Harbinger Blog

Warning Signs That We Should Prepare For The Worst

Javed — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:40:25 +0000

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Thu Jan 26, 2012 8:13 pm

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Warning Signs That We Should Prepare For The Worst
January 19, 2012
By Michael Snyder
The warning signs are all around us. All we have to do is open up our eyes and look at them. Almost every single day there are more prominent voices in the financial world telling us that a massive economic crisis is coming and that we need to prepare for the worst. On Wednesday, it was the World Bank itself that issued a very chilling warning. In an absolutely startling report, the World Bank revised GDP growth estimates for 2012 downward very sharply, warned that Europe could be on the verge of a devastating financial crisis, and declared that the rest of the world better â€œprepare for the worst.â€�Â You would expect to hear this kind of thing on The Economic Collapse Blog, but this is not the kind of language that you would normally expect to hear from the stuffed suits at the World Bank. Obviously things have gotten bad enough that nobody is even really trying to deny it anymore. Andrew Burns, the lead author of the report, said that
if the sovereign debt crisis gets even worse we could be looking at an economic crisis that could be even worse than the last one: â€œAn escalation of the crisis would spare no-one. Developed- and developing-country growth rates could fall by as much or more than in 2008/09.â€�Â Burns also stated that the â€œimportance of contingency planning cannot be stressed enough.â€�Â In other words, Burns is saying that it is time to prepare for the worst. So are you ready?
But of course it isnâ€™t just the World Bank that is warning about these things. The chorus of voices that is warning about the next great financial crisis just seems to grow by the day.
Some of these voices were profiled in a Bloomberg article the other day entitled â€œApocalypse How? Dire â€™12 Forecastsâ€œ. The following is just a sampling of quotes from that articleâ€¦.
-John Mauldin, president of Millennium Wave Advisors: â€œWeâ€™ve got a cancer. That cancer is debtâ€�
-Mark Spitznagel of Universa Investments: â€œToo much malinvestment has been kept alive, and history shows an inevitable wipeout, which started in 2000.â€�
-Michael Panzner of Financial Armageddon: â€œThe fundamental outlook is even worse now than it was a few weeks ago, given (the lack of positive) developments in Europe and growing evidence that the economies of major countries around the world are deteriorating fast.â€�
If you have time, you should go check out the rest of that article. It really is fascinating.
When this crisis is over, all sorts of people are going to be running around claiming that they predicted it. But it does not take a genius to see what is coming. All you have to do is open up your eyes and look at the flashing red warning signs.
So what should we all be looking for next?
March 20th is a key date to keep your eye on. That is the day when Greece will either makes its 14.5 billion euro bond payment or it will default.
Greece does not have a prayer of making that payment without help. If Greece can convince the EU and the IMF to release the next scheduled bailout payment and if Greece can reach a satisfactory deal with private bondholders, then the coming Greek default might be â€œorderlyâ€�. But if something goes wrong, the coming Greek default might be quite â€œdisorderlyâ€�.
At this point, almost everyone in the financial world is anticipating a Greek default of one form or anotherâ€¦.
-Edward Parker, the managing director for Fitchâ€™s sovereign and supranational group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, recently declared that a Greek default is inevitableâ€¦.
â€œIt is going to happen. Greece is insolvent so it will default.â€�
-Moritz Kraemer, the head of S&Pâ€™s European sovereign ratings unit, made the following statement on Bloomberg Television on Monday:
â€œGreece will default very shortly. Whether there will be a solution at the end of the current rocky negotiations I cannot say.â€�
-Richard McGuire, a strategist at Dutch bank Rabobank, was recently quoted by CNBC as saying the followingâ€¦.
â€œPeople often ask if Greece is going to default which â€¦ is a misnomer because Greece is (already) defaultingâ€�
-Diane Swonk, the chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, says that the default by Greece will probably be an â€œorderlyâ€� one but that the situationcould change at any momentâ€¦.
â€œIt appears at the moment that the market is accepting a Greek default as inevitable, and it will be an orderly default. But that can change on a dime.â€�
But whether there is a default or not, the reality is that Greece is already experiencing a full-blown economic depression. In Greece, 20 percent of all retail stores have already shut down. The unemployment rate for those under the age of 24 is now at 39 percent. Large numbers of Greeks are trying to get themselves and their money out of the country while they still can.
Pessimism regarding Greece is at an all-time high. Michael Fuchs, the deputy leader of Angela Merkelâ€™s political party, recently made the following statementâ€¦.
â€œI donâ€™t think that Greece, in its current condition, can be saved.â€�
But of course Greece is not the only declining economy in Europe by a long shot.
Italy has a much larger economy, and if Italy totally collapses it will be an absolute nightmare for the entire globe.
Right now, the Bank of Italy is forecasting a significant recession for the Italian economy in 2012. The following is from a statement that Bank of Italy has just releasedâ€¦.
â€œThe uncertainty that surrounds the medium-term perspectives of the Italian economy â€¦ are extraordinarily high and are directly linked to the evolution of the eurozone debt crisisâ€�
Italyâ€™s youth unemployment rate has hit the highest level ever, and nearly all sectors of the Italian economy are showing signs of slowing down.
Plus there is the looming problem of Italian debt. As I wrote about yesterday, when you add the maturing debt that the Italian government must roll over in 2012 to their projected budget deficit, it comes to 23.1 percent of Italyâ€™s GDP.
Originally it was hoped that the economic problems in Europe could be contained to just a few countries. But now it has become clear that is just not going to happen.
Trends forecaster Gerald Celente recently explained to ABC Australia that much of Europe is already essentially experiencing an economic depressionâ€¦.
â€œIf you live in Greece, youâ€™re in a depression; if you live in Spain, youâ€™re in a depression; if you live in Portugal or Ireland, youâ€™re in a depression,â€� Celente said. â€œIf you live in Lithuania, youâ€™re running to the bank to get your money out of the bank as the bank runs go on. Itâ€™s a depression. Hungary, thereâ€™s a depression, and much of Eastern Europe, Romania, Bulgaria. And there are a lot of depressions going on [already].â€�
The troubling news out of Europe just seems to keep coming in waves. Here are some more recent examplesâ€¦.
-Manufacturing activity in the euro zone has fallen for five months in a row.
-Germanyâ€™s economy actually contracted during the 4th quarter of 2011.
-It is being reported that the Spanish economy contracted during the 4th quarter of 2011.
-Bad loans in Spain recently hit a 17-year high and the unemployment rate is at a 15-year high.
So will all of this economic trouble eventually spread to the United States?
Of course it will.
The global economy is more interconnected today than ever. Back in 2008 the financial crisis that started on Wall Street ended up devastating economies all over the planet. The same thing will happen during this next great financial crisis.
Only this time the U.S. is in a much weaker position. The U.S. debt problem has gotten much worse since the last crisis.
During 2008, our national debt crossed the 10 trillion dollar mark. Less than 4 years later, we have crossed the 15 trillion dollar mark.
So what are we going to do the next time large numbers of banks fail and unemployment skyrockets?
Where are we going to get the money to bail out all of those banks and to take care of all of those newly unemployed people?
Some people say that socialism is the answer, but the truth is that we are already a socialist welfare state. If you can believe it, nearly half of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of financial benefits from the U.S. government.
During the next great crisis, the number of people that are dependent on the government will go even higher.
If you dont want to end up dependent on the government, you should heed the warning signs and you should use this time to prepare for the hard times that are coming.
When even the World Bank tells us to hope for the best but to prepare for the worst, you know that it is late in the game.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people out there only believe what they want to believe. They donâ€™t want to believe that a great economic crisis is coming, and so when it does happen they are going to be absolutely blindsided by it.

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free

Javed — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:30:04 +0000

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free
By Jonathan Turley, Published: January 13
Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.
Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own – the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?
While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.
These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens – precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.
The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.
Assassination of U.S. citizens
President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)
Indefinite detention
Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While the administration claims that this provision only codified existing law, experts widely contest this view, and the administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal courts. The government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)
Arbitrary justice
The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)
Warrantless searches
The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use “national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens – and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance. )
Secret evidence
The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts. It also forces the dismissal of cases against the United States by simply filing declarations that the cases would make the government reveal classified information that would harm national security – a claim made in a variety of privacy lawsuits and largely accepted by federal judges without question. Even legal opinions, cited as the basis for the government’s actions under the Bush and Obama administrations, have been classified. This allows the government to claim secret legal arguments to support secret proceedings using secret evidence. In addition, some cases never make it to court at all. The federal courts routinely deny constitutional challenges to policies and programs under a narrow definition of standing to bring a case.
War crimes
The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration said in 2009 that it would not allow CIA employees to be investigated or prosecuted for such actions. This gutted not just treaty obligations but the Nuremberg principles of international law. When courts in countries such as Spain moved to investigate Bush officials for war crimes, the Obama administration reportedly urged foreign officials not to allow such cases to proceed, despite the fact that the United States has long claimed the same authority with regard to alleged war criminals in other countries. (Various nations have resisted investigations of officials accused of war crimes and torture. Some, such as Serbia and Chile, eventually relented to comply with international law; countries that have denied independent investigations include Iran, Syria and China.)
Secret court
The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations. In 2011, Obama renewed these powers, including allowing secret searches of individuals who are not part of an identifiable terrorist group. The administration has asserted the right to ignore congressional limits on such surveillance. (Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.)
Immunity from judicial review
Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy. (Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.)
Continual monitoring of citizens
The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. (Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.)
Extraordinary renditions
The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects. The Obama administration says it is not continuing the abuses of this practice under Bush, but it insists on the unfettered right to order such transfers – including the possible transfer of U.S. citizens.
These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy.
Some politicians shrug and say these increased powers are merely a response to the times we live in. Thus, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could declare in an interview last spring without objection that “free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” Of course, terrorism will never “surrender” and end this particular “war.”
Other politicians rationalize that, while such powers may exist, it really comes down to how they are used. This is a common response by liberals who cannot bring themselves to denounce Obama as they did Bush. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, has insisted that Congress is not making any decision on indefinite detention: “That is a decision which we leave where it belongs – in the executive branch.”
And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.
An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.
The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got – a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.
The indefinite-detentio n provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.
Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

Washington Post

Israel Grabs Palestinian Land

Javed — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 04:53:16 +0000

In Jerusalem, national parks seen by Palestinians as a land grab

Seven existing and planned parks in sensitive East Jerusalem, chosen in part for their archaeological significance, would expand areas of Jewish control where Palestinians envision a future capital.

By Ben Lynfield, Correspondent / January 20, 2012

The Dome of the Rock on the compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, is seen from the Mount of Olives, Tuesday. An Israeli government plan to create parks around Jerusalem, chosen in part for their archaeological significance, is seen by Palestinians as a land grab.

Ammar Awad/Reuters
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Jerusalem

An Israeli government plan to create a greenbelt around Jerusalem, preserving the ancient city’s natural beauty and archaeological wealth, is fueling opposition among Palestinians and their supporters as the project moves into a critical stage.
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Cultural Institutions and Parks
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Archaeology
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Local Politics
Israeli Politics

Israel says the parks plan is necessary for the public’s benefit. It also fits into Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s vision for bolstering tourism in Jerusalem, which, despite its storied history, gets only a fraction of the visitors of Paris or New York.

But critics say the parks amount to a land grab that consolidates Israel’s grip on disputed East Jerusalem. The territory was annexed by Israel after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and declared part of its “eternal, undivided capital.” But it is envisioned by Palestinians as the capital of their future state.

RELATED: Five controversial Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem

“People say, ‘It’s just a park,’ but these parks change totally the political scope of Jerusalem and have a direct impact on the lives of Palestinians,” says Hagit Ofran, who monitors Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas for the dovish Peace Now movement.

Efrat Cohen Bar, an architect at the progressive Israeli planning group Bimkom, which recently conducted a study of national parks in East Jerusalem, terms them “green settlements,” which have the same effect of keeping Palestinians off the land and expanding Israeli control. Israel denies that as a motive behind the project.

The battle for East Jerusalem

The national parks strike at the heart of the battle over East Jerusalem because they are on or near territory with nationalistic, religious, or strategic resonance. Together, they could link and expand areas under Jewish control, from the old city through the heart of East Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim.

The next phase of the parks plan would turn East Jerusalem’s largest remaining open area into Mount Scopus Slopes National Park, overriding Palestinian objections that the land is vital to relieve a housing crunch. It is to be created on what residents say is the only land available for the expansion of the crowded Palestinian neighborhood of Isawiya.

“This park will choke the people of Isawiya into a given area and prevent them from having a natural life,” says Isawiya leader Darwish Darwish. “It prevents any development and progress.” Isawiya’s 15,000 residents currently live on 150 acres – an area smaller than that of the planned park. Some 112.5 acres owned by Isawiya residents and 75 acres owned by residents of nearby Al-Tur are slated to become part of the park without any compensation to the owners, who would retain ownership.

Spearheading the national park drive is Evyatar Cohen, head of the Jerusalem district in the National Parks Authority and a former staffer for Elad, a hard-line settler group. The NPA, however, dismisses charges that the park is driven by any political motive. “The National Parks Authority is not a political body and its only interest is preserving nature and landscape values,” says spokeswoman Osnat Eitan.

My Guantánamo Nightmare

Javed — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 07:11:37 +0000

By LAKHDAR BOUMEDIENE
Published: January 7, 2012

ON Wednesday, America’s detention camp at Guantánamo Bay will have been
open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without
explanation or charge. During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to
visit or speak to me by phone. Most of their letters were returned as
“undeliverable,” and the few that I received were so thoroughly and
thoughtlessly censored that their messages of love and support were
lost.

Some American politicians say that people at Guantánamo are terrorists,
but I have never been a terrorist. Had I been brought before a court
when I was seized, my children’s lives would not have been torn apart,
and my family would not have been thrown into poverty. It was only after the United States Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again.

I left Algeria in 1990 to work abroad. In 1997 my family and I moved to
Bosnia and Herzegovina at the request of my employer, the Red Crescent
Society of the United Arab Emirates. I served in the Sarajevo office as
director of humanitarian aid for children who had lost relatives to
violence during the Balkan conflicts. In 1998, I became a Bosnian
citizen. We had a good life, but all of that changed after 9/11.

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence
officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer
questions. I did so, voluntarily — but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities
arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United
States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never — for a second — considered this.

The fact that the United States had made a mistake was clear from the
beginning. Bosnia’s highest court investigated the American claim, found that there was no evidence against me and ordered my release. But
instead, the moment I was released American agents seized me and the
five others. We were tied up like animals and flown to Guantánamo, the
American naval base in Cuba. I arrived on Jan. 20, 2002.

I still had faith in American justice. I believed my captors would
quickly realize their mistake and let me go. But when I would not give
the interrogators the answers they wanted — how could I, when I had done nothing wrong? — they became more and more brutal. I was kept awake for many days straight. I was forced to remain in painful positions for
hours at a time. These are things I do not want to write about; I want
only to forget.
I went on a hunger strike for two years because no one would tell me why I was being imprisoned. Twice each day my captors would shove a tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach so they could pour food
into me. It was excruciating, but I was innocent and so I kept up my
protest.

In 2008, my demand for a fair legal process went all the way to America’s highest court. In a decision that bears my name, the Supreme Court declared that “the laws and
Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in
extraordinary times.” It ruled that prisoners like me, no matter how
serious the accusations, have a right to a day in court. The Supreme
Court recognized a basic truth: the government makes mistakes. And the
court said that because “the consequence of error may be detention of
persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or
more, this is a risk too significant to ignore.”

Five months later, Judge Richard J. Leon, of the Federal District Court
in Washington, reviewed all of the reasons offered to justify my
imprisonment, including secret information I never saw or heard. The
government abandoned its claim of an embassy bomb plot just before the
judge could hear it. After the hearing, he ordered the government to free me and four other men who had been arrested in Bosnia.

I will never forget sitting with the four other men in a squalid room at Guantánamo, listening over a fuzzy speaker as Judge Leon read his
decision in a Washington courtroom. He implored the government not to
appeal his ruling, because “seven years of waiting for our legal system
to give them an answer to a question so important is, in my judgment,
more than plenty.” I was freed, at last, on May 15, 2009.

Today, I live in Provence with my wife and children. France has given us a home, and a new start. I have experienced the pleasure of
reacquainting myself with my daughters and, in August 2010, the joy of
welcoming a new son, Yousef. I am learning to drive, attending
vocational training and rebuilding my life. I hope to work again serving others, but so far the fact that I spent seven and a half years as a
Guantánamo prisoner has meant that only a few human rights organizations have seriously considered hiring me. I do not like to think of
Guantánamo. The memories are filled with pain. But I share my story
because 171 men remain there. Among them is Belkacem Bensayah, who was
seized in Bosnia and sent to Guantánamo with me.

About 90 prisoners have been cleared for transfer out of Guantánamo.
Some of them are from countries like Syria or China — where they would
face torture if sent home — or Yemen, which the United States considers
unstable. And so they sit as captives, with no end in sight — not
because they are dangerous, not because they attacked America, but
because the stigma of Guantánamo means they have no place to go, and
America will not give a home to even one of them.

I’m told that my Supreme Court case is now read in law schools. Perhaps
one day that will give me satisfaction, but so long as Guantánamo stays
open and innocent men remain there, my thoughts will be with those left
behind in that place of suffering and injustice.

Lakhdar Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush. He
was in military custody at Guantánamo Bay from 2002 to 2009. This essay
was translated by Felice Bezri from the Arabic.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on
January 8, 2012, on page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline:
My Guantánamo Nightmare.
http://www.nytimes. com/2012/ 01/08/opinion/ sunday/my- guantanamo- nightmare. html

Iran war talk: Can we stop playing Hitler whack-a-mole

Javed — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:01:25 +0000

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January 10, 2012 | 7:41 am

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Iranian fisherman rescued
I guess now we can call it the “Iran rule.”

You know: It’s the rule that says the United States must go to war with a country or risk loosing another Hitler on the world.

In 2003, of course, it was the “Iraq rule.” Remember how George W. Bush and other administration officials and conservatives justified the invasion of Iraq by comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler?

Although, to be fair, Bush was just following in the tracks of his father, who also invoked the Hitler comparison in deciding to oust Hussein from Kuwait in the 1990 Persian Gulf War.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say too many U.S. policymakers have seen “The Boys From Brazil” and assumed it was a documentary.

Today’s Hitler, though, is — take your pick — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the mullahs who rule Iran. And they want Iran to be a nuclear power. And they must be stopped. And the U.S., of course, must do the stopping. And all options must be on the table, including military action.

Who says so?

Well, except for Ron Paul, every Republican running for president, for starters. Here’s Mitt Romney:

“If we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon,” Romney stated unequivocally. “And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”

But this is a bipartisan stance, it appears. As The Times quoted Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Sunday:

“Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No,” Panetta said. “But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, ‘Do not develop a nuclear weapon.’ That’s a red line for us.”

“I think they need to know that … if they take that step, that they’re going to get stopped,” Panetta said, adding that he was not taking any options off the table.

Gosh, fellows, maybe you could all take a break from the Xbox and Call of Duty for a bit? You know, get out for some fresh air?

Because honestly, I think the American people are just a bit tired of playing Hitler whack-a-mole.

And this is starting to give me 2003 deja vu: Everyone knows the Iranians are building a bomb, just like everyone knew Saddam Hussein was pursuing a bomb.

Except he wasn’t.

And even if the Iranians are, what makes everyone so sure they’d use it?

Ah, you say, just check what Ahmadinejad has said.

OK. Check what Romney just said. Check what Panetta just said. Does that mean we’re automatically going to war?

If we went to war every time someone said something bellicose, we’d be going to war a lot — uh, I mean a lot more.

We didn’t want the Soviet Union to get the bomb, but it did. We didn’t want China to get the bomb, but it did. Ditto North Korea. And Pakistan.

Each time, some argued — as some, especially Israel, argue now about Iran — that it would be Armageddon if the bad guys got the bomb.

Well, the United States has lived for more than 60 years with thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at it.

It’s no picnic, but we’re still here.

Plus, sanctions against Iran are starting to take their toll. They might work. At any rate, they don’t cost nearly as much as a military action.

So why don’t we give the war talk a rest. Hitler, after all, is dead.

US Deploys Thousands of Troop to Israel

Javed — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 14:04:57 +0000

While these troop movements don’t seem to have been reported in the MSM, there are articles on the Internet about the situation. I have listed the URL’s of a couple of others after the first article. My server doesn’t access the first one. I don’t understand why, but I am suspicious.
Hajja Romi

http://www.eurasiareview.com/06012012-us-deploys-thousands-of-troops-to-israel/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29

US Deploys Thousands Of Troops To Israel
Written by: RT
January 6, 2012

Without much media attention, thousands of American troops are being deployed to Israel, and Iranian officials believe that this is the latest and most blatant warning that the US will soon be attacking Tehran.
Tensions between nations have been high in recent months and have only worsened in the weeks since early December when Iran hijacked and recovered an American drone aircraft. Many have speculated that a back-and-forth between the two countries will soon escalate Iran and the US into an all-out war, and that event might occur sooner than thought.
Under the Austere Challenge 12 drill scheduled for an undisclosed time during the next few weeks, the Israeli military will together with America host the largest-ever joint missile drill by the two countries. Following the installation of American troops near Iranâ€™s neighboring Strait of Hormuz and the reinforcing of nearby nations with US weapons, Tehran authorities are considering this not a test but the start of something much bigger.
In the testing, Americaâ€™s Theater High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile system will be operating alongside its ship-based Aegis system and Israelâ€™s own program to work with Arrow, Patriot and Iron Drone missiles.
Israeli military officials say that the testing was planned before recent episodes involving the US and Iran. Of concern, however, is how the drill will require the deployment of thousands of American troops into Israel. The Jerusalem Post quotes US Commander Lt.-Gen Frank Gorenc as saying the drill is not just an â€œexerciseâ€ but also a â€œdeploymentâ€ that will involve â€œseveral thousand American soldiersâ€ heading to Israel. Additionally, new command posts will be established by American forces in Israel and that countryâ€™s own IDF army will begin working from a base in Germany.
In September, the US European Command established a radar system in Israel.
With America previously equipping Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with weaponry to wreck any chance of an Iranian nuclear weapon program from close by, the US will now have added forces on the ready in Israel and Germany under what Tehran fears is a guise being merely perpetrated as a test-run. RT reported last week that the US is equipping Saudi Arabia with nearly $30 billion F-15 war planes, a deal that comes shortly after Washington worked out a contract with Dubai to give the UAE advanced â€œbunker busterâ€ bombs that could decimate underground nuclear operations in neighboring Iran.
Since the US surveillance mission over Iran that left overseas intelligence with a captured American drone aircraft, tensions have only escalated between the two nations. After Iran threatened to close down the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial path for the nationâ€™s oil trade, the US dispatched 15,000 marines into the area.

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=250249

http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2012/01/several-thousand-us-troops-headed-to.html

http://atimetobetray.com/blog/us-deploys-troops-in-israel-for-iran-war/

Time We Waste

Javed — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:31:45 +0000

A Historic Partnership with the Devil

Javed — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 03:06:00 +0000

An “Historic
Partnership` ` With The Devil
An Analysis by Lawrence
Davidson, 29 December 2011
The announcement came from the mayorâ€™s office of New York City (NYC) on 19 December
2011 in the form of an eleven page declaration. It begins â€œMayor Michael R.
Bloomberg, CornellUniversity President David J. Skorton, and
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology President Peretz Lavie today announced
an historic partnership to build a two-million- square-foot applied science and
engineering campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City.â€�
Lawrence
Davidson`s Website:

U.S. war crimes in Iraq: Slitting throats in Haditha

Javed — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:23:27 +0000

€ ’³In their own words€ ’¥ Marines came to view dead civilians as not
€ ’±remarkable,€ ’² but as routine.€ ’´

€ ’³Troops€ ’¥ grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in
accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the
killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow
soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up€ ’¥
Charges were dropped against six of the accused Marines in the Haditha
episode, one was acquitted and the last remaining case against one Marine
is scheduled to go to trial next year.€ ’´

€ ’³That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for
American forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them
stay without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White
House could not accept.€ ’´

*As the U.S. formally withdraws from Iraq, it leaves behind an army of paid
mercenaries, a country on the edge of civil war, hundreds of thousands of
mourning families, and the memories of horrific war crimes.*

*Twenty four civilians were killed in various attacks in Haditha, in 2005,
including seven women and three children. No one was punished. Evidence was
supposed to have been destroyed. Now the interviews with the soldiers have
been discovered and published revealing the events and mentality that
murdered Iraqis that day.*

*These 400 pages lay bare what is usually so hidden (buried along with the
bodies) . Here is the reality of U.S. occupations. Here are the actual
activities of the € ’±boots on the ground€ ’´ in the town of Haditha € ’· but it is
an exposure of the whole larger operation in which the murder of Iraqi
people was routine, accepted and € ’³the cost of doing business.€ ’´*

*While the U.S. media talks of soldiers who are so routinely and
deceitfully sanitized as € ’³helping the foreign peoples€ ’´ and € ’³keeping America
safe€ ’´ € ’· the interviews from Haditha reveal what is actually being done.*

*The invasion and occupation of Iraq was a war of unprovoked aggression,
unleashed using a cynical government machinery of complete lies. Iraq was
pounded into pieces using a high tech aerial € ’³shock and awe€ ’´ followed by
massive foreign invasion.*

*Not only were the responsible war criminals Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and
Powell kept out of court and prison (why no Hague Tribunal for these war
criminals?), but their criminal war policies then pursued by a new
President Obama (whose main claim to fame was that he opposed the war from
the beginning)! And only a few of the lowest soldiers on the ground have
even faced the possibility of trial € ’· which is itself a white wash. And
their € ’³trials€ ’´ are (over and over) leading to acquittal. For those cases
that become scandals, € ’³prosecution€ ’´ is the form of official whitewash.*

*It is now widely said in the empire€ ’²s political arena that Obama has been
the most faithful successor to the Bush-Cheney polices of global war on
terror and its numerous wars of occupation . Withdrawals are happening on
the long-established Bush/McCain timetables.*

*In print, € ’³the troops are leaving.€ ’´ In the reality, thousands now stay
behind € ’· as a paid mercenary force of many thousands packed into the
permanent U.S. military base within the heart of Baghdad (officially
disguised as the world€ ’²s largest € ’³embassy.€ ’´)*

*The other combat forces and supplies are (in many cases) € ’³withdrawn over
the horizon € ’· i.e. withdrawn to naval fleets and nearby bases in Bahrain € ’·
where they can continue to threaten renewed reentry into Iraq and threaten
nearby Iran.*

*As Obama does his version of the € ’³Mission Accomplished€ ’´ ritual € ’· new
evidence of U.S. warc rimes emerges about Haditha.*

*The following detailed account appeared in the New York
Times.
The article bends over backwards to describe the massacre as the result of
€ ’³stress€ ’´ and as merely the actions of soldiers on the ground. But what
comes through is how routine such a massacre was, how powerful the
machinery of coverup, and how deeply the U.S. killers hate the people of
Iraq.*

* * * * * * * *

*Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq*

*By Michael S. Schmidt*

BAGHDAD
€ ’· One by one, the
Marines
sat
down, swore to tell the truth and began to give secret interviews
discussing one of the most horrific episodes of America€ ’²s time in
Iraq:
the 2005 massacre by Marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.

€ ’³I mean, whether it€ ’²s a result of our action or other action, you know,
discovering 20 bodies, throats slit, 20 bodies, you know, beheaded, 20
bodies here, 20 bodies there,€ ’´ Col. Thomas Cariker, a commander in Anbar
Province at the time, told
investigators
as
he described the chaos of Iraq. At times, he said, deaths were caused by
€ ’³grenade attacks on a checkpoint and, you know, collateral with civilians.€ ’´

The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war,
were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to
leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other
classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and
radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York
Times
at
a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a
dinner of smoked carp.

The documents € ’· many marked secret € ’· form part of the military€ ’²s internal
investigation, and confirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates
River town where Marines killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a
wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.

Haditha became a defining moment of the war, helping cement an enduring
Iraqi distrust of the United States and a resentment that not one Marine
has been convicted.

But the accounts are just as striking for what they reveal about the
extraordinary strains on the soldiers who were assigned here, their
frustrations and their frequently painful encounters with a population they
did not understand. In their own words, the report documents the
dehumanizing nature of this war, where Marines came to view 20 dead
civilians as not € ’³remarkable,€ ’´ but as routine.

Iraqi civilians were being killed all the time. Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson,
the commander of American forces in Anbar, in his own
testimony,
described it as € ’³a cost of doing business.€ ’´

The stress of combat left some soldiers paralyzed, the testimony shows.
Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under
siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in
accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the
killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow
soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up at
a time when the war had gone horribly wrong.

Charges were dropped against six of the accused Marines in the Haditha
episode, one was acquitted and the last remaining case against one Marine
is scheduled to go to trial next year.

That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American
forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them stay
without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White House
could not accept.

Told about the documents that had been found, Col. Barry Johnson, a
spokesman for the United States military in Iraq, said that many of the
documents remained classified and should have been destroyed. € ’³Despite the
way in which they were improperly discarded and came into your possession,
we are not at liberty to discuss classified information,€ ’´ he said.

He added: € ’³We take any breach of classified information as an extremely
serious matter. In this case, the documents are being reviewed to determine
whether an investigation is warranted.€ ’´ The military said it did not know
from which investigation the documents had come, but the papers appear to
be from an inquiry by Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell into the events in Haditha.
The documents ultimately led to a report that concluded that the Marine
Corps€ ’²s chain of command engaged in € ’³willful negligence€ ’´ in failing to
investigate the episode and that Marine commanders were far too willing to
tolerate civilian casualties. That report, however, did not include the
transcripts.

*Under Pressure*

Many of those testifying at bases in Iraq or the United States were clearly
under scrutiny for not investigating an atrocity and may have tried to
shape their statements to dispel any notion that they had sought to cover
up the events. But the accounts also show the consternation of the Marines
as they struggled to control an unfamiliar land and its people in what
amounted to a constant state of siege from fighters who were nearly
indistinguishable from noncombatants.

Some, feeling they were under attack constantly, decided to use force first
and ask questions later. If Marines took fire from a building, they would
often level it. Drivers who approached checkpoints without stopping were
assumed to be suicide bombers.

€ ’³When a car doesn€ ’²t stop, it crosses the trigger line, Marines engage and,
yes, sir, there are people inside the car that are killed that have nothing
to do with it,€ ’´ Sgt. Maj. Edward T. Sax, the battalion€ ’²s senior
noncommissioned officer,
testified
.

He added, € ’³I had Marines shoot children in cars and deal with the Marines
individually one on one about it because they have a hard time dealing with
that.€ ’´

Sergeant Major Sax said he would ask the Marines responsible if they had
known there had been children in the car. When they said no, he said he
would tell them they were not at fault. He said he felt for the Marines who
had fired the shots, saying they would carry a lifelong burden.

€ ’³It is one thing to kill an insurgent in a head-on fight,€ ’´ Sergeant Major
Sax testified. € ’³It is a whole different thing € ’· and I hate to say it, the
way we are raised in America € ’· to injure a female or injure a child or in
the worse case, kill a female or kill a child.€ ’´

They could not understand why so many Iraqis just did not stop at
checkpoints and speculated that it was because of illiteracy or poor
eyesight.

€ ’³They don€ ’²t have glasses and stuff,€ ’´ Col. John Ledoux
said

The Cause of this Recession

Javed — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 05:16:18 +0000

The cause of this recession? Economic pundits ignoring history’s voice
As long as factional interests like bankers or economists override common sense, there will be another crash

Simon Jenkins
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 December 2011 22.00 GMT
larger | smaller

Illustration by Noma Bar
The Queen, reported the Daily Mail, was wearing a speckled cream suit and matching hat. Her Majesty was at the London School of Economics, listening to a professor, Luis Garicano, talk about the credit crunch. “It’s awful,” she said suddenly. “Why did nobody see it coming?”

For three years I have pondered the Queen’s question, and the answer. (LSE was institutionally flummoxed; a year later, it gave her a waffly reply, that “everyone thought they were doing the right thing,” and that “wishful thinking was combined with hubris”.) It resurfaced last Tuesday with the publication of the Financial Services Authority report into its own conduct of the 2008 collapse of RBS and the attendant chaos. It is like expecting the Cosa Nostra to investigate the mafia. We are all sinners, ruminated the FSA, and need forgiveness, but no one was really to blame. It is a rough old world.

Had the banking fiasco been a Russian invasion, nuclear meltdown or outbreak of plague, every expert would have faced inquisition, damning or being damned. Soldiers would have been cashiered and scientists ruined; doctors would have choked, blaming government cuts. Yet from the profession of economics and its gilded acolytes in the City, nothing but silence. The Queen’s question remains on the table, its acid quietly eating into the woodwork.

The world economy is in a mess. At such times we take refuge in familiarity and choose metaphors that fit our prejudices. Last week we either opted for the slow lane of Europe’s great future, or carefully declined a luxury berth on the Titanic. Britain was a dog slinking miserably from the top table, or walking proud into the sunset.

I prefer to seize the apron strings of history, following a series of articles in the New York Review of Books by the American Nobel economist Paul Krugman. For two years he and his colleague, Robin Wells, have been seeking to set current economic woes in the context of the past. They have studied previous crashes and distilled what was ordered at the time by such pundits as Keynes and Friedman. From the cliff of economic history, Krugman hacked nuggets of wisdom, many sane, most alarming. They should be wrapped in vellum and delivered to Buckingham Palace.

A year ago Krugman wrote up Reinhart and Rogoff’s history of financial crashes – with the ironic title, This Time Is Different. Every crash was unpredictable because everyone thought it was unlike the last one – until found in crucial respects to be the same. Then came Jeff Madrick’s The Age of Greed, with its eerie narrative of how each crash since the war had been worse than the one before and nobody noticed, and Roubini and Mihm’s Crisis Economics – with Krugman admitting “outrage fatigue” amid a crescendo of gloom.

At each turn the financial gurus assert that a recession will be temporary and “different”. Over the past two years each prediction, including from Britain’s Office for National Statistics, has been wildly optimistic. Mathematical models have proved as useless to economics as leeches and blisters once were to medicine. As Krugman notes, whatever the evil tidings, “things have turned out considerably worse … and are running fairly close to the historical norm”.

The western world is in the grip not of a blip or retrenchment, but of “the second great contraction” of modern times. It matches that of the Great Depression of the 1930s, out of which the west climbed only with the spending spree of Hitler’s war. Its roots lay in the same cause, a speculative bubble (this time in housing) linked to reckless bank lending to individuals and states. That lending concealed wide imbalances between national economies.

The fact that no remedy has seemed to work has had remarkably little impact on policy. During the Depression Milton Friedman’s call for an increase in money supply proved ineffective when that increase was merely hoarded by stricken banks. Thus pumping up the banks is exactly what the Bank of England is doing today: to the same minimal effect.

Likewise in the 1920s and 1930s governments that forced national budgets into balance through austerity saved their banks, but exacerbated stagnation and slump. Krugman accepts that deficit finance is more acceptable today than in the 30s, but it is as yet insufficient to stimulate real growth. Equally disastrous was forcing nations to sustain overvalued currencies in deference to the gold standard. Yet the EU is still trying to shackle the weaker European states to an overvalued currency.

There are lessons in smaller crashes, such as the 1982-3 boom in Latin American debt, the Swedish crash of 1991, or the 1997 downturn in the so-called Asian tiger economies. Latin America descended into depression and hyperinflation. Japan has yet to recover. Some things worked. Korea rescued itself by halving the value of its currency, leading to an export-led boom. Sweden nationalised, divided and recapitalised its banks.

Krugman holds strongly to the thesis that indebtedness is no enemy of growth, as creditworthy Britain showed for much of the 20th century. The task for government is to make the trade-off: how much credit to risk for how much growth. The argument between George Osborne and Ed Balls is old as the hills. Now that Osborne has established his bona fides on the credit front, the message of history is probably tilting Balls’s way, towards more aggressive stimulants to demand.

The question is not what history says but who is listening. The relaxation of global regulation in the 1980s arose from the influence over government of a profession that was becoming both rich and arrogant. Bankers paid lobbyists and courted politicians. Their influence is vividly narrated in Madrick’s Age of Greed, as they moved their lending into sovereign debt on the thesis that “countries don’t go out of business” and were “too big to fail”. It was a phrase they deftly applied to themselves when disaster struck.

This week Britain’s bankers likewise persuaded David Cameron that “the national interest” required a refusal to accept or even participate in a new regulatory regime, despite such a regime being palpably needed. The same lobby resisted pressure to reduce bonuses, erect Chinese walls or adopt the recent Vickers report on bank restructuring. History is clear: as long as sectional interest overrides prudence or common sense, there is another crash.

This repeats the awful lesson offered by Seymour Hersh in his book, The Target is Destroyed. Describing events after the Russians accidentally shot down a Korean airliner in 1983, Hersh accused Washington of refusing to believe its own clear intelligence that the shooting was in error. In the grip of the cold war, the most sophisticated surveillance on earth was useless because no one wanted to believe it. Reagan’s White House needed an excuse to hurl threats at Moscow. The message of economic history is similar. It can scream as loud as it likes, but if power is not listening it might as well be mute.