Political News — March to May 2012

Article 1

Iran: Hypocrisy of US & Israel Policy--Chomsky

Given US support of and long record of cooperation with the US, Israel must be viewed as a client state, and as such it actions must be assumed to be with the approval of our government. Thus an attack on Iran by Israel must be viewed as done with US approval. Europeans and Arabs reguard the US and Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. This point Chomsky has repeatedly made in his speeches and books. Chomsky raises the question of why can Israel have nuclear weapon and enrich uranium, yet Iran can’t? The nonaligned nations(120 of them), hold that Iran has a right to do what Israel does. The real issue is that Iran opposes the march towards globalization. “An additional charge the West levels against Iran is that it is seeking to expand its influence in neighboring countries attacked and occupied by the U.S. and Britain, and is supporting resistance to the U.S.-backed Israeli aggression in Lebanon and illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.” The desire for self-defense through having an nuclear arsenal, given Western aggression in the Middle East, makes sense. Only// Views » March 2, 2012 http://inthesetimes.com/article/12821/what_are_irans_intentions What Are Iran’s Intentions?As tensions flare between Iran and the West, 120 nonaligned nations agree: the country has the right to enrich uranium. BY Noam Chomsky

Chomsky raises the question of why can Israel have nuclear weapon and enrich uranium, yet Iran can’t? The nonaligned nations(120 of them), hold that Iran has a right to do what Israel does. The real issue is that Iran opposes the march towards globalization.

“An additional charge the West levels against Iran is that it is seeking to expand its influence in neighboring countries attacked and occupied by the U.S. and Britain, and is supporting resistance to the U.S.-backed Israeli aggression in Lebanon and illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.” The desire for self-defense through having an nuclear arsenal, given Western aggression in the Middle East, makes sense.

As tensions flare between Iran and the West, 120 nonaligned nations agree: the country has the right to enrich uranium. BY Noam Chomsky

Concerns about 'the imminent threat' of Iran are often attributed to the "international community"—code language for U.S. allies. The people of the world tend to see matters rather differently.

The January/February issue of Foreign Affairs featured the article “Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option,” by Matthew Kroenig, along with commentary about other ways to contain the Iranian threat.

The media resound with warnings about a likely Israeli attack on Iran while the U.S. hesitates, keeping open the option of aggression—thus again routinely violating the U.N. Charter, the foundation of international law. As tensions escalate, eerie echoes of the run-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are in the air. Feverish U.S. primary campaign rhetoric adds to the drumbeat. Concerns about “the imminent threat” of Iran are often attributed to the “international community”—code language for U.S. allies. The people of the world, however, tend to see matters rather differently.

Article 2

Clarence Thomas non-disclosure of income, an ethics violation

Clarence Thomas violated court ethics on a grand scale. The Congressional investigation went nowhere. He is one of the good boys. Below are the letters concerning this matter. The road ends in the fall of 2011. The least qualified judge in the last 60 years (received the lowest rating by ABA among those nominated by the President, in his case bush senior); Clarence has violated bluntly and repeatedly in two ways the financial disclosure law in his yearly fillings. Will Congress and the Justice Department sleep on this one? Clarence Thomas Should Be Investigated For Nondisclosure, Democratic Lawmakers Say Jennifer Bendery, 9/30/11 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/democratic-lawmakers-call-for-investiation-into-clarence-thomas-finances_n_987934.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=093011&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/democratic-lawmakers-call-for-investiation-into-clarence-thomas-finances_n_987934.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=093011&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

WASHINGTON -- Democratic lawmakers on Thursday called for a federal investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars on annual financial disclosure forms.

Led by House Rules Committee ranking member Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), 20 House Democrats sent a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States -- the entity that frames guidelines for the administration of federal courts -- requesting that the conference refer the matter of Thomas' non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to the Department of Justice.

The letter outlines how, throughout his 20-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Thomas routinely checked a box titled "none" on his annual financial disclosure forms, indicating that his wife had received no income. But in reality, the letter states, she earned nearly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation from 2003 to 2007 alone.

Slaughter called it "absurd" to suggest that Thomas may not have known how to fill out the forms. "It is reasonable, in every sense of the word, to believe that a member of the highest court in the land should know how to properly disclose almost $700,000 worth of income," Slaughter said in a statement. "To not be able to do so is suspicious, and according to law, requires further investigation. To accept Justice Thomas’s explanation without doing the required due diligence would be irresponsible."

The letter also cites a June report in The New York Times indicating Thomas may have regularly benefited from the use of a private yacht and airplane owned by real estate magnate Harlan Crow and failed to disclose the travel as a gift or travel reimbursement.

Article 3

How Goldman Sacked Greece--Palast

WTO un-reported rape of Greece; Greg Palast uncovers Goldman Saks deal Lazy Ouzo-Swilling, Olive-Pit Spitting Greeks Or, How Goldman Sacked Greece by Greg Palast for In These Times Sunday, November 6, 2011

Lazy Ouzo-Swilling, Olive-Pit Spitting Greeks Or, How Goldman Sacked Greece by Greg Palast for In These Times Sunday, November 6, 2011

Greece's economy blew apart because a bunch of olive-spitting, ouzo-guzzling, lazy-ass Greeks refuse to put in a full day's work, retire while they're still teenagers, pocket pensions fit for a pasha; and they've gone on a social-services spending spree using borrowed money. Now that the bill has come due and the Greeks have to pay with higher taxes and cuts in their big fat welfare state, they run riot, screaming in the streets, busting windows and burning banks. I don't buy it. I don't buy it because of the document in my hand marked, "RESTRICTED DISTRIBUTION." I'll cut to the indictment: Greece is a crime scene. The people are victims of a fraud, a scam, a hustle and a flim-flam. And--cover the children's ears when I say this--a bank named Goldman Sachs is holding the smoking gun. ******** This is an adaptation of an excerpt from Vultures' Picnic, Greg Palast's new book, out next week, an investigator's pursuit of petroleum pigs, power pirates and high-finance fraudsters. Read the first chapter or just get the book here. In 2002, Goldman Sachs secretly bought up €2.3 billion in Greek government debt, converted it all into yen and dollars, then immediately sold it back to Greece. Goldman took a huge loss on the trade. Is Goldman that stupid? Goldman is stupid—like a fox. The deal was a con, with Goldman making up a phony-baloney exchange rate for the transaction. Why? Goldman had cut a secret deal with the Greek government in power then. Their game: to conceal a massive budget deficit. Goldman's fake loss was the Greek government's fake gain. Goldman would get repayment of its "loss" from the government at loan-shark rates. The point is, through this crazy and costly legerdemain, Greece's right-wing free-market government was able to pretend its deficits never exceeded 3 percent of GDP. Cool. Fraudulent but cool. But flim-flam isn't cheap these days: On top of murderous interest payments, Goldman charged the Greeks over a quarter billion dollars in fees. When the new Socialist government of George Papandreou came into office, they opened up the books and Goldman's bats flew out. Investors' went berserk, demanding monster interest rates to lend more money to roll over this debt. Greece's panicked bondholders rushed to buy insurance against the nation going bankrupt. The price of the bond-bust insurance, called a credit default swap (or CDS), also shot through the roof. Who made a big pile selling the CDS insurance? Goldman. And those rotting bags of CDS's sold by Goldman and others? Didn't they know they were handing their customers gold-painted turds? That's Goldman's specialty. In 2007, at the same time banks were selling suspect CDS's and CDOs (packaged sub-prime mortgage securities), Goldman held a "net short" position against these securities. That is, Goldman was betting their financial "products" would end up in the toilet. Goldman picked up another half a billion dollars on their "net short" scam. But, instead of cuffing Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein and parading him in a cage through the streets of Athens, we have the victims of the frauds, the Greek people, blamed. Blamed and soaked for the cost of it. The "spread" on Greek bonds (the term used for the risk premium paid on Greece's corrupted debt) has now risen to — get ready for this--$14,000 per family per year. Euro-nation, the secret Geithner memo, and the Ecuador connection Why did the Greek government throw its nation's fate into Goldman's greasy hands? What the heck was in the "RESTRICTED" document? And why did I have to take it to Geneva, to throw it down in front of the Director-General of the WTO for authentication, a creepy French banker I otherwise wouldn't bother to spit on, and then tear off to Quito to share it with the grateful President of Ecuador? To give you all the answers would require me to write a book. I have: Vultures' Picnic--in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters. It's really quite important to me that you read it, that you get it now. That's a funny statement, I suppose, from an author. But if you've been reading my stories in The Guardian or watching my reports on BBC Newsnight, you've gotten the facts; but I really want to let you inside the investigations, to cross the continents with me and follow down the leads so that you can get a full picture of The Beasts. The Beasts and their trophy wives, intelligence agency go-fers, political concubines and bone-breakers. And besides, it's enormous fun when it's not scary as sh*t. ******** Here's a taste of Chapter 12 - The Generalissimo of Globalization - from the film-enhanced eBook edition. [And more on the 1% Greece-ing us, check out the upcoming issue of In These Times.]

In 2002, Goldman Sachs secretly bought up €2.3 billion in Greek government debt, converted it all into yen and dollars, then immediately sold it back to Greece. Goldman took a huge loss on the trade. Is Goldman that stupid? Goldman is stupid—like a fox. The deal was a con, with Goldman making up a phony-baloney exchange rate for the transaction. Why? Goldman had cut a secret deal with the Greek government in power then. Their game: to conceal a massive budget deficit. Goldman's fake loss was the Greek government's fake gain. Goldman would get repayment of its "loss" from the government at loan-shark rates. The point is, through this crazy and costly legerdemain, Greece's right-wing free-market government was able to pretend its deficits never exceeded 3 percent of GDP. Cool. Fraudulent but cool. But flim-flam isn't cheap these days: On top of murderous interest payments, Goldman charged the Greeks over a quarter billion dollars in fees. When the new Socialist government of George Papandreou came into office, they opened up the books and Goldman's bats flew out. Investors' went berserk, demanding monster interest rates to lend more money to roll over this debt. Greece's panicked bondholders rushed to buy insurance against the nation going bankrupt. The price of the bond-bust insurance, called a credit default swap (or CDS), also shot through the roof. Who made a big pile selling the CDS insurance? Goldman. And those rotting bags of CDS's sold by Goldman and others? Didn't they know they were handing their customers gold-painted turds? That's Goldman's specialty. In 2007, at the same time banks were selling suspect CDS's and CDOs (packaged sub-prime mortgage securities), Goldman held a "net short" position against these securities. That is, Goldman was betting their financial "products" would end up in the toilet. Goldman picked up another half a billion dollars on their "net short" scam. But, instead of cuffing Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein and parading him in a cage through the streets of Athens, we have the victims of the frauds, the Greek people, blamed. Blamed and soaked for the cost of it. The "spread" on Greek bonds (the term used for the risk premium paid on Greece's corrupted debt) has now risen to — get ready for this--$14,000 per family per year. Euro-nation, the secret Geithner memo, and the Ecuador connection Why did the Greek government throw its nation's fate into Goldman's greasy hands? What the heck was in the "RESTRICTED" document? And why did I have to take it to Geneva, to throw it down in front of the Director-General of the WTO for authentication, a creepy French banker I otherwise wouldn't bother to spit on, and then tear off to Quito to share it with the grateful President of Ecuador? To give you all the answers would require me to write a book. I have: Vultures' Picnic--in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters. It's really quite important to me that you read it, that you get it now. That's a funny statement, I suppose, from an author. But if you've been reading my stories in The Guardian or watching my reports on BBC Newsnight, you've gotten the facts; but I really want to let you inside the investigations, to cross the continents with me and follow down the leads so that you can get a full picture of The Beasts. The Beasts and their trophy wives, intelligence agency go-fers, political concubines and bone-breakers. And besides, it's enormous fun when it's not scary as sh*t. ******** Here's a taste of Chapter 12 - The Generalissimo of Globalization - from the film-enhanced eBook edition. [And more on the 1% Greece-ing us, check out the upcoming issue of In These Times.]

On May 5, 2010, I open up the Wall Street Journal and I could puke. There was this photo of a man on fire, just a bunch of flames with a leg sticking out. Two others burnt with him on a pretty spring day in Athens.

If you read the U.S. papers, the answer was obvious. A bunch of olive-spitting, ouzo-guzzling, lazy Greek workers who refused to put in a full day’s work, and retired while they were still teenagers on pensions fit for pasha, had gone on a social services spending spree using borrowed money. Now that the bill came due and the Greeks had to pay with higher taxes and cuts in their big fat welfare state, they ran riot, screaming in the streets, busting windows and burning banks with people inside.

I didn’t buy it. It wasn’t just a feeling in my gut, it was the document in my hand, marked, “RESTRICTED DISTRIBUTION. ITS CONTENTS MAY NOT BE OTHERWISE DISCLOSED. MAY BE USED BY RECEIPIENTS (sic) ONLY IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THEIR OFFICIAL DUTIES.”

Article 4

Scouts Train to Fight Terrorism

Explorer Scouts are the elder boys and girls of the Scouts of American and Great Britain. They age is between 14 and 18—replacing the Venture Scouts. “ This was part of a greater change in programme, including the introduction of Scout Network for 18- to 25-year-olds. The aim of the section is to provide a flexible and active Scouting programme for adolescents, with an emphasis on personal challenge and adventure”—Wikipedia. The Globalizers have learnt from Hitler and Mussolini. As Naomi Kline Points out in the Shock Doctrine and Alewx Jones in the Fall of the Empire, the Pinochet option will be tried here if necessary. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14explorers.html Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More Explorers ready to enter a building taken by terrorists, in an exercise. More Photos > By JENNIFER STEINHAUER Published: May 13, 2009 a version of this article appeared in print on May 14, 2009 on page A1 of the New York Edition.

Published: May 13, 2009 a version of this article appeared in print on May 14, 2009 on page A1 of the New York Edition.

IMPERIAL, Calif. — Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

Article 5

Lydia regime change; the globalizers spin

As usual the real terrorists, the major killers, and the destabilizers of a region blame their victims for atrocities and provocations. The real terrorist, the forces for globalization, claim to have the backing of a popular uprising, which in fact is not popular and is supported by the globalizers through such the CIA and various allies of the US such as Saudi Arabia. The atrocities against the civilians are by far in the main committed by the Western powers with their twelve thousand sorties and the two thousand five hundred targets. A Beggar's Banquet The Undoing of Libya By Prof. VIJAY PRASHAD University of Connecticut

NATO headquarters shares with the caves of al-Qaeda the error of hubris. The jihadist believes that it was their rag-tag mujahedeen that chased the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Nothing in their world-view allows them to share the glory with the United States, the Saudis and the Pakistanis, nor yet with the infestation of economic termites inside the heart of the Soviet industrial base. In much the same way, the NATO war planners believe that it was their seventy-eight day bombing campaign that freed Kosovo from the clutches of Slobodan Milosevic's forces. Nothing in the Brussels briefing books underlines the crucial step taken by the Russians, when they withdrew their support of Milosevic and left him, "looking at the stars," as he put it in his famous invocation of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. Neither the mujahedeen nor the NATO aircraft are themselves capable of military victories that have a political impact. A skirmish here and a bombing campaign there, but not the decisive blow that overturns a political dispensation.

Outgoing U. S. Defense Chief Robert Gates complains that the Europeans are not bearing enough responsibility for the NATO campaign. France's Sarkozy replies that Gates' retirement causes him to use "bitter words." It is only when they are set to retire or do retire that sensible custodians of the hierarchical world order speak the truth: Eisenhower warned the U. S. about the military industrial complex in his farewell address of 1961, World Bank heads Robert McNamara and James Wolfensohn snubbed their own certainties only when the door of the Bank shut behind them. Gates indicates that the U. S. can no longer use its military power to sustain its flagging hegemony. It has to turn things over to partners. The European ship falters, as the Greek sinkhole widens. It does not have the fortitude.

Gates' criticism came as Congress sent the White House a confused verdict: no authorization for the Libyan adventure, no allowance for more U. S. participation in the NATO operation, and yet, no cut-off for the funds needed for the operation. The U. S. drones can continue to work with other NATO warplanes to cut a swath through the civilian districts of Tripoli. The fears of some in Congress is that despite the stalemate in Libya, pressure mounts from the humanitarian interventionist clique around Obama (Samantha Powers, Susan Rice) and from Tel Aviv to stiffen the U. S. stand vis-à-vis Syria, and perhaps Iran. "We don't have enough wars going on?" asked Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio). "We have to wage war against another nation which did not attack us?"

The technical discussions about the War Powers Act are of little consequence. Few U. S. presidents have honored the Act. More significant is the crack in the consensus on the doctrine of perpetual war that governs the political economy of the United States: taxpayer spending on warfare provides whatever long-term government stimulus to the economy is allowed, whereas any money spent on the social side of the ledger is sniffed at. Into this breach comes Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, with "How China Plans to Reinforce the Global Recovery" (Financial Times, June 23). Wen calls the bet. China is at ready, but not yet to take on the political challenges alone. It will seek to work through the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) formation.

The twelve thousand sorties and the two thousand five hundred targets have done little to stop the Qaddafi regime from trying to assert itself. The Libyan army continues to push against Misrata, the city of perpetual dread. The frontline between east and west remains stagnant. The regime of Syria's Bashar al-Assad is more likely to collapse sooner than that of Qaddafi. Qaddafi's daughter, Aisha, filed papers in Brussels to sue NATO for its killing of her daughter, Mastoura, her brother and Qaddafi's two other grandchildren. After this April 30 attack, the Russian Foreign Ministry pointed out that the "physical destruction of Qaddafi and members of his family raise serious doubts." U. S. Navy Admiral Samuel Locklear told Congressman Mike Turner in May that the NATO forces were trying to kill Qaddafi (or in his more measured language, as reported via Turner, "the scope of civil protection was being interpreted to permit the removal of the chain of command of Qaddafi's military, which includes Qaddafi"). Qaddafi's resolve is hardened. With everything to lose, he is determined to fight on.

Time is Qaddafi's friend. As each day goes by, more and more of NATO's propaganda ploys unravel. Donatella Rovera (Amnesty International) spent three months in Libya, investigating the various claims. She now reports that many of them are figments of the imagination, not the least of which is the one about Libyan troops given Viagra to conduct the mass rape of women (this was repeated as fact by the International Criminal Court's Luis Moreno-Ocampo). Other crimes are certainly in evidence, such as the bombardment of civilian areas, but these now seem to have been conducted by both the Libyan army and by the NATO warplanes. There is no moral high ground.