Friday, November 28, 2014

Thursday, November 27, 2014

I Support Israel’s National Bill

Mazal Tov: a controversial bill that officially defines Israel as the “Nation-State of the Jewish People” was approved by the Israeli cabinet last Sunday.

Finally Israel has acknowledged its true Jewish nature. Instead of pretending to be a ‘Jewish Democracy” - a contradiction in terms, the Jewish State admits that it is a theocracy guided by Jewish racial supremacist ideology.

The bill, which is intended to become part of Israel’s Basic Laws, recognises Israel’s Jewish character, institutionalises Jewish law as an inspiration for legislation and delists Arabic as an official second language. As if until now Arabic had been equal to Hebrew.

No longer will Jewish anti Zionists and their few Palestinian cronies be able to deny the Jewishness of the Jewish state. They may even have to admit that Palestine is engaged in a religious war that was imposed on them. 

According to some Israeli critics, the new Israeli bill would weaken the wording of Israel’s declaration of independence, which states that the new state would “be based on the principles of liberty, justice and freedom expressed by the prophets of Israel [and] affirm complete social and political equality for all its citizens, regardless of religion, race or gender.”

Israel has always been the Jewish State, it has never been a liberal place nor has it been committed to justice or equality. The deepest truth is that universal humanism and ethical culture is foreign to Judaic thinking that is tribal and legalistic.

Interestingly, as Israel is finally admitting that it has little to do with democracy, the USA is strengthening its relationships with Iran. I guess that in the White House and the Pentagon they had already understood that Iran is the only democracy in the region. 

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

U.S. Among Only 3 Countries Officially Backing Nazism & Holocaust-Denial

In a U.N. vote, on November 21st, only three countries  — the United States, Ukraine, and Canada — voted against a resolution to condemn racist facsism, or “nazism,” and to condemn denial of Germany’s World War II Holocaust against primarily Jews.

This measure passed the General Assembly, on a vote of 115 in favor, 3 against, and 55 abstentions (the abstentions were in order not to offend U.S. President Obama, who was opposed to the resolution).

The measure had been presented to their General Assembly after a period of more than a decade of rising “neo-Nazi” (i.e., racist-fascist) movements in Europe, including especially in Ukraine, where two Ukrainian nazi parties were installed by the U.S. into high posts in Ukraine’s new government, immediately after the democratically elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych was overthrown in a violent coup in Kiev during February of this year. The entire Ukrainian ‘defense’ establishment was then immediately taken over by the leaders of these two nazi parties, which rabidly hate ethnic Russians, and Ukraine is now led by the first — and so far, the only — nazi government to take charge of any country after the end of WW II. Within less than a mere three months after the coup, this new Government began an ethnic-cleansing program in Ukraine’s own ethnic-Russian southeast, where around 90% of the residents had voted for the man who had been overthrown in the coup — this was a campaign to isolate and exterminate those people, so that those voters could never again participate in a Ukrainian national election. Unless those voters would be eliminated, these nazis would be elected out of power — removed from office.

Ukraine voted no on this resolution because this new Ukrainian Government is the only nazi regime in the world, and they are doing the standard nazi things, and so what they are doing is in violation of numerous international laws, which are not being enforced, but which are re-asserted and re-affirmed in this resolution, though Ukraine and the Ukrainian situation aren’t at all mentioned in the resolution. The United States voted no on it, because the U.S. Government had placed them into power. And Canada voted no on it because their far-right Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has been a virtually unquestioning supporter of all U.S. foreign-policy positions, and wants U.S. President Barack Obama to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to assist the Koch brothers and other large oil giants to profitably transport and sell to Europe and around the world, tar-sands oil from Canada’s landlocked Athabasca region.

Germany abstained from voting on this resolution because their leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, does not want to offend the U.S. President by voting for a resolution that the U.S. Government strongly opposes; and also because, as today’s leader of the land where nazism started — in the first nazi political party, the Nazi Party of Germany — she does not want Germany to vote against a resolution that condemns Nazism. If Germany were to have voted against this anti-nazi resolution, she would have faced a political firestorm at home. So, Germany abstained, in order not to offend Obama on the one side, and her public on the other.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Rogue President

Asserting a legal and constitutional authority he himself said he did not have, President Obama is going rogue, issuing an executive amnesty to 4 to 5 million illegal aliens.

He will order the U.S. government not to enforce the law against these 5 million, and declare that they are to be exempt from deportation and granted green cards.

Where did Obama get his 4-5 million figure, not 2-4 million, or 5-7 million? Nowhere in law, but plucked out of his own mind, as to what he can get away with. Barack Obama just felt it was about right.

Thus does our constitutional law professor-president “faithfully execute” the laws of the United States he has twice swore to uphold?

Our rogue president has crossed an historic line, and so has the republic. Future presidents will cite the “Obama precedent” when they declare they will henceforth not enforce this or that law, because of a prior commitment to some noisy constituency.

We have just taken a monumental step away from republicanism toward Caesarism. For this is rule by diktat, the rejection of which sparked the American Revolution.

Source

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The Devil’s bargain: The illusion of a trouble-free existence in the American police state

It’s no coincidence that during the same week in which the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Yates v. United States, a case in which a Florida fisherman is being threatened with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water, Florida police arrested a 90-year-old man twice for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public. 

Both cases fall under the umbrella of overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker. As I make clear in my book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, this is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government. 

John Yates, a commercial fisherman, was written up in 2007 by a state fish and wildlife officer who noticed that among Yates’ haul of red grouper, 72 were apparently under the 20-inch minimum legal minimum. Yates, ordered to bring the fish to shore as evidence of his violation of the federal statute on undersized catches, returned to shore with only 69 grouper in the crate designated for evidence. A crew member later confessed that, on orders from Yates, the crew had thrown the undersized grouper overboard and replaced them with larger fish. Unfortunately, they were three fish short. Sensing a bait-and-switch, prosecutors refused to let Yates off the hook quite so easily. Unfortunately, in prosecuting him for the undersized fish under a law aimed at financial crimes, government officials opened up a can of worms. 

Arnold Abbott, 90 years old and the founder of a nonprofit that feeds the homeless, is facing a fine of $1000 and up to four months in jail for violating a city ordinance that makes it a crime to feed the homeless in public. Under the city’s ordinance, clearly aimed at discouraging the feeding of the homeless in public, organizations seeking to do so must provide portable toilets, be 500 feet away from each other, 500 feet from residential properties, and are limited to having only one group carry out such a function per city block. Abbott has been feeding the homeless on a public beach in Ft. Lauderdale every Wednesday evening for the past 23 years. On November 2, 2014, moments after handing out his third meal of the day, police reportedly approached the nonagenarian and ordered him to “‘drop that plate right now,’ as if I were carrying a weapon,” recalls Abbott. Abbott was arrested and fined. Three days later, Abbott was at it again, and arrested again. 

That both of these incidents occurred in Florida is no coincidence. Remember, this is the state that arrested Nicole Gainey for letting her 7-year-old son walk to the park alone, even though it was just a few blocks from their house. If convicted, Gainey could have been made to serve up to five years in jail. 

Read the entire article

Monday, November 17, 2014

Looming Obamnesty Just A Symptom Of America’s Democidal Democracy

The Obama Amnesty, threatened as early as this week, is bigger than the perfidy of one President—it’s a systemic failing of our form of government. Our ruling elite clearly has a positive interest in making life worse for the majority of people in the country and in actively degrading the concept of citizenship. Our democidal democracy is actually unmaking the American people. Obama’s Executive Amnesty is merely the final stroke that will sever the connection between the historic American nation and the government in Washington, D.C.

The only hope: the GOP/ GAP will become the explicit defender of the American majority’s interests via a National Conservative program of immigration restriction, pro-worker policies, and opposition to corporate exploitation. But this would mean overcoming the ideological bankruptcy of the Beltway Right—and the short-term pecuniary interests of the Republican Congressional leadership.

Ominously, there are troubling signs that the new Republican majority, having been elected largely on the strength of the public’s opposition to Amnesty, is already wobbling. Thus Betsy Woodruff at Slate giggles that “the GOP is about as divided over immigration policy as any political party is over any single issue.” [The Coming Immigration War, November 14, 2014]

Significantly, there does not seem to be a consensus among Republican Party about what actually to do if and when Obama pulls the trigger on unilaterally legalizing almost five million law-breaking aliens.

GOP congressional leaders are discussing a series of short-term funding measures that would “create a forum to push back against the president, and, possibly, gain concessions. Republicans also are planning to file a lawsuit against the president over his use of executive authority, according to the lawmakers and aides.” [Congressional Republicans consider using short-term funding bill to pressure Obama, Robert Costa, Washington Post, November 14, 2014] The power of the purse could be used to simply defund Obama’s Amnesty, as Senator Jeff Sessions (R-America) has urged. [Jeff Sessions: Defund Obama’s Exec Amnesty in Next Funding Bill, Tony Lee, Breitbart, November 6, 2014]

But, needless to say, this approach concedes the initiative entirely to President Obama, who has already acknowledged that what he is proposing to do is unconstitutional.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

The CIA Won the Midterms

The wheels up party is a venerable CIA tradition, normally celebrated at overseas stations when a particularly incompetent Chief of Station or a hostile ambassador was in the process of permanently leaving post. The drinking would begin at a time estimated to coincide with the moment when the dearly departed’s aircraft lifted off from the tarmac on its way to Washington.

Wheels ups are rarer at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., though celebrations were reported when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980; but as a number of senior officers in the Agency actually had a hand in that development, there was probably a measure of self-congratulation at a job well done.

One might well imagine that the partying began at Langley shortly after the polls closed last Tuesday, as soon as it became clear that there would be a GOP Senate majority. More to the point, Sen. Dianne Feinstein would be performing her own wheels up, relinquishing her position as Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) chair to be replaced by the little known Richard Burr of North Carolina. Burr is regarded by the Agency as a good friend, someone who had already staked out a position in favor of protecting government secrecy, stating “I personally don’t believe that anything that goes on in the intelligence committee should ever be discussed publicly.” He also basically supports the CIA position that torture produced information critical to the killing of Osama bin Laden, commenting that “The information that eventually led us to this compound was the direct result of enhanced interrogations…” Burr is regarded as a right-wing conservative and has earned the ultimate accolade of a zero rating from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Now some might argue that Feinstein herself did her best to preserve the executive branch’s right to assassinate Americans overseas, to spy secretly, set up black site prisons and to engage in other activities that are best not discussed in polite company. Many of these activities were carried out by the CIA, but Feinstein did draw the line at torture, which is one of the few illegal acts that the Obama administration credibly claims to be against, placing Feinstein on safe ground bureaucratically speaking. She only turned against the Agency when she learned that it had had the temerity to spy on the activity of her own committee.

In a recent speech made before the midterms, election Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper expressed his confidence that congressional moves to rein in National Security Agency spying had pretty much lost momentum. With Republicans now firmly in charge, remaining watered down measures are likely to die in committee.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The FBI: America’s Secret Police

Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Intimidation tactics. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment schemes. 

These are the hallmarks of every authoritarian regime from the Roman Empire to modern-day America, yet it’s the secret police—tasked with silencing dissidents, ensuring compliance, and maintaining a climate of fear—who sound the death knell for freedom in every age. 

Every regime has its own name for its secret police: Mussolini’s OVRA carried out phone surveillance on government officials. Stalin’s NKVD carried out large-scale purges, terror and depopulation. Hitler’s Gestapo went door to door ferreting out dissidents and other political “enemies” of the state. And in the U.S., it’s the Federal Bureau of Investigation that does the dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo. 

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work. 

Indeed, a far cry from the glamorized G-men depicted in Hollywood films noir and spy thrillers, the government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. 

Case in point: the FBI is being sued after its agents, lacking sufficient evidence to acquire a search warrant, disabled a hotel’s Internet and then impersonated Internet repair technicians in order to gain access to a hotel suite and record the activities of the room’s occupants. Justifying the warrantless search as part of a sting on Internet gambling, FBI officials insisted that citizens should not expect the same right to privacy in the common room of a hotel suite as they would at home in their bedroom. 

Read the entire article

Monday, November 10, 2014

Friday, November 7, 2014

The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS

In the war on the Islamic State, the alleged scourge of humanity, little is heard about the position of America’s much-ballyhooed greatest ally in the Middle East, if not the world, Israel. Now the Islamic State has been conquering territory in very close proximity to the border of Israel. But Israel does not seem to be fearful and it is not taking any action.

And the Obama administration and American media pundits do not seem to be the least bit disturbed.  This is quite in contrast to the complaints about other Middle East countries such as Turkey that are being harshly criticized for their failure to become actively involved in fighting the Islamic State.

For example, a New York Times editorial, “Mr. Erdogan’s Dangerous Game,” begins, “Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once aspired to lead the Muslim world. At this time of regional crisis, he has been anything but a leader. Turkish troops and tanks have been standing passively behind a chicken-wire border fence while a mile away in Syria, Islamic extremists are besieging the town of Kobani and its Kurdish population.”

An article in the Boston Globe read “Turkey has failed Kobani, Kurds.”  An editorial in the USA Today was titled “Turkey waits as ISIL crushes Kobani.”

Neocon Charles Krauthammer in “Erdogan’s Double Game” compared Turkey’s failure to come to the defense of the Kurds in the surrounded border town of Kobani to Stalin’s unwillingness to aid the uprising of Polish nationalist forces in Warsaw in 1944, thus allowing the latter’s destruction at the hands of the Nazis.

Read the entire article

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Sheriffs, Senator Warn About Effects of Obama Amnesty for Illegals

Several sheriffs across the nation, as well as an outspoken U.S. senator, have warned about the dangers that will result from President Obama’s stated plan to grant amnesty (under the guise of a “path to citizenship”) to many of the estimated 11 million illegal aliens living in the United States.

A report from Breitbart News on November 3 quoted sheriffs' statements from Massachusetts to Arizona who warned that the Obama plan to grant amnesty by executive actions will have dire consequences. 

Among those Breitbart quoted was Sheriff Tom Hodgson of Bristol County, Massachusetts, who declared:

[Amnesty] will dramatically increase the draw for illegal immigrants to come into our country, because you have the President of the United States sending out a message that we have no problem with people ignoring our immigration laws…. They’re looking for a wink and nod that says "yeah, come on in" — we’ve seen it with the DACA. It is the worst message you can possibly send…. The President’s planned [executive order] is a formula for national disaster and public safety.

Sheriff Sam Page of Rockingham County, North Carolina, in a statement provided to Breitbart News, warned that illegal immigration by executive amnesty will pose a major threat to Americans: 

Human trafficking, drug trafficking and criminal activity are coming through our borders, but not staying near our borders — it’s getting into every part of the United States…. This is a public safety issue — a terrorist or any other kind of criminal may cross our borders. We just don’t know who is coming across. If the President issue his executive amnesty, you’ll see a dramatic surge of people coming in from all countries, including Central America — and again we won’t know who’s coming in: gangs, drugs, cartels, public health threats, human trafficking….

Read the entire article

Monday, November 3, 2014

15 Reasons Why Americans Think We’re Still in a Recession

1: Wage StagnationWhy America’s Workers Need Faster Wage Growth—And What We Can Do About It, Elise Gould, EPI
2: Most people still haven’t recouped what they lost in the crash: Typical Household Wealth Has Plunged 36% Since 2003, Zero Hedge
3: Most working people are still living hand-to-mouth76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, CNN Money
4: Millennials are Drowning in Red Ink:  Biggest economic threat? Student loan debt, USA Today
5: Downward mobility is the new reality: Middle-Class Death Watch: As Poverty Spreads, 28 Percent of Americans Fall Out of Middle Class, Truthout
6: People are more vulnerable than ever:  “More Than Half Of All Americans Can’t Come Up With $400 In Emergency Cash… Unless They Borrow“, Personal Liberty
7: Working people are getting poorer: The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third, New York Times
8: Most people can’t even afford to get their teeth fixed:  7 things the middle class can’t afford anymore, USA Today
9: The good, high-paying jobs have vanishedRecovery Has Created Far More Low-Wage Jobs Than Better-Paid Ones, New York Times
10: More workers are throwing in the towel:  Labor Participation Rate Drops To 36 Year Low; Record 92.6 Million Americans Not In Labor Force, Zero Hedge
11: Nearly twice as many people still rely on Food Stamps than before the recession: Food-stamp use is falling from its peak, Marketwatch
12: The ocean of  red ink continues to grow: American Household Credit Card Debt Statistics: 2014, Nerd Wallet Finance
13: No Recovery for working people: The collapse of household income in the US, World Socialist Web Site
14: Most people will work until they die:  The Greatest Retirement Crisis In American History, Forbes
15: Americans are more pessimistic about the future, Polling Report
The majority of people in the United States, no longer believe in the American dream, or that America is the land of opportunity, or that their children will have a better standard of living than their own.  They’ve grown more pessimistic because  they haven’t seen the changes they were hoping for, and because their lives are just as hard as they were right after the crash.  In fact, according to a 2014 Public Religion Research Institute poll– 72 percent of those surveyed said they think “the economy is still in recession.”

Judging by the info in the 15 links above,  they’re probably right.