly Der Spiegel said Germany viewed France’s proposal for an “economic government” as part of a struggle over which model should dominate in Europe — the social market economy or the state-controlled economy.
You thought the housing crisis was bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet
You thought the housing crisis was bad?
You ain’t seen nothing yet
Nationwide, two million homes sit vacant. Home sales are at a nine-year low. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says that housing finance has not been this bad since the Depression. We still don’t know the full extent of the colossal subprime rip-off, but a recent Bank of America study did some guesstimating on the scale of the consequences of the “credit crisis.” The meltdown in the U.S. subprime real estate market, the bank said, had led to a global loss of $7.7 trillion dollars in stock market value since October.
While many eyes are focusing on the housing meltdown and its hugely negative effect on an economy clearly moving into recession, few are paying attention to the next bubble expected to burst: credit cards. Combined with the subprime losses, such a credit card nightmare has the potential, experts say, of bringing down the entire financial system and global economy. You and your credit card have become key players in the highly unstable financial crunch. Mortgage lender cupidity and bank credit card greed wedded to financial institution deregulation supported by both political parties, have been made manifestly worse by Bush administration support-the-rich policies. It has brought us to a brink not seen since just before the Great Depression.
While campaigning in Edinburg, Texas, in February, Barack Obama met with students at the University of Texas-Pan American. “Just be careful about those credit cards, all right? Don’t eat out as much,” he said. After the foreclosure crisis, he warned, “the credit cards are next in line.”
The coupling of home equity debt and credit card debt has gone hand in glove for years. The homeowners at risk can no longer use their homes as ATM machines, thanks to their prior re-financings and equity loans, often used in the past to pay off their credit cards. Indeed, homeowners cashed out $1.2 trillion from their home equity from 2002 to 2007 to pay down credit card debts and to cover other costs of living, according to the public policy research organization Demos.
To compound the problem, fewer people are paying their credit card bills on time. And, to flip the old paradigm, more are using high-interest credit card cash to pay at least part of their mortgages instead of the other way around.
How bad is it?
• Financial analysts say that in the U.S. alone more than $850 billion in unpaid credit card balances is at stake and fast approaching $1 trillion, roughly the same amount as in the subprime market.
• CNN reports that worldwide, consumers have racked up more than $2.2 trillion in purchases and cash advances on major credit cards in just the last year.
• The unpaid debt portion of this is continuing to pile up, with U.S. consumers last year adding $68 billion against their credit lines, boosting credit card debt by 7.8 percent, the largest increase in seven years, just when the last recession was beginning.
• Even as they spent, consumers have been going into default at a stunning rate. The percentage of people delinquent on their credit cards is soaring, and credit card companies are now writing off somewhere near 5 percent of payments.
• By last fall, the major banks were setting aside billions for loan-loss reserves while anticipating an increase of 20 percent in non-payments over the next two to four quarters.
• Capital One, one of the biggest credit card banks, was forced to write off $1.9 billion in bad debt just in the last quarter of 2007.
•By October, according to a survey of only the leading credit card banks by the Associated Press, the value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late was up 26% from the previous year, to $17.3 billion. Serious delinquencies among some of the biggest lenders rose by 50 percent or more in the value of accounts that were at least 90 days delinquent.
• Making matters worse, or more widespread throughout the economy, just as with mortgage debt, credit card debt is put into pools that are then resold to investment houses, other banks and institutional investors. About 45 percent of the nation’s $900-plus billion in credit card debt has been packaged into these pools, and so many companies, not just a few, are at risk of being forced out of business by credit card debt write-offs.
What this adds up to, and what Obama didn’t say, is that we are actually face to face with the results of the most massive failure of our political and economic system since the Depression. Since Ronald Reagan, we have been living in an era in which neither the meltdown of the savings and loan banks in the 1980s nor the Enron-like scandals of the Bush years has stopped the relentless advancement and protection by both parties of the ability of financial institutions to make a buck at any cost to the social good and economic fabric. Which is what you get, of course, when both parties are so dependent on massive financial contributions to get their candidates into office and when the corporate media, heavy with advertising from the FIRE sector – Finance, Insurance and Real Estate – doesn’t warn the public or investigate the egregious fudging, misrepresentation and outright fraud that underpins the subprime and looming credit card crisis.
Priceless!
The credit card industry (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc.) and the 10 banks that dominate the industry as the primary card issuers spend an estimated $2 billion a year in endless marketing worldwide. We are all bombarded with their solicitations and sales tie-ins and gimmicks. They know that they might only have a 2-3 percent return rate, but that more than pays the enormous costs. They have thus succeeded in supplying 1.5 billion cards to 158 million U.S. card holders. That averages to 10 cards per person. In the last few years, retailers, banks, a wide range of companies, sports teams, unions and even universities have launched specialized card programs. Like the car companies that discovered that they made more money on car loans than automobiles, the benefits of what’s been called “financialization” is obvious to more business sectors.
Credit card advertising for new card holders is especially effective now as inflation drives costs up and consumers have less to spend. “Charging it” on yet another new credit card is for many the only option to meet their budgets or maintain their lifestyles, especially as gas prices rise. It’s become habit for many to spend more than they have. As a result, overall U.S. credit card debt grew by 435% from 2002 to year-end 2007, from $211 billion to approximately $915 billion.
The relentless, continuing push by the credit card banks doesn’t target potential customers alone. Constant focus group studies and other research techniques are still being used to persuade retailers to encourage more credit card transactions. Increasingly, businesses simplify their use by “swiping” and other gimmicks, no signed receipt needed.
“More and more sectors of the American economy recognize that their financial success is based on the success of the credit card industry,” explains Robert Manning, the author of the definitive Credit Card Nation and a leading expert who has been sounding the alarm about the consequences of credit card debt.
“Everything is very clearly thought out and premeditated. Whether it’s having conferences and think tank sessions about how to encourage people to accept more debt [or] to work with merchants – for example, to persuade merchants with empirical information that … if they use a credit card that they’ll buy 20-25 percent more.”
Manning notes that saving and thrift was historically a positive value in the U.S. As recently as the l980s, the national savings rate was 10 to 11 percent. Since 2005, Americans have saved less than 1 percent of their disposable incomes. In fact, the most recent figures from March show that the savings rate is negative, below zero. And also in March the government reported that for the first time since the Depression, Americans owe more on their ≠homes than they have in equity. Essentially, on average, America is broke and its credit cards played a dominant role in getting there.
Manning, who teaches at Rochester Institute of Technology, has taken on the issue with original research and financial literacy courses for students. He found that many of his students already had credit cards before they arrived on campus, some for years.
As we all know, the companies don’t tell about the downside when they are seducing customers. They offer low introductory or teaser rates, in the same way that mortgage brokers enticed sub-prime customers. They offer rewards, frequent flyer miles and other prizes. Students are especially targeted because they have little real-world financial experience. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which is campaigning against student debt, says the average is $4,000 per student, but it easily climbs after four years to $15,000 to $20,000.
All of this, in our globalized world, is not unique. Clear across the world and down under, the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) and bank workers’ union Finsec are joining forces to try and keep students out of high-interest debt. The amount students owe on credit cards has increased by 32 percent since 2004, according to the NZUSA Income and Expenditure Survey. Credit card debt has increased at a higher rate than low to no interest overdrafts.
Here in the U.S., one mother, Joan E. Lisante, has set up a website targeted at other parents, www.consumeraffairs.com, so they can tell their stories. She wrote recently about what she calls the “plastic prison.”
“My 22-year-old son Jon, a college senior, got 52 credit card offers in the last year. I know this because, like a CIA operative, I intercepted the offers pouring into our mailbox.
“He got 19 from Capitol One, 13 from Providian, six from Washington Mutual, four from Chase, four from eBay and one each from an assortment of lenders ranging from PayPal to First Premier Bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (co-capital with “Small Wonder” Delaware of the credit card kingdom).
“Most begged Jon to rip open the envelope and wallow in instant gratification. Capital One, the most persistent suitor, shouted, ‘Offer Status: Confirmed. No Annual Fee!’
“‘16 Card Designs’ (but none that tally the total whenever you use it). You could get a response in as little as 60 SECONDS when you apply online.
“Now this kid has never held a job (yet) for more than one summer. He spent one summer working in the FEMA flood insurance call center, which shows how much expertise you need to work there. Although he is familiar with the inner workings of Blockbusters and Starbucks, Jon’s not yet a member of any corporate elite, prestigious profession or skilled craftsman’s guild. Does this matter? Apparently not.”
“The key for the banks,” Manning says, “is to get them dependent upon consumer credit, shape their attitudes towards savings, consumption and debt and to then multiply the number of financial products that they’re buying from that particular bank so the credit card will lead to the student loan, to the car loan, eventually to a home mortgage and then maybe some insurance products and investment opportunity.
The banks, he says, want students in a condition of dependency. “Young people today that see credit as a social entitlement have no understanding of what it is going to entail to repay those loans back. Once they’re used to living on borrowed money, then the banks realize that they’ll be following that pattern possibly for the rest of their lives. By the time they graduate they’re so indebted, and they’re so dependent upon the use of credit and debt, that it’s already presaged their future. They can’t possibly pursue the kinds of careers that they anticipated.”
Defaults on student loans are climbing. Many students used those loans to pay off credit cards. Military recruiters are now promising to pay off debts to entice enlistments. Other government agencies are also offering funds as part of their head-hunting.
Rise Up
“Many of you have probably forgotten that the American Revolution was largely driven by the great American planners, that were heavily in debt to European banks and they had very onerous terms,” Manning said in a lecture I attended when I was making my film In Debt We Trust. “And they recognized that they could not financially prosper under such outrageous financial demands.”
On the day I visted Manning’s lecture in an alcove literally right next door to the lecture room in the student center, local branches of banks like Chase and HSBC were signing up students for checking accounts and credit cards. Freshmen lined up at the tables to set up accounts. The banks had permission from the same school administration that hires Manning to counsel students to avoid getting into debt.
I listened in at the pitches.
BANK REP: “You don’t need anything for deposit, and we’re giving out free backpacks.”
BANK REP: “You get zero percent on the purchases for the first six months and then it goes to the standard intrest rate.”
QUESTION: “What’s the interest rate?”
BANK OF AMERICA REP: “The interest rate is variable … to be honest with you, off-hand, I don’t know the interest rate off-hand. Sorry.”
A student is counting out twenties as his first deposit.
BANK REP: “I just need your signature. Right here, please.”
ANOTHER BANK REP: “And it’s free while they’re a student.”
What will happen when they do have to pay it back includes nonstop calls to them and their parents. Credit card collection agencies know how to harass, threaten and then sweet-talk cardholders who are late. They even have a term for people squeezed by debt: “sweatbox.” They also know that the longer the debt goes unpaid, the larger the potential profit for companies, as interest builds up at rates of up to 30 percent. Credit card promoters call people who only pay minimums “revolvers.” Those of us who pay our bills in full? “Deadbeats.”
Recently the companies unilaterally hiked late fees and penalties that compound the debt. A few missing payments can earn you an interest rate hike to 29 to 30 percent. If you are late with a payment on some other debt not related to your credit card, you can readily find your interest fee doubled on your credit card. Some companies make more on fees and penalties than on interest payments. The companies racked up more than $17 billion in 2006, the last year for which records are available.
Like many of the homeowners who accepted subprime mortgages, and like you with your credit cards, youths and adults alike signed dense agreements that are largely unreadable. The credit card banks constantly update these with those small print notices with which you get assaulted in the mail, these drafted by risk-minimizing lawyers. Of course, it’s unlikely you bother to read these. In part of the unread text, the companies give themselves the right to unilaterally change the deal even after it is signed. Other small print insures that consumers cannot sue them over differences. All grievances have to be arbitrated in a process the companies created and control.
Even the Federal Reserve Bank condemns some of these practices, noting: “Although profitability for the large credit card banks has risen and fallen over the years, credit card earnings have been consistently higher than returns on all commercial bank activities.”
The Failure Trifecta
Track the subprime and credit card mess back, and you will find its origins in free market policies since Reagan that deregulated banking and much of the oversight that managed for years to keep the greed-meisters on Wall Street in check. The failure of media-lionized Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve Bank to pay attention to predatory lenders and sub-prime schemers allowed them to prosper.
Add to these failures a complicit Congress, with Democrats and Republicans alike dependent on donations from the three leaders of the FIRE economy. To assure their freedom to run their businesses their own damn way, the banks in the 1990s persuaded Congress to deregulate the practices of financial service companies. Pro-business Court decisions have allowed them to base their operations in low-tax states like South Dakota and Delaware and to end consumer protections against usury.
This decade, Bush’s tax cuts and his bankruptcy “reform” bill strengthening the power of credit card companies were passed with bipartisan support, including that of Senator Dianne Feinstein. Add major media amnesia to this list and you get a trifecta of failure. The New York Times admitted that advocates warned them that a rise in predatory lending was destroying poor communities in 2001, but they sat on the story for nearly six years.
Neither the politicians nor the media told us that every major brand name banking firm and investment house had its fingers in the juicy pie of pedaling mortgage-backed securities worldwide without disclosing that many of these mortgages were deliberately offloaded on people whom they knew could not afford to pay them. As with the credit card industry, these mortgage borrowers were cleverly given “teaser rates” that would soon reset upwards. The banks then resold the mortgages as “asset-backed paper” even though the assets’ value was so questionable.
Meanwhile, media outlets took in hundreds of millions in ad revenues from deceptive lenders and credit card banks encouraging Americans to shop and charge till we drop. The Super Bowl broadcast ran all those cool but misleading ads by credit card companies and mortgage hustlers. It was, um, “priceless.”
Notes scholar Lionel Tiger: “Those who have been operating the managerial levers of the financial system have failed embarrassingly and massively to comprehend the processes for which they are responsible. They have loaned money avidly and recklessly to people who couldn’t pay it back.
“They fudged data to get loans approved and recalculated. Then they sausaged fragile figments of money reality into new ‘products’ which could be sold around the world to investors eager to enjoy the surprising returns which often accompany theft, managerial incompetence and fraud. When it comes to responsibility for all this, there appears to be no one here but us spring chickens.”
– Danny Schechter blogs for Mediachannel.org. His film In Debt We Trust spawned the action website StopTheSqueeze.org. He’s written a new book on the crisis called PLUNDER: An Investigation Into Our Economic Calamity. Dissector@mediachannel.org.
http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/10/29/house-of-cards/
Barack Obam let his aunt Zeituni Onyango in poor ghetto
Found in a rundown Boston estate:
Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango
‘Auntie Zeituni’, who, with Uncle Omar, dropped out of sight after moving to the US, is backing the presidential candidate from her modest flat.
Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House. But a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, immigrants living in modest circumstances in Boston, have a contrasting American story.
Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.
A second relative believed to be the long-lost “Uncle Omar” described in the book was beaten by armed robbers with a “sawed-off rifle” while working in a corner shop in the Dorchester area of the city. He was later evicted from his one-bedroom flat for failing to pay $2,324.20 (£1,488) arrears, according to the Boston Housing Court.
The US press has repeatedly rehearsed Mr Obama’s extraordinary odyssey, but the other side of the family’s American experience has only been revealed in parts. Just across town from where Mr Obama made history as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, some of his closest blood relatives have confronted the harshness of immigrant life in America.
In his book Mr Obama writes that “Uncle Omar” had gone missing after moving to Boston in the 1960s – a quarter-century before Mr Obama first visited his family in Kenya. Aunt Zeituni is now also living in Boston, and recently made a $260 campaign contribution to her nephew’s presidential bid from a work address in the city.
Speaking outside her home in Flaherty Way, South Boston, on Tuesday, Ms Onyango, 56, confirmed she was the “Auntie Zeituni” in Mr Obama’s memoir. She declined to answer most other questions about her relationship with the presidential contender until after the November 4 election. “I can’t talk about it, I just pray for him, that’s all,” she said, adding: “After the 4th, I can talk to anyone.”
A photograph of Ms Onyango was later shown to George Hussein Onyango, Barack Obama’s half-brother in Nairobi, who confirmed that it was their aunt. George Onyango, 26, the youngest child of Barack Obama Sr, said that he had spent weekends with his Aunt Zeituni when he was growing up, and instantly recognised her.
George Onyango said that his aunt had left for the US about eight years ago but sent him e-mails. “She left to find work and I suppose she thought her life would be better there,” he said. “She was kind and caring.”
In his memoir Mr Obama describes the joy of meeting his father’s family during his first visit to Kenya in 1988. Aunt Zeituni, then a computer programmer at Kenya Breweries in Nairobi, is portrayed as a feisty woman who proclaims herself “the champion dancer”. Uncle Omar, by contrast, remains a mysterious figure who left for America and never came back. At one point in the book a half-sister tells Mr Obama that people “like our Uncle Omar, in Boston” move to the West.
“They promise to return after completing school. They say they’ll send for the family once they get settled. At first they write once a week. Then it’s just a month. Then they stop writing completely. No one sees them again.”
Aunt Zeituni and Uncle Omar are the children of Mr Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, by his third wife – the woman Mr Obama calls “Granny” because she raised his father. Mr Obama’s father, Barack Sr, was Onyango Obama’s son by his second wife, Akumu. That makes Zeituni and Omar a half-sister and half-brother of Mr Obama’s father, or Mr Obama’s half-aunt and half-uncle.
While Mr Obama was on his voyage of personal discovery in Africa, his aunt and uncle were engaged in their own journey in his homeland.
The Times could not determine their immigration status and an official at Boston City Hall said that Ms Onyango was a resident of Flaherty Way but not registered to vote on the electoral roll. However, that Ms Onyango made a contribution to the Obama campaign would indicate that she is a US citizen. Records at the Boston City Hall confirmed Zeituni Onyango’s birthdate as May 29, 1952.
It is not clear when Ms Onyango first came to the US. She said: “I have been coming to America ever since 1975. I always come and go.”
She is a frail woman who walks with the aid of a metal stick. Neighbours said that she lived alone in a ground-floor flat normally set aside for people facing physical hardship.
An Associated Press story about poor people buying lottery tickets at cheque-cashing shops, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 25, 2003, quotes a Zeituni Onyango whom it describes as out of work and without much money. “It’s like when I feel luck might fall I do that, like manna might come from Heaven. That’s when I buy it,” she told AP.
A staff member at the Boston Housing Authority office, 50 yards from her house, said Ms Onynango had been a volunteer resident health advocate between December 2007 and August this year. She worked six hours a week for a small stipend. Records show she used the housing authority’s address to make her campaign contribution.
Ms Onyango is also listed on the internet as a volunteer with Experience Corps, a programme in which adults over 55 mentor children in their communities. The “former computer systems co-ordinator” tells the group’s online newsletter: “I felt that I should help the children in my community. I love people and enjoy interacting with them . . . Also, I was idle, and this was a chance to get involved.”
A public record search lists an “O. Onyango Obama”, born on June 3, 1944, at 24 Colgate Road whose name matches that of the “Uncle Omar” in Dreams from My Father.
Nelson Ochieng, a cousin of Mr Obama who lives in the Kenyan city of Kisumu, near the family village of Kogelo, said that Omar had changed his first name after moving to the US. “Before he went to America we all knew him as Omar, but he dropped that bit, changing it to Obama Onyango, because he said he preferred his African name,” he said. Gail Greenberger, the landlady who bought the four-storey brick block of flats at a foreclosure sale in 1994, knew her tenant, however, by the name Obama Onyango. “We used to call him ‘Oh-bummer!’. That is how I pronounced Obama in 2000,” she said.
Ms Greenberger said she inherited him with the building but was forced to evict him in 2000 for nonpayment of his rent of about $500 a month. “I remember him being decent but I think he lost his job. When they lose their job, they just stop paying rent. He did not even go to court. He bolted from the apartment,” she said. Records of Boston Housing Court show a “summary process” was executed against Mr Onyango on February 23, 2000, for unpaid rent of $2,324.70.
Mr Onyango was a business partner in a “convenience store” called the Wells Market at 1760 Dorchester Avenue, now a Hispanic bodega, or grocery. Records list him as the treasurer of the corporation, which was set up without his name in 1992 and involuntarily wound up in 2007 after failing to file annual reports since 1997.
In 1994 Obama Onyango was attacked in an armed robbery at the Wells Market, the Boston Herald reported. According to a police report, two masked black males entered the store around 9.30pm on June 7, 1994, and “did assault and beat the victim, and did rob victim of an undetermined amount of US currency. Suspects were believed to be armed with a ‘sawed-off’ rifle, and did flee the area on foot .”
Asked why the man believed to be “Uncle Omar” went by the name Obama Onyango, Zeituni Onyango said that Obama was his true name. “That is the name his father gave him,” she said. Dershaye Geresu, the Ethiopian-born president of Wells Market Inc, confirmed that Mr Onyango was a “cousin” of Mr Obama.
Lennard Tenende, whose wife Lucy was secretary to the shop, said: “I don’t know where he is. It seems as if he is getting a lot of inquiries, a lot of people trying to find him and find out about his relationship with Obama and he just doesn’t want to be found.” Mr Ochieng said that he believed Mr Onyango ran a chain of stores.
The Obama campaign was repeatedly approached for comment yesterday but had not responded at the time of going to press. It is not clear whether Mr Obama has been in touch with his African relatives living in the US, or even whether he is aware that they are on US soil.
In the preface to the 2004 reissue, he writes: “Most of the characters in this book remain a part of my life, albeit in varying degrees – a function of work, children, geography, and turns of fate.”
“What is family?” he reflects. “Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me?” Twenty years after he first met Aunt Zeituni, and first heard of the elusive Uncle Omar, the man likely to be the next president will have the opportunity for another family reunion, rather closer to home.
MAKE SURE BARRY DOESN’T GET LOST
How Barack Obama tells of his first meeting with his aunt
‘‘Barack!” I turned to see Auma [his Kenyan cousin] jumping up and down behind another guard who wasn’t letting her pass into the luggage area. I excused myself and rushed over to her, as we laughed and hugged as silly as the first time we’d met. A tall, brown-skinned woman was smiling beside us, and Auma turned and said: “Barack, this is our Auntie Zeituni. Our father’s sister.”
“Welcome home,” Zeituni said kissing me on both cheeks . . .
We went to drop Zeituni off at Kenya Breweries, a large, drab complex where she worked as a computer programmer. Stepping out of the car, she leaned over again to kiss me on the cheek, then wagged her finger at Auma. “You take good care of Barry now,” she said. “Make sure he doesn’t get lost again.”
Once we were back on the highway, I asked Auma what Zeituni had meant about my getting lost. Auma shrugged.
“It’s a common expression,” she said. “Usually it means that the person hasn’t seen you in a while. ‘You’ve been lost,’ they’ll say. Or, ‘Don’t get lost’. Sometimes it has a more serious meaning. Let’s say a husband or son moves to the city, or to the West, like our Uncle Omar in Boston. They promise to return after completing school. They say they’ll send for the family once they get settled. At first they write once a week. Then it’s just once a month. Then they stop writing completely. No one sees them again. They’ve been lost, you see. Even if people know where they are.”
Extracted from Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, pp305-307 (Canongate)
The Money Masters – How International Bankers Gained Control of Americ…
The Money Masters – How International Bankers Gained Control of Americ…
“The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole…Their secret is that they have annexed from governments, monarchies, and republics the power to create the world’s money…” THE MONEY MASTERS is a 3 1/2 hour non-fiction, historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money. The development of fractional reserve banking practices in the 17th century brought to a cunning sophistication the secret techniques initially used by goldsmiths fraudulently to accumulate wealth. With the formation of the privately-owned Bank of England in 1694, the yoke of economic slavery to a privately-owned “central” bank was first forced upon the backs of an entire nation, not removed but only made heavier with the passing of the three centuries to our day. Nation after nation, including America, has fallen prey to this cabal of international central bankers. Segments: The Problem; The Money Changers; Roman Empire; The Goldsmiths of Medieval England; Tally Sticks; The Bank of England; The Rise of the Rothschilds; The American Revolution; The Bank of North America; The Constitutional Convention; First Bank of the U.S.; Napoleon’s Rise to Power; Death of the First Bank of the U.S. / War of 1812; Waterloo; Second Bank of the U.S.; Andrew Jackson; Fort Knox; World Central Bank; Loose Change 911 truth police state globalists NWO New World Order Federal Reserve Alex Jones Aaron Russo America From Freedom To Fascism zionist IMF BIS John Perkins 911 911 Globalism bilderberg Rothschild Rockefeller Schiff Warburg illuminati bohemian grove idi amin freemason Video news on “Federal Reserve”:
