I agree with this 100%. The UK needs its own version of a Pecora Commission.
NOW!
IMMEDIATELY!
I'd gladly donate my free time to the investigation if so required.
==================================
From http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2009/01/12/what-new-pecora-commission-must-do.html
What A New Pecora Commission Must Do
THE DEFENSE OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY: WHAT A NEW PECORA COMMISSION MUST DO
by John Hoefle
January 12, 2009 (LPAC)--The crucial battle facing the United States is the need to re-establish its national sovereignty in the face of an all-out push by the Anglo-Dutch Liberal/Saudi empire to destroy the nation-state system in favor of a new global empire. It is in this context that Lyndon LaRouche has called for a new Pecora Commission.
The original Pecora Commission, an investigation into the financial machinations which led to the Great Depression, conducted by the Senate Banking and Currency Committee from 1932 to 1934, exposed the way in which a cabal of powerful bankers dominated the U.S. economy, and manipulated it to suit their own goals. The investigation was run by Ferdinand Pecora, a former prosecutor who hauled some of the most prominent bankers in the nation before the committee and revealed them to be, under their pompous, self-righteous veneer, a pack of self-serving, arrogant, and corrupt hyenas who had little regard for the interests of the nation and its people. In doing so, Pecora smashed the myth of public service the bankers and their publicists had so carefully crafted, and helped build the public support President Franklin Roosevelt required to force Congress to pass tough regulatory reforms.
The situation today is even worse than the one faced by FDR. Then, the U.S. still had a strong agro-industrial base and a citizenry which understood that infrastructure and production were the pillars upon which the economy stood. Today, those pillars have been severely weakened by deindustrialization and globalization, and our people blinded by the myth that economics is based upon finance. Rather than hauling the hyenas before Congress to demand answers, our Federal government is lavishing them with money, saving the banks while selling the nation down the river.
If this bailout continues, the United States will cease to exist as a sovereign nation, and become just another satrapy in the imperium. We will have abandoned the promise of the American Revolution, which lifted mankind to a new level of freedom and prosperity, and have fallen back into that against which we fought.
We must once again expose the nature of the financier parasites which infest our economy, so that our people will understand the need to cast them off. To that end, we need a new Pecora Commission.
- The Nature of Empire -
The most pernicious myth about the financial system is that it is basically honest, if corrupted here and there by a few bad apples. The truth is just the opposite: The system itself is corrupt--corruption is the way the empire works, and the empire is what runs the global financial system.
In a recent discussion with his staff, LaRouche stated that "an empire is not based on a nation. An empire is based on being atop of a number of nations. That's an empire. All other uses of the term `empire' are nonsensical. So now we're dealing with the British Empire, which is a Venetian empire, an Anglo-Dutch Liberal/Saudi empire, and these forces, which are the central political elements in there, coordinate all these banking forces.... The empire is this system.''
The operational center of this empire, as LaRouche has defined it, is the City of London, but the empire itself is stateless, with operations in every part of the world, in every financial and political center. LaRouche describes it as a slime-mold which constantly adapts to changes, creating new structures and shedding others to maintain its power.
"The essential slime-mold is the idea of money as having an intrinsic value, either by dictate or by approximation, by evolution. And that you run economies based on money,'' LaRouche said. "Thus, you set up the financial systems, and the financial system has always been the core of every empire from Babylon to the present time. That's the thing that has to be understood--you have to destroy the slime-mold."
- Get Serious -
After every financial crisis there are investigations and prosecutions of high-profile people, designed to persuade the population that the laws are being enforced and the crooks punished, when they are not. Such investigations tend to occur well after the fact, when the activity being investigated has ceased to be profitable, and often involve individuals who are prominent but not particularly important to the empire.
Perhaps the best example of the latter is the prosecution of Martha Stewart for insider trading, in the wake of the stock market crash of 2000. The case garnered huge publicity, allowed for much posturing on the part of regulators, but accomplished little else. It was a classic show trial.
Another good example is the case of Enron, the energy-trading scam which collapsed in 2001. A number of top Enron officials were sent to prison--and rightly so--but the overall investigation and prosecution into the activities of the company was run as a cover-up, to protect those who steered Enron from behind the scenes. This cover-up began with the initial revelations of trouble at the company, through a press campaign which effectively focused public attention on one area of the company's operations, and continued with a special internal company investigation of just that area; that investigation, in turn, became the basis for the Congressional hearings and the Federal prosecutions of company officials. The officials who went to jail were expendable, but so in fact was Enron, which had served much of its purpose.
What Enron really was, was a battering ram to force a deregulation of the electric-power industry, to allow for the creation of a spot-market pricing structure similar to the spot market in crude oil. Enron was largely steered in this imperial endeavor by two banks, Lazard and Rothschild, which had also played major roles in the creation of the oil spot market. Rothschild had a man on Enron's board at the time of the collapse, and one of the two men brought in to handle the company's internal investigation was a former Lazard banker, while the company itself was a long-time Lazard client. With the cover-up in place, the allegations of widespread bribery of public officials to grease the skids for deregulation and other crimes were never investigated, and the controllers of the operation walked away, leaving the insiders to twist in the wind.
Already, we see signs that a similar cover-up is in the works. Lists of targets are appearing in the press, along with sanitized exposé of "what really happened'' at places like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, all of which have the characteristic of blaming forces inside the companies, while hiding the way these companies were operating as creatures of the larger system. The puppets are being thrown to the wolves, while the puppetmasters are protected. If we are to save this nation, it is imperative that the puppetmasters also be exposed.
As LaRouche said, "You don't destroy the empire, by putting some of its members in jail. You destroy the empire, by putting the whole oligarchy in prison!''
- Targets -
One of the prime targets of the Pecora hearings was J.P. Morgan, both the man and the bank. Through its direct and interlocking directorships, Pecora said, Morgan had "incomparably the greatest reach of power in private hands in our entire history.'' The hearings revealed that Morgan maintained what it called "preferred lists'' of powerful men in finance, business, politics, and public life, to whom he would offer securities at less than market value and provide other favors. Morgan insisted that these were simple business transactions, for which he expected nothing in return!
The House of Morgan was, in truth, a British operation from its inception. It began life as George Peabody & Co., a bank founded in London in 1851 by American George Peabody. A few years later, another American, Junius S. Morgan, joined the firm, and upon Peabody's death the firm became J.S. Morgan & Co. Junius Morgan brought in his son, J. Pierpont Morgan, to head the New York office of J.S. Morgan, and the New York office became J.P. Morgan & Co. From its original role in helping the British gain control of American railroads, the Morgan bank became a leading force in the oligarchy's war against the American System, using the deep pockets of its imperial masters to become a powerhouse in not only finance but steel, automobiles, railroads, electricity generation, and other industries.
In taking on Morgan, along with Kuhn Loeb, Chase, National City Bank, and others, Pecora was serving notice to the empire that, in the United States at least, its activities would be subject to the laws of the nation. Pecora's efforts were rewarded with the passage of the Banking Act of 1933, commonly known as Glass-Steagall, which founded the FDIC, and prohibited the mixing of commercial and investment banking. Glass-Steagall forced J.P. Morgan & Co. to break up into two separate companies, the commercial bank J.P. Morgan and the investment bank Morgan Stanley.
Glass-Steagall helped keep the bankers in check, until the 1980s, when its restrictions began to be eroded; by 1999, when the commercial bank-investment bank prohibition was repealed, it was already being ignored. Today, the top U.S. commercial banks are all part of financial conglomerates with heavy investment-banking and related speculative activity. Pulling the proper banking functions out of these monstrosities will require considerable effort.
The activities of Morgan Chase, as the leading British bank based in the U.S., should be at the top of the investigators' list, along with Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and the American arms of Britain's HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Add to the list, the activities of those investment banks turned bank holding companies, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and their departed brethren Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch.
Special attention should also be paid to the activities of Lazard and Rothschild, with their long histories of subversion. Though much smaller than the giants, these two banks are in many ways far more powerful, and played a critical role in the creation and steering of the speculative bubble. Lazard's longtime banker Felix Rohatyn has made a career of aiding the empire's takeover of the United States, and virtually everything he's touched should be examined. Rohatyn's board positions and merger deals provide a road map to guide investigators.
Other targets of a new Pecora-style investigation should include the hedge funds and private equity funds, the derivatives trade, and the "structured finance'' instruments--the collateralized debt obligations and such--which have proved such a disaster. How did these operations come into being, who protected them, and why did the regulatory and ratings systems fail so spectacularly?
Among the hedge funds, special attention should be given to the activities, political as well as financial, of George Soros, the Rothschild-connected drug-pusher whose specialty is undermining nations through political and financial warfare. Pulling the Soros thread will do much to expose how our nation has been destroyed.
The relationship between the illegal drug trade and the financial system should be thoroughly investigated. It is widely known that the dope trade would choke on its own cash were not a significant portion of the international banking system devoted to laundering drug money. And here the list of suspects reads like a Who's Who of International Finance. Who's laundering the money? In whose pockets does it wind up, and what do they do with it?
We know that drugs and the drug money have played major roles in the imperial assault on the nation-state. Shutting down the drug trade is a necessary part of defending our sovereignty. A new Pecora Commission could easily pay for itself out of the illegal drug profits that could be confiscated as a result of such investigations.
Then, there is the way in which the oil markets have been rigged via the spot market, which created a huge pool of dollars in Europe, which the empire also used to fund its assault on our nation, and the concept of nation-states in general. This petrodollar market has allowed the empire to not only flood the U.S. with speculative money, but also to exert considerable control over the dollar itself. We must protect ourselves from this predatory apparatus.
An included aspect of this, perhaps better left to law enforcement agencies, should be a thorough investigation into the British-Saudi arms-for-oil deals, the slush funds spawned in those deals, and the role of British arms company BAE Systems.
Just as the original Pecora Commission paved the way for reform by showing the American people the nature of the financial system which triggered the Great Depression, a new Pecora Commission must show the public how the empire foisted deregulation and globalization upon the nation, with the collusion of a corrupted political class. It must show that the so-called "free market'' system is actually a corrupt looting operation which has bankrupted our nation and our people; that the highly touted "financial innovation'' was a fraud; and that only a return to the American System of sovereign credit, regulation, infrastructure, and production can lead us out of this new Dark Age. It won't solve all our problems, but it is a necessary step in the right direction.
johnhoefle@larouchepub.com
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
MUFC 3 CHELSEA FC 0
What does that scoreline suggest?
What about this one?
Israel 854 Gaza 13 (with 10 Israeli own goals in the form of IDF soldiers, although the 3 Israeli civilians could also be described as own goals because last October during the ceasefire there was only one rocket fired from Gaza and no Israeli deaths).
More importantly, which scoreline is the most important to you?
What about this one?
Israel 854 Gaza 13 (with 10 Israeli own goals in the form of IDF soldiers, although the 3 Israeli civilians could also be described as own goals because last October during the ceasefire there was only one rocket fired from Gaza and no Israeli deaths).
More importantly, which scoreline is the most important to you?
Saturday, January 10, 2009
ISRAEL NOT HAMAS REJECTED THE DECEMBER CEASEFIRE
Well of course they did.
The current slaughter in Gaza is part of Operation Justified Vengeance, which itself is part of a much longer term plan to blow up the Middle East.
======================================
From http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=14031
Israel Rejected Hamas Cease-Fire Offer in December
by Gareth Porter
Contrary to Israel's argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel cease-fire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.
The proposal to renew the cease-fire was presented by a high-level Hamas delegation to Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman at a meeting in Cairo Dec. 14. The delegation, said to have included Moussa Abu Marzouk, the second-ranking official in the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, told Suleiman that Hamas was prepared to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would open up the Gaza border crossings and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza.
The Hamas officials insisted that Israel not be allowed to close or reduce commercial traffic through border crossings for political purposes, as it had done during the six-month lull, according to the source. They asked Suleiman, who had served as mediator between Israel and Hamas in negotiating the original six-month Gaza cease-fire last spring, to "put pressure" on Israel to take that the cease-fire proposal seriously.
Suleiman said he could not pressure Israel but could only make the suggestion to Israeli officials. It could not be learned, however, whether Israel explicitly rejected the Hamas proposal or simply refused to respond to Egypt.
The readiness of Hamas to return to the cease-fire conditionally in mid-December was confirmed by Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Center, who met with Khaled Meshal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor told IPS that Meshal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the cease-fire that had been in effect up to early November "if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza."
Pastor said he passed Meshal's statement on to a "senior official" in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) the day after the meeting with Meshal. According to Pastor, the Israeli official said he would get back to him, but did not.
"There was an alternative to the military approach to stopping the rockets," said Pastor. He added that Israel is unlikely to have an effective cease-fire in Gaza unless it agrees to lift the siege.
The Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment Thursday on whether there had been any discussion of a cease-fire proposal from Hamas in mid-December that would have stopped the rocket firing.
Abu Omar, a spokesman for Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Syria, told CBS News Wednesday that Hamas could only accept the cease-fire plan now being proposed by France and Egypt, which guarantees an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza as soon as hostilities on both sides were halted. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would only support the proposal if it also included measures to prevent Hamas from re-arming.
The interest of Hamas in a cease-fire agreement that would actually open the border crossings was acknowledged at a Dec. 21 Israeli cabinet meeting – five days before the beginning of the Israeli military offensive – by Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet. "Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce," Diskin was quoted by YNet News agency as saying.
Israel's rejection of the Hamas December proposal reflected its preference for maintaining Israel's primary leverage over Hamas and the Palestinian population of Gaza – its ability to choke off food and goods required for the viability of its economy – even at the cost of continued Palestinian rocket attacks.
The cease-fire agreement that went into effect June 19, 2008, required that Israel lift the virtual siege of Gaza which Israel had imposed after the June 2007 Hamas takeover. Although the terms of the agreement were not made public at the time, they were included in a report published this week by the International Crisis Group (ICG), which obtained a copy of the understanding last June.
In addition to a halt in all military actions by both sides, the agreement called on Israel to increase the level of goods entering Gaza by 30 percent over the pre-lull period within 72 hours and to open all border crossings and "allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza" within 13 days after the beginning of the cease-fire.
Nevertheless, Israeli officials freely acknowledged in interviews with ICG last June that they had no intention of opening the border crossings fully, even though they anticipated that this would be the source of serious conflict with Hamas.
The Israelis opened the access points only partially, and in late July Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declared that the border crossings should remain closed until Hamas agreed to the release of Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier abducted by Hamas in June 2006. The Hamas representative in Lebanon, Usam Hamdan, told the ICG in late December that the flow of goods and fuel into Gaza had been only 15 percent of its basic needs.
Despite Israel's refusal to end the siege, Hamas brought rocket and mortar fire from Gaza to a virtual halt last summer and fall, as revealed by a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) in Tel Aviv last month. ITIC is part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), an NGO close to the Israeli intelligence community.
In the first days after the cease-fire took effect, Islamic Jihad fired nine rockets and a few mortar rounds in retaliation for Israeli assassinations of their members in the West Bank. In August another eight rockets were fired by various groups, according to IDF data cited in the report. But it shows that only one rocket was launched from Gaza in September and one in October.
The report recalls that Hamas "tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement" on other Palestinian groups, taking "a number of steps against networks which violated the arrangement," including short-term detention and confiscating their weapons. It even found that Hamas had sought support in Gazan public opinion for its policy of maintaining the cease-fire.
On Nov. 4 – just when the cease-fire was most effective – the IDF carried out an attack against a house in Gaza in which six members of Hamas' military wing were killed, including two commanders, and several more were wounded. The IDF explanation for the operation was that it had received intelligence that a tunnel was being dug near the Israeli security fence for the purpose of abducting Israeli soldiers.
Hamas officials asserted, however, that the tunnel was being dug for defensive purposes, not to capture IDF personnel, according to Pastor, and one IDF official confirmed that fact to him.
After that Israeli attack, the cease-fire completely fell apart, as Hamas began openly firing rockets into Israel, the IDF continued to carry out military operations inside Gaza, and the border crossings were "closed most of the time," according to the ITIC account.
Israel cited the firing of 190 rockets over six weeks as the justification for its massive attack on Gaza.
(Inter Press Service)
The current slaughter in Gaza is part of Operation Justified Vengeance, which itself is part of a much longer term plan to blow up the Middle East.
======================================
From http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=14031
Israel Rejected Hamas Cease-Fire Offer in December
by Gareth Porter
Contrary to Israel's argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel cease-fire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.
The proposal to renew the cease-fire was presented by a high-level Hamas delegation to Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman at a meeting in Cairo Dec. 14. The delegation, said to have included Moussa Abu Marzouk, the second-ranking official in the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, told Suleiman that Hamas was prepared to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would open up the Gaza border crossings and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza.
The Hamas officials insisted that Israel not be allowed to close or reduce commercial traffic through border crossings for political purposes, as it had done during the six-month lull, according to the source. They asked Suleiman, who had served as mediator between Israel and Hamas in negotiating the original six-month Gaza cease-fire last spring, to "put pressure" on Israel to take that the cease-fire proposal seriously.
Suleiman said he could not pressure Israel but could only make the suggestion to Israeli officials. It could not be learned, however, whether Israel explicitly rejected the Hamas proposal or simply refused to respond to Egypt.
The readiness of Hamas to return to the cease-fire conditionally in mid-December was confirmed by Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Center, who met with Khaled Meshal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor told IPS that Meshal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the cease-fire that had been in effect up to early November "if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza."
Pastor said he passed Meshal's statement on to a "senior official" in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) the day after the meeting with Meshal. According to Pastor, the Israeli official said he would get back to him, but did not.
"There was an alternative to the military approach to stopping the rockets," said Pastor. He added that Israel is unlikely to have an effective cease-fire in Gaza unless it agrees to lift the siege.
The Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment Thursday on whether there had been any discussion of a cease-fire proposal from Hamas in mid-December that would have stopped the rocket firing.
Abu Omar, a spokesman for Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Syria, told CBS News Wednesday that Hamas could only accept the cease-fire plan now being proposed by France and Egypt, which guarantees an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza as soon as hostilities on both sides were halted. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would only support the proposal if it also included measures to prevent Hamas from re-arming.
The interest of Hamas in a cease-fire agreement that would actually open the border crossings was acknowledged at a Dec. 21 Israeli cabinet meeting – five days before the beginning of the Israeli military offensive – by Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet. "Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce," Diskin was quoted by YNet News agency as saying.
Israel's rejection of the Hamas December proposal reflected its preference for maintaining Israel's primary leverage over Hamas and the Palestinian population of Gaza – its ability to choke off food and goods required for the viability of its economy – even at the cost of continued Palestinian rocket attacks.
The cease-fire agreement that went into effect June 19, 2008, required that Israel lift the virtual siege of Gaza which Israel had imposed after the June 2007 Hamas takeover. Although the terms of the agreement were not made public at the time, they were included in a report published this week by the International Crisis Group (ICG), which obtained a copy of the understanding last June.
In addition to a halt in all military actions by both sides, the agreement called on Israel to increase the level of goods entering Gaza by 30 percent over the pre-lull period within 72 hours and to open all border crossings and "allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza" within 13 days after the beginning of the cease-fire.
Nevertheless, Israeli officials freely acknowledged in interviews with ICG last June that they had no intention of opening the border crossings fully, even though they anticipated that this would be the source of serious conflict with Hamas.
The Israelis opened the access points only partially, and in late July Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declared that the border crossings should remain closed until Hamas agreed to the release of Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier abducted by Hamas in June 2006. The Hamas representative in Lebanon, Usam Hamdan, told the ICG in late December that the flow of goods and fuel into Gaza had been only 15 percent of its basic needs.
Despite Israel's refusal to end the siege, Hamas brought rocket and mortar fire from Gaza to a virtual halt last summer and fall, as revealed by a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) in Tel Aviv last month. ITIC is part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), an NGO close to the Israeli intelligence community.
In the first days after the cease-fire took effect, Islamic Jihad fired nine rockets and a few mortar rounds in retaliation for Israeli assassinations of their members in the West Bank. In August another eight rockets were fired by various groups, according to IDF data cited in the report. But it shows that only one rocket was launched from Gaza in September and one in October.
The report recalls that Hamas "tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement" on other Palestinian groups, taking "a number of steps against networks which violated the arrangement," including short-term detention and confiscating their weapons. It even found that Hamas had sought support in Gazan public opinion for its policy of maintaining the cease-fire.
On Nov. 4 – just when the cease-fire was most effective – the IDF carried out an attack against a house in Gaza in which six members of Hamas' military wing were killed, including two commanders, and several more were wounded. The IDF explanation for the operation was that it had received intelligence that a tunnel was being dug near the Israeli security fence for the purpose of abducting Israeli soldiers.
Hamas officials asserted, however, that the tunnel was being dug for defensive purposes, not to capture IDF personnel, according to Pastor, and one IDF official confirmed that fact to him.
After that Israeli attack, the cease-fire completely fell apart, as Hamas began openly firing rockets into Israel, the IDF continued to carry out military operations inside Gaza, and the border crossings were "closed most of the time," according to the ITIC account.
Israel cited the firing of 190 rockets over six weeks as the justification for its massive attack on Gaza.
(Inter Press Service)
Friday, January 09, 2009
DID CRAIG MURRAY EMBARRASS BROWN INTO LAST NIGHT'S UN RESOLUTION?
It seems more than coincidental that just a few days after Craig Murray told us that he was informed that the British mission to the UN was blocking moves for a ceasefire that last night the UN voted for a UN resolution drafted by the British calling for a ceasefire, although unsurprisingly the USA abstained.
EVEN BLAIR NOW ADMITS THE FSA WAS CRAP
Speaking to the Financial Times Tony Blair, who created the FSA, admits that the light-touch approach taken by the whole regulatory system for The City was inadequate. But it's not clear that if Blair knew of the problems he would have stopped them anyway.
=============================
From http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8b039386-dddb-11dd-87dc-000077b07658.html
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Blair implicitly accepted that the light-touch regulatory system instigated by his government for financial services had proved inadequate. “The point is to learn and learn the right lesson,” Mr Blair said. “This was a credit bubble and a product of a particular way of running the financial system and that has to change and change dramatically and fundamentally.
“And it is changing. It is not a problem of the whole free enterprise system.”
Challenged on Labour’s failure to impose more stringent controls before the credit and banking crisis, Mr Blair said the government would have acted if the regulators had warned of the extent of the problems. But he suggested that in the absence of such warnings, the boom meant tough statutory regulation was virtually impossible in political terms.
“Supposing a few years back I had said or Gordon [Brown] had said ‘we are going to impose these big new capitalisation requirements on banks’, people would have said you are mad. You are going to destroy the City of London. If you had tried making major changes to the regulatory system a few years ago when things were going extremely well you would have a big political problem,” said Mr Blair.
=============================
From http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8b039386-dddb-11dd-87dc-000077b07658.html
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Blair implicitly accepted that the light-touch regulatory system instigated by his government for financial services had proved inadequate. “The point is to learn and learn the right lesson,” Mr Blair said. “This was a credit bubble and a product of a particular way of running the financial system and that has to change and change dramatically and fundamentally.
“And it is changing. It is not a problem of the whole free enterprise system.”
Challenged on Labour’s failure to impose more stringent controls before the credit and banking crisis, Mr Blair said the government would have acted if the regulators had warned of the extent of the problems. But he suggested that in the absence of such warnings, the boom meant tough statutory regulation was virtually impossible in political terms.
“Supposing a few years back I had said or Gordon [Brown] had said ‘we are going to impose these big new capitalisation requirements on banks’, people would have said you are mad. You are going to destroy the City of London. If you had tried making major changes to the regulatory system a few years ago when things were going extremely well you would have a big political problem,” said Mr Blair.
LET ME TELL YOU THE STORY OF LOVE AND HATE
From one of my favourite films, Do The Right Thing by Spike Lee. The character Radio Raheem wears knuckledusters on both fists, the left spells HATE and the right spells LOVE. He is talking to the central character of the film Mookie, played by Lee.
RADIO RAHEEM
I just copped them. Let me tell
you the story of Right-Hand--Left-
Hand--the tale of Good and Evil.
MOOKIE
I'm listening.
RADIO RAHEEM
HATE!
He thrusts up his left hand.
RADIO RAHEEM
It was with this hand that Brother
Cain iced his brother. LOVE!
He thrusts up his right hand.
RADIO RAHEEM
See these fingers, they lead
straight to the soul of man. The
right hand. The hand of LOVE!
Mookie is buggin'.
RADIO RAHEEM
The story of Life is this...
STATIC! One hand is always fighting
the other. Left Hand Hate is
kicking much ass and it looks like
Right Hand Love is finished. Hold
up. Stop the presses! Love is
coming back, yes, it's Love. Love
has won. Left Hand Hate KO'ed by
Love.
Mookie doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything.
RADIO RAHEEM
Brother, Mookie, if I love you I
love you, but if I hate you...
MOOKIE
I understand.
RADIO RAHEEM
I just copped them. Let me tell
you the story of Right-Hand--Left-
Hand--the tale of Good and Evil.
MOOKIE
I'm listening.
RADIO RAHEEM
HATE!
He thrusts up his left hand.
RADIO RAHEEM
It was with this hand that Brother
Cain iced his brother. LOVE!
He thrusts up his right hand.
RADIO RAHEEM
See these fingers, they lead
straight to the soul of man. The
right hand. The hand of LOVE!
Mookie is buggin'.
RADIO RAHEEM
The story of Life is this...
STATIC! One hand is always fighting
the other. Left Hand Hate is
kicking much ass and it looks like
Right Hand Love is finished. Hold
up. Stop the presses! Love is
coming back, yes, it's Love. Love
has won. Left Hand Hate KO'ed by
Love.
Mookie doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything.
RADIO RAHEEM
Brother, Mookie, if I love you I
love you, but if I hate you...
MOOKIE
I understand.
NEVER AGAIN?
Jerry Lewis has been on BBC Radio 5 Live this morning. Lewis is London correspondent for Israel Radio, and was the Zionist voice of the Israel v Gaza argument on BBC Radio 5 Live debate on Victoria Derbyshire on Monday. Lewis, like Daniel Finkelstein in The Times, is using the Holocaust as an excuse for the slaughter in Gaza. Lewis, like David Aaronovitch also of The Times, denies the analogy that Israelis in Gaza are the new Nazis in the Polish ghetto. And Lewis, like Finkelstein, claims to feel sympathy for those being slaughtered, particularly the children.
Never again! Lewis cried.
Never again!
Never again, as it is happening right now in Gaza, again, and again, and again...
Can you put tens of Gazan civilians in a house and then blow it up just because the Nazis (created by the Rothschilds and Warburgs for the purpose) did it to Jews 70 years ago?!
No you cannot. That is evil, selfish logic, and precisely the kind of evil, selfish logic the Warburgs and Rothschilds want to provoke.
Lewis, like Finkelstein, also uses the Holocaust to claim that because nobody defended the Jews against the Nazis then the Jews must defend themselves. The Israelis have created the very monsters they are defending themselves against!!
It really is absurd, ridiculous and plain daft.
Lewis, like Finkelstein and Aaronovitch, should carefully study the Warburgs and Rothschilds, self-proclaimed Kings of the Jews.
Never again? Lewis, like Finkelstein and Aaronovitch, say yes, because it's different when Zionists conduct ethnic cleansing and genocide. And they wonder why so many hate them?
As a MUFC fan the following has been adapted from the Glazier take-over, and is intended to help make the distinction between Jews and Zionists;
Love Jews. Hate Zionists.
Never again! Lewis cried.
Never again!
Never again, as it is happening right now in Gaza, again, and again, and again...
Can you put tens of Gazan civilians in a house and then blow it up just because the Nazis (created by the Rothschilds and Warburgs for the purpose) did it to Jews 70 years ago?!
No you cannot. That is evil, selfish logic, and precisely the kind of evil, selfish logic the Warburgs and Rothschilds want to provoke.
Lewis, like Finkelstein, also uses the Holocaust to claim that because nobody defended the Jews against the Nazis then the Jews must defend themselves. The Israelis have created the very monsters they are defending themselves against!!
It really is absurd, ridiculous and plain daft.
Lewis, like Finkelstein and Aaronovitch, should carefully study the Warburgs and Rothschilds, self-proclaimed Kings of the Jews.
Never again? Lewis, like Finkelstein and Aaronovitch, say yes, because it's different when Zionists conduct ethnic cleansing and genocide. And they wonder why so many hate them?
As a MUFC fan the following has been adapted from the Glazier take-over, and is intended to help make the distinction between Jews and Zionists;
Love Jews. Hate Zionists.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
UKRAINE
Ukraine and Georgia have recently both been targets for NATO expansion, suffering colour revolutions financed by Soros and Berezovsky.
Last August Georgia tried to provoke a larger scale war with tie-muncher's mad invasion of South Ossetia on the opening day of the Olympic Games.
Now it seems Ukraine is being advised by a Soros-owned group Blackstone which until July had Lord Jacob Rothschild as a director.
This is just another attempt to rile Russia and paint it as the cruel and heartless aggressor.
The following facts suggest otherwise.
And in case you've forgotten who Soros was, he made a billion by screwing our currency...causing Berezovsky to fall in love with him for it, describing the financial rape as "top-notch!".
========================================
From http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2009/01/07/soros-advised-ukrainian-government-cuts-gas-freezing-europe.html
Soros-Advised Ukrainian Government Cuts Gas To Freezing Europe
Increase Decrease
January 7, 2009 (LPAC) -- An economic and humanitarian emergency began to take shape across southern Europe today, after government-run Naftohaz of Ukraine cut the flow of Russian natural gas in three pipelines across Ukrainian territory, which supply Russian Gazprom's customers in Turkey, the Balkans, and other European countries. Some affected parts of Eastern Europe are in the grip of a deep cold wave, with temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees C (minus 4 degrees F).
The dispute between Naftohaz and Gazprom escalated Jan. 1 when Gazprom stopped supplying Ukraine itself with gas, for lack of a contract, and it has been complicated by faction fights between the Ukrainian President and Prime Minister. But the outstanding feature of the situation is that the Ukrainian government, which today left southern Europe freezing, is being advised on financial and economic policy by megaspeculator and ex-Nazi George Soros, during this same period. The Soros factor betrays the natural gas crisis as orchestrated from London.
British geopolitical strategy outlets, including the London Economist weekly, have repeatedly trumpeted their hopes for a Russia-Ukraine showdown to force all Eurasia onto the agenda of a new empire, run through the EU and NATO.
As of October, Russian and Ukrainian Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko had agreed on an outline for renewal of the Naftohaz-Gazprom contracts, based on a below-market price for the gas, no increase in the transit fees charged by Ukraine for Russian gas going to Europe, and payment in full of Ukraine's gas bills for 2008. Then Ukraine's main exports, steel and chemicals, collapsed. Its currency tumbled. Ukraine turned to the International Monetary Fund for a $16.5 billion loan in October, which the Economist Intelligence Unit stresses was chiefly for servicing the foreign debt of Ukrainian banks. As a term of that loan, Ukrainian sources report, the government agreed to hire the Soros-owned Blackstone Group as a consultant. Prime Minister Tymoshenko admits meeting with Soros in December.
As of Dec. 31, Gazprom reported receiving no payment for the Naftohaz arrears. The Russian side then dropped the offer of a below-market price and proposed $450/thousand cubic meters for 2009. Naftohaz was demanding an above-normal $2/thousand cubic meter transit fee for the gas Gazprom ships to Europe. Kiev broke off the talks on New Year's Eve. Gazprom cut the supply of gas for Ukraine itself, continuing to send the "transit gas" for Europe. Several days later, Gazprom accused Ukraine of diverting up to 65.3 million cubic meters, and reduced its total supply to the pipeline network accordingly, by about 15%. Last night, Ukraine retaliated by cutting Europe off.
Bulgaria, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Greece received no Russian gas via Ukraine today. The flow to the Czech Republic dropped by 75%, to Poland by 85%, to Austria by 90%, and to France by 70%. Slovakia, losing 70% of its supplies, discussed declaring a state of emergency, RIA Novosti reported. Bulgaria scrambled to prepare restart of a nuclear plant, shut down when it joined the EU three years ago. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, at a press conference today in Moscow, said Gazprom has boosted the supply of gas through the Blue Stream pipeline across the Black Sea to Turkey, and through the Yamal-Europe pipeline from northern Siberia through Belarus and Poland, as well as purchasing gas on the spot market and drawing down reserve pools it owns in Europe, in an attempt to meet its obligations.
This evening Prime Minister Putin jumped into the situation, meeting with Miller and the head of Russia's Customs Service (which had handed Gazprom a citation for shipping "contraband" -- gas without a contract -- to Ukraine). Putin, who had been phoned by the leaders of Bulgaria and Romania, ordered Miller to take all the Gazprom-Naftohaz contracts with him to show EU officials when he goes to Brussels for talks on the crisis tomorrow.
The Communist Party of Ukraine, a large group in the Supreme Rada, today called for an emergency session on the gas crisis and growing tension with Russia. Economist Natalia Vitrenko, chairman of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, issued a statement Jan. 3, calling Ukraine's negotiating posture a "dirty political attack" on Russia. She noted that the government took Ukraine into the World Trade Organization (WTO) last May, with a pledge to move to world market prices; furthermore, since Nov. 1 Naftohaz is charging its domestic customers $320/thousand cubic meters, or nearly 60% more than the $201 it was offering to pay Gazprom in 2009. Has George Soros advised the Ukrainian authorities how to spend the difference?
Last August Georgia tried to provoke a larger scale war with tie-muncher's mad invasion of South Ossetia on the opening day of the Olympic Games.
Now it seems Ukraine is being advised by a Soros-owned group Blackstone which until July had Lord Jacob Rothschild as a director.
This is just another attempt to rile Russia and paint it as the cruel and heartless aggressor.
The following facts suggest otherwise.
And in case you've forgotten who Soros was, he made a billion by screwing our currency...causing Berezovsky to fall in love with him for it, describing the financial rape as "top-notch!".
========================================
From http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2009/01/07/soros-advised-ukrainian-government-cuts-gas-freezing-europe.html
Soros-Advised Ukrainian Government Cuts Gas To Freezing Europe
Increase Decrease
January 7, 2009 (LPAC) -- An economic and humanitarian emergency began to take shape across southern Europe today, after government-run Naftohaz of Ukraine cut the flow of Russian natural gas in three pipelines across Ukrainian territory, which supply Russian Gazprom's customers in Turkey, the Balkans, and other European countries. Some affected parts of Eastern Europe are in the grip of a deep cold wave, with temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees C (minus 4 degrees F).
The dispute between Naftohaz and Gazprom escalated Jan. 1 when Gazprom stopped supplying Ukraine itself with gas, for lack of a contract, and it has been complicated by faction fights between the Ukrainian President and Prime Minister. But the outstanding feature of the situation is that the Ukrainian government, which today left southern Europe freezing, is being advised on financial and economic policy by megaspeculator and ex-Nazi George Soros, during this same period. The Soros factor betrays the natural gas crisis as orchestrated from London.
British geopolitical strategy outlets, including the London Economist weekly, have repeatedly trumpeted their hopes for a Russia-Ukraine showdown to force all Eurasia onto the agenda of a new empire, run through the EU and NATO.
As of October, Russian and Ukrainian Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko had agreed on an outline for renewal of the Naftohaz-Gazprom contracts, based on a below-market price for the gas, no increase in the transit fees charged by Ukraine for Russian gas going to Europe, and payment in full of Ukraine's gas bills for 2008. Then Ukraine's main exports, steel and chemicals, collapsed. Its currency tumbled. Ukraine turned to the International Monetary Fund for a $16.5 billion loan in October, which the Economist Intelligence Unit stresses was chiefly for servicing the foreign debt of Ukrainian banks. As a term of that loan, Ukrainian sources report, the government agreed to hire the Soros-owned Blackstone Group as a consultant. Prime Minister Tymoshenko admits meeting with Soros in December.
As of Dec. 31, Gazprom reported receiving no payment for the Naftohaz arrears. The Russian side then dropped the offer of a below-market price and proposed $450/thousand cubic meters for 2009. Naftohaz was demanding an above-normal $2/thousand cubic meter transit fee for the gas Gazprom ships to Europe. Kiev broke off the talks on New Year's Eve. Gazprom cut the supply of gas for Ukraine itself, continuing to send the "transit gas" for Europe. Several days later, Gazprom accused Ukraine of diverting up to 65.3 million cubic meters, and reduced its total supply to the pipeline network accordingly, by about 15%. Last night, Ukraine retaliated by cutting Europe off.
Bulgaria, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Greece received no Russian gas via Ukraine today. The flow to the Czech Republic dropped by 75%, to Poland by 85%, to Austria by 90%, and to France by 70%. Slovakia, losing 70% of its supplies, discussed declaring a state of emergency, RIA Novosti reported. Bulgaria scrambled to prepare restart of a nuclear plant, shut down when it joined the EU three years ago. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, at a press conference today in Moscow, said Gazprom has boosted the supply of gas through the Blue Stream pipeline across the Black Sea to Turkey, and through the Yamal-Europe pipeline from northern Siberia through Belarus and Poland, as well as purchasing gas on the spot market and drawing down reserve pools it owns in Europe, in an attempt to meet its obligations.
This evening Prime Minister Putin jumped into the situation, meeting with Miller and the head of Russia's Customs Service (which had handed Gazprom a citation for shipping "contraband" -- gas without a contract -- to Ukraine). Putin, who had been phoned by the leaders of Bulgaria and Romania, ordered Miller to take all the Gazprom-Naftohaz contracts with him to show EU officials when he goes to Brussels for talks on the crisis tomorrow.
The Communist Party of Ukraine, a large group in the Supreme Rada, today called for an emergency session on the gas crisis and growing tension with Russia. Economist Natalia Vitrenko, chairman of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, issued a statement Jan. 3, calling Ukraine's negotiating posture a "dirty political attack" on Russia. She noted that the government took Ukraine into the World Trade Organization (WTO) last May, with a pledge to move to world market prices; furthermore, since Nov. 1 Naftohaz is charging its domestic customers $320/thousand cubic meters, or nearly 60% more than the $201 it was offering to pay Gazprom in 2009. Has George Soros advised the Ukrainian authorities how to spend the difference?
WHEN SHOOTING FISH IN A BARREL IT'S MORE FUN IF THE FISH ARE ALIVE
Aren't those bloody Zionist Israelis so kind?
Hundreds of dead civilians.
Thousands more injured.
Many under rubble.
And now the kind Israelis are allowing a 3 hour ceasefire a day to allow in aid.
As Confucius said, when shooting fish in a barrel it's more fun if the fish are alive.
Hundreds of dead civilians.
Thousands more injured.
Many under rubble.
And now the kind Israelis are allowing a 3 hour ceasefire a day to allow in aid.
As Confucius said, when shooting fish in a barrel it's more fun if the fish are alive.
NOW DANIEL PIPES WANTS TO WIPE PALESTINE OFF THE MAP
This is getting outrageous!
A few days ago John Bolton proposed a three state solution, with no Palestine.
Now Daniel Pipes in The Jerusalem Post has proposed something very similar.
Note how Pipes refers to "the Palestinian Problem", as if the Palestinians are the problem.
===============================
From http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231167283823&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Jan 6, 2009 22:29 | Updated Jan 6, 2009 22:47
Solving the 'Palestinian problem'
By DANIEL PIPES
Israel's war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza.
Let's first review what we know does not and cannot work:
• Israeli control. Neither side wishes to continue the situation that began in 1967, when the IDF took control of a population that is religiously, culturally, economically and politically different and hostile.
• A Palestinian state. The 1993 Oslo Accords began this process but a toxic brew of anarchy, ideological extremism, anti-Semitism, jihadism and warlordism led to complete Palestinian failure.
• A binational state: Given the two populations' strong mutual antipathy, the prospect of a combined Israel-Palestine (what Muammar Gaddafi calls "Israstine") is as absurd as it seems.
Excluding these three prospects leaves only one practical approach, which worked tolerably well in the period 1948-67: Shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule, with Amman ruling the West Bank and Cairo running Gaza.
TO BE sure, this back-to-the-future approach inspires little enthusiasm. Not only was Jordanian-Egyptian rule undistinguished, but resurrecting this arrangement will frustrate Palestinian impulses, be they nationalist or Islamist. Further, Cairo never wanted Gaza and has vehemently rejected its return. Accordingly, one academic analyst dismisses this idea as "an elusive fantasy that can only obscure real and difficult choices."
It is not. The failures of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and the "peace process," has prompted rethinking in Amman and Jerusalem. Indeed, the Christian Science Monitor's Ilene Prusher found already in 2007 that the idea of a West Bank-Jordan confederation "seems to be gaining traction on both sides of the Jordan River." The Jordanian government, which enthusiastically annexed the West Bank in 1950 and abandoned its claims only under duress in 1988, shows signs of wanting to return. Dan Diker and Pinhas Inbari documented for Middle East Quarterly in 2006 how the PA's "failure to assert control and become a politically viable entity has caused Amman to reconsider whether a hands-off strategy toward the West Bank is in its best interests."
Israeli officialdom has also shown itself open to this idea, occasionally calling for Jordanian troops to enter the West Bank.
Despairing of self-rule, some Palestinians welcome the Jordanian option. An unnamed senior PA official told Diker and Inbari that a form of federation or confederation with Jordan offers "the only reasonable, stable, long-term solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
Hanna Seniora opined that "the current weakened prospects for a two-state solution forces us to revisit the possibility of a confederation with Jordan." The New York Times's Hassan Fattah quotes a Palestinian in Jordan: "Everything has been ruined for us - we've been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left. It would be better if Jordan ran things in Palestine, if King Abdullah could take control of the West Bank."
NOR IS this just talk: Diker and Inbari report that back-channel PA-Jordan negotiations in 2003-04 "resulted in an agreement in principle to send 30,000 Badr Force members," to the West Bank.
And while Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak announced a year ago that "Gaza is not part of Egypt, nor will it ever be," his is hardly the last word. First, Mubarak notwithstanding, Egyptians overwhelmingly want a strong tie to Gaza; Hamas concurs; and Israeli leaders sometimes agree. So the basis for an overhaul in policy exists.
Secondly, Gaza is arguably more a part of Egypt than of "Palestine." During most of the Islamic period, it was either controlled by Cairo or part of Egypt administratively. Gazan colloquial Arabic is identical to what Egyptians living in Sinai speak. Economically, Gaza has most connections to Egypt. Hamas itself derives from the Muslim Brethren, an Egyptian organization.
Is it time to think of Gazans as Egyptians?
Thirdly, Jerusalem could out-maneuver Mubarak. Were it to announce a date when it ends the provisioning of all water, electricity, food, medicine and other trade, and accepts enhanced Egyptian security in Gaza, Cairo would have to take responsibility for Gaza. Among other advantages, this would make it accountable for Gazan security, finally putting an end to the thousands of Hamas rocket and mortar assaults.
The Jordan-Egypt option quickens no pulses, but that may be its value. It offers a uniquely sober way to solve the "Palestinian problem."
The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
A few days ago John Bolton proposed a three state solution, with no Palestine.
Now Daniel Pipes in The Jerusalem Post has proposed something very similar.
Note how Pipes refers to "the Palestinian Problem", as if the Palestinians are the problem.
===============================
From http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231167283823&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Jan 6, 2009 22:29 | Updated Jan 6, 2009 22:47
Solving the 'Palestinian problem'
By DANIEL PIPES
Israel's war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza.
Let's first review what we know does not and cannot work:
• Israeli control. Neither side wishes to continue the situation that began in 1967, when the IDF took control of a population that is religiously, culturally, economically and politically different and hostile.
• A Palestinian state. The 1993 Oslo Accords began this process but a toxic brew of anarchy, ideological extremism, anti-Semitism, jihadism and warlordism led to complete Palestinian failure.
• A binational state: Given the two populations' strong mutual antipathy, the prospect of a combined Israel-Palestine (what Muammar Gaddafi calls "Israstine") is as absurd as it seems.
Excluding these three prospects leaves only one practical approach, which worked tolerably well in the period 1948-67: Shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule, with Amman ruling the West Bank and Cairo running Gaza.
TO BE sure, this back-to-the-future approach inspires little enthusiasm. Not only was Jordanian-Egyptian rule undistinguished, but resurrecting this arrangement will frustrate Palestinian impulses, be they nationalist or Islamist. Further, Cairo never wanted Gaza and has vehemently rejected its return. Accordingly, one academic analyst dismisses this idea as "an elusive fantasy that can only obscure real and difficult choices."
It is not. The failures of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and the "peace process," has prompted rethinking in Amman and Jerusalem. Indeed, the Christian Science Monitor's Ilene Prusher found already in 2007 that the idea of a West Bank-Jordan confederation "seems to be gaining traction on both sides of the Jordan River." The Jordanian government, which enthusiastically annexed the West Bank in 1950 and abandoned its claims only under duress in 1988, shows signs of wanting to return. Dan Diker and Pinhas Inbari documented for Middle East Quarterly in 2006 how the PA's "failure to assert control and become a politically viable entity has caused Amman to reconsider whether a hands-off strategy toward the West Bank is in its best interests."
Israeli officialdom has also shown itself open to this idea, occasionally calling for Jordanian troops to enter the West Bank.
Despairing of self-rule, some Palestinians welcome the Jordanian option. An unnamed senior PA official told Diker and Inbari that a form of federation or confederation with Jordan offers "the only reasonable, stable, long-term solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
Hanna Seniora opined that "the current weakened prospects for a two-state solution forces us to revisit the possibility of a confederation with Jordan." The New York Times's Hassan Fattah quotes a Palestinian in Jordan: "Everything has been ruined for us - we've been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left. It would be better if Jordan ran things in Palestine, if King Abdullah could take control of the West Bank."
NOR IS this just talk: Diker and Inbari report that back-channel PA-Jordan negotiations in 2003-04 "resulted in an agreement in principle to send 30,000 Badr Force members," to the West Bank.
And while Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak announced a year ago that "Gaza is not part of Egypt, nor will it ever be," his is hardly the last word. First, Mubarak notwithstanding, Egyptians overwhelmingly want a strong tie to Gaza; Hamas concurs; and Israeli leaders sometimes agree. So the basis for an overhaul in policy exists.
Secondly, Gaza is arguably more a part of Egypt than of "Palestine." During most of the Islamic period, it was either controlled by Cairo or part of Egypt administratively. Gazan colloquial Arabic is identical to what Egyptians living in Sinai speak. Economically, Gaza has most connections to Egypt. Hamas itself derives from the Muslim Brethren, an Egyptian organization.
Is it time to think of Gazans as Egyptians?
Thirdly, Jerusalem could out-maneuver Mubarak. Were it to announce a date when it ends the provisioning of all water, electricity, food, medicine and other trade, and accepts enhanced Egyptian security in Gaza, Cairo would have to take responsibility for Gaza. Among other advantages, this would make it accountable for Gazan security, finally putting an end to the thousands of Hamas rocket and mortar assaults.
The Jordan-Egypt option quickens no pulses, but that may be its value. It offers a uniquely sober way to solve the "Palestinian problem."
The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
DAVID ICKE WINS HIS COURT CASE
Brilliant!
I donated £100 to the David Icke Legal Defence Fund when I first heard of his case.
I'm happy to have financed in a small way a victory for truth and bravery.
I donated £100 to the David Icke Legal Defence Fund when I first heard of his case.
I'm happy to have financed in a small way a victory for truth and bravery.
REMEMBER REMEMBER THE 22ND JULY 1946
On the 22nd July 1946 Jewish terrorists blew up The King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
They dressed as local Arabs.
They planted bombs in milk churns.
They killed 91 people, many of whom were British.
The King David Hotel was being used by the ruling British authorities as a HQ.
This terrorist attack was celebrated in 2006 by The Menachim Begin Centre, named after Menachim Begin who ran the operation and later became Prime Minister of Israel, and was attended by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Why the fuck are we supporting these trigger-happy murdering senseless Zionist thugs?
The answer lies in Bilderberg.
Gordon Brown : Bilderberg 1991.
Tony "AWOL" Blair : Bilderberg 1993, 1998, JP Morgan Chase, AWOL Special Peace Envoy to the Middle East(!?)
They dressed as local Arabs.
They planted bombs in milk churns.
They killed 91 people, many of whom were British.
The King David Hotel was being used by the ruling British authorities as a HQ.
This terrorist attack was celebrated in 2006 by The Menachim Begin Centre, named after Menachim Begin who ran the operation and later became Prime Minister of Israel, and was attended by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Why the fuck are we supporting these trigger-happy murdering senseless Zionist thugs?
The answer lies in Bilderberg.
Gordon Brown : Bilderberg 1991.
Tony "AWOL" Blair : Bilderberg 1993, 1998, JP Morgan Chase, AWOL Special Peace Envoy to the Middle East(!?)
OH BOY! IT'S GETTING VERY, VERY UGLY.
Who are the latest terrorists to be blown away?
10 kids?!
In a UN school?!
Trigger-happy Zionist thugs! (defend that one, Aaronovitch)
If they're not killing children they're killing they're own!
Just one rocket will mean victory for Hamas.
How much has Operation Cast Lead cost?
During the ceasefire just one rocket, repeat just one rocket, was fired from Gaza last October, and nobody died. How many rockets have been fired since Operation Cast Lead started? How many Israelis have died?
Absolutely totally senseless murdering Zionist thugs!!
The money for Cast Lead would have been better spent on building Gazan infrastructure, not destroying it.
10 kids?!
In a UN school?!
Trigger-happy Zionist thugs! (defend that one, Aaronovitch)
If they're not killing children they're killing they're own!
Just one rocket will mean victory for Hamas.
How much has Operation Cast Lead cost?
During the ceasefire just one rocket, repeat just one rocket, was fired from Gaza last October, and nobody died. How many rockets have been fired since Operation Cast Lead started? How many Israelis have died?
Absolutely totally senseless murdering Zionist thugs!!
The money for Cast Lead would have been better spent on building Gazan infrastructure, not destroying it.
WHO DOES DAVID AARONOVITCH WORK FOR?
Last week Aaronovitch wrote a harsh piece that we should not fill ourselves with false grievance for the deaths of innocent Palestinians.
Today Aaronovitch has written that we should be accurate about history. He has a dig at George Galloway, Brian Eno, Ken Livingstone, who all compare Gaza to a Polish Ghetto controlled by the Nazis. Aaronovitch’s point is that the scale is incomparable, both in terms of number of deaths and the manner of the deaths.
This is true.
But that is as far as Aaronovitch’s history goes.
It does not go back to the attempts of total weirdo Sabbatai Zevi to take Palestine from the Ottomans.
It does not go back to the Rothschild/Montefiore attempts to colonize Palestine in the 19th Century.
It does not go back to the deliberate creation of Hitler and the Nazi state by the Warburgs, close family friends of the Rothschilds, and the transfer agreement between the Zionists and the Nazis.
It does not go back to the Jewish immigration that was received by the Palestinians with mass riots and anger, a sign of things to come which manifested on 9/11.
And it definitely does not go back to how the Balfour Declaration has been torn up and ignored by the Zionists ( and I’m still waiting for a comment, Tzipi).
What we are seeing in Gaza is the next stage of ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
We see it in John Bolton’s public call for a three state solution without any Palestine whatsoever!
They don’t want any Palestinians in Israel whatsoever. It's obvious. They've illegally walled off the West Bank. Now they're invading Gaza.
=============================
From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5454670.ece
Hamas or Hannas, they're not black and white
Good and bad, victim and murderer, Jew or Palestinian or Nazi sympathiser... we can't afford our simplistic arguments
David Aaronovitch
For months - years even - the historical twinning that some campaigners have chosen for the situation in Gaza has been with the Warsaw ghetto. There'll probably be a sign up soon, because in the past week Ken Livingstone, the activist-musician Brian Eno and George Galloway have all made the comparison.
“Gaza is a ghetto,” said Mr Livingstone, "in exactly the same way that the Warsaw Ghetto was, and people are trapped in it”; while Eno predicted: “They [the Israelis] will continue to create a Warsaw Ghetto in the Middle East.” The less-restrained Mr Galloway pronounced: “Those murdering them [the occupants of Gaza] are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1942.”
Busy people sometimes hurry their reading. Mr Galloway, for example, may only have skimmed the day-by-day reports made by SS Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. On the third day of the operation Stroop tells how “large numbers of Jews - entire families - already on fire, jumped from the windows. We made sure that these, as well as the other Jews, were liquidated immediately.”
Stroop's operation was made necessary because the inhabitants of the ghetto took up what few arms they had, having already seen more than half their number transported to extermination camps - a figure which, if translated into Gaza terms, would mean the deliberate killing of 500,000 Palestinians.
A year earlier in this place that was, pace Livingstone, “exactly” a ghetto in the same way as Gaza, the death rate from starvation and disease was more than 4,000 a month - the equivalent of 12,000 in the Gazan “ghetto”. On these grounds alone, never mind any others (rockets, Hamas, etc), we may conclude that Gaza 2009 and Warsaw 1943 have very little in common.
So why the philistine insistence on this particular match? Partly, I imagine, so that the matcher can mention the “irony” of Jews supposedly doing to others what the Nazis “did to them” - as if there weren't a thousand other closer, but far less narratively satisfying, comparisons.
But this ahistorical hyperbole is also the product of a kind of binary thinking, the belief that there can only be two kinds of anything, and two possible responses: there's the good and the bad; there's the victim and the murderer. The only way Jews can shed their unique victim status is if they take on the mantle of the worst kind of murderer, the mantle of Stroop. The only way we can think about the Holocaust (or subsequent little holocausts) is that those who carried it out are so unlike us that they are beyond comprehension.
Strangely this thought did not begin for me with events in Gaza, but in the reactions to a piece of cinema released here last week. Ten years ago I read a book by a German author, Bernhard Schlink, called The Reader, which told the story of a young German boy who, in 1958, falls for an older woman. She becomes his first lover, but then disappears from his life. A few years later, as a law student he sees the same woman - Hanna - on trial for crimes committed as a guard at a concentration camp during the war. Gradually he realises that the key to much of her behaviour, exciting and appalling, lies in something as banal as her shame at her own illiteracy.
The film version, starring Kate Winslet, directed by Stephen Daldry and with a screenplay by David Hare, has met with a surprisingly vigorous dusting-up from some of the Anglophone world's finest film critics. The objections to style or cinematography vary, but those to moral purpose are very similar. “Outrageously,” said the New York Times reviewer, “Hanna is a victim too, because she took the guard job only to hide her illiteracy, as if illiteracy were an excuse for barbarism.”
Anthony Lane, of The New Yorker, more languidly complained that the audience is “encouraged to muse upon the cultural shortcomings, or improvements, in the life of an ageing member of the SS. This is not an issue that most of us feel the need to worry about.”
As an assertion, it seems to me, this is more or less completely wrong. But I'll come to that in a minute, after having said that I think neither the book nor the film deserve such castigation. On the contrary. Neither invite you to think that Hanna is a good person or a victim, indeed she is rather animalistic, manipulative and lacking in imagination. And neither excuses barbarism in any way. But the story suggests that, if you didn't know your lover was once a concentration camp guard, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell.
Wilfully, almost, the critics have missed the point. One of the most important exchanges takes place in the courtroom. Hanna, who joined the SS as a guard in 1943, is being interrogated by the judge about how selections were made in her work camp for those who would be sent to the gas chambers. She answers matter-of-factly that each of the six guards selected ten women every month. The judge is horrified. “So what would you have done?” she asks, genuinely bemused.
In an interview Daldry talked about how the real trials were reported in the German press in the 1960s. Those in the dock had been depicted as “obviously monsters, sadists, mad people, criminally insane. They must be because only the criminally insane could have been involved in this.” He was talking about the binary, evading thought. Schlink, Daldry and Hare are about challenging this evasion.
So when Hanna asks “What would you have done?” the answer is, how far back shall we go? When 13.75 million German voters put their cross against the overtly Jew-hating National Socialist list in July 1932, didn't they make themselves complicit in the events that ended up with Hanna's choice? Or, to put it another way, couldn't people that you might fall in love with, be capable - depending on the circumstances, created by millions of others - of doing terrible things? That's the question the New Yorker critic so disdains.
It has always seemed to me that the most awful question raised by the Holocaust is not about victimhood, but about being the perpetrator, and how that declension can take place. And in that context I want to ask Brian Eno, whether he has ever - in a recording break - watched Hamas TV and thought to compare it to the propaganda, much earlier, of those who later gave the Hannas their jobs?
Today Aaronovitch has written that we should be accurate about history. He has a dig at George Galloway, Brian Eno, Ken Livingstone, who all compare Gaza to a Polish Ghetto controlled by the Nazis. Aaronovitch’s point is that the scale is incomparable, both in terms of number of deaths and the manner of the deaths.
This is true.
But that is as far as Aaronovitch’s history goes.
It does not go back to the attempts of total weirdo Sabbatai Zevi to take Palestine from the Ottomans.
It does not go back to the Rothschild/Montefiore attempts to colonize Palestine in the 19th Century.
It does not go back to the deliberate creation of Hitler and the Nazi state by the Warburgs, close family friends of the Rothschilds, and the transfer agreement between the Zionists and the Nazis.
It does not go back to the Jewish immigration that was received by the Palestinians with mass riots and anger, a sign of things to come which manifested on 9/11.
And it definitely does not go back to how the Balfour Declaration has been torn up and ignored by the Zionists ( and I’m still waiting for a comment, Tzipi).
What we are seeing in Gaza is the next stage of ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
We see it in John Bolton’s public call for a three state solution without any Palestine whatsoever!
They don’t want any Palestinians in Israel whatsoever. It's obvious. They've illegally walled off the West Bank. Now they're invading Gaza.
=============================
From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5454670.ece
Hamas or Hannas, they're not black and white
Good and bad, victim and murderer, Jew or Palestinian or Nazi sympathiser... we can't afford our simplistic arguments
David Aaronovitch
For months - years even - the historical twinning that some campaigners have chosen for the situation in Gaza has been with the Warsaw ghetto. There'll probably be a sign up soon, because in the past week Ken Livingstone, the activist-musician Brian Eno and George Galloway have all made the comparison.
“Gaza is a ghetto,” said Mr Livingstone, "in exactly the same way that the Warsaw Ghetto was, and people are trapped in it”; while Eno predicted: “They [the Israelis] will continue to create a Warsaw Ghetto in the Middle East.” The less-restrained Mr Galloway pronounced: “Those murdering them [the occupants of Gaza] are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1942.”
Busy people sometimes hurry their reading. Mr Galloway, for example, may only have skimmed the day-by-day reports made by SS Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. On the third day of the operation Stroop tells how “large numbers of Jews - entire families - already on fire, jumped from the windows. We made sure that these, as well as the other Jews, were liquidated immediately.”
Stroop's operation was made necessary because the inhabitants of the ghetto took up what few arms they had, having already seen more than half their number transported to extermination camps - a figure which, if translated into Gaza terms, would mean the deliberate killing of 500,000 Palestinians.
A year earlier in this place that was, pace Livingstone, “exactly” a ghetto in the same way as Gaza, the death rate from starvation and disease was more than 4,000 a month - the equivalent of 12,000 in the Gazan “ghetto”. On these grounds alone, never mind any others (rockets, Hamas, etc), we may conclude that Gaza 2009 and Warsaw 1943 have very little in common.
So why the philistine insistence on this particular match? Partly, I imagine, so that the matcher can mention the “irony” of Jews supposedly doing to others what the Nazis “did to them” - as if there weren't a thousand other closer, but far less narratively satisfying, comparisons.
But this ahistorical hyperbole is also the product of a kind of binary thinking, the belief that there can only be two kinds of anything, and two possible responses: there's the good and the bad; there's the victim and the murderer. The only way Jews can shed their unique victim status is if they take on the mantle of the worst kind of murderer, the mantle of Stroop. The only way we can think about the Holocaust (or subsequent little holocausts) is that those who carried it out are so unlike us that they are beyond comprehension.
Strangely this thought did not begin for me with events in Gaza, but in the reactions to a piece of cinema released here last week. Ten years ago I read a book by a German author, Bernhard Schlink, called The Reader, which told the story of a young German boy who, in 1958, falls for an older woman. She becomes his first lover, but then disappears from his life. A few years later, as a law student he sees the same woman - Hanna - on trial for crimes committed as a guard at a concentration camp during the war. Gradually he realises that the key to much of her behaviour, exciting and appalling, lies in something as banal as her shame at her own illiteracy.
The film version, starring Kate Winslet, directed by Stephen Daldry and with a screenplay by David Hare, has met with a surprisingly vigorous dusting-up from some of the Anglophone world's finest film critics. The objections to style or cinematography vary, but those to moral purpose are very similar. “Outrageously,” said the New York Times reviewer, “Hanna is a victim too, because she took the guard job only to hide her illiteracy, as if illiteracy were an excuse for barbarism.”
Anthony Lane, of The New Yorker, more languidly complained that the audience is “encouraged to muse upon the cultural shortcomings, or improvements, in the life of an ageing member of the SS. This is not an issue that most of us feel the need to worry about.”
As an assertion, it seems to me, this is more or less completely wrong. But I'll come to that in a minute, after having said that I think neither the book nor the film deserve such castigation. On the contrary. Neither invite you to think that Hanna is a good person or a victim, indeed she is rather animalistic, manipulative and lacking in imagination. And neither excuses barbarism in any way. But the story suggests that, if you didn't know your lover was once a concentration camp guard, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell.
Wilfully, almost, the critics have missed the point. One of the most important exchanges takes place in the courtroom. Hanna, who joined the SS as a guard in 1943, is being interrogated by the judge about how selections were made in her work camp for those who would be sent to the gas chambers. She answers matter-of-factly that each of the six guards selected ten women every month. The judge is horrified. “So what would you have done?” she asks, genuinely bemused.
In an interview Daldry talked about how the real trials were reported in the German press in the 1960s. Those in the dock had been depicted as “obviously monsters, sadists, mad people, criminally insane. They must be because only the criminally insane could have been involved in this.” He was talking about the binary, evading thought. Schlink, Daldry and Hare are about challenging this evasion.
So when Hanna asks “What would you have done?” the answer is, how far back shall we go? When 13.75 million German voters put their cross against the overtly Jew-hating National Socialist list in July 1932, didn't they make themselves complicit in the events that ended up with Hanna's choice? Or, to put it another way, couldn't people that you might fall in love with, be capable - depending on the circumstances, created by millions of others - of doing terrible things? That's the question the New Yorker critic so disdains.
It has always seemed to me that the most awful question raised by the Holocaust is not about victimhood, but about being the perpetrator, and how that declension can take place. And in that context I want to ask Brian Eno, whether he has ever - in a recording break - watched Hamas TV and thought to compare it to the propaganda, much earlier, of those who later gave the Hannas their jobs?
MORE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT EXISTENCE OF OPERATION JUSTIFIED VENGEANCE
The following strongly supports the existence of Operation Justified Vengeance, the long term plan to divide-and-conquer the Palestinian Occupied Territories, with Hamas controlling Gaza.
It describes how control of Gaza was guided into the hands of Hamas by none other than the Bush administration.
And the commander of al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade is quoted as saying,
"We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves [the Bush administration's] overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise."
Hence mass murderer Bush's public support for the Israeli slaughter.
=======================================
From http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=14005
Bush Plan Eliminated Obstacle to Gaza Assault
by Gareth Porter
Until mid-2007, there was a serious political obstacle to a massive conventional war by Israel against Hamas in Gaza: the fact that Hamas had won free and fair elections for the Palestinian parliament and was still the leading faction in a fully legitimate government.
But the George W. Bush administration helped Israel eliminate that obstacle by deliberately provoking Hamas to seize power in Gaza. That plan was aimed at getting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the democratically elected Hamas government – something Bush had tried unsuccessfully to do for many months.
Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Palestinian parliament in the January 2006 elections, and the following month, the Palestinian Legislative Council voted for a new government under Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The Bush administration immediately began to use its control over the "Quartet" (the U.S., European Union, United Nations, and Russia) to try to reverse the results of the election.
The Quartet responded to the Hamas victory by demanding that Hamas renounce all armed resistance to Israel and even "disarm" before a political solution was reached. That was in effect a demand that Israel be allowed to use its military and economic controls over the West Bank and Gaza to impose its own unilateral solution on the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration and the Europeans cut off all financing for the Palestinian government, while Israel refused to hand over to the Palestinian authorities the VAT and customs duties it collected on behalf of the Palestinians under the Paris Protocol signed with the PLO as part of the Oslo Accords.
When Abbas continued to resist U.S. demands for an end to the elected government, both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told him at the United Nations in September 2006 that they would not accept a Palestinian government with Hamas participation.
Then Rice was dispatched to Ramallah in early October 2006 to tighten the screws on the Palestinian president. She demanded a commitment from Abbas to dissolve the Haniyeh government within two weeks, then accepted his promise to do so within four weeks, according to a later U.S. State Department memorandum published in Vanity Fair magazine.
There was one problem, however, with the U.S. demand: under Article 45 of the Palestinian Authority's "Basic Law," Abbas could fire the prime minister, but he could not appoint a new one who did not represent the majority party in the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Abbas failed to act on the dissolution promise, so the Bush administration gave him a memo demanding that Hamas be given a "clear choice, with a clear deadline" to accept or reject "a new government that meets the Quartet principles." The memo, published in part last January in Vanity Fair, said that if Hamas refused that demand, "you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform."
It further demanded that Abbas "strengthen his team" by bringing in "credible figures of strong standing in the international community." That was a reference to the longtime director of Fatah's paramilitary forces, Muhammad Dahlan, who had long been regarded as the candidate of the Bush administration and its allies. In April 2003, Yasser Arafat had been under pressure from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to name Dahlan as head of Palestinian security.
In late 2006, Rice got Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to agree to provide covert military training and money to equip a major increase in Dahlan's militia.
But there was another element of the Bush administration plan. It encouraged Dahlan to carry out attacks against the Hamas security and political infrastructure in Gaza, which were well-known to be far stronger than that of Abbas' Fatah faction. In a later interview with Vanity Fair, Dahlan admitted that he had carried out "very clever warfare" against Hamas in Gaza for many months.
Other sources said that Dahlan's militia was carrying out torture and kidnappings of Hamas security personnel.
Alvaro de Soto, then UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, wrote in his confidential "End of Mission Report" that the U.S. "clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas." He recalled that the "U.S. envoy" to a Feb. 2, 2007, meeting of the Quartet in Washington had twice declared "how much I like this violence," because "it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas."
That U.S. envoy was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The Bush administration seemed to want Hamas to know about its plan to help Fatah use force against the Hamas organization in Gaza. A Jan. 5, 2007, Reuters story datelined Jerusalem revealed an internal U.S. document showing that the United States had pledged $86 million to "strengthen and reform elements of the Palestinian security sector controlled by the PA presidency" and "dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza."
When Abbas negotiated a new agreement with Hamas in Mecca in February 2007 on a Palestinian unity government, the Bush administration responded by drafting a secret "action plan for the Palestinian presidency" which threatened that the "international community" would "no longer deal exclusively with the presidency" if it did not go along with U.S. demands, and that "[m]any countries in the EU and the G8" would "start looking for more credible interlocutors on the Palestinian side who can deliver on key issues of security and governance."
The plan, dated March 2, 2007, called for Abbas to "start taking necessary action against groups undermining the cease-fire with the goal of ensuring all armed groups within Palestine security institutions in stages (between 2007 and 2008)." It promised to help Abbas to "impose necessary order on the Palestinian street" through "superiority" of Fatah forces over Hamas, after which there would be new elections in autumn 2007.
Again that U.S. plan was not kept secret but was leaked in April 2007 by the Jordanian newspaper Al-Majd. That could only have happened if Jordanian intelligence services, which cooperative very closely with the United States, made the decision to leak it to the press.
Then, on June 7, 2007, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz revealed that Israel had been asked to authorize the shipment of dozens of Egyptian armored cars, hundreds of rockets, and thousands of hand grenades for the Fatah security forces.
The leaked plans for a military buildup were an open invitation to Hamas to take preemptive action. The day after the Ha'aretz story, Hamas launched a campaign that eliminated the Fatah security presence in Gaza in five days.
The day after the complete defeat of Dahlan's forces in Gaza, Abbas dissolved the Haniyeh unity government and named his own prime minister, in violation of the Palestinian charter.
The rout of Dahlan's forces was a predictable consequence of the Bush administration's policy. As the commander of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Khalid Jaberi, told Vanity Fair's David Rose, "We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves [the Bush administration's] overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise."
But the Bush administration had not only accomplished its goal of eliminating a Hamas-dominated government; it had also set up a new argument that could later be used to justify an all-out Israeli offensive in Gaza: that Hamas had mounted an "illegal coup" in Gaza. That was the term that Rice used on Jan. 2 in justifying the Israeli operations against Gaza.
(Inter Press Service)
It describes how control of Gaza was guided into the hands of Hamas by none other than the Bush administration.
And the commander of al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade is quoted as saying,
"We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves [the Bush administration's] overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise."
Hence mass murderer Bush's public support for the Israeli slaughter.
=======================================
From http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=14005
Bush Plan Eliminated Obstacle to Gaza Assault
by Gareth Porter
Until mid-2007, there was a serious political obstacle to a massive conventional war by Israel against Hamas in Gaza: the fact that Hamas had won free and fair elections for the Palestinian parliament and was still the leading faction in a fully legitimate government.
But the George W. Bush administration helped Israel eliminate that obstacle by deliberately provoking Hamas to seize power in Gaza. That plan was aimed at getting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the democratically elected Hamas government – something Bush had tried unsuccessfully to do for many months.
Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Palestinian parliament in the January 2006 elections, and the following month, the Palestinian Legislative Council voted for a new government under Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The Bush administration immediately began to use its control over the "Quartet" (the U.S., European Union, United Nations, and Russia) to try to reverse the results of the election.
The Quartet responded to the Hamas victory by demanding that Hamas renounce all armed resistance to Israel and even "disarm" before a political solution was reached. That was in effect a demand that Israel be allowed to use its military and economic controls over the West Bank and Gaza to impose its own unilateral solution on the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration and the Europeans cut off all financing for the Palestinian government, while Israel refused to hand over to the Palestinian authorities the VAT and customs duties it collected on behalf of the Palestinians under the Paris Protocol signed with the PLO as part of the Oslo Accords.
When Abbas continued to resist U.S. demands for an end to the elected government, both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told him at the United Nations in September 2006 that they would not accept a Palestinian government with Hamas participation.
Then Rice was dispatched to Ramallah in early October 2006 to tighten the screws on the Palestinian president. She demanded a commitment from Abbas to dissolve the Haniyeh government within two weeks, then accepted his promise to do so within four weeks, according to a later U.S. State Department memorandum published in Vanity Fair magazine.
There was one problem, however, with the U.S. demand: under Article 45 of the Palestinian Authority's "Basic Law," Abbas could fire the prime minister, but he could not appoint a new one who did not represent the majority party in the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Abbas failed to act on the dissolution promise, so the Bush administration gave him a memo demanding that Hamas be given a "clear choice, with a clear deadline" to accept or reject "a new government that meets the Quartet principles." The memo, published in part last January in Vanity Fair, said that if Hamas refused that demand, "you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform."
It further demanded that Abbas "strengthen his team" by bringing in "credible figures of strong standing in the international community." That was a reference to the longtime director of Fatah's paramilitary forces, Muhammad Dahlan, who had long been regarded as the candidate of the Bush administration and its allies. In April 2003, Yasser Arafat had been under pressure from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to name Dahlan as head of Palestinian security.
In late 2006, Rice got Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to agree to provide covert military training and money to equip a major increase in Dahlan's militia.
But there was another element of the Bush administration plan. It encouraged Dahlan to carry out attacks against the Hamas security and political infrastructure in Gaza, which were well-known to be far stronger than that of Abbas' Fatah faction. In a later interview with Vanity Fair, Dahlan admitted that he had carried out "very clever warfare" against Hamas in Gaza for many months.
Other sources said that Dahlan's militia was carrying out torture and kidnappings of Hamas security personnel.
Alvaro de Soto, then UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, wrote in his confidential "End of Mission Report" that the U.S. "clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas." He recalled that the "U.S. envoy" to a Feb. 2, 2007, meeting of the Quartet in Washington had twice declared "how much I like this violence," because "it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas."
That U.S. envoy was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The Bush administration seemed to want Hamas to know about its plan to help Fatah use force against the Hamas organization in Gaza. A Jan. 5, 2007, Reuters story datelined Jerusalem revealed an internal U.S. document showing that the United States had pledged $86 million to "strengthen and reform elements of the Palestinian security sector controlled by the PA presidency" and "dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza."
When Abbas negotiated a new agreement with Hamas in Mecca in February 2007 on a Palestinian unity government, the Bush administration responded by drafting a secret "action plan for the Palestinian presidency" which threatened that the "international community" would "no longer deal exclusively with the presidency" if it did not go along with U.S. demands, and that "[m]any countries in the EU and the G8" would "start looking for more credible interlocutors on the Palestinian side who can deliver on key issues of security and governance."
The plan, dated March 2, 2007, called for Abbas to "start taking necessary action against groups undermining the cease-fire with the goal of ensuring all armed groups within Palestine security institutions in stages (between 2007 and 2008)." It promised to help Abbas to "impose necessary order on the Palestinian street" through "superiority" of Fatah forces over Hamas, after which there would be new elections in autumn 2007.
Again that U.S. plan was not kept secret but was leaked in April 2007 by the Jordanian newspaper Al-Majd. That could only have happened if Jordanian intelligence services, which cooperative very closely with the United States, made the decision to leak it to the press.
Then, on June 7, 2007, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz revealed that Israel had been asked to authorize the shipment of dozens of Egyptian armored cars, hundreds of rockets, and thousands of hand grenades for the Fatah security forces.
The leaked plans for a military buildup were an open invitation to Hamas to take preemptive action. The day after the Ha'aretz story, Hamas launched a campaign that eliminated the Fatah security presence in Gaza in five days.
The day after the complete defeat of Dahlan's forces in Gaza, Abbas dissolved the Haniyeh unity government and named his own prime minister, in violation of the Palestinian charter.
The rout of Dahlan's forces was a predictable consequence of the Bush administration's policy. As the commander of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Khalid Jaberi, told Vanity Fair's David Rose, "We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves [the Bush administration's] overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise."
But the Bush administration had not only accomplished its goal of eliminating a Hamas-dominated government; it had also set up a new argument that could later be used to justify an all-out Israeli offensive in Gaza: that Hamas had mounted an "illegal coup" in Gaza. That was the term that Rice used on Jan. 2 in justifying the Israeli operations against Gaza.
(Inter Press Service)
EVEN RACHMAN CONCEDES JUST ONE ROCKET FROM GAZA WILL MEAN VICTORY FOR HAMAS
Gideon Rachman, the now notorious pro-world government Bilderberger at the FT, has conceded that just one rocket from Gaza means victory for Hamas.
Rachman, surprisingly, talks some sense this time, perhaps because there is very little history involved in his analysis. This leads me to think that if Rachman did learn some real, hard, true history instead of the spoon-fed history from Cambridge then he may come to the same conclusion that more and more are coming to every day; there is a global conspiracy to create a world government of microchipped people.
===================================
From http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/34c5a426-db49-11dd-be53-000077b07658.html
Israel’s self-defeating Gaza offensive
By Gideon Rachman
Published: January 5 2009 19:04 | Last updated: January 5 2009 19:04
By sending ground troops into the Gaza Strip, Israel has crossed a line that brings it perilously close to strategic failure.
Just as with the Lebanon war of 2006, an air bombardment has failed to stop rocket fire into Israel – and has been followed by a ground invasion. The Israeli government says it has learnt the lessons of its stalemated war with Hizbollah, the Lebanese militia. Gaza is more hospitable terrain than southern Lebanon; Hamas is militarily weaker than Hizbollah; Israel is better prepared and is using new tactics.
Maybe so. But what are Israel’s strategic needs? The first is the protection of Israeli citizens; the second is the re-establishment of Israel’s deterrent power; the third is the preservation of international support; and the fourth some prospect of durable peace. Each one of these objectives is now in peril.
By sending the army into Gaza, Israel has probably ensured it will lose many more lives than the four killed by Hamas rockets in the year before the conflict started. It is, of course, the job of the military to take casualties to protect civilians. But Israel’s is a citizen army. The point has not been lost on the Israeli public. A poll taken early in the conflict found more than 70 per cent support for bombing Gaza – but just 20 per cent support for a ground invasion.
The Israeli government may feel that the loss of life, on both sides, is justified if it can stop the rockets and restore the deterrent power that was damaged in Lebanon. But this is a gamble that could easily backfire. As Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, put it a couple of days ago: “Let’s say we unilaterally stopped and four days from now a barrage fell on Ashkelon ... Do you understand the consequences for Israeli deterrence?” But that means that a battered Hamas just has to find a way to keep firing rockets into Israel to claim some sort of victory. And even if Israel succeeds in stopping the rockets for now, any future regional enemy now knows how best to taunt Israel and delight its enemies: rockets.
Then, there is international opinion. In the early stages of the campaign, Israel got a relatively easy ride. Among western governments there was widespread acceptance of the argument that no state can tolerate regular assaults of the sort that peppered southern Israel. And Hamas has few friends among Arab governments.
But international sympathy is predictably crumbling away as the death toll mounts. Arguments about what is a “proportional” response to Hamas’s rockets seem legalistic, next to the simple fact that more than 500 Palestinians have died so far, compared with five Israelis. The European Union is now demanding a ceasefire. Arab governments are responding to outrage at home.
Israel has so far been able to rely on the usual rock-solid support from the US government. But even that could eventually change. A recent opinion poll showed that Democratic party voters were opposed to the Israeli attack on Gaza by a margin of 22 per cent. It is not inevitable that Barack Obama, president-elect, will reflect the views of the rank and file of his party. But neither is it inevitable that he will ignore them.
Then there are the Palestinians – who will still be Israel’s neighbours after the bloodletting has stopped. Israeli official rhetoric suggests that the government hopes a massive attack on Gaza will turn the population against Hamas. But violence against Israelis has always made public opinion there more hawkish. Why should the Palestinians be any different? In their more reflective moments, even senior Israeli politicians recognise that more killing is likely further to radicalise the Palestinians. A columnist in Haaretz, a liberal Israeli paper, recalled this week that Ehud Barak, the defence minister, who is masterminding the attack on Gaza, once told him that if he were a Palestinian “I would join a terror organisation”.
The Israelis sometimes suggest that their ultimate goal is in fact to displace Hamas, which still refuses to recognise Israel, rather than simply to stop the rockets. But any new Palestinian government that rode to power on the back of Israeli tanks would be maimed from the start.
The Israeli government may acknowledge the force of some of these objections. But its response is that it had no alternative. Hamas is a terrorist organisation that forced Israel’s hand.
In fact, there was an alternative that was never tried: relax the blockade of Gaza in return for a renewal of the ceasefire that ran out in December. Israel appears to have done the opposite. In November the blockade became harsher, putting serious pressure on the supply of food and fuel into Gaza.
Ending the blockade of Gaza in return for a ceasefire remains the best option – for both humanitarian and strategic reasons.
But the longer the bloodshed goes on, the more both sides in the conflict will be sucked into a logic of revenge and retaliation. The last time that I visited the Israeli occupied territories, I got chatting to a Palestinian. He was a secular, educated man who had worked in the US, so I was astonished when he told me that he would vote for Hamas. Why, I asked.
“Because every day, the Israelis find a different way to say ‘fuck you’,” he told me. “By voting for Hamas, I’m saying ‘fuck you back’.” I laughed at the time. But – stripped of all the diplomatic and strategic rationales – that seems like a good summary of the tragic and self-defeating logic that lies behind the fighting in Gaza.
gideon.rachman@ft.com
Post and read comments at Gideon Rachman’s blog
More Columns at www.ft.com/gideonrachman
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Rachman, surprisingly, talks some sense this time, perhaps because there is very little history involved in his analysis. This leads me to think that if Rachman did learn some real, hard, true history instead of the spoon-fed history from Cambridge then he may come to the same conclusion that more and more are coming to every day; there is a global conspiracy to create a world government of microchipped people.
===================================
From http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/34c5a426-db49-11dd-be53-000077b07658.html
Israel’s self-defeating Gaza offensive
By Gideon Rachman
Published: January 5 2009 19:04 | Last updated: January 5 2009 19:04
By sending ground troops into the Gaza Strip, Israel has crossed a line that brings it perilously close to strategic failure.
Just as with the Lebanon war of 2006, an air bombardment has failed to stop rocket fire into Israel – and has been followed by a ground invasion. The Israeli government says it has learnt the lessons of its stalemated war with Hizbollah, the Lebanese militia. Gaza is more hospitable terrain than southern Lebanon; Hamas is militarily weaker than Hizbollah; Israel is better prepared and is using new tactics.
Maybe so. But what are Israel’s strategic needs? The first is the protection of Israeli citizens; the second is the re-establishment of Israel’s deterrent power; the third is the preservation of international support; and the fourth some prospect of durable peace. Each one of these objectives is now in peril.
By sending the army into Gaza, Israel has probably ensured it will lose many more lives than the four killed by Hamas rockets in the year before the conflict started. It is, of course, the job of the military to take casualties to protect civilians. But Israel’s is a citizen army. The point has not been lost on the Israeli public. A poll taken early in the conflict found more than 70 per cent support for bombing Gaza – but just 20 per cent support for a ground invasion.
The Israeli government may feel that the loss of life, on both sides, is justified if it can stop the rockets and restore the deterrent power that was damaged in Lebanon. But this is a gamble that could easily backfire. As Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, put it a couple of days ago: “Let’s say we unilaterally stopped and four days from now a barrage fell on Ashkelon ... Do you understand the consequences for Israeli deterrence?” But that means that a battered Hamas just has to find a way to keep firing rockets into Israel to claim some sort of victory. And even if Israel succeeds in stopping the rockets for now, any future regional enemy now knows how best to taunt Israel and delight its enemies: rockets.
Then, there is international opinion. In the early stages of the campaign, Israel got a relatively easy ride. Among western governments there was widespread acceptance of the argument that no state can tolerate regular assaults of the sort that peppered southern Israel. And Hamas has few friends among Arab governments.
But international sympathy is predictably crumbling away as the death toll mounts. Arguments about what is a “proportional” response to Hamas’s rockets seem legalistic, next to the simple fact that more than 500 Palestinians have died so far, compared with five Israelis. The European Union is now demanding a ceasefire. Arab governments are responding to outrage at home.
Israel has so far been able to rely on the usual rock-solid support from the US government. But even that could eventually change. A recent opinion poll showed that Democratic party voters were opposed to the Israeli attack on Gaza by a margin of 22 per cent. It is not inevitable that Barack Obama, president-elect, will reflect the views of the rank and file of his party. But neither is it inevitable that he will ignore them.
Then there are the Palestinians – who will still be Israel’s neighbours after the bloodletting has stopped. Israeli official rhetoric suggests that the government hopes a massive attack on Gaza will turn the population against Hamas. But violence against Israelis has always made public opinion there more hawkish. Why should the Palestinians be any different? In their more reflective moments, even senior Israeli politicians recognise that more killing is likely further to radicalise the Palestinians. A columnist in Haaretz, a liberal Israeli paper, recalled this week that Ehud Barak, the defence minister, who is masterminding the attack on Gaza, once told him that if he were a Palestinian “I would join a terror organisation”.
The Israelis sometimes suggest that their ultimate goal is in fact to displace Hamas, which still refuses to recognise Israel, rather than simply to stop the rockets. But any new Palestinian government that rode to power on the back of Israeli tanks would be maimed from the start.
The Israeli government may acknowledge the force of some of these objections. But its response is that it had no alternative. Hamas is a terrorist organisation that forced Israel’s hand.
In fact, there was an alternative that was never tried: relax the blockade of Gaza in return for a renewal of the ceasefire that ran out in December. Israel appears to have done the opposite. In November the blockade became harsher, putting serious pressure on the supply of food and fuel into Gaza.
Ending the blockade of Gaza in return for a ceasefire remains the best option – for both humanitarian and strategic reasons.
But the longer the bloodshed goes on, the more both sides in the conflict will be sucked into a logic of revenge and retaliation. The last time that I visited the Israeli occupied territories, I got chatting to a Palestinian. He was a secular, educated man who had worked in the US, so I was astonished when he told me that he would vote for Hamas. Why, I asked.
“Because every day, the Israelis find a different way to say ‘fuck you’,” he told me. “By voting for Hamas, I’m saying ‘fuck you back’.” I laughed at the time. But – stripped of all the diplomatic and strategic rationales – that seems like a good summary of the tragic and self-defeating logic that lies behind the fighting in Gaza.
gideon.rachman@ft.com
Post and read comments at Gideon Rachman’s blog
More Columns at www.ft.com/gideonrachman
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
CALL THE NEXT EXPERT WITNESS
Yes, M'Lord.
M'Lord, I call Sir Andrew Large.
====================================================
From http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f2270f72-db6d-11dd-be53-000077b07658.html
Large calls for stronger finance watchdog
By Norma Cohen
Published: January 5 2009 23:07 | Last updated: January 5 2009 23:07
Britain risks a repeat of the current financial crisis unless it establishes a body to tackle systemic risk that is independent enough to stand up to powerful vested interests, a prominent former regulator has warned.
Sir Andrew Large, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, says that the UK needs an independent body that would provide early warnings of systemic problems and have the tools to discourage excessive borrowing.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
SEC inspector-general testifies over Madoff - Jan-05
Record low interest rate expected - Jan-05
Sir Andrew added in a separate interview with the FT that the government must act quickly to set up a new body as there was a risk that the political will to do so would dissipate once the crisis passed. “In five years’ time it could all be over and everybody will forget,” said Sir Andrew, who was chairman of the Financial Services Authority’s predecessor, the Securities and Investment Board. “If people don’t grasp this nettle now, we will be back here in 25 years’ time.”
Sir Andrew said the new body would have to make it more expensive for banks to increase lending as overall borrowing in the system rose. Sir Andrew said his proposal did not alter the regulatory role of bodies such as the FSA, which would continue to have day-to-day oversight.
In his article, Sir Andrew says that the power of vested interests ranged against such an institution “is intense”.
“In good times, politicians want growth, even if it is debt-fuelled,” he writes. “Banks want profits. Bankers want bonuses. Borrowers and consumers – voters – want to go on borrowing and spending.”
Sir Andrew argues that central banks, such as the Bank of England, are best placed to take on an oversight role because of their perceived independence from the political process. They are best placed to glean market intelligence from each nation’s banking system and are the sole bodies able to create liquidity in financial crises.
“Experience also suggests that people respect central banks that are able and willing to stand up to politicians and governments, as much as the vested interests of bankers and their customers,” he writes.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
M'Lord, I call Sir Andrew Large.
====================================================
From http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f2270f72-db6d-11dd-be53-000077b07658.html
Large calls for stronger finance watchdog
By Norma Cohen
Published: January 5 2009 23:07 | Last updated: January 5 2009 23:07
Britain risks a repeat of the current financial crisis unless it establishes a body to tackle systemic risk that is independent enough to stand up to powerful vested interests, a prominent former regulator has warned.
Sir Andrew Large, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, says that the UK needs an independent body that would provide early warnings of systemic problems and have the tools to discourage excessive borrowing.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
SEC inspector-general testifies over Madoff - Jan-05
Record low interest rate expected - Jan-05
Sir Andrew added in a separate interview with the FT that the government must act quickly to set up a new body as there was a risk that the political will to do so would dissipate once the crisis passed. “In five years’ time it could all be over and everybody will forget,” said Sir Andrew, who was chairman of the Financial Services Authority’s predecessor, the Securities and Investment Board. “If people don’t grasp this nettle now, we will be back here in 25 years’ time.”
Sir Andrew said the new body would have to make it more expensive for banks to increase lending as overall borrowing in the system rose. Sir Andrew said his proposal did not alter the regulatory role of bodies such as the FSA, which would continue to have day-to-day oversight.
In his article, Sir Andrew says that the power of vested interests ranged against such an institution “is intense”.
“In good times, politicians want growth, even if it is debt-fuelled,” he writes. “Banks want profits. Bankers want bonuses. Borrowers and consumers – voters – want to go on borrowing and spending.”
Sir Andrew argues that central banks, such as the Bank of England, are best placed to take on an oversight role because of their perceived independence from the political process. They are best placed to glean market intelligence from each nation’s banking system and are the sole bodies able to create liquidity in financial crises.
“Experience also suggests that people respect central banks that are able and willing to stand up to politicians and governments, as much as the vested interests of bankers and their customers,” he writes.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Monday, January 05, 2009
GAZA : IT WAS PLANNED LONG AGO. WANT PROOF?
You are not going to believe this, and it comes straight from the Israeli horse's mouth!
Below is a graph showing the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.
IT COMES STRAIGHT FROM THE ISRAELI MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS!
[source : http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Hamas+war+against+Israel/Behind+the+Headlines-+Calm+in+the+South+19-Jun-2008.htm ]
So what does it show?
It shows that during the truce between June to December the amount of rockets and mortars was virtually nil, until after Israel invaded Gaza on the day of the US Presidential election, when all eyes were on the USA (which of course the graph does not show).
July : total = 12
August : total = 11
September : total = 4 (!)
October : total = 2(!!)
November : total = 193 ( the month Israel invaded Gaza)
So what does this mean?
It means you are being lied to.
It means that Hamas exercised some restraint with the hope that Israel would abide by its side of the truce, which was to ease the blockade that was enforced after Hamas was democratically elected!
But Israel did not ease the blockade.
Yes, Israel can come out with these statistics that so many rockets have been fired over the years.
But look at the facts.
During the truce the number of rockets and mortars fired was very much less than before the truce, until Israel invaded Gaza. And those rockets that were fired may well have come from other rogue organizations in Gaza anyway.
This is evidence that no matter what, Israel was going in.
This is evidence that Gaza is part of a much larger Operation Justified Vengeance.
Cast Lead was planned six months ago.
Barak's wet dream has always been to invade Gaza.
The truce is going too well, so invade Gaza when nobody's looking on the day of the US Presidential election, to provoke rockets and mortars.
And before the MFA remove the graph I found it on SparrowWatch.
Is this worth dead starving Gazan children? Grieving Gazan parents? Grieving Israeli parents, even?
ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Below is a graph showing the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.
IT COMES STRAIGHT FROM THE ISRAELI MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS!
[source : http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Hamas+war+against+Israel/Behind+the+Headlines-+Calm+in+the+South+19-Jun-2008.htm ]
So what does it show?
It shows that during the truce between June to December the amount of rockets and mortars was virtually nil, until after Israel invaded Gaza on the day of the US Presidential election, when all eyes were on the USA (which of course the graph does not show).
July : total = 12
August : total = 11
September : total = 4 (!)
October : total = 2(!!)
November : total = 193 ( the month Israel invaded Gaza)
So what does this mean?
It means you are being lied to.
It means that Hamas exercised some restraint with the hope that Israel would abide by its side of the truce, which was to ease the blockade that was enforced after Hamas was democratically elected!
But Israel did not ease the blockade.
Yes, Israel can come out with these statistics that so many rockets have been fired over the years.
But look at the facts.
During the truce the number of rockets and mortars fired was very much less than before the truce, until Israel invaded Gaza. And those rockets that were fired may well have come from other rogue organizations in Gaza anyway.
This is evidence that no matter what, Israel was going in.
This is evidence that Gaza is part of a much larger Operation Justified Vengeance.
Cast Lead was planned six months ago.
Barak's wet dream has always been to invade Gaza.
The truce is going too well, so invade Gaza when nobody's looking on the day of the US Presidential election, to provoke rockets and mortars.
And before the MFA remove the graph I found it on SparrowWatch.
Is this worth dead starving Gazan children? Grieving Gazan parents? Grieving Israeli parents, even?
ABSOLUTELY NOT!
SUPER 'TACHE BOLTON WANTS TO WIPE PALESTINE OFF THE MAP
Remember the furore when it was claimed that Iran claimed it wanted to wipe Israel off the map (I understand there was a (deliberate) mistake in the translation and that what was really said was that Iran wanted to remove the Zionist government of Israel, which is slightly different).
Anyway, John "let's nuke Iran" Bolton has written in the Washington Post that there should not be a two state solution. In fact Bolton proposes a three state solution, without any Palestine, effectively wiping Palestine off the map.
Bolton proposes that Gaza be absorbed into Egypt, and The West Bank be absorbed into Jordan.
=====================================
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401434.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
The Three-State Option
By John R. Bolton
Monday, January 5, 2009; Page A11
War in the Gaza Strip demonstrates yet again that the current governance paradigm for the Palestinian people has failed. Terrorists financed and supplied by Iran control Gaza; the Palestinian Authority is broken, probably irretrievably; and economic development is stalled in Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians are suffering the consequences of regional power struggles played out through them as surrogates.
Israel isn't a happy place, either. It endures opprobrium from the world's High-Minded for defending itself from terrorism yet still finds itself subjected to terrorist attacks from Hamas and terrorists based in Syria and Lebanon. Israel's domestic politics are increasingly muddled, and its way forward obscure.
Neighboring countries also suffer. Egypt has walled off its boundary with Gaza; Lebanon remains under threat of a Hezbollah coup enabled by Iran; Syria slides further under Iranian hegemony; and Jordan is trapped in the general gridlock. Other Arab countries search for solutions, but their attention is increasingly diverted by the growing threat from Iran and the downturn in global oil prices.
Given this landscape, we should ask why we still advocate the "two-state solution," with Israel and "Palestine" living side by side in peace, as the mantra goes. We are obviously not progressing, and are probably going backward. We continue poring over the Middle East "road map" because that is all we have, faute de mieux, as they say in Foggy Bottom.
The logic to this position is long past its expiration date. Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine a new approach that the key players would receive enthusiastically. If the way out were obvious, after all, it would already have been suggested. So consider the following, unpopular and difficult to implement though it may be:
Let's start by recognizing that trying to create a Palestinian Authority from the old PLO has failed and that any two-state solution based on the PA is stillborn. Hamas has killed the idea, and even the Holy Land is good for only one resurrection. Instead, we should look to a "three-state" approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty.
Anyway, John "let's nuke Iran" Bolton has written in the Washington Post that there should not be a two state solution. In fact Bolton proposes a three state solution, without any Palestine, effectively wiping Palestine off the map.
Bolton proposes that Gaza be absorbed into Egypt, and The West Bank be absorbed into Jordan.
=====================================
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401434.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
The Three-State Option
By John R. Bolton
Monday, January 5, 2009; Page A11
War in the Gaza Strip demonstrates yet again that the current governance paradigm for the Palestinian people has failed. Terrorists financed and supplied by Iran control Gaza; the Palestinian Authority is broken, probably irretrievably; and economic development is stalled in Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians are suffering the consequences of regional power struggles played out through them as surrogates.
Israel isn't a happy place, either. It endures opprobrium from the world's High-Minded for defending itself from terrorism yet still finds itself subjected to terrorist attacks from Hamas and terrorists based in Syria and Lebanon. Israel's domestic politics are increasingly muddled, and its way forward obscure.
Neighboring countries also suffer. Egypt has walled off its boundary with Gaza; Lebanon remains under threat of a Hezbollah coup enabled by Iran; Syria slides further under Iranian hegemony; and Jordan is trapped in the general gridlock. Other Arab countries search for solutions, but their attention is increasingly diverted by the growing threat from Iran and the downturn in global oil prices.
Given this landscape, we should ask why we still advocate the "two-state solution," with Israel and "Palestine" living side by side in peace, as the mantra goes. We are obviously not progressing, and are probably going backward. We continue poring over the Middle East "road map" because that is all we have, faute de mieux, as they say in Foggy Bottom.
The logic to this position is long past its expiration date. Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine a new approach that the key players would receive enthusiastically. If the way out were obvious, after all, it would already have been suggested. So consider the following, unpopular and difficult to implement though it may be:
Let's start by recognizing that trying to create a Palestinian Authority from the old PLO has failed and that any two-state solution based on the PA is stillborn. Hamas has killed the idea, and even the Holy Land is good for only one resurrection. Instead, we should look to a "three-state" approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty.
IS GAZA STILL OCCUPIED TERRITORY? IF NOT, THEN WHAT IS ITS PRECISE LEGAL STATUS?
In 2005 Israel withdrew settlers and military installations from Gaza, and has since used this withdrawal to claim that Gaza is no longer classified as Occupied Territory.
Here are two legal arguments, one written in January 2007 arguing Gaza is still occupied,
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6415.shtml
and one written in 2008 arguing against
http://www.mesi.org.uk/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=96
The exact legal status of Gaza is crucial as to how bring Israel to court.
Here are two legal arguments, one written in January 2007 arguing Gaza is still occupied,
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6415.shtml
and one written in 2008 arguing against
http://www.mesi.org.uk/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=96
The exact legal status of Gaza is crucial as to how bring Israel to court.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
IS GORDON BROWN A MURDEROUS TWO-FACED C^&%?
Craig Murray, the only blog I trust, has written that while calling for an immediate ceasefire the British delegation to the UN is "under direct instruction" to block any ceasefire.
Under direct instruction from whom? Lord Malloch-Brown?
I listened to Brown on BBC Radio 5 Live this morning on the Gabby Logan Show, and he sounded such a lovely, warm chap.
Is he instead a murderous two-faced c^&%?
===============================
From http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
January 4, 2009
Gordon Brown Is a Murderous Two Faced Cunt
Brown is appeasing domestic horror at the Israeli massacre in Gaza by calling for a ceasefire. Meanwhile British diplomats on the United Nations Security Council are under direct instructions to offer "tacit support" to United States' efforts to block a ceasefire.
I have been told this directly by a former colleague in the UK Mission to the United Nations.
Under direct instruction from whom? Lord Malloch-Brown?
I listened to Brown on BBC Radio 5 Live this morning on the Gabby Logan Show, and he sounded such a lovely, warm chap.
Is he instead a murderous two-faced c^&%?
===============================
From http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
January 4, 2009
Gordon Brown Is a Murderous Two Faced Cunt
Brown is appeasing domestic horror at the Israeli massacre in Gaza by calling for a ceasefire. Meanwhile British diplomats on the United Nations Security Council are under direct instructions to offer "tacit support" to United States' efforts to block a ceasefire.
I have been told this directly by a former colleague in the UK Mission to the United Nations.
WHY DID I PREDICT AN INVASION OF GAZA IN 2005?
Shortly fter the London bombings on 7th July 2005 I wrote to the Intelligence and Security Committee confidently predicting that Israel was planning to invade Gaza and that the London bombings were part of a psychological preparation for that invasion.
I based this on the following;
1. there is very strong evidence to suggest that Israel had foreknowledge of 7/7 and had intimate knowledge of how the bombings were executed, knowledge that even the British investigating authorities did not discover or verify until a few weeks after the event.
2. Jewish settlers in Gaza were being forcefully removed from Gaza.
If Gaza was going to be subject to a blockade and eventually invaded then Israeli Jewish settlers would need to be relocated from Gaza, dragged screaming if necessary.
And such a blockade and invasion would require the support of the UK and the USA, and what better way to drum up support than to bomb London with Muslim stooges, leading to the comparison that 7/7 was our 9/11.
It has now come to my attention that a decade-long plan has been in operation, Operation Justified Vengeance, which includes the age-old tactic of divide-and-conquer of the Palestine Occupied Territories, with Hamas controlling Gaza, leading to a justified invasion of Gaza.
[source : http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11606 ]
Yesterday I posted "Israel's goin' in" in which I posted my suspicions as to why no matter what happened, no matter what Hamas did, Israel was going to invade Gaza.
The existence of such a massive propaganda campaign by Israel is also evidence that a much larger and hidden campaign is ongoing.
I based this on the following;
1. there is very strong evidence to suggest that Israel had foreknowledge of 7/7 and had intimate knowledge of how the bombings were executed, knowledge that even the British investigating authorities did not discover or verify until a few weeks after the event.
2. Jewish settlers in Gaza were being forcefully removed from Gaza.
If Gaza was going to be subject to a blockade and eventually invaded then Israeli Jewish settlers would need to be relocated from Gaza, dragged screaming if necessary.
And such a blockade and invasion would require the support of the UK and the USA, and what better way to drum up support than to bomb London with Muslim stooges, leading to the comparison that 7/7 was our 9/11.
It has now come to my attention that a decade-long plan has been in operation, Operation Justified Vengeance, which includes the age-old tactic of divide-and-conquer of the Palestine Occupied Territories, with Hamas controlling Gaza, leading to a justified invasion of Gaza.
[source : http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11606 ]
Yesterday I posted "Israel's goin' in" in which I posted my suspicions as to why no matter what happened, no matter what Hamas did, Israel was going to invade Gaza.
The existence of such a massive propaganda campaign by Israel is also evidence that a much larger and hidden campaign is ongoing.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
ISRAEL'S GOIN' IN.
Haartez is reporting that Israeli troops are going into Gaza, and Israel Defense Forces Major Avital Leibovitch said, "The objective is to destroy the Hamas terror infrastructure in the area of operations,...We are going to take some of the launch areas used by Hamas."
[source : http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052299.html ]
Let's just have a quick reminder of what has happened.
Haaretz recently stated that the current operation was planned six months ago.
During that time offers of a more permanent ceasefire made by Hamas were rejected by Israel. This has recently been stated by the United Nations Special Rapporteur Professor Richard Falk. Israel also did not keep its side of the deal brokered by Egypt, which was to gradually ease the blockade.
[source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-falk/understanding-the-gaza-ca_b_154777.html ]
Then on 4th November 2008 Israel officially broke the deal and invaded Gaza, allegedly to destroy tunnels used to smuggle food into Gaza.
As a result the number of rockets fired from Gaza increased, but did not kill anyone.
This consequence of the invasion of Gaza on the 4th November may well have given the Israelis a much better idea of the military logistics of Hamas in Gaza; where rockets were stored, who was involved, etc.
And with the fact that Ehud Barak's wet dream is to invade Gaza, all this leads me to suspect that no matter what happened, Israel was goin' in.
[source : http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052299.html ]
Let's just have a quick reminder of what has happened.
Haaretz recently stated that the current operation was planned six months ago.
During that time offers of a more permanent ceasefire made by Hamas were rejected by Israel. This has recently been stated by the United Nations Special Rapporteur Professor Richard Falk. Israel also did not keep its side of the deal brokered by Egypt, which was to gradually ease the blockade.
[source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-falk/understanding-the-gaza-ca_b_154777.html ]
Then on 4th November 2008 Israel officially broke the deal and invaded Gaza, allegedly to destroy tunnels used to smuggle food into Gaza.
As a result the number of rockets fired from Gaza increased, but did not kill anyone.
This consequence of the invasion of Gaza on the 4th November may well have given the Israelis a much better idea of the military logistics of Hamas in Gaza; where rockets were stored, who was involved, etc.
And with the fact that Ehud Barak's wet dream is to invade Gaza, all this leads me to suspect that no matter what happened, Israel was goin' in.
MASS MURDERER BUSH BLAMES HAMAS
Quelle fucking surprise!
At least Bush offered a comment, unlike the incoming Obama.
Let's just remind ourselves what Bush and Blair did; they invaded Iraq on a bunch of lies and gave all the oil to their mates despite their promises, and killed an estimated 1 million civilians in the process.
Channel 4 should host a new BB show, Celebrity Gazan Brother, with the likes of Bush and Livni living in Gaza with Gazan families with cameras everywhere. Then we'd all see what living in Gaza is really like and see how the Zionists react.
I'd give Bush two days before he's calling in the air strikes on Tel Aviv.
At least Bush offered a comment, unlike the incoming Obama.
Let's just remind ourselves what Bush and Blair did; they invaded Iraq on a bunch of lies and gave all the oil to their mates despite their promises, and killed an estimated 1 million civilians in the process.
Channel 4 should host a new BB show, Celebrity Gazan Brother, with the likes of Bush and Livni living in Gaza with Gazan families with cameras everywhere. Then we'd all see what living in Gaza is really like and see how the Zionists react.
I'd give Bush two days before he's calling in the air strikes on Tel Aviv.
BANKS : PLEASE SIR, CAN WE HAVE SOME MORE
Where has all the money gone?
We’ve re-capitalised several banks, saving them from bankruptcy, with the explicit understanding that they start lending immediately to get the economy going. Instead the money has been either hoarded or gambled away, with the result being repossessions, job losses and depression.
In effect we are giving the banks our money so that they should lend it back to us, and with interest. This is such a ridiculous situation anyway that any one with any sense would stop it immediately, take the banks into bankruptcy and create accountable government controlled banks whose responsibility would be to finance a stable and growing economy for the benefit of society as a whole, not speculation for a quick buck for the few.
But what is really happening is that the banks are upgrading their computer systems to continue the derivative speculation with financial mathematics that got us into this mess in the first place, so the problem is not being solved. Instead the next and even bigger problem is being financed…AND WITH OUR MONEY.
Darling and Brown are members of the House of Commons, elected by their constituents to serve them, not to serve the banks with their constituents’ money to speculate with.
The banks have shown themselves unworthy of the power we have given them.
Take the banks into bankruptcy.
Create government controlled banks run by elected and accountable officials whose responsibility it is to create a stable and growing economy for the benefit of society as a whole.
And perhaps most important of all, hold a public inquiry into the current financial crisis so criminal bankers go to jail and the ordinary British taxpayer is never screwed by this or any other similar crime again (and yes it is a crime due to the Fraud Act 2006 Section 4).
===================================
From http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5434660.ece
From The Times
January 3, 2009
Chancellor Alistair Darling on brink of second bailout for banks
Billions may be needed as lending squeeze tightens
Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor, and Gary Duncan, Economics Editor
Alistair Darling has been forced to consider a second bailout for banks as the lending drought worsens.
The Chancellor will decide within weeks whether to pump billions more into the economy as evidence mounts that the £37 billion part-nationalisation last year has failed to keep credit flowing. Options include cash injections, offering banks cheaper state guarantees to raise money privately or buying up “toxic assets”, The Times has learnt.
The Bank of England revealed yesterday that, despite intense pressure, the banks curbed lending in the final quarter of last year and plan even tighter restrictions in the coming months. Its findings will alarm the Treasury.
The Bank is expected to take yet more aggressive action this week by cutting the base rate from its current level of 2 per cent. Doing so would reduce the cost of borrowing but have little effect on the availability of loans.
Whitehall sources said that ministers planned to “keep the banks on the boil” but accepted that they need more help to restore lending levels. Formally, the Treasury plans to focus on state-backed gurantees to encourage private finance, but a number of interventions are on the table, including further injections of taxpayers’ cash.
We’ve re-capitalised several banks, saving them from bankruptcy, with the explicit understanding that they start lending immediately to get the economy going. Instead the money has been either hoarded or gambled away, with the result being repossessions, job losses and depression.
In effect we are giving the banks our money so that they should lend it back to us, and with interest. This is such a ridiculous situation anyway that any one with any sense would stop it immediately, take the banks into bankruptcy and create accountable government controlled banks whose responsibility would be to finance a stable and growing economy for the benefit of society as a whole, not speculation for a quick buck for the few.
But what is really happening is that the banks are upgrading their computer systems to continue the derivative speculation with financial mathematics that got us into this mess in the first place, so the problem is not being solved. Instead the next and even bigger problem is being financed…AND WITH OUR MONEY.
Darling and Brown are members of the House of Commons, elected by their constituents to serve them, not to serve the banks with their constituents’ money to speculate with.
The banks have shown themselves unworthy of the power we have given them.
Take the banks into bankruptcy.
Create government controlled banks run by elected and accountable officials whose responsibility it is to create a stable and growing economy for the benefit of society as a whole.
And perhaps most important of all, hold a public inquiry into the current financial crisis so criminal bankers go to jail and the ordinary British taxpayer is never screwed by this or any other similar crime again (and yes it is a crime due to the Fraud Act 2006 Section 4).
===================================
From http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5434660.ece
From The Times
January 3, 2009
Chancellor Alistair Darling on brink of second bailout for banks
Billions may be needed as lending squeeze tightens
Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor, and Gary Duncan, Economics Editor
Alistair Darling has been forced to consider a second bailout for banks as the lending drought worsens.
The Chancellor will decide within weeks whether to pump billions more into the economy as evidence mounts that the £37 billion part-nationalisation last year has failed to keep credit flowing. Options include cash injections, offering banks cheaper state guarantees to raise money privately or buying up “toxic assets”, The Times has learnt.
The Bank of England revealed yesterday that, despite intense pressure, the banks curbed lending in the final quarter of last year and plan even tighter restrictions in the coming months. Its findings will alarm the Treasury.
The Bank is expected to take yet more aggressive action this week by cutting the base rate from its current level of 2 per cent. Doing so would reduce the cost of borrowing but have little effect on the availability of loans.
Whitehall sources said that ministers planned to “keep the banks on the boil” but accepted that they need more help to restore lending levels. Formally, the Treasury plans to focus on state-backed gurantees to encourage private finance, but a number of interventions are on the table, including further injections of taxpayers’ cash.
Friday, January 02, 2009
JOHN BUCHAN
Buchan was born in Perth, to an obscure family, the son of a Minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and attended a local Grammar School in Glasgow after the family moved there in 1888.
Buchan was awarded a scholarship and attended Brasenose College, Oxford between 1895 – 1899, where he was President of the Oxford Union in his final year.
About this time in Oxford a group called the Kindergarten was formed by Alfred Milner, and Buchan was invited to join, which he did. He was then in the company of such British Imperialists as Lionel Curtis, who had many important roles, one of which was as editor of The Round Table Journal which was created to lobby for the establishment of an Imperial Federation, i.e. one world government ruled by Great Britain.
Buchan was Private Secretary to Lord Milner during the period 1901 – 1903, administrating South Africa.
Buchan married into one of the richest families in Great Britain, the Grosvenors, better known as the Dukes of Westminster. He married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor, a direct descendant of Sir Richard Grosvenor 1st Baronet and MP for Cheshire.
During WW1 Buchan wrote for the War Propaganda Bureau while reporting for The Times in France, and eventually joined British Intelligence writing speeches and communiqués for Sir Douglas Haig, who planned and commanded the battle of The Somme which led to the deaths of over a half a million Allied soldiers and the same number of dead German soldiers.
In 1917 Buchan was appointed Director of Information of the Government of Great Britain.
In 1918 Buchan becomes Director of news for Reuters, then owned by Rothschild.
In 1935 Buchan is made Governor-General of Canada.
In 1939 Buchan is made Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order.
In The Thirty Nine Steps, written in August 1914 and published in 1915, Buchan wrote the following in the first chapter, The Man Who Died, regarding an imminent world war;
==================================
I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out. Away behind all the governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further and then he got caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that beside them were financiers who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.
He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me – things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads.
When asked Why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse then hell.
=================================================
Buchan then goes on to indicate that the conspiracy involved the assassination of Constantine Karolides in London by an Austrian that would be blamed on “the big folk in Vienna and Berlin”, and that the conspiracy was developed in Austria, Germany and Paris.
All this is very close to the truth.
In my analysis of World War 1 on my website The Conspiracy Explained you will find
1. that Freemasonry played a highly significant part, desiring and predicting the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand over a year before the event, and even assisting the guilty assassins with encouragement and logistics. Ferdinand knew of the Freemasonic plot to kill him and knew that Austrians were involved and where in Austria the assassination was discussed.
2. Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote in his memoirs that a “distinguished German Freemason” told him that Freemasonry, specifically the Grand Orient, engineered World War 1 for the destruction of the Central European monarchies and church. The Grand Orient is based in Paris and is a derivative of English Freemasonry.
3. the blame for the war was placed on Germany.
4. Germany and Russia were placed at loggerheads thanks to the conspiring of Edward VII, who when conspiring was Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE, pronounced ugly).
5. the Russian monarchy was overthrown, in a revolution that Jewish banker Jacob Schiff was proud to claim as his own, and was replaced by a tyranny that killed millions of its own subjects.
It is of great interest that Buchan went to Oxford merely as a clever Scot on a scholarship, but after meeting up with Milner he joined the Kindergarten, worked for Milner, married into one of the richest families in Great Britain, wrote a book that divulged the existence of a conspiracy to create a new world order by fomenting war between Germany and Russia, during WW1 he worked for the Rothschilds at Reuters and at the same time was also Director of Information for the British government, then governed Canada and was finally awarded one of the highest honours available, Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order.
It is also of interest that Alfred Hitchcock did not include the above section in his version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, because Hitchcock went on to become one of the most powerful film directors in Hollywood, if not the most powerful.
Buchan was awarded a scholarship and attended Brasenose College, Oxford between 1895 – 1899, where he was President of the Oxford Union in his final year.
About this time in Oxford a group called the Kindergarten was formed by Alfred Milner, and Buchan was invited to join, which he did. He was then in the company of such British Imperialists as Lionel Curtis, who had many important roles, one of which was as editor of The Round Table Journal which was created to lobby for the establishment of an Imperial Federation, i.e. one world government ruled by Great Britain.
Buchan was Private Secretary to Lord Milner during the period 1901 – 1903, administrating South Africa.
Buchan married into one of the richest families in Great Britain, the Grosvenors, better known as the Dukes of Westminster. He married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor, a direct descendant of Sir Richard Grosvenor 1st Baronet and MP for Cheshire.
During WW1 Buchan wrote for the War Propaganda Bureau while reporting for The Times in France, and eventually joined British Intelligence writing speeches and communiqués for Sir Douglas Haig, who planned and commanded the battle of The Somme which led to the deaths of over a half a million Allied soldiers and the same number of dead German soldiers.
In 1917 Buchan was appointed Director of Information of the Government of Great Britain.
In 1918 Buchan becomes Director of news for Reuters, then owned by Rothschild.
In 1935 Buchan is made Governor-General of Canada.
In 1939 Buchan is made Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order.
In The Thirty Nine Steps, written in August 1914 and published in 1915, Buchan wrote the following in the first chapter, The Man Who Died, regarding an imminent world war;
==================================
I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out. Away behind all the governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further and then he got caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that beside them were financiers who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.
He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me – things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads.
When asked Why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse then hell.
=================================================
Buchan then goes on to indicate that the conspiracy involved the assassination of Constantine Karolides in London by an Austrian that would be blamed on “the big folk in Vienna and Berlin”, and that the conspiracy was developed in Austria, Germany and Paris.
All this is very close to the truth.
In my analysis of World War 1 on my website The Conspiracy Explained you will find
1. that Freemasonry played a highly significant part, desiring and predicting the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand over a year before the event, and even assisting the guilty assassins with encouragement and logistics. Ferdinand knew of the Freemasonic plot to kill him and knew that Austrians were involved and where in Austria the assassination was discussed.
2. Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote in his memoirs that a “distinguished German Freemason” told him that Freemasonry, specifically the Grand Orient, engineered World War 1 for the destruction of the Central European monarchies and church. The Grand Orient is based in Paris and is a derivative of English Freemasonry.
3. the blame for the war was placed on Germany.
4. Germany and Russia were placed at loggerheads thanks to the conspiring of Edward VII, who when conspiring was Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE, pronounced ugly).
5. the Russian monarchy was overthrown, in a revolution that Jewish banker Jacob Schiff was proud to claim as his own, and was replaced by a tyranny that killed millions of its own subjects.
It is of great interest that Buchan went to Oxford merely as a clever Scot on a scholarship, but after meeting up with Milner he joined the Kindergarten, worked for Milner, married into one of the richest families in Great Britain, wrote a book that divulged the existence of a conspiracy to create a new world order by fomenting war between Germany and Russia, during WW1 he worked for the Rothschilds at Reuters and at the same time was also Director of Information for the British government, then governed Canada and was finally awarded one of the highest honours available, Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order.
It is also of interest that Alfred Hitchcock did not include the above section in his version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, because Hitchcock went on to become one of the most powerful film directors in Hollywood, if not the most powerful.
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
The following is taken verbatim from the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I would greatly appreciate a comment from a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs on how the Balfour Declaration has been honoured by Israel.
================================
From http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/The+Balfour+Declaration.htm
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
I would greatly appreciate a comment from a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs on how the Balfour Declaration has been honoured by Israel.
================================
From http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/The+Balfour+Declaration.htm
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
Thursday, January 01, 2009
STATEMENT BY NETUREI KARTA OF THE ORTHODOX JEWRY ON GAZA
Apparently the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, stated that Gazans should be transferred to the Sinai Desert and leave Israel for the Jews! This fits well with Gaza : The Musical.
Haaretz reported on an interview of Metzger by The Jewish News, in which Metzger is reported by Haaretz as stating;
"take all the poor people from Gaza to move them to a wonderful new modern country with trains buses cars, like in Arizona - we are now in a generation where you can take a desert and build a city. This will be a solution for the poor people - they will have a nice county, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace."
[source : http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948907.html ]
Below is a photo of members of NK USA protesting in New York against the Gaza slaughter.
==============================================
From http://www.nkusa.org/activities/Statements/20080131_nkpalestine.cfm
NETUREI KARTA of THE ORTHODOX JEWRY
JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
Jan 31.08
URGENT PRESS RELEASE
In the past week the so-called Chief Rabbi of the so-called State of "Israel", Yona Metzger, has made vicious and provocative statements asserting that the Palestinians living in Gaza should be moved from their homes into the Sinai desert.
Yona Metzger is not an authentic Torah authority, despite the fact that he carries the so-called title of "Chief Rabbi". Chief rabbis of the Zionist State only carry legitimacy in the eyes of Zionist Jews. His status as a chief rabbi is not unlike the leadership of Theodor Herzl, who also wore a beard!
The State of "Israel" is illegitimate according to the Torah teachings. The founding of the State of "Israel" is in direct contradiction to the teachings of the Torah which forbids the establishment of a Jewish state and commands Jews to remain in exile until released from that exile by G-d Himself, without any human intervention, at which time all nations of the world will live together in peace.
We are likewise forbidden to rebel against any nation. We are to remain peaceful and loyal citizens, in every country in which we reside. Therefore to oppress the Palestinian people, harm them, steal their land, expel them, etc. is totally forbidden according to our Holy Torah.
The Rabbinical authorities universally have stood in vehement opposition to the ideology of Zionism and have opposed the state of "Israel" from its creation until the present day.
Palestinians have an inherent right to return to their land in historic Palestine and to establish their independent state in the entire Holy Land, which was forcefully taken from them by the Zionists. Indeed, many Gazans are refugees who were expelled from other areas of Palestine by the Zionists ever since 1948.
Chief Rabbis of the Zionist state, whether Metzger or anyone else, are merely very well-paid stooges of the Zionists and serve their Zionist masters without regard for the welfare of the Jewish People, the Palestinians, or any other nation in the world.
The Chief Rabbinate of the Zionist State, just as all Zionist institutions, has importance only because of its coercive power over the religious, economic and everyday life of the Jewish residents of Zionist occupied Palestine. Whoever recognizes and supports the Zionist State, even innocently, has been taken over by the heretical Zionist movement, no matter how large the halo that it is granted by supposed Jewish authorities.
Chief Rabbis, and other rabbis who support the existence of the Zionist state, are wicked emissaries of evil. Such "rabbis" promote hatred and war, and use their coercive powers to demand subservience of Jews to the Zionist enterprise. This description that we posit of such people has been the long-standing position of authentic rabbis for the last century.
Yona Metzger expresses feelings of inhumanity which originates in his loyalty to the cult of Zionism and is perfectly prepared to sacrifice Jewish lives on the altar of his idolatry, the State of "Israel." Any moral person would much prefer to see the Zionist warmongers, including Metzger, removed from the Holy Land. METZGER AND ALL ZIONIST RABBIS DO NOT REPRESENT THE JEWISH RELIGION.
We urgently appeal to the leaders of the world nations, especially the great powers, to stop supporting the Zionist regime. Many nations believe that supporting Zionism shows friendship to the Jewish People. This is incorrect! True friendship to the Jewish People can be demonstrated by saving all the peoples of the Middle East, including Jews, from the bloodthirsty machinations of the dangerous State of "Israel" and by dismantling the Zionist regime entirely, peacefully and speedily in our day.
May Almighty G-d protect us from the influence of Zionism in general, their evil warmongering bloodthirsty leaders, and from their wicked servants who call themselves "rabbis."
Haaretz reported on an interview of Metzger by The Jewish News, in which Metzger is reported by Haaretz as stating;
"take all the poor people from Gaza to move them to a wonderful new modern country with trains buses cars, like in Arizona - we are now in a generation where you can take a desert and build a city. This will be a solution for the poor people - they will have a nice county, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace."
[source : http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948907.html ]
Below is a photo of members of NK USA protesting in New York against the Gaza slaughter.
==============================================
From http://www.nkusa.org/activities/Statements/20080131_nkpalestine.cfm
NETUREI KARTA of THE ORTHODOX JEWRY
JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
Jan 31.08
URGENT PRESS RELEASE
In the past week the so-called Chief Rabbi of the so-called State of "Israel", Yona Metzger, has made vicious and provocative statements asserting that the Palestinians living in Gaza should be moved from their homes into the Sinai desert.
Yona Metzger is not an authentic Torah authority, despite the fact that he carries the so-called title of "Chief Rabbi". Chief rabbis of the Zionist State only carry legitimacy in the eyes of Zionist Jews. His status as a chief rabbi is not unlike the leadership of Theodor Herzl, who also wore a beard!
The State of "Israel" is illegitimate according to the Torah teachings. The founding of the State of "Israel" is in direct contradiction to the teachings of the Torah which forbids the establishment of a Jewish state and commands Jews to remain in exile until released from that exile by G-d Himself, without any human intervention, at which time all nations of the world will live together in peace.
We are likewise forbidden to rebel against any nation. We are to remain peaceful and loyal citizens, in every country in which we reside. Therefore to oppress the Palestinian people, harm them, steal their land, expel them, etc. is totally forbidden according to our Holy Torah.
The Rabbinical authorities universally have stood in vehement opposition to the ideology of Zionism and have opposed the state of "Israel" from its creation until the present day.
Palestinians have an inherent right to return to their land in historic Palestine and to establish their independent state in the entire Holy Land, which was forcefully taken from them by the Zionists. Indeed, many Gazans are refugees who were expelled from other areas of Palestine by the Zionists ever since 1948.
Chief Rabbis of the Zionist state, whether Metzger or anyone else, are merely very well-paid stooges of the Zionists and serve their Zionist masters without regard for the welfare of the Jewish People, the Palestinians, or any other nation in the world.
The Chief Rabbinate of the Zionist State, just as all Zionist institutions, has importance only because of its coercive power over the religious, economic and everyday life of the Jewish residents of Zionist occupied Palestine. Whoever recognizes and supports the Zionist State, even innocently, has been taken over by the heretical Zionist movement, no matter how large the halo that it is granted by supposed Jewish authorities.
Chief Rabbis, and other rabbis who support the existence of the Zionist state, are wicked emissaries of evil. Such "rabbis" promote hatred and war, and use their coercive powers to demand subservience of Jews to the Zionist enterprise. This description that we posit of such people has been the long-standing position of authentic rabbis for the last century.
Yona Metzger expresses feelings of inhumanity which originates in his loyalty to the cult of Zionism and is perfectly prepared to sacrifice Jewish lives on the altar of his idolatry, the State of "Israel." Any moral person would much prefer to see the Zionist warmongers, including Metzger, removed from the Holy Land. METZGER AND ALL ZIONIST RABBIS DO NOT REPRESENT THE JEWISH RELIGION.
We urgently appeal to the leaders of the world nations, especially the great powers, to stop supporting the Zionist regime. Many nations believe that supporting Zionism shows friendship to the Jewish People. This is incorrect! True friendship to the Jewish People can be demonstrated by saving all the peoples of the Middle East, including Jews, from the bloodthirsty machinations of the dangerous State of "Israel" and by dismantling the Zionist regime entirely, peacefully and speedily in our day.
May Almighty G-d protect us from the influence of Zionism in general, their evil warmongering bloodthirsty leaders, and from their wicked servants who call themselves "rabbis."
OLIVER KAMM PROPOSES JOINING THE EURO
Oliver Kamm is a Blairite who supported the invasion of Iraq, supported the re-election of Bush, and he is also a founding member of the Henry Jackson Society.
Kamm has today written in The Times that we should ditch the pound and join the euro.
This is another step to creating the European Superstate which in turn will be a "local" unelected power under the all-seeing all-knowing world government.
Beware of Kamm. He is a tool of the creepy conspirators who are now crawling out of the woodwork and from under the fridges to propose the formation of a world government, a world government that, of course, they should control.
Kamm's argument is that the current financial chaos is good enough reason. Kamm, like BBC's Robert Peston, does not mention the D word; DERIVATVE.
===============================================
The market has spoken: long live the euro
Detractors of the new currency have been proved wrong. We would be much better off if we were part of the eurozone
Oliver Kamm
Ten years ago today monetary union for the eurozone was established. Three years later the euro was born. Throughout the currency's gestation and launch, the panjandrums of British politics confidently predicted failure.
“I myself believe that EMU will probably break down before Blair is called on to take a decision whether or not Britain should join,” said Lord Healey, the former Labour Chancellor. The European single currency will fail “economically, politically and socially”, insisted Baroness Thatcher. “As the citizens of Europe wake up to the reality of what their politicians have committed themselves to, Britain should count its lucky stars it is not in the euro,” ventured Lord Lamont of Lerwick.
The elder statesmen did not merely oppose British adoption of the single currency. They depicted monetary union as intrinsically flawed. “A continental ‘one-size' bank rate as now imposed on Euroland... simply does not fit the varying needs of stimulus and restraint in so diverse an area,” declared the late Lord Shore, the former Labour Trade Secretary.
It is time for a reckoning. There have been economic stresses and political controversies in the eurozone, but the euro has plainly been a success. It now outstrips the dollar in the value of notes in circulation. It has established itself as the alternative international reserve currency to the dollar. Countries within the eurozone have survived the financial crisis in much better shape than, say, Iceland or Hungary.
During the euro's first two years, sceptics charged that the currency's supposed weakness against the dollar demonstrated a lack of investor confidence. From 2004, when the euro appreciated, the critics changed script without missing a breath. They now claimed that growth in the eurozone was hampered by excessive currency strength, which penalised exporters.
These incompatible criticisms utterly failed to grasp the significance of the new currency. Fluctuations in the dollar-euro exchange rate were nothing extraordinary, let alone apocalyptic. They reflected divergences in relative growth rates and interest rates. These swings were less disruptive for the euro area - comprising a fifth of the world's output and almost a third of its trade - than they would have been for its member states individually, had national currencies still been in force.
In short, the disdain that British policymakers traditionally reserve for European ventures has been just as traditionally refuted. The euro has worked. It has broadened and deepened European financial markets, reducing the cost of capital for business. It has achieved reserve currency status because investors have confidence in its future stability.
The success of EMU, although unforeseen by much of Britain's political class, does not necessarily mean that we should give up the pound and embrace the euro. But we should. The potential benefits are legion. They include increased trade flows (businesses can be more confident about the value of future sales receipts), greater price transparency (consumers can directly compare prices across countries), and lower transactions costs for consumers and businesses.
Such arguments admittedly make no difference to those who believe that the euro involves an intolerable violation of national sovereignty. But a currency ought not to be an issue of dogma. Any treaty obligation involves giving up something in return for a benefit. The issue of euro membership is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. A useful test is whether the opponents of the euro consider that that calculation has been affected in any way by the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s. They appear to think not. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, complains that advocates of the euro have “seized on economic difficulties for political ends”.
Mr Osborne is wrong. The crisis does shift the balance of the argument. In keeping out of the euro, Britain faces greater costs while the benefits are less clear.
The dramatic fall of sterling against the dollar and the euro provides, in theory, help to British exporters. But the boost to growth will be negligible: the global economy is in recession. And the volatility of sterling - which partly reflects the sharp deterioration in the public finances - has costs to set against this notional benefit. It will cost the Government more to borrow money (international investors require a higher premium to compensate for the risk of holding UK government bonds) and the taxpayer will have to pick up the bill eventually.
The crisis has also underscored the importance of international action to stabilise the economy. There have been co-ordinated interest rate cuts, but decisions on fiscal policy and banking regulation - notably with national guarantees on bank deposits - have been taken unilaterally. That must change. Being part of the eurozone would make it easier, by joining with other countries to get things done that will benefit the UK.
It used to be argued that the greater importance of the financial services sector to the UK economy made euro membership unsuitable for us. Surely no one can now maintain that a common European approach to banking supervision and capital adequacy is a threat. The weaknesses of the UK financial system are glaring and need to be remedied. If the UK were in the euro, then it could advance effective European regulation, while opposing impractical schemes that would simply distort markets.
The idea that the UK economy has characteristics that are distinctive from those of Europe has been undermined. The greater importance of our housing sector is a crippling weakness, not an idiosyncrasy. The peculiarly destructive cycle of
boom and bust in the UK is a product of specific policy errors. Joining the euro will not work miracles, but it would make easier the task of repair.
Kamm has today written in The Times that we should ditch the pound and join the euro.
This is another step to creating the European Superstate which in turn will be a "local" unelected power under the all-seeing all-knowing world government.
Beware of Kamm. He is a tool of the creepy conspirators who are now crawling out of the woodwork and from under the fridges to propose the formation of a world government, a world government that, of course, they should control.
Kamm's argument is that the current financial chaos is good enough reason. Kamm, like BBC's Robert Peston, does not mention the D word; DERIVATVE.
===============================================
The market has spoken: long live the euro
Detractors of the new currency have been proved wrong. We would be much better off if we were part of the eurozone
Oliver Kamm
Ten years ago today monetary union for the eurozone was established. Three years later the euro was born. Throughout the currency's gestation and launch, the panjandrums of British politics confidently predicted failure.
“I myself believe that EMU will probably break down before Blair is called on to take a decision whether or not Britain should join,” said Lord Healey, the former Labour Chancellor. The European single currency will fail “economically, politically and socially”, insisted Baroness Thatcher. “As the citizens of Europe wake up to the reality of what their politicians have committed themselves to, Britain should count its lucky stars it is not in the euro,” ventured Lord Lamont of Lerwick.
The elder statesmen did not merely oppose British adoption of the single currency. They depicted monetary union as intrinsically flawed. “A continental ‘one-size' bank rate as now imposed on Euroland... simply does not fit the varying needs of stimulus and restraint in so diverse an area,” declared the late Lord Shore, the former Labour Trade Secretary.
It is time for a reckoning. There have been economic stresses and political controversies in the eurozone, but the euro has plainly been a success. It now outstrips the dollar in the value of notes in circulation. It has established itself as the alternative international reserve currency to the dollar. Countries within the eurozone have survived the financial crisis in much better shape than, say, Iceland or Hungary.
During the euro's first two years, sceptics charged that the currency's supposed weakness against the dollar demonstrated a lack of investor confidence. From 2004, when the euro appreciated, the critics changed script without missing a breath. They now claimed that growth in the eurozone was hampered by excessive currency strength, which penalised exporters.
These incompatible criticisms utterly failed to grasp the significance of the new currency. Fluctuations in the dollar-euro exchange rate were nothing extraordinary, let alone apocalyptic. They reflected divergences in relative growth rates and interest rates. These swings were less disruptive for the euro area - comprising a fifth of the world's output and almost a third of its trade - than they would have been for its member states individually, had national currencies still been in force.
In short, the disdain that British policymakers traditionally reserve for European ventures has been just as traditionally refuted. The euro has worked. It has broadened and deepened European financial markets, reducing the cost of capital for business. It has achieved reserve currency status because investors have confidence in its future stability.
The success of EMU, although unforeseen by much of Britain's political class, does not necessarily mean that we should give up the pound and embrace the euro. But we should. The potential benefits are legion. They include increased trade flows (businesses can be more confident about the value of future sales receipts), greater price transparency (consumers can directly compare prices across countries), and lower transactions costs for consumers and businesses.
Such arguments admittedly make no difference to those who believe that the euro involves an intolerable violation of national sovereignty. But a currency ought not to be an issue of dogma. Any treaty obligation involves giving up something in return for a benefit. The issue of euro membership is whether the benefits outweigh the costs. A useful test is whether the opponents of the euro consider that that calculation has been affected in any way by the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s. They appear to think not. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, complains that advocates of the euro have “seized on economic difficulties for political ends”.
Mr Osborne is wrong. The crisis does shift the balance of the argument. In keeping out of the euro, Britain faces greater costs while the benefits are less clear.
The dramatic fall of sterling against the dollar and the euro provides, in theory, help to British exporters. But the boost to growth will be negligible: the global economy is in recession. And the volatility of sterling - which partly reflects the sharp deterioration in the public finances - has costs to set against this notional benefit. It will cost the Government more to borrow money (international investors require a higher premium to compensate for the risk of holding UK government bonds) and the taxpayer will have to pick up the bill eventually.
The crisis has also underscored the importance of international action to stabilise the economy. There have been co-ordinated interest rate cuts, but decisions on fiscal policy and banking regulation - notably with national guarantees on bank deposits - have been taken unilaterally. That must change. Being part of the eurozone would make it easier, by joining with other countries to get things done that will benefit the UK.
It used to be argued that the greater importance of the financial services sector to the UK economy made euro membership unsuitable for us. Surely no one can now maintain that a common European approach to banking supervision and capital adequacy is a threat. The weaknesses of the UK financial system are glaring and need to be remedied. If the UK were in the euro, then it could advance effective European regulation, while opposing impractical schemes that would simply distort markets.
The idea that the UK economy has characteristics that are distinctive from those of Europe has been undermined. The greater importance of our housing sector is a crippling weakness, not an idiosyncrasy. The peculiarly destructive cycle of
boom and bust in the UK is a product of specific policy errors. Joining the euro will not work miracles, but it would make easier the task of repair.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)