Last week, the IMF told the United States that it needs to start getting its budget deficit down. It put cutting Social Security at the top of the steps that the country should take to achieve deficit reduction. This one is more than a bit outrageous for two reasons.

First, the IMF deserves a substantial share of the blame for the economic crisis that gave us big deficits in the first place. The IMF is supposed to oversee the operations of the international financial system. According to standard economic theory, capital is supposed to flow from rich countries like the United States to poor countries to finance their development. In other words, the United States should be having a trade surplus, which would correspond to the money that we are investing in poor countries to finance their development.

However, the IMF messed up its management of financial crises so badly in the last 15 years that poor countries decided that they had to accumulate huge amounts of currency reserves in order to avoid ever being forced to deal with the IMF. This meant that capital was flowing in huge amounts in the wrong direction. One result of this reverse flow was that the United States ran a huge trade deficit instead of a trade surplus.

The trade deficit in the United States was a big part of the story of the housing bubble. The trade deficit cost millions of workers their jobs. This was one of the main reasons that economy was so weak coming out of the 2001 recession. This weakness led the Fed to keep interest rates at 50-year lows, until the growth of the housing bubble eventually began to generate jobs in the fall of 2003.

The IMF both bears much of the blame for the imbalances in the world economy and then for failing to clearly sound the alarms about the dangers of the bubble. While the IMF has no problem warning about retired workers getting too much in Social Security benefits, it apparently could not find its voice when the issue was the junk securities from Goldman Sachs or Citigroup that helped to fuel the housing bubble.

The collapse of this bubble has not only sank the world economy, it also destroyed most of the savings of the near retirees for whom the IMF wants to cut Social Security. The vast majority of middle-income retirees have most of their wealth in their home equity. This home equity largely disappeared when the bubble burst. Maybe the IMF doesn’t have access to house price series and data on wealth, because if they did, it’s hard to believe that they would advocate further harm to some of the main victims of their policy failure.

The other reason that the IMF’s call for cutting Social Security benefits is infuriating is the incredible hypocrisy involved. The average Social Security benefit is just under $1,200 a month. No one can collect benefits until they reach the age of 62. By contrast, many IMF economists first qualify for benefits in their early 50s. They can begin drawing pensions at age 51 or 52 of more than $100,000 a year.

This means that we have IMF economists, who failed disastrously at their jobs, who can draw six-figure pensions at age 52, telling ordinary workers that they have to take a cut in their $14,000 a year Social Security benefits that they can’t start getting until age 62. Now that is real black helicopter material.

Author’s Bio: Dr. Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.

Source: OpEd News
Photo: -John–

Warren Buffett has been quoted as saying, “The U.S trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to political turmoil…”. No economic issue today is more pressing than the U.S. Trade Deficit. This predicament should be America’s top priority. It is also a key reason why we have high unemployment. Yet most people in America do not understand this Silent Killer or what they can do about it. Even most economists are very defensive of our free trade policy, yet none of them can defend free trade’s 1000 pound Gorilla in the room” the U.S. yearly trade deficit. This article will outline the frightening facts and provide the reader with a number ways to make their voice heard to congress in an effort to create change on this U.S. economic crisis in favor of Fair and Equal Trade.

Here are important key facts on why the Trade Deficit now threatens our future:

1. First and foremost, there is absolutely no history that shows that any country including the U.S. can long sustain large yearly trade deficits without putting its future at risk. However, there are instances where empires have fallen due to trade deficit failures including the 17th Century Spanish Economy and a trade deficit was partially responsible for the fall of the great Roman Empire .

2. In the last 10 years the trade deficit has averaged $0.55 trillion. The U.S. Trade Deficit since 1971 is over $7.5 trillion and $6.5 trillion in just the last 20 years. By comparison, the national debt is now about $13 trillion.

3. This year the current trade deficit through May is $0.170 trillion on track for about $0.4 trillion. It’s only lower than average due to the lingering modern recession. The NAFTA (from 1993 through 2003) free trade agreement displaced a reported 879,280 jobs. Since the entrance of China, the U.S. has lost another 2.4 million jobs. The two combine for about 3.5 million total jobs lost due to the free trade policy allowing for these large deficits. This number is growing as more and more outsourcing is occurring. Last year 60% of the U.S. trade deficit was with China.

4. The free trade deficit profits have allowed foreigners to buy up America. According to the Grant Thornton report, “total assets at foreign-owned companies increased 15% to $9.2 trillion in 2005 from $8.0 trillion a year earlier and was more than three times the 1996 total of $3 trillion. Foreign-owned assets totaled just $37 billion in 1971″.

5. Foreign-owned companies in the United States have a work force of about 5.3 million, or some 3.5% of all workers. According to the last note (2005), they owned 15% of all U.S. businesses but only employ 3.5% of the workforce. Extrapolating this to 100% ownership (that we are on a crash course for) this would only equate to 25% employment in the U.S. This is our future.

6. Most of the U.S. trade deficit is with China and their ownership is the largest share of U.S. businesses and debt. Thus the U.S. is slowly being sold mostly to China from trade deficit profits dollars obtained from U.S. consumers.

7. The U.S. has a national debt crisis of about $13 Trillion. However with the massive trade deficit job losses, this author estimates lost tax revenues of about $1 trillion dollars. Thus the trade deficit contributes significantly to our national debt. Free trade is really not free!

8. We have a vicious cycle, we outsource jobs, increase unemployment, this creates tax losses, the U.S. goes further into debt from these lost tax revenues, the U.S. must then sell more treasury bonds to China and foreigners, consumers are forced to purchase more and more foreign imports with few U.S. made alternative products, this enables foreign to make huge trade deficit profits, which allows them to purchase more U.S. businesses and debt, foreign owned business pay far less taxes then U.S. equivalent businesses and hire fewer American employers, this creates higher unemployment and more tax losses, and the cycle continues.

9. Economic global greed is excessive; the U.S. free trade policy encourages foreigners to cheat as every country wants a piece of America. Well known is unethical trade deficit problems related to:

1. Currency manipulation by U.S. trading partners,
2. Excessive Job outsourcing by U.S. businesses
3. Product subsidies by foreign governments,
4. Unfair non tariff trade barriers by our trading partners, 5) Lack of intellectual property rights protection, and 6) Product counterfeiting.

10. Because of these massive trade deficit tax losses, this is like a reverse tariff that U.S. citizens must pay on trade deficit goods. These lost revenues cause increase tax programs. Every citizen must pay more taxes which means in part we are actually supporting all the unethical foreign greed issues cited above.

Finally the U.S. trade deficit is not just unethical, it is unconstitutional. The subtle reason why it violates U.S. constitutional law is fully explained at the website, CitizensForEqualTrade.org

What the reader can do. There are a number of organizations that are trying to force congress to act on the trade deficit. Here are some websites:

• CitizensForEqualTrade.org here you can sign a petition to support Equal Trade. This is the only website that is currently trying to force legislation for Equal Trade by acting on a Constitutional violation. This site believes the only way to get congress to act is by bringing this matter through the Supreme Court. Other sites below are working for fair trade. However, because of economic greed, forced Equal Trade is most likely necessary.
• Prosperousamerica.org This is the Coalition for a Prosperous America. They currently have two petitions one currently working on the issue of currency reform and the other to fix America’s economy. These petitions are worth signing as well.
• CitizensTrade.org This site supports the TRADE act for fair trade.
• Americaneconomicalert.org This site has numerous articles on the issues of the trade deficit. It is very educational.

All the above organizations need your support. Please take the time and support these petitions.

About the author: Dr. Alec Feinberg is the founder of Citizens for Equal Trade (CET). He is a reliability economist and author of the book, The Truth of the Modern Recession, Root Causes and Reliable Solutions and inventor of Reliability Economics for the layperson, congress people and economists. He is also on the steering committee for the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA).

Source: OpEd News

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Get ready for the BP bailout debate. As the most hated company in America led by the most despised CEO in business continues its systematic deceptions about the magnitude of the catastrophe, its systematic secrecy and threats of reprisal against employees who speak the truth in public and its systematic blockade against reporters seeking the basic facts, get ready for the mother of all political debates.

When the full damage of the oil is calculated, and the full payment of restitution is required and the full consequences of lawsuits are understood and the monetary consequences of such enormous personal and economic misery are realized, BP will tell us that we face the choice of BP going bankrupt and being unable to pay its debts or receiving a government bailout so it can meet its obligations from the damage it has done.

We will be told that BP is too big to fail.

Prediction: Before the rooster crows another 60 times, BP will be seeking a government bailout. If you thought the Wall Street bailout debate was nasty, wait until you see the BP bailout debate.

There should be NO bailout of BP paid for by ANY taxpayer, period, end of discussion, over and out. If necessary there should be a fund paid for by all of the oil companies doing offshore drilling, as the price of their doing business off our shores and as the incentive to make sure this does not happen again.

The economic damage and the political fallout have only begun. If the pictures of oil spewing from pipes are unsavory, and the pictures of angry citizens and dead pelicans are unsavory, watch what happens when we begin weeks of television news of the D-Day invasion of poison oil landing on the beaches of the American Normandy.

It would serve Washington right if the rivers of poison meet the loop current and the Gulf Stream and end up in the river of the Potomac so official Washington can see, taste and smell what has only begun for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Let us hope this does not happen, though it very well could.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should disclose, every video stream and internal memo that reveals the truth, whatever it is, about the size of the ocean of poison.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should disclose, the exact amount of chemical dispersants that are polluting our land, water and people.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should agree, that all restrictions against media be ended and all reprisals against media should be stopped, and if rights are being violated, those responsible should be prosecuted.

The sooner the truth comes out, the safer our people will be.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should disclose, the exact and complete chemical composition of the dispersants so Americans do not wake up on some future morning with news about deformed babies or cancerous disease.

Mark my words: The abuse of dispersants, the composition of which are being kept secret, in amounts that are probably infinitely larger than what is being disclosed, create the potential for a grave, extreme and mortal health catastrophe whose pain and cost are not even remotely understood today.

What does it tell us that these secrets are being kept from the people even today? It tells us that the damage is far more than realized, and that the cost is far greater than understood, and that the BP bailout is far more likely than realized.

With BP delaying so much payment to so many people already, heaven help the victims when the payments due mount from the millions that are currently unpaid today, to the billions of dollars that will be due tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Ladies and gentlemen, mark my words, the BP bailout issue will soon reach the front pages and television screens, and our answer to the “bailout for BP” idea should be simple:

No, no, no, no, no.

Let the cash-rich oil industry pay the full cost, not the hard-hit taxpayers of an outraged nation who have been slammed too hard, far too often.

About the author: Brent Budowsky is a regular columnist on thehill.com. He served as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, responsible for commerce and intelligence matters, including one of the core drafters of the CIA Identities Law. Served as Legislative Director to Congressman Bill Alexander, then Chief Deputy Whip, House of Representatives. Currently a member of the International Advisory Council of the Intelligence Summit. Left goverment in 1990 for marketing and public affairs business including major corporate entertainment and talent management.

Source: OpEd News

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Entirely dispelled are any lingering doubts about the disdain Israel has for international law. Before going any further, just reflect upon all the apologist responses to the global condemnation of the Mediterranean Massacre. All the toadies that carry the water for the Zionist despotism are predictable and deceitful. Based on a foundation of sand their mantra ignores the facts and rests on false axioms.

NeoCon Glenn Beck is a devoted cheerleader of Zionism. Making things worse, he is also a Dispensationalist. Departing from the solid research on condemning the failed philosophy of Progressivism, Beck demeans his audience with a false history of Palestine and the nature of the Israeli state. His religious doctrine regarding Israel makes him an apostate. Duping well intentions, but ill-informed viewers into accepting the crimes of Israel, as the will of God, is why he is a Trojan horse.

He is just one of the countless buffoons or propagandists who earned their place in the media circus by proving their loyalty to a gang of criminals. Israel is no ally of the United States. Zionism is not a victim. “Likudnick” Benjamin Bebe Netanyahu is no friend of America. Most importantly, not all Jews are Zionists or even support the state of Israel.

In NeoCons are a terminal disease, a profound question is asked.

“There is no canon within our heritage that deems that America has the responsibility to foster the interests of any other foreign country. However, that is exactly the goal of the NeoCons. The question is simple; can you name one such scalawag scoundrel that would not trade the safety and treasure of our country for the benefit of the Zionist despotism of Israel?”

Israel uses Christian-Zionists as ignorant tools and treats them as useful idiots. They are the most pathetic of the lot. From, How much fun is this war?

“But the best are the holy rollers who are infested with Dispensationalist Dementia, who grovel at the feet of Zionists, in the name of their Savior, while they bolster a Likud Central Committee Party for a Greater Israel policy and can’t wait for the third temple to be erected. Christ’s words are all too easily ignored if they conflict with devotion to their false doctrine. “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” – Jesus Christ, John 17:15, NAS”

A blockade is an act of war. Defenders of Israeli’s arrogant attack on an unarmed flotilla of humanitarian stores, claim the Israeli Defense Force was acting in self-defense. Pirates are not commandos. Henry Morgan, knighted and made Lieutenant Governor to Jamaica for his privateer adventures, served the expansion of the British Empire. So too Netanyahu’s, “Greater Israel” designs applied their military arm to keep their colonial concentration camp in check.

Only tactics and sophisticated technology separates the IDF air assault from the crude violence of Somali pirates. These third world criminals kill for money, while Zionist use American weapons and money to expand their genocide on an entire race and expand their geographic reach in the region.

Where was the international outrage back in 1981 when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor? The Untied States was complicit then and are far more culpable today with joint plans for a replay air strike, this time on Iran facilities. Since Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, why should the world accept their building of a nuclear arsenal with impunity?

Zionists have no compunction from violating laws, moral principles and human rights.

The Guardian Newspaper recently reports: “Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower who exposed Israel’s nuclear arsenal to the world and paid for it with 18 years in jail, mostly in solitary confinement, was sent back to prison today for a new three-month sentence.” The reason – unauthorized meetings with foreigners. Amnesty International said he had been living under a “draconian” military order and was now considered a “prisoner of conscience”.

Today Mordechai Vanunu is the modern day Alfred Dreyfus, but where is his Émile Zola? If Iran wants an atomic deterrent to counter the nukes from the Dimona reactor, what Talmudic authority gives contemporary Elders of Zion the protocols to ferment a nuclear winter?

With the sneak attack record of pre-emptive strikes, how can the planet allow Israeli retention of military nuclear weapons?

The Samson Option still threatens the world. Israel’s nuclear arsenal and American foreign policy makes a compelling case that the steady and clandestine growth of an Israeli nuclear industry proved so successful that Israel was able to coerce several U.S. administrations into doing its bidding. “Once Israel had the Bomb, they are in a position to bring it all down on everyone if ever they feel cornered. It’s the ultimate in Israeli security as a nation-state, if not for the security of humankind.”

The significance of the attack upon the humanitarian flotilla is that Israel proves itself as a rogue state and a threat to the entire civilized world. One does not have to be pro-Palestinian or anti-Semitic towards Jewish people to condemn Israel. The analogy that the government of the United States has forfeited its moral authority seems minor in comparison to the depths of pathological insanity that is the sociopathic state of Israel.

Hijacking on the high seas cannot be an acceptable foreign policy. Yet, it is business as usual for the self-selected chosen masters of the Middle East. Religion clouds the politics. This is not a Jewish issue. Squarely, Zionist power underpins and threatens the region and the entire world. Pirates usually want to take the booty, but when their invasion seeks to control the territory and inflict permanent rule, you get perpetual warfare. The Zionist buccaneers have created their own Port Royal.

Few pirate states are able to withdraw from their piracy, with little legal retribution. The pillage and moral decay that is intrinsic in the Zionist mindset awaits universal condemnation and eternal justice. There will be no easy life, Henry Morgan, retirement for Israel as long as malefic supremacy is the model for their corrupt society.

About the author: Sartre is the pen name of a reformed, former political operative. This pundit’s formal instruction in History, Philosophy and Political Science served as training for activism, on the staff of several politicians and in many campaigns. He is a past columnist for Ether Zone.

Sartre can be reached at: BATR@batr.org We invite you to visit his website at: BREAKING ALL THE RULES.

Published originally at EtherZone.com

Photo: gageskidmore

By John LeBoutillier

1) Iran—and the combined two stories of their nuclear program and their ongoing new revolution—will be the dominant news story of the year.

1a) There is a strong likelihood that the Islamic Republic itself will fall in 2010. That is what is now at stake. Not regime change—the switching of one office-holder for another within the same system—but total governmental change.

The young have decided the aging and corrupt and obscenely-rich mullahs—and the rigged governmental system which sustains them—can no longer stand. That is why these brave young people are willing to risk their lives on the streets each day facing the thug Basij militia and the VEVAK security forces, both of which—on direct orders from Ayatollah Khamenei—specialize in using terror to quash dissent.

The development of the Iranian nuclear program is a key factor driving the fomenting revolution. As the West draws a line for Tehran not to cross, the Iranian people—already disaffected by last June’s rigged elections—see their government pursuing a policy that will isolate Iran from the West and cause terrible economic dislocation for the Iranian people for years to come.

Yet the Ahmadinejad Government insists on racing to join the Nuclear Club, figuring that once they’re in the club the other club members will treat them differently. Tehran reads history this way: if Saddam had had nukes, no 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Thus, if Iran has ’em, no US or Israel aggression against Iran. Plus, they can bully the Saudis and other rich Arabs with their superior military power once they acquire these weapons.

So Iran is the flash-point for many stories in 2010.

Look for violence, hatred, ugliness—a passive President Obama refusing to side with these brave people fighting for their freedom—and ultimately for the Hand of God. “What,” you ask?

Yes, the Hand of God is at work here. Go back to 1989—the fall of the Berlin Wall followed by the almost-totally-peaceful end of the Soviet Union, the “focus of Evil in the modern world,” as President Reagan called it. How could the dreaded, all-powerful Soviet Empire crumble—without a shot being fired—if it weren’t for God’s intervention, perhaps beginning with the mysterious selection of Pope John Paul II followed by the creation of the Solidarity Movement in Poland?

Indeed, God triumphed over pure man-made evil in that situation.

And perhaps it will repeat itself in Iran—only this time there is already more bloodshed. There are also reports that some Iranian police are refusing to fire on demonstrators—always a sign of the regime’s imminent loss of power.

Pray for the creation of a Persian democracy.

So—in sum—Iran is the nation to keep our eye on in 2010.

2) Obama: is going to decline even more in the polls.

The jobs situation will continue to rot away any good feeling about his Administration. There will be more and more Americans who see him as a political fluke, in-over-his-head, incompetent, too liberal and without a clue about how to get the economy back on track. His approval rate will drop to 42%.

3) The Health Care Bill—whatever version ends up passing—will grow even more unpopular as time goes on.

Why? Because from the day the bill becomes law, every medical billing or prescription problem or denied service will be blamed on “ObamaCare.” We all have these medical glitches—but now they will be “Obama’s fault.”

4) The Democrats are going to get creamed in the November mid-term elections.

Some big names may go down. Chris Dodd in Connecticut is on the Endangered Species list; so, too, is Harry Reid. One or both will lose. Former GOP Congressman Rob Simmons in Connecticut will defeat Dodd.

In the House, there will be a strong anti-Obama, anti-Pelosi push back in November. The GOP might not quite take back control, but they will narrow the gap and force the House back toward the political center.

5) In New York, Andrew Cuomo will be elected Governor.

But the Republicans will recapture control of the State Senate.

6) In Florida, Governor Charlie Crist will lose to Marco Rubio in their GOP Senate primary.

7) John McCain will sweat all through the year about his August Arizona GOP primary.

Former Representative J.D. Hayworth will run a tough race against McCain. If the immigration issue is pushed in DC by Obama—as he has said he would—then McCain will lose his primary by either flip-flopping on the issue or sticking with his pro-amnesty position. (McCain losing his own party’s primary less than two years after being that party’s presidential nominee would be a huge story. It will happen if the illegal immigration issue is back on the front page.)

8 ) In California, it will be former Governor—and former every-other-job-in-the-state—Jerry Brown versus GOP newcomer and former EBAY Boss Meg Whitman for Governor.

She has tons of money; he is known throughout the state from his four decades in public life. It is a Democratic state reeling under financial collapse—with a GOP Governator who hasn’t gotten the job done.

Brown can be testy and nasty; Meg is nice—and a bit boring and stiff.

He has been around a long time; she hasn’t even voted in most elections—a shocking revelation for someone who wants to run the biggest state after never holding a governmental position before. You can bet Brown will make a big deal out of this. It hurt Caroline Kennedy here in NY a lot. Not voting is inexplicable.

He can argue that he knows every nook and cranny of state government; she can argue that she will make Sacramento run like a business.

He is Mr. Inside; she is Mrs. Outside.

Who wins?

Meg Whitman—by 3 points.

And right away you will hear talk of her for Veep on the 2012 GOP ticket. After all, California is 55 Electoral votes – one fifth of the total you need to win.

9) The economy will grow in 2010—but not quickly—and not enough to reverse the horrendous 17.5% underemployment picture.

The perception of the bad economy will not change in 2010—or 2011—and thus Obama and incumbent Democrats will suffer greatly for it. He better pray that this perception changes by 2012, or he is a goner.

10) Al Qaeda will soon implant bombs right into the abdominal cavity of suicide bombers—and equip cell phones as detonators.

Can our airport screening machines look into someone—like an X-Ray machine—to see these objects? (Hey, if drug cartels use people as mules with swallowed condoms filled with heroin and cocaine, why won’t their terrorist cousins do the same thing?)

11) On The Right: Sarah Palin will continue to dominate the scene in 2010—and suck all the oxygen away from other potential 2012 GOP candidates.

Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, Barbour and any others just get no coverage whatsoever compared to her.

11a) The next Conservative Leader will emerge onto the national scene in 2010. He is not prominent as of today.

11b) The Tea Party will be more popular than the Republican Party.

11c) If this new Conservative Leader can harness the passion of the Tea Parties and the built-in structure of the GOP, he can sweep the nation in 2012.

12) A controversial new book will emerge in 2010 that will reveal the truth about Obama’s past.

The publisher will be under pressure to quash the book. The so-called Mainstream Media will attack this book. But when it finally comes out, it will sell over a million copies hard-cover and several million in paperback—and the truth about many of the controversies in Obama’s past will finally be revealed.

Happy 2010 to you all!!!

About the author: John LeBoutillier is a former U.S. Congressman and a nationally recognized political commentator. He has been a frequent guest on many national talk show programs and is author of the book Harvard Hates America. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

John LeBoutillier can be reached at: johnlebout@johnlebout.com

He keeps an archive of his articles at: JohnLeBout.com

Published originally at EtherZone.com
Photo: sean808080

By Jim Traficant

“We, the Jewish people, control America and the Americans know it.” —Ariel Sharon, Oct. 3, 2001.

Yes, folks they do! The Israelis manifest their control over America through a series of powerful lobbies. Yes, a series, hundreds of them, all under the umbrella of the parent organization known as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). No one ever told you this?

AIPAC controls America with money, big money, that is funneled into the campaign funds of U.S. senators, representatives and yes, even candidates for the president of the United States.

AIPAC channels money through a number of innocently named Political Action Committees (PACS) that no one (I don’t believe anybody wants to) can trace to AIPAC—Israeli money.

As an example—XYZ PAC (for example only/not real). Sounds like it could be an educational lobby, or a science lobby—but alas, it’s money from Israel, routed to political candidates of their choice.

I can’t name all these PACS, but I suspect there are 200 or more such phony lobbies whose real purpose is to elect politicians at all levels, especially state and federal offices, who will support Israel without fail. These politicians will support Israel even when Israel is caught spying on America—yes, spying on America.

To provide background as the precursor to the official AIPAC lobby I cite an infamous Israeli spy. Check this out:

Jonathan Pollard

1. Jonathan Pollard was turned down by the CIA (after leaving graduate school) for failing a polygraph test. Pollard lied about his use of illegal drugs. He later admitted to prolific illegal drug usage between 1974 and 1978.

2. Guess what: That didn’t hurt Pollard with the Navy. He was hired as an “intelligence specialist.” The CIA refused to give the Navy any information they had on Pollard.

3. Within two months, Director Richard Haver wanted him fired on suspicion, but Pollard was only transferred to Naval Investigative Service (NIS).

4. In his new position, Adm. Sumner Shapiro ordered Pollard’s official clearance be revoked for suspicious behavior. Once again, Pollard was reassigned.

5. Pollard now complained he was being abused, and, in 1984, he received “excellent performance” reviews and was returned to Naval Intelligence. How’s that for a pat on the back?

6. Shortly after, in June 1984, documents show that Pollard “started to pass classified information” to Israel. The full extent of those crimes/info, that he gave to Israel has “never been revealed.”

7. Israel claimed that Pollard was a “rogue” without Israeli authority or knowledge. If you believe that garbage, it’s no wonder America is a puppet state for Israel. And guess what? Bingo! Israel’s memory improved—10 years later Israel admitted that Pollard was indeed working for—and with—Israel as a spy.

Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice

8. America asked for the return of all documents and materials that Pollard had given to Israel. Israel turned over—“a few, paltry dozen of lowly classified documents” even though our government knew that “Pollard had given Israel close to a million documents,” according to U.S. informants. Uncle Sam really shows great concern over this? I wonder why? I think you can start to figure this out.

9. Israel’s contact/handler of Pollard was withheld by Israel until finally pressured. One Aviem Selvia came forward to “satisfy” America, and then stepped down.

10. America now offered Pollard a plea agreement. In May 1986, Pollard accepted a life sentence.

11. Upon sentencing, Pollard’s wife said, “My husband and I did what we were expected to do for Israel. As Jews, we had a moral obligation to Israel.” Allegiance to Israel, not America! (I get sick reporting this to you, and you should be getting sick as well.)

12. Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Olmert all asked for Pollard to be pardoned. All of these leaders are/were prime ministers of Israel. They said, “He was only spying for Israel—set him free!”

13. “After all—Israel is America’s greatest ally.” They also said “Pollard is a dear friend of both our countries.” Some friend to America!

14. Attorney Alan Dershowitz summed it up quite pointedly—“as an American and a Jew, I am outraged at Pollard’s life sentence. Pollard pleaded guilty to spying on America and should have received a lesser sentence.” Yeah, he only spied on America! I guess that’s no big deal for Dershowitz. I always thought traitors and spies were put to death. They should be.

You see folks, it’s all about power, pure power. I say that Pollard had big, powerful American power brokers behind him from the very start.

Think again about what Ariel Sharon said again: “We, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it!”

I keep reminding you of this statement because I’m the man who’s been targeted by both Israel and America for proclaiming that “Israel has a stranglehold on American government, commerce and the media.”

I also said, “Israel has involved us in foreign wars to aid Israel expansion, bankrupts our great nation and has our kids shipped back to us in body bags.”

About the author: James A. (Jim) Traficant, Jr. was born in Youngstown, Ohio on May 8, 1941. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was a well-known football star. He also received a M.S. degree from Youngstown State University in 1976. For ten years he served as executive director of the Mahoning County (Ohio) Drug Program and from 1981-1985 he served as sheriff of Mahoning County, prior to his election to the U.S. Congress as a Democrat in 1984. He was re-elected by overwhelming margins every year up until 2002 when, following his conviction on trumped up corruption charges, he was expelled from the House of Representatives. Despite his conviction and expulsion and being sent to prison for a seven year term Traficant still won 15% of the vote running for re-election to the House in the 2002 election as an independent. He recently completed a seven-year prison sentence, having refused to seek a pardon or clemency, refusing to admit to or apologize for crimes he did not commit.

Source: www.americanfreepress.net

Palestine in 1946: Palestine Monitor: "During the ensuing war of 1948, over 750,000 Palestinians (75% of the Arab population in Palestine) were displaced and dispossessed of their homes and land, creating what has become the largest refugee population in the world. Some 531 villages and towns were destroyed, amounting to estimated total losses of 209 billion USD. The majority remained in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but a large number fled to neighboring countries; Jordan, Lebanon and others throughout the world."

Is the death of a Palestinian worth the same as that of a Jew? For six decades, Israeli Jewish leaders with utter impunity have been killing defenceless Palestinians and justifying their crimes as “self-defence” of Israel and all Jews. Absolving the Israeli regime of culpability of war crimes has always been a U.S.-Western ritual. The message is: Jews are above the law and killing Palestinians is Israelis’ right to commit war crimes.

The Gaza Massacre

In December/January this year, Israeli occupation forces indiscriminately attacked Gaza (a Nazi-like concentration/death camp of 1.5 million Palestinians) from land, sea and air, using all kinds of weapons, including illegally banned weapons. More than 1,400 Palestinians – the overwhelming majority (85 per cent) civilians, one third of them children – were killed and some 5000 civilians were seriously wounded and maimed for life. At least 225 innocent civilians were killed instantly in the first few minutes of the attacks as school children returning home and police cadets attending graduation ceremony. Only eleven Israeli soldiers (four by ‘friendly-fire’) and three civilians were killed during the 22-day premeditated massacre.

The destruction to vital civilian infrastructure was barbaric and beyond imagination. Israel’s primary targets were: food storages and food production facilities, factories, agricultural land, drinking water treatment plants, electric power generators, private homes, hospitals, schools and school children, universities, ambulances and mosques. The aims of the attack were not only to terrorise the Palestinian population, but also to cause them great suffering. Israel is teaching the Palestinians a lesson, lauded the New York Times, Zionism’s most influential propaganda organ in the U.S. It is “an all-out war on the Palestinians”, declared Ehud Barak, Israeli Defence Minister and one of Israel’s war criminals who planned and executed the massacre. Barak’s crimes confirmed by the brave Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert in Gaza as he witnessed Israel’s “[a]ll out war against the civilian population of Gaza”. The attacks on civilians were consistent with Israel’s sixty years long history of violence in Palestine. Israeli leaders have always targeted the Palestinian civilian populations, deliberately and purposely.

Importance of the Goldstone Report

The unprovoked aggression against a defenceless and starving population unleashed world-wide outrage by civil societies and individuals that forced the United Nations (UN) to conduct its own inquiry into the massacre. The Goldstone Report – named after the lead jurist of the “United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict”, Justice Richard Goldstone – found that Israeli leaders, who planned and executed the attacks, have committed flagrant war crimes and crimes against humanity during the attacks on Gaza by using “disproportionate” force. The Report also accused Israeli leaders of deliberately targeting civilians, including using civilians as human shields to protect Israeli soldiers. Justice Goldstone, a self-described South African Jewish-Zionist and an avowed supporter of Israel was chosen because of his “integrity” and “expertise” as the first prosecutor serving Western powers at the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The Report also accused the Islamic Resistance Movement, HAMAS of war crimes.

The Report warned Israeli leaders that the persecution of the Palestinian people constitutes a grave breach of international human rights law and recommended the case against Israel be transferred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The Report also confirmed the findings of previous reports by several Western and non-Western human rights organisations, such as; Human Rights Watch, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and the National Lawyers Guild. Like the Goldstone report, all these reports show clearly that Israeli forces deliberately and purposely targeted civilians and vital civilian infrastructure.

As always, the U.S. and Israel have condemned the Report as one-sided and biased. They made concerted efforts to undermine the Report’s findings and to deflect attention away from Israeli criminality. According to a variety of legal experts, the Goldstone Report is balanced and supports Israel’s argument. “Any fair reading of the report would show that it was balanced, took full and sensitive account of Israel’s arguments relating to security, and indeed gave Israel the benefit of the doubt on some key issues”, writes Richard Falk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a professor of International Law at Princeton University.

Alarmed by world-wide condemnation of its war crimes, Israel and Israel’s Zionist defenders resorted to using the “anti-semitism” brush to smear and silence anyone critical of Israel’s terror. The Nazi holocaust – exploited as the “Jewish holocaust” – is resurrected – as if the Palestinians are guilty of it – and exploited by Zionists to justify Israel’s crimes. Critics of Israel’s terror are accused of being “anti-semitics” and “holocaust deniers” for rightly comparing Israel’s terror with the Nazis’ and Zionism with Nazism. Even Justice Goldstone, a respected Jewish jurist and a devoted supporter of Israel, is accused of being “anti-semite”. Anti-semitism is invoked because it has been proved to be Israel’s greatest asset and serves Israel’s Zionist interests. It makes Israel looks like a victim and legitimises Israel’s violence against the Palestinians.

Israel’s Public Defender

Meanwhile, the U.S. Government is fighting tooth-and-nail to absolve the Israeli regime of war crimes. On November 03, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives – the lower house of the U.S. Congress – overwhelmingly (344-36) approved a resolution (H. Res. 867) condemning the Goldstone Report findings and recommendations and called on President Barack Obama “to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the Report”. The non-binding vote defended Israel’s aggression and war crimes against the Palestinians as determined by the UN Human Rights Council. The Resolution, written primarily by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish-Zionist agency that lobbies on behalf of the state of Israel, also endorses Israel’s “right” to pre-emptively attack Syria and Iran. It is a fraudulent and dishonest resolution designed to encourage violence, protect war criminals and reject international humanitarian law. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (R. Ohio) rightly accused the House of “covering up” Israel’s war crimes and sabotaging peace. It is important to remember that the U.S. government not only approved the Israeli attacks on Gaza, but also shipped more weapons (300 tons of ammunition), including cluster bombs to Israel before and during the attacks.

Betrayal by the Palestinian Authority

As the U.S. and Israeli governments continue their campaign to discredit the Goldstone Report and absolve Israel of culpability of war crimes, the “Palestinian Authority (PA)” – the Vichy Regime in the Occupied Territories – was the first to fall in line. Mahmoud Abbas, as head of the Collaborationist Authority succumbed to U.S.-Israeli threats and blackmails and has agreed not to refer the Report to the UN General Assembly for possible action on all the recommendations of the UN Mission into the Gaza massacre. It was a cowardice act, a betrayal of the Palestinians aspiration, because it allows Israel and Israeli criminals to get away with war crimes.

Professor Richard Falk, UN Commissioner on Human Rights told Al Jazeera:

“The Palestinians [the Vichy Regime of Mahmoud Abbas] have betrayed their people, this was a moment when finally the international community indorsed the allegations of war crimes and it would have been an opportunity to vindicate the struggle of the Palestinian people for their rights under international law and for the Palestinian representatives in the UN themselves to seem to undermine this report is an astonishing development”, said Professor Richard Falk.

The Abbas regime has since agreed to Palestinians’ and international demands and made a U-turn to refer the Goldstone Report to the UN Security Council.

It was not the first time that the PA has been an instrument of Israel’s violence. Since its creation by Israel and the U.S. as a result of the disastrous Oslo accords in 1993, the PA provided the fig leaf for the Israeli Occupation. It has been the enforcer of the day-to-day security in the same way Jews in France collaborated with the Nazis during the Nazis’ occupation of France. Just before the attacks on Gaza, PA security forces went training by the C.I.A. under General Keith Dayton and Israeli assassins aimed at inciting civil war and toppling the HAMAS Administration in Gaza (For more see: David Rose, the Gaza Bombshell, Vanity Fair, April 2008). And when the PA collaborators failed to topple HAMAS, they colluded with Israeli forces to suppress any Palestinians uprising in the West Bank during Israel’s unprovoked aggression.

The UN General Assembly Adopts Goldstone Report

However, despite an aggressive campaign by the U.S. and Israel, the UN General Assembly has on 04 November 2009 voted by a margin of 114 to 18 (with 4 abstentions) to adopt the Report. Earlier on October 16, 2009 the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which sponsored the Fact Finding Mission, voted by 25 to six to refer the Report to the Security Council. The Report has already been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council. It was a new development giving the U.S.-Israeli fierce opposition.

Judge Goldstone’s Defense of Israeli Crimes

While the Goldstone Report holds Israel accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity, – which is a new development and a good start – the Report puts Israel’s monstrous war crimes at the same level with Palestinian legitimate resistance. The misrepresentation of unprovoked attacks by the world fifth largest army on defenceless civilian population as a “war” designed to manipulate public opinion and justify Israel’s ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people. There is no symmetry. Judge Goldstone is trying to apply the law of war to a massacre in a death camp that has been under genocidal siege for three years. Israeli soldiers, who participated in the massacre, described Gaza as a “moral twilight” and the massacre of defenceless women and children “like a child with magnifying glass burning ants”. The Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz observed: “It was a Sabra and Chatila, this time carried out by us”. Levy was referring to the massacre of more than 2000 Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila by the Israeli-controlled Phalangists (Christian militias) in Lebanon in 1982.

Further, the Report scathes on the indiscriminate use of illegal weapon of mass destructions (WMD), such as “depleted uranium” (DU), white phosphorous, dense inert metal explosive (DIME) and cluster bombs, which aimed at terrorising the civilian population and contaminate the environment. Unmentioned in the Report is the six decades of Israel’s terror and occupation. The Report also expressed concern about the welfare of Gilat Shallot, the Israeli POW held by Palestinians. However, the Report ignored the welfares of 11,000 Palestinians, including 149 women and 423 children, illegally imprisoned and routinely tortured by Israeli forces. While some imprisoned for their legitimate resistance and social activities, the majority of the prisoners have been held without charge and without trial. (See: Silvia Nicolaou-Garcia, The Conditions of Palestinian Women and Children in Israeli Jails, Middle East Monitor, September 2009). Like the German Nazi regime, the Israeli regime uses so-called “Administrative Detention” – Palestinian held in prison without charge and with no access to fair trial – to crush the Palestinian popular resistance to Israel brutal and oppressive occupation.

The Report endorses Israel’s pretext of “self-defence” even when Israel violated a ceasefire agreement on November 04, 2008 by deliberately killing several innocent Palestinian citizens in order to initiate retaliation and justify the attacks. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Publicly, Hamas leaders have stated time and again that the lull is a Palestinian national interest. On several occasions, Hamas members have arrested Fatah operatives who were involved in firing at Israel and confiscated their arms”. Ehud Barak admitted on Thursday November 20, 2008, that “the recent wave of rocket attacks are a result of our operations, which have resulted in the killing of twenty Hamas gunmen” (See: Shmulik Hadad, Qassam lands in Western Negev, no injuries, Ynetnews). Hence, Israel’s attacks on Gaza have nothing to do with Palestinian rockets and self-defence. In fact, Israeli propaganda prepared and sold the attacks on Gaza months before the attacks began.

Legally, Israel’s claim of self-defence is baseless propaganda and inconsistent with the law and facts, said Richard Falk. Under international law, Israeli has no right to use violence as self-defence, but to abide by international law and ends the occupation of Palestinian land.

Falk writes:

“[The Report] added little to what was previously known. Arguably, it was more sensitive to Israel’s contentions that Hamas was guilty of war crimes by firing rockets into its territory than earlier reports had been. And in many ways the Goldstone report endorses the misleading main line of the Israeli narrative by assuming that Israel was acting in self-defence against a terrorist adversary. The report does describe the success of the ceasefire with Hamas that had cut violence in southern Israel to very low levels, and attributes its disruption to Israel’s attack on 4 November 2008, but nowhere does it make the inference that would seem to follow, that the Israeli attacks were an instance of the international crime of aggression. Instead, the report focuses its criticism on Israel’s excessive and indiscriminate uses of force”.

Falk points to the Report failure to condemn Israel unprovoked aggression:

“The report takes for granted, the dubious proposition that Israel was entitled to act against Gaza in self-defence, thereby excluding inquiry into whether crimes against the peace in the form of aggression had taken place by the launching of the attack. In this respect, the report takes no notice of the temporary ceasefire that had cut the rocket fire directed at Israel practically to zero in the months preceding the attacks, nor of Hamas’ repeated efforts to extend the ceasefire indefinitely provided Israel lifted its unlawful blockade of Gaza … By ignoring Israel’s initiation of a one-sided war the Goldstone report accepts the dubious central premise of Operation Cast Lead, and avoids making a finding of aggression”. It follows that the Report is prepared to appease Israeli war criminals.

Regarding the besieged civilian population of Gaza, Falk noted:

“Also, disappointing was the failure of the report to comment upon the Israeli denial of a refugee option to the civilian population trapped in the tiny, crowded combat zone that constitutes the Gaza Strip. Israel closed all crossings during the period of the Gaza War, allowing only Gaza residents with foreign passports to leave”. In fact, Gaza has been under a genocidal blockade for three years, before and during the massacre, with no possibility of escape for those who can. It is a death camp.

Israel Rejects the Goldstone Report. Demands Total Impunity

As mentioned earlier, Israel rejected the Report’s findings and recommendations. With most mainstream media outlets controlled by pro-Israel Zionists, a massive propaganda campaign to cover-up Israel’s barbaric image and put a positive spin on the horror stories that emerged from the attacks is continuing. “We don’t kill and we have not killed children in Gaza”, said President Shimon Peres, Israel’s most recognised fascist. Israeli leaders protested that Israel is a “democracy” and therefore capable of conducting its own criminal investigation. Criminal prosecutions are rare in Israel because Israel practices a culture of impunity. The so-called “military inquiries are used to avoid criminal investigation” and provide Israel with a civilised human face. The purpose of the military inquiries is to undermine international calls for legal actions and justice for the Palestinians. Previous investigations proved to be fraudulent and have been condemned as lacking independence and impartiality. The Israeli justice system is a racist, anti-Palestinians and corrupt system. An international criminal tribunal is the best place to prosecute Israeli war criminals.

Israel’s Agenda: Racism, Fascism and Ethnic Cleansing

Let’s be very clear. Israel is not a democracy. It is a militarised racist religio-ethnocracy that espouses a Nazi-like ideology – the Hitlerian concept of state. Israel could not have come into existence without perpetual violence, racism, ethnic cleansing and the obliteration of Palestinian identity and Palestinian culture. For six decades, Palestinians have been denied their identity as human beings. Israel’s aim has always been to cleanse the Palestinians from their homeland and establish a monoethnic/monoreligious Jewish-Zionist state to dominate the region by force. The expropriation of Palestinian land is not incidental or accidental racism, but the carefully thought out ideological racism of a racist state that intends to exterminate the Palestinian native population. Over the years, Israel has become more racist, more brutal and more violent towards the Palestinians. The Israeli society is a barbaric anti-Muslims/anti-Arabs society where 82 per cent of Israel’s Jewish population approved the Gaza massacre. (For more see: Gideon Levi, One Racist Nation, Ha’aretz, 27 March, 2006).

The Israeli regime is a coalition of corrupt far-right and religious-fascist parties that embodied the extremes of Nazism. The regime sees violence as the only tool for its existence in a territory that is religiously and ethnically diverse. From its inception, Israel was destined to be a replica of Nazi Germany with too many aspects of the Nazi ideology – its dehumanising of non-Jews, its anti-semitism, its pure Jewish race doctrines, its Jewish nationalism, its Zionist conquest, its conception of Jewish geopolitical supremacy – are compatible with the key tenets of Nazism. Throughout Israel’s history, clones of Adolf Hitler have dominated the Israeli regime (military and politics) and pursued a Nazi-like ideology of persecution of the Palestinians and expropriating Palestinian land. In addition to its stockpile of WMD that is often used on defenceless Palestinian women and children, the Israel regime has its finger on the button of several hundred nuclear bombs, hidden from the public by Western complicity in Israel’s war crimes.

Endorsing Israel’s Crimes and Threat to World Peace

Anyone who supports the state of Israel in its current form and its brutal repression of the Palestinian people is a self-identified fascist lacking morality. “I don’t think there is one moral person in the world who supports what Israel stands for”, said the Israeli-born history scholar, Ilan Pappe. The Israeli regime is rightly seen by the rest of the world’s population as a major threat to world peace, including an “existential” threat to many nations in the region like Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. “Israel is number one threat to Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses”, said the outgoing Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei. According to the Global Peace Index Ranking, out of 141 countries, Israel ranks as the fourth least peaceful country.

Despite the serious threat posed by Israel to world peace, the Israeli regime is unconditionally supported, politically and financial by major Western countries, thanks to a powerful Jewish-Zionist Lobby that controls the centres of power and finance in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. government, in particular, is the unquestionable supporter and defender of Israel’s terror because U.S. (Middle East) foreign policy is completely controlled by Zionist Jews and supporters of Israel. The U.S. Congress (known as the Israeli Knesset in Washington) is an anti-Arabs/anti-Muslims club of wealthy Judeo-Christian and pro-Israel Zionists.

Financing Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity

In addition to endorsing every criminal act by Israel, the U.S. provides Israel between $3 billion to $6 billion in federal loan guarantees. The money is used by the Israeli regime to kill Palestinians women and children, and build Jewish “settlements” (colonies) on illegally-occupied Palestinian land. This massive unconditional financial support has cost U.S. taxpayers around $84,854,827,200 since 1949. In other words, the U.S. is paying $14,346 for each man, woman and child in Israel. Meanwhile, a third of American citizens, including some fifty million without health insurance, live in poverty (For more, see: Richard Curtiss: The Cost of Israel to US Taxpayers, If Americans Knew, 03 October 2009). Israelis must be the only people on the planet that are rewarded for their crimes.

When it comes to financing the Jewish-Zionist state, almost every Western nation is complicit. Germany is the second highest provider of weapons and money to Israel. Britain (the Arabs’ most virulent and racist enemy) and France are just behind Germany followed by other Western nations who are unconditionally financing Israel’s terror and racist ideology. Politically, the Israeli Zionist regime is not only supported by Western governments and mainstream parties, but also by every fascist and far-right racist party and organisation in Europe and the U.S.

The Western Media and Government Policy Front

Furthermore, Israel is unconditionally supported by one-sided, well-oiled and Nazi-like propaganda machine provided by the Zionists-controlled Western media, including CNN, the BBC and the fascist Murdoch propaganda. Israel can also count on war criminals like former Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair to defend its criminal policy globally. In addition, most Western countries grant Israeli soldiers – with Palestinians blood on their hands – “Working-Holidays visas” to “recuperate” and work in Europe and other Western countries after completing their military service in the Israeli Occupation Army. Palestinians cannot even move between towns and villages in their own land, let alone go abroad. Of course, European governments pretend it is a “humanitarian” gesture to promote peace in Palestine, while at the same times they are participating in the genocidal siege of the Palestinian population in Gaza, depriving them of food, water and every basic necessity to live a normal life. Hence, Israeli war crimes and its policies are committed with the overt complicity of the U.S. government and its Western allies.

Compare this lavish “aid” meted to Israel with the U.S. aid to the Palestinians. Recently, the Obama Administration has announced it will withdraw its entire $900 million aid to the Palestinians if the unity government doesn’t “recognize Israel’s right to exist” as a Jewish-Zionist state and submit to a brutal Jewish occupation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Mahmoud Abbas the U.S. Congress won’t approve Palestinian aid unless the Palestinian government also renounces violence. No such conditions have been imposed on Israel to renounce its daily terror against the Palestinians. Successive Israeli governments refuse to renounce violence and have never recognised the rights of the Palestinians. Recognising Israel’s “right to exist” means recognising Israel as a legitimate and oppressive Jewish-Zionist occupier of Palestinian land in the heart of the Arab region.

Silence and Betrayal of the Arab Regimes

Shamefully, the Arab regimes remain silent and most Arab regimes pretend to look the other way when Israelis murder Palestinian women and children. The brutal Egyptian regime is taking the lead by being the most shameful collaborator with the Israelis against the Palestinians. And because the Arab regimes are divided like never before, deserting Islam – drowning in a deep sea of Western-style corruption – and remain subservient to U.S. imperialism, Israel has a carte blanch to continue dominating the region and annex all of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, Israel and its Zionist supporters will continue pursuing their Zionist ideology as long as Muslim and Arab nations remain divided and do not speak in one voice. It is now more important than ever – when Islam and Muslims are under attack by U.S.-Zionist forces –, that Arab and Muslim nations abandon the politics of serving imperialist interests and unit against U.S.-Israel Zionist agenda.

Obama, “a pusillanimous and feckless leader”

Taking advantage of Arabs’ divisions and weakness, U.S. President Barack Obama even went as far as calling on all Arab nations to “normalise” relations with Israel on Israel’s terms. Obama was deliberately ignoring the Arab League demands (the Saudi Peace Plan) for a full Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian lands to the 1967 borders as well as a just resolution to the refugees in exchange for recognition and normalisation of relations.

It is misleading to suggest that President Obama is the product of “Black struggle” in America. President Obama is a product of the U.S. ruling class. Indeed, the white elites proudly proclaim that Obama is a black man “raised the right way”. The “right way” is the imperialist white man way that serves white elites interests. Obama is a manipulative tool of imperialist propaganda. For his service to Zionism, Wall Street and for his “extraordinary efforts” to continue the slaughter of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Barack Obama is awarded the Noble “Peace” Prize by the Swedish Bank, not because of his empty rhetoric. Granting Obama the Nobel Peace Prize provides legitimacy to U.S. war on Muslim nations. By accepting the Prize, Obama joined gallery of war criminals and terrorists such as; Menachem Begin, Henry Kissinger, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, etc. Obama will not bring peace to the world; he is escalating the war of terror on Muslim nations and endorsing Israel’s Zionist expansion in Palestine.

The U.S. and the Israeli governments’ rhetoric about peace is just propaganda designed to consolidate the Occupation by continue the crimes of house demolition and building more illegal Jewish colonies on Palestinian land. Peace is a formidable propaganda tool to undermine international efforts to find a just solution. Every year, Israeli and American leaders cooked something up for the media to propagate the so-called fabricated “Israelis’ desire for peace”. Of course, Israelis never find a “partner for peace”. They cry: “Thank God, we do not have any one to talk to”.

When it comes to peace, Israeli leaders are the masters of deception. Deception has been their game to play. The recent so-called “offer” by the corrupt Zion-fascist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “temporarily freeze” the illegal building of Jewish colonies on Palestinian land is a case of Israel’s deception propaganda aimed at manipulating public opinion, particularly in the U.S.

Peace in the Middle East is “dead as a doornail,” said Francis Boyle, a professor of International Law at the University of Illinois. According to Professor Boyle, former senator George Mitchell “is running a dog and pony show in his scampering around the Middle East”. He added: “Mitchell’s mission is just a public relations exercise to delude the Arab and Muslim world into believing that the Obama Administration is going to do something while in fact they are pushing their agenda against Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan.” Obama is “a pusillanimous and feckless leader”, added Professor Boyle. Like Condoleezza Rice and her predecessors’ countless missions, the Mitchell’s mission has nothing to do with peace.

Peace is Ethnic Cleansing

Israel and the U.S. define and control the term of peace according to Zionist interests. Publicly, Israeli leaders are crying for peace, but more often conspire and openly sabotage any peace effort in order to perpetuate more violence and blame it on the Palestinians. “It is the fault of the Bolsheviks, and we have to act in self-defence”. In the same way the Nazis used to blame the Bolsheviks, Israelis blame the Palestinians. Peace is not Israel’s primary concern; violence and expansion are.

For more than forty years, Israel and the U.S. have done everything to kill any peaceful settlement. “It is not that Israel does not want peace: everyone wants peace, even Hitler. The question is: on what terms? From its origins, the Zionist movement has understood that to achieve its goals, the best strategy would be [to perpetuate violence in order] to delay political settlement, meanwhile slowly [expropriating Palestinian land and] building facts on the ground”, writes Noam Chomsky, a long-time analyst of Middle East (Israel-U.S.) politics and a strong supporter of a “civilised” Israel.

The so-called “facts on the ground” – the illegal blocks of large Jewish-only colonies, Jewish-only network of roads and the apartheid wall that represent a Zionist state built on the ruin of historic Palestine – often used by Israeli leaders as evidence of Jewish claims to the land have removed any possibility of a viable Palestinian state. What remains of historic Palestine is a small area of islands-like disconnected ghettos and concentration camps; an archipelago, controlled by hundreds of Israeli-imposed military checkpoints, roadblocks and walls (the apartheid wall) that completely forbid the movement of Palestinians between towns and villages and between Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians anywhere are under constant watch, their movement is monitored and contained and their safety is threatened. Hitler would have envied Israel’s system of controlling Palestinian movement.

Peace is ethnic cleansing, ghettoization of Palestinian villages and towns, expropriation of Palestinian land and water resources, bulldozing Palestinian homes and building Jewish-only colonies in violation of international law. Peace is the “Judaizing” of Palestinian Jerusalem and allowing Jewish terrorists and religio-fascists into Al-Aqsa mosque while denying access to Muslims. Peace is the incarceration and routine torture of innocent Palestinians men, women and children. Peace is targeted political assassinations, the slaughter of innocent women and children, collective punishment that denies innocent Palestinians access to food, drinking water and normal life.

Gaza is the obvious case in point. It is commonly claimed that Israel has “withdraw” from Gaza and the Palestinians are “free” there. That was demonstrably not true. Israel removed its illegal Jewish settlers (colonisers) from Gaza in August 2005 to consolidate the occupation of East Jerusalem and Palestinian areas in the West Bank. Gaza remains an occupied death camp under a barbaric and genocidal siege dubbed as collective punishment – sponsored by Western powers and enforced by Israeli forces. In addition, Israeli forces continue to terrorise the Palestinian population on a daily basis.

The so-called “peace process” is a trap (for the Palestinians) that allowed Israel to expand by confiscating more Palestinian lands. “What peace process are they [Israelis] talking about? There isn’t one. The Israeli foreign minister [the openly racist-fascist Moldovan émigré, Avigdor Liebermann] doesn’t want one”, said Justice Richard Goldstone during a meeting with a group of Jewish rabbis in the U.S.

Peace talks are considered by the U.S. and the Israeli government as occasions for bullying the Palestinians into submission, as suggested by a Palestinian official familiar with these talks. Indeed, often during peace talks Israel accelerated its criminal attacks on the Palestinians. And every time the Palestinians succumbed to Israeli demands, Israeli leaders shifted the goal-posts. Every time the Palestinians insisted on implementing previous agreements, the Israelis refused and found a new pretext to justify their action.

The Deceptive “Two State Solution”

Opportunists and apologists for Israel’s war crimes talk about a “two-state” solution where Palestinians and Jews “living side-by-side”. But Israel is against the two-state solution and is determined not to allow the emergence of an independent Palestinian state. Also, the two-state solution denies the majority of Palestinians (the ethnically cleansed refugees) the right to return to their homeland. Promoted by Zionists, and supporters of Israel, including the U.S. and European nations, the two-state solution is an illusion useful for Israel’s propaganda. Like the “peace process”, the two–state solution is defended by Israel and Israel’s allies because it is a useful trick to deceive. As Israel’s most recognised fascist, President Shimon Peres warned recently: “Anyone who rejects the two-state solution won’t bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end”. Recently, Mr. President Peres began advocating a Palestinian state with “provisional” borders at the mercy of Israel’s terror. Endorsed by successive U.S. government, including the Obama Administration, and financed by U.S. money, Israel is violently expropriating Palestinian land for illegal Jewish colonies and illegally exploiting the natural resources for its own benefits. The Israeli regime’s goal in the Occupied Territories is the establishment of a Bantustan system, like the one in South Africa under the Apartheid system or worse.

Time has passed by the two-state solution. The two-state is a fiction. Israel is on a mission of ghettoization of the Palestinian people by expropriating their land and water resources. “The two-state solution is unworkable in the first place because Israel has destroyed the physical and political possibilities of building a coherent state for the Palestinian people, thanks to its brutal occupation. This has entailed the invasion of Palestinian land by 450,000 Israeli settlers, along with putting up monstrous walls and Jews-only roads that simply reduce the ever-diminishing Palestinian lands to fragments. To build a viable Palestinian state on such a basis is impossible; or, from another angle, would require dismantling Israel”, said Joel Kovel, former professor of Social Studies at Bard College in New York and author of Overcoming Zionism.

The Only Viable Solution

Finally, the only legal and practical solution for the proposal of a viable and independent Palestinian state is the complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian lands, which Israel is refusing to do in flagrant violations of international law and several UN Resolutions. The Nazis “saw the lands of the Slavs as German lebensraum, just like Israel and Palestine”, said Professor Francis Boyle. The best and just solution for everyone is a one-state solution, where Palestinians and Israelis living in peace with equal rights in a democratic secular state.

Some Western Hypocrisy

Here in Australia – where Israel is worshiped and the slaughter of Palestinian women and children greeted with approval in Parliament House by both parties (‘Labor’ and ‘Liberal’) and the establishment media –, an 88-year old man (Charles Zentai) is in prison awaiting extradition to Hungary to face “justice” for allegedly killing a Jewish boy there in 1944. For six decades, Israeli Jews have been killing Palestinian boys and girls with utter impunity. They are rewarded for their crimes by those same nations, including Australia, that pretend to be committed to justice and international law. If the killing of one boy is a crime, why the massacre of hundreds of boys and girls is a legitimate “self-defence”? Australia of course, was among the minority of the 18 nations that voted against the Goldstone Report in the UN General Assembly. Meanwhile, the visit to Australia by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – still on corruption charges and is considered one of Israel’s most wanted war criminals, who planned and executed the massacre of Palestinian women and children in Gaza and the massacre of Lebanese women and children in Lebanon in 2006 – this week passed with deafening silence in a country proud itself of being “civilised”.

The Terrorist’s Impunity and International Law

Israel’s impunity has allowed Israeli leaders to get away with war crimes because people failed to stand up to their own governments who supported Israel’s war crimes overtly and tacitly. In a civilised world, no one is above the law. Israeli leaders who committed war crimes should be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court. If this is not possible, all sates have an obligation to exercise universal jurisdiction over Israelis who committed war crimes against the Palestinians. It is time to stand up to Israeli war criminals and upheld international law.

There is ample evidence that if Israel is subjected to world-wide censure, Israeli leaders will denounce violence and seek peace. Civil society movements and individuals have duty to challenge pro-Israel suppression. They should give the Palestinian struggle for justice all the political and moral backing they can muster, including boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel and Israeli products. It is one of many non-violent options to stop Israel’s terror and provide a road for Palestinian self-determination. It is the only human right expressly recognised in the UN Charter.

About the author: Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.

Courtesy: www.axisoflogic.com

by Justin Raimondo

In what the Los Angeles Times described as “a fence-mending trip” to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to tear down more fence posts than she repaired. Abrasive, arrogant, and condescending, she fired a series of verbal RPG volleys that nearly demolished what remained of good relations between the U.S. and its principal ally in the region.

On the fight against al-Qaeda:

“Clinton told a group of journalists in Lahore that she found it ‘hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.’ Al-Qaeda, she said, ‘has had a safe haven in Pakistan since 2002.’”

It is astonishing that a U.S. diplomat would say this in a public forum – at a question-and-answer session with Pakistani journalists, no less. One U.S. official tried to justify this outburst with the “explanation” that “You’ve got to remember, she was a senator from New York on 9/11.” But what has that got to do with the plausibility of Hillary’s contention that the government of Pakistan is holding out on us as to Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts? Exactly nothing. If she has evidence Pakistan is knowingly harboring the world’s most wanted terrorist, then she should state it publicly, rather than engage in unfounded innuendo.

A more inflammatory remark would be hard to imagine – unless it’s what she said about U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan’s territory. Asked if she thinks attacks that kill innocent civilians constitute terrorism – “execution without trial,” as one questioner put it – Clinton replied, “No, I do not,” and then refused to discuss the matter further, citing “security” reasons. The audience of Pakistani women sat there in stunned, horrified silence. Which was similar to the reaction of an audience of businessmen, who were told:

“‘At the risk of sounding undiplomatic, Pakistan has to have internal investment in your public services and your business opportunities,’ she told the executives. The U.S. government taxes ‘everything that moves and everything that doesn’t, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan.’”

Hillary is miffed Pakistan doesn’t plunder its citizens to the extent we do, but that doesn’t mean the central government in Islamabad scores high points in any index of economic freedom. Pakistan’s poor bear the lion’s share of the tax burden in that country to such an extent that their Supreme Court recently intervened to lower the gasoline tax, overruling the national legislature. The lower and middle classes cheered, but Hillary will have none of it: how dare those Pakistanis lower taxes!

What’s scary is that Hillary considers this to have been a “charm offensive” – and, by her standards, it is. Having inflicted maximum damage on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, she took her bull-in-a-china-shop routine to Israel, where, standing next to Netanyahu, she declared:

“What the prime minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements … is unprecedented.”

Well, yes, Netanyahu’s absolute refusal to freeze all “settlement” activity is unprecedented – in its stubborn intransigence. This is specially evident in the context of the U.S. demand that, as Hillary put it not long ago, we “see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” So much for taking the administration’s pronouncements seriously.

The Palestinian reaction was to declare that the peace talks – which Hillary had been sent to the region to kick-start – are indefinitely stalled. Nabil Abu Rudeinah, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority head honcho Mahmoud Abbas, averred, “The negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel’s intransigence and America’s backpedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon.”

It is often said that the election of Barack Obama boosted our image in the world: suddenly, after eight years of unmitigated hatred directed against George W. Bush’s America, we’re popular again. Yet it looks like Hillary is trying as hard as she can to undo all that with her ill-will tour. The woman is John Bolton in a dress.

Just as I predicted upon her appointment to State, Clinton is conducting her own foreign policy while Obama, preoccupied with domestic matters, dithers and lets his “team of rivals” carry the ball. The problem is that the Clintonian policy is a blunt instrument with which our remaining allies are being hit over the head, and the results aren’t pretty. Hillary left Pakistan even more destabilized – and hostile to the U.S. – than it was when she arrived, and her trip to Israel is similarly disastrous.

This administration is hopelessly divided when it comes to foreign policy, with the Obama loyalists sending out hopeful signals in the form of the Dear Leader’s matchless rhetoric (e.g., the Cairo speech) and the the Clintonians in effective control of the foreign policy apparatus, contradicting and neutralizing whatever positive effects result from the president’s pronouncements.

Not only that, but at the policy level, where words are translated into concrete actions, Queen Hillary and her minions are carrying out another policy altogether, one virtually indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s in style and content. The same blundering crudity is used to express and justify a policy of unmitigated aggression and complete disregard for human life.

There is nothing diplomatic about Hillary’s words or the tone in which they are uttered; she speaks with the bold assertiveness of Obama’s co-president, rather than as a member of the cabinet. Which is, indeed, precisely what she is, having been ceded the entire realm of foreign affairs by a chief executive clearly staggering under the burden of his office.

The point is that, once again, American voters are faced with a coup at the top. They never voted for a more belligerent foreign policy – quite the opposite, in fact – and yet that is precisely what they are being given. Obama is the happy, smiling, politically correct face of a policy that remains essentially unchanged, which is why his secretary of state feels free to travel the world recklessly pushing her weight around and insulting everyone within range of her smug, grating, hubris-inflected voice.

So you thought you were getting change, eh? Not a chance, not as long as Obama refuses to rein in his secretary of state. It is going to take more than a mere presidential election to effect fundamental change in our interventionist foreign policy. We are in for a long, hard slog. So dig in, check that you have enough rations, and get ready for a protracted struggle against the War Party – which has by no means retired from the field.

About the author: Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director of AntiWar.Com.

Published originally at EtherZone.com

Oil has played a unique role in the economy and history of modern times. No other raw material has been so critical in shaping the destiny of nations.

While Saudi Arabia leads the world in oil exports, Russia and the United States follow closely behind in their oil exports. As for importing the United States leads the way. With their fuel ineffective vehicles, Americans consume more oil than the next four leading oil consuming countries combined.

Click to view

The world’s oil supply is running out and the demand continues to rise. With the world’s building dependency on oil and if alternative forms of energy are not utilized our future gas prices, economy, and way of life will continue to suffer.

In order to reduce our dependency on oil, we need to utilize the different forms of alternative energy. The world’s oil supply is running out and investments in alternative forms of energy will make for a promising future. Solar Energy, Wind Energy, Bio-Fuels, and Hydro Electric energies are all viable sources of alternative energies.

Solar energy is becoming more and more common as a means to power things that normally run off of electricity. Ethanol is starting to creep into the gas tanks of more and more Americans as we see countries like Brazil in South America running on ethanol, and depending less on gas. Wind energy farms are starting to dot the countryside in countries all over the world.

The world has grown a disturbing addiction for oil. Many oil fields around the world are headed for depletion. National statistics are unreliable at best, or classified at worst, and national oil companies control up to 80 percent of oil and natural gas reserves.

The main problem of oil shortages today is not lack of reserves in the ground, but lack of access above ground. The demand for oil continues to rise right along with the population growth. Recognizing the inherent, systemic, and long-term instability of the global oil markets is the first step in addressing the problem the world. is facing. Continuing research on alternative energies and creating fuel effective vehicles is a great place to start in resolving the world’s oil dependency issue.

About the author: Lawrence Leary

Courtesy: EzineArticles
photo credit: azrainman

Iran is not, and has never been, as colorful and congenial as those on the left make it out to be. The traditional imagery of an Arabian knight and his pet monkey is next-to-nonexistent, much to the dismay of those like Barney Frank who’d give anything to join them for a magic carpet ride.

Ever since the revolution in 1979, Iran is a country which, in the terms of the bygone Bush era, might be called evil.

On November 4th, 1979, fifty-two Americans were held hostage for four hundred and forty-four days. After their prolonged release, it was found that the condition of the prisoners was the only thing more ungodly than the inaction of their president, Jimmy Carter. Though this one instance fails to portray the entirety of the country’s evil, it proves Iran’s tendency toward hostility–a factual state our president chooses to ignore.

Despite critique of his attitude toward Iran, Obama’s stance is well-grounded. Indeed, his reasons are two-fold.

Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, ... Are Scamming Us... and What to Do about It

First, being a student of history himself, he’s bound to appreciate the fact that the Iranian revolutionaries chose to release minorities first. For only a few weeks after capture, thirteen black men and women were let go. In all likelihood, Obama accepts terrorist action committed with a honest attempt at affirmative action.

Also, it remains a sad fact that the tenure of the hostages in captivity was longer than the tenure of Obama in the Senate before announcing his presidential candidacy. Thus, his Iranian stance is understandable given his lack of foreign policymaking experience.

As evidence of the above, in order to celebrate the Fourth of July, our would-be world leader invited all of Iran to an embassy barbeque. This offer was later rescinded in an effort to punish the government for their most recent human rights violations against their own people.

But before Obama’s decision to change his mind on his decision, it had been widely hoped that he might employ a certain level of empathy in his meal to the Muslims. However, his previous gifting of DVD’s to the British Prime Minister and an iPod to the Queen of England made such consideration unlikely.

History would suggest the unwise and unpublicized placement of pork on the menu. All America needed was for an innocent embassy barbeque to turn into a terrorist attack on our sovereign territory. But, had this occasion taken place, after a few “Wiener akbars,” America would step back in line to receive potatoes French-fried and a bomb on the side.

Americans should thank the Muslim clerics who effectively turned down this kind offer and hold President Obama accountable for his flawed foreign policy. Though, without a doubt, the fireworks would’ve been to die for!

About the author:  is an ultra-conservative columnist adding a fresh voice to the conservative movement. www.coopersvoice.com

Courtesy: IdeaMarketers
photo credit: jelene

In its initial report, CNN (Newsroom, 4/18/09) appeared to be completely unaware of Galeano’s classic 1971 treatise on the history of European and U.S. imperialism in Latin America, failing to correct Obama’s initial mistaken belief that the book was penned by Chavez himself.

Both CNN (CNN Newsroom, 4/18/09) and AP (4/19/09) contrasted the immediate surge in the book’s sales on Amazon with its previous “obscurity”:

It’s gone from obscurity to bestseller overnight. In just hours, it zoomed to No. 14 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list, and on Friday, it was ranked number 60,280, making its way to the top of the list very fast. – CNN, 4/18/09

The publicity about the gift of the Galeano book helped propel it from relative obscurity to No. 13 on the Amazon.com list of bestsellers by Saturday night. – AP, 4/19/09

The book may not have ranked highly a month ago on Amazon, but it can hardly be described as “obscure.” A classic Latin American history text that was banned by several military dictatorships, with its author “forced into exile as the book grew in popularity,” according to the New Yorker, the book boasts more than 50 Spanish editions, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. As demonstrated by Chavez’s choice, it still has currency with Latin American political leaders.

About the author: Isabel Macdonald

Courtesy: FAIR

Good luck to our well-prepared travel plan if we are unfortunate enough to have the same name as somebody on the country’s no-fly list. We have been told by the government that this time-consuming process is necessary for homeland security and to insure the safety of the public. In truth, this tedious process just to enter an airplane makes us feel that, despite all the inconvenience, at least we are doing our own small part to assist the government in its primary job of protecting our national security.

This is exactly why the recent incident along the United States border with Mexico, and the State Department’s subsequent incoherent response, should leave every American citizen who values the importance of homeland security frustrated, furious, and feeling insecure.

Consider that a Tucson Border Patrol agent recently encountered four Mexican soldiers wearing desert camouflage and carrying weapons as he patrolled a border road in the Tohono O’Odham nation southwest of Tucson. The agent was held by the Mexican military at gunpoint for four minutes as he spoke to them in English and Spanish before he carefully reached for the radio in his back pocket in order to call for help. The Mexican soldiers took flight back across the border, into Mexico, only when other agents were seen in the distance responding to his call for help.

According to the Department of State this incident was just an unfortunate accident. Here is the statement from the Department of State’s spokesman. “Our understanding is that this encounter stemmed from a momentary misunderstanding as to the exact location of the U.S.-Mexican border.”

However, despite that dubious statement from the State Department, there is no real need to buy the soldiers of the Mexican army a GPS navigational system. The border in that area of the southwest is pretty clearly defined. This was no misunderstanding or accident.

Indeed, the Mexican soldiers’ action was planned, as it has been on many other occasions, for years. In fact, since 1996, there have been more than 200 confirmed incursions by the Mexican military across the United States border. Consider that there have been more than forty similar incidents along the Mexican border in this calendar year alone.

The truth is, the Tohono O’Odham border is frequently crossed by human and drug smugglers from Mexico. U.S. law enforcement authorities know that current and former Mexican military personnel have been hired to protect drug and migrant smugglers. Therefore, the smuggling process for illegal human and drug traffic across the border, assisted by Mexican soldiers, is certainly not any accident. In fact, it has become an illegal process that is now not even as time-consuming as an American boarding an airplane.

Mexican soldiers are motivated by a payoff from the Mexican drug cartel for their assistance. They cross the border and threaten at gunpoint a United States border patrol agent. The agent is allowed to respond by calling for border patrol backup. Other agents along the Mexican border leave their locations to assist the agent being held at gunpoint. After they are seen coming to the agent’s rescue, the Mexican soldiers flee back across the border into the safety of Mexico.

The incident is successful in relocating the border patrol agents who need to move to rescue the hostage agent. This displacement of the border patrol agents allows planned entry into the United States for illegal drugs and illegitimate human traffic. Then, the incident is reported by the border patrol and the scripted response of an unfortunate accident or misunderstanding by Mexican soldiers from the Department of State is always the same.

Every day, from all walks of life, Americans do their part for the vital cause of homeland security. Is it really too much to ask that the United States Government better support their effort? What it takes is only what should be expected. To enforce the existing immigration laws, and to better support and protect border patrol agents. This can easily be achieved by increasing border security and by holding the Mexican government accountable for its frequent military invasion of the United States border.

Indeed, a more aggressive approach by the United States government to support the dedicated agents on patrol along the Mexican border would certainly make standing in those long airport lines in the name of homeland security a lot easier for many Americans to understand.

About the author: James William Smith has worked in Senior management positions for some of the largest Financial Services firms in the United States for the last twenty five years. He has also provided business consulting support for insurance organizations and start up businesses. Visit his website at http://www.eWorldvu.com

Courtesy: GoArticles

This consists of criticisms of Israel, which, though true, might be manipulated by others to Israel’s detriment. To avoid assisting Israel’s enemies, the State Department recommends that every comment about Israel (including its leaders and military) first be scrutinized for whether it could put Israel in a bad light. If so, it shouldn’t be said. Only then can we consider ourselves “free from anti-Semitism.”

What if you defy the government and go ahead and speak truthful criticisms of Israel, knowing that Israel’s detractors will probably use it against her? According to the Office of Global Anti-Semitism, one who assists anti-Semites is an anti-Semite.

However, people who don’t face reality hold back part of the truth. They consider too much truth to be potentially dangerous. Christian Evangelical leaders believe they protect Jews from possible persecution by censoring truth about Jewish supremacism and creation of Christian-persecuting hate laws. In reality, protection of Jewish anti-Christian activists empowers them to flourish and expand their corruption of society.

This, in turn, only increases criticism and resentment of all Jews — most of whom are innocent of such evil. Many bitterly resent the Anti-Defamation League, architect of hate laws, for the bad reputation it gives the Jewish people.

Evangelicals think that by only speaking well of Jews they are beyond the reproach of ever being labeled anti-Semitic. Wrong. The State Department says that if Christians believe the New Testament account that
Jewish leaders had Christ crucified they are the very worst kind of anti-Semites: “classical” anti-Semites. That’s what Hitler was.

To please both Jews and the government, evangelicals must now fulfill two criteria: Never say true but unflattering things about Israel and abandon belief in the New Testament.

Will evangelicals accommodate the State Department’s new requirement of philo-Semitic correctness? Countless followers of John Hagee already do. They agree with his book, In Defense of Israel, that the New Testament testimony that Jews killed Christ is an anti-Semitic lie that birthed the holocaust.

Yet, an increasing number of Americans are no longer content to be insulated from truth. Many visiting the Internet and www.truthtellers.org in particular are rediscovering an enormous reality: We don’t have to fear the whole truth. Truth can be trusted entirely. Truth doesn’t beget error and evil; rather, it bears the good fruit of knowledge, wisdom, moderation, and guidance in a darkened, confused world.

About the author: Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization. This article has been shortened for space. The entirety of this article is available at www.truthtellers.org.

Courtesy: American Free Press

In case that name doesn’t ring a bell, Swett is the daughter of the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), who was one of Israel’s most ardent champions in the House. Her husband is former Rep. Dick Swett (D-N.H.), who, after two terms in the House and an unsuccessful Senate bid, managed to amass a respectable $95,500 in pro-Israel PAC contributions.

Will Sununu’s Democratic opponent, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, who received $72,022 in pro-Israel PAC contributions to oppose Sununu in 2002, find it in herself to rise above the crowd?

Janet McMahon is managing editor of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. This astounding compilation of research was provided to AFP by that fine publication. For more information on The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, please write the publisher at P.O. Box 53062, Washington, D.C. 20009. Call them at 800-368-5788 or see their website at www.wrma.com

Top 2008 & Career Recipients of Pro-Israel PAC Funds

Compiled by Hugh Galford

HOUSE: 2008 CYCLE $
Berkley, Shelley (D-NV) 34,700
Hoyer, Steny (D-MD) 32,500
Pence, Mike (R-IN) 30,000
Kirk, Mark (R-IL) 27,000
Boehner, John (R-OH) 27,000
Cantor, Eric (R-VA) 25,500
Klein, Ron (D-FL) 16,150
Crowley, Joseph (D-NY) 15,745
Johnson, Tim (R-IL) 13,000
Bachmann, Michele (R-MN) 13,000
House: Career $
Berkley, Shelley (D-NV) 283,405
Engel, Eliot (D-NY) 193,418
Hoyer, Steny (D-MD) 171,775
Obey, David (D-WI) 156,100
Kirk, Mark (R-IL) 156,882
Cantor, Eric (R-VA) 156,730
Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana (R-FL) 133,490
Lowey, Nita (D-NY) 130,738
Levin, Sander (D-MI) 124,221
Lantos, Tom (D-CA) 123,250

SENATE: 2008 CYCLE $
Levin, Carl (D-MI) 61,850
Swett, Katrina (D-NH) 44,000
Lautenberg, Frank (D-NJ) 39,000
Pryor, Mark (D-AK) 37,500
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) 35,500
Collins, Susan (R-ME) 33,500
Coleman, Norm (R-MN) 31,000
Durbin, Richard (D-IL) 29,000
Reed, Jack (D-RI) 27,500
Landrieu, Mary (D-LA) 24,790
Senate: Career $
*Levin, Carl (D-MI) 720,737
*Harkin, Tom (D-IA) 526,950
Specter, Arlen (R-PA) 492,973
*Lautenberg, Frank (D-NJ) 473,078
*McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) 412,685
Lieberman, Joseph (D-CT) 373,851
*Durbin, Richard (D-IL) 359,421
*Baucus, Max (D-MT) 342,648
Reid, Harry (D-NV) 320,301
Wyden, Ronald (D-OR) 277,562

*UP FOR RE-ELECTION

Author: Janet McMahon
Source: American Free Press

If the United States is serious about advancing stability and peace in the Middle East and ensuring security for Israel, it must use these hearings to clarify to lawmakers what sort of security threat Syria poses, and how North Korea factors into their assessments. The reason: North Korea’s weapons transfers pose a potential threat to the Middle East peace process.

Pyongyang has a long laundry list of customers who have obtained missiles, components, technical assistance, and production technology, including Iran, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Pakistan. Throughout the 1990s, Syria imported North Korean SCUD-C missiles. These missiles are considered short range and can travel up to 500 kilometers, or more than 300 miles.

More recently, Syria imported SCUD-D and No Dong missiles from North Korea. The SCUD-D, acquired by 20,000, is considered short range, with a range of up to 700 km, or more than 400 miles. The longer range No Dong missile, which Syria acquired in late 2006, can reach targets of up to 1,200 km, which means these missiles can hit targets anywhere in Israel.

But the danger to Israel from these missiles may not be confined to Syria. Currently, Hamas uses a smuggling and tunnel system to transfer weapons from Syria via the Sinai Peninsula into Gaza—a method they replicated from Hezbollah. This system has been effective in arming Palestinian militants with weapons and the raw materials needed for independent artillery production.

In addition, it is reported that Syria (through Hezbollah) provides Palestinian militant groups with advanced professional training in sniping, anti-tank warfare, intelligence, and artillery. These Palestinian militants are potentially the beneficiaries of North Korea’s extensive missile exports to the Middle East because they can use their established smuggling and tunnel system to obtain more advanced and longer range weaponry that endanger more Israeli civilians.

Last month Israel launched a military attack against Gaza because Israeli civilians in the southern towns of Sderot and Ashkelon were increasingly vulnerable to rocket fire from Gaza. Palestinian militants rely on Qassam rockets, highly inaccurate rockets with a range of only 6 to 12 km. But there is some evidence of longer range rockets being prepared by militants, called Katyushas, which can travel up to 20—to-40 km.

The town of Sderot is just a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip, and Ashkelon is just 10 kilometers north. Israeli raids in reaction to these rocket attacks by Palestinian militants have resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred Gazans, bringing the already fragile Israeli-Palestinian peace process under additional strain. Both the Qassam and Katyusha rockets are nowhere near as advanced as the missiles that North Korea is exporting to Syria, but the United States needs to maintain vigilance about the full range of weapons transfers North Korea is making to the Middle East.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice undertakes a new diplomatic mission this week in the Middle East to boost support for Iraq and revitalize the peace process, Congress can play an important role in asking the Bush administration tough questions about what it knows regarding North Korea’s weapons transfers to the Middle East. If the United States downplays the significance of North Korea’s weapons and technology transfers to the region, then it could undermine the Israeli government’s confidence that it can take steps to advance the peace process without undermining the security of its people.

As the Bush administration tries to manage initiatives on multiple fronts in the Middle East—a complicated task by itself—it should keep a close watch on what countries outside the region, such as North Korea, are doing to shape and impact security dynamics in the region. Though there is no clear evidence that weapons North Korea has provided to Syria have gotten into the hands of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah or Hamas, even the slim possibility that this could happen would have disastrous consequences for Israel’s security and the prospects for the peace process.

About the author: Amanda Rios is an intern at the Center for American Progress working with Senior Fellow Brian Katulis.

Source: Center for American Progress

Much to the dismay of Washington war planners, there has been a growing weariness in Europe with the Afghan conflict and reluctance by NATO members to expand troop commitments. This past year, Pentagon chiefs have consistently complained that European allies have not been pulling their weight at a time when it is vital to throw more troops into the fight against a resurgent Taliban, and a re-formed al Qaeda, whose leadership is based somewhere in the tribal lands between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Talk of a secret deal emerged during the recent NATO summit in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, when member nations were given a classified dossier outlining a German-inspired strategy for a reduction in troop levels leading to a phased withdrawal. The proposal conflicted strongly with the views of Pentagon military chiefs who have long argued that a resolution of the conflict could take decades. They believe that, like Iraq, Afghanistan might require a U.S.-NATO presence without a time limit.

For some observers, the shifting German position on Afghanistan was predictable because the German public has consistently made it clear it is opposed to a long-term military commitment. During a NATO summit in Holland last year, Germany’s defense minister, Franz Joseph Jung, hinted at building up the Afghan security forces as a prelude to troop withdrawals, but he was careful not to elaborate or provide a timescale. But, in the wake of this latest summit, reports indicated that the secret German dossier went further, pointing to a need to build, train and equip an Afghan army and police force to take over from NATO.

Some of the proposals were said to fall into line with a British policy advocating intensive training of the Afghan military, the planning for a robust police force to combat organized crime and terrorism and the creation of an independent judiciary.

The British, however, have been reluctant to predicate their proposals on any hint of an exit strategy. Nonetheless, Germany’s apparent willingness to set the groundwork for a phased withdrawal could find favor with NATO countries that are reluctant to commit to a long-term engagement in Afghanistan.

Another unusual aspect of the Bucharest summit was the background role played by Russia, which experienced its own Vietnam when it occupied Afghanistan. Russian President Vladimir Putin sent summit members an offer that would allow NATO to ship food and “non-lethal military equipment” for its Afghan forces across Russian territory, thus avoiding treacherous routes through Pakistan.

The Pakistani routes have begun to prove hazardous for NATO food and oil convoys, with 40 oil tankers destroyed in a recent attack.

A curious aspect of the Russian offer was that Russia also made it on behalf of six neighboring countries, including Uzbekistan, through which NATO convoys would have to pass after exiting Russia en route to northern Afghanistan. Those countries come under Russia’s NATO alternative, the CSTO—Collective Security Treaty Organization. By making the offer, President Putin was in effect indicating that NATO needed a closer partnership with Russia. Putin and his advisers had carefully studied NATO’s logistical difficulties and the fact that the Taliban had identified most of NATO’s transit routes through Pakistan, making it easy to hit NATO supply lines.

In particular, the Taliban had been zeroing in on the major Pakistan-Afghanistan crossing point at Torkham, thereby interrupting important supply convoys. When Putin made his offer he was equally aware of a growing concern within NATO about the changing political climate in Pakistan and how, in the longer term, it could have a negative impact on NATO’s reliance on Pakistan as a supply route.

If all of that was not enough to make the Bucharest summit a complex affair, there were calls from countries like Uzbekistan for a dialogue between the Afghan Northern Alliance led by Gen. Rashid Dostum and the Taliban. Dostum, with the help of U.S. Special Forces, crushed the Taliban at the outset of the U.S. invasion. His territory shares a border crossing with Uzbekistan, and both he and the Uzbekistani president, Islam Karimov, have benefited tremendously from the heroin traffic that uses the crossing.

While the Pentagon still maintains good relations with Dostum, it has no time for Karimov, who ordered the U.S. to leave bases in his country after Washington diplomats condemned his killing of hundreds of Muslim protesters in 2005. His regime has been accused of boiling dissidents alive; yet several years ago he visited the White House and signed a secret
pact with President George W. Bush. Aside from his proposal to start talks with the Taliban, he also recommended involving neighboring countries like China in a dialogue to find a solution to the Afghan crisis.

While that may appeal to one or two NATO members, it will be dismissed by British and American leaders, who were dismayed to learn in Bucharest that the Northern Alliance was already engaged in a secret dialogue with the Taliban. The source for that information was none other than the Uzbek leader, Islam Karimov.

It now looks like NATO for the foreseeable future will be tied to Russia and countries like Uzbekistan for supply lines, and that could prove problematic, especially if men like Karimov choose to play a greater role in Afghan politics. For example, if NATO has to rely entirely on routes through Russia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tadzhikistan and Kyrgyzstan, it will make it difficult to exclude the leaders of those nations from demanding a role in forging an outcome to the Afghan conflict.

About the author: Richard Walker is the nom de plume of a former mainstream news producer who now writes for AFP so he can expose the kinds of subjects that he was forbidden to cover in the controlled press.

Source: American Free Press

The first recommendation is a no-brainer, but it will have to wait for a new president because the only kind of diplomacy the Bush Administration understands is gunboat diplomacy. The second recommendation (closing the prison camp at Gitmo), should begin immediately. Guantanamo prison, and what has transpired there during George Bush’s war of terror, is an embarrassment to America.

“It gives us a very, very bad name, not just internationally. I have a great deal of difficulty understanding how we can hold someone, pick someone up, particularly someone who might be an American citizen—even if they were caught somewhere abroad, acting against American interests—and hold them without ever giving them an opportunity to appear before a magistrate,” said James Baker, secretary of state under George H.W. Bush.

Other nations have suffered terrorist attacks during the years since Sept. 11, 2001. In many cases, they have caught the terrorists, tried them in criminal court, convicted them and put them in prison. The Bush administration has spent those same years trying to invent new ways to withhold the normal protections of our judicial system from the hundreds of prisoners who have been held at Guantanamo.

Now, the Bush administration is preparing to compound the tragedy by putting on show-trials of six high-profile prisoners during the run-up to the elections in November. These will be nothing like the trials we are accustomed to seeing—where both sides see the evidence and it is possible that the defendant might be found innocent. These trials will be conducted under the rules of the Military Commissions Act, which was foolishly passed by Congress to keep from being labeled “soft on terrorism.”

These tribunals will routinely deny the defendants due process. They may proceed without the defendant. The secretary of defense will pick the judges, hearsay evidence and evidence obtained without a warrant are admissible. Defendants are not allowed to see all the evidence against them, and defense attorneys cannot meet with clients without a government monitor and are not even permitted to keep their notes of the meetings.

The Military Commissions Act does not allow evidence obtained by torture, but this is not a problem for the upcoming show-trials because none of the evidence was extracted by torture. Even though our government has admitted that evidence was obtained by waterboarding prisoners, President Bush has plainly stated that “we do not torture”—therefore: waterboarding must not be torture in the Bush world view).

In some of these cases, government prosecutors have had years to prepare for upcoming show-trials. The defense has not been so lucky.

“The military is speeding ahead with plans to try six men at Guantanamo Bay for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but none of the defendants, who face possible execution if found guilty, has seen a defense lawyer yet,” Associated Press reported.

According to Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, who successfully represented Salim Hamdan in the case Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, the Office of Military Commissions has no attorneys who are qualified to handle death-penalty cases. He says:

“The government seems to almost intentionally ensure that there [are] not sufficient assets to put on a credible defense.”

Even though Guantanamo prison is a military installation, and the trials are called military tribunals, it is the Bush administration that is pushing the agenda—not the military. Several honorable officers have voiced concerns about the fairness of the legal proceedings at Guantanamo.

“I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused. Instead, I find a halfhearted and disorganized effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged.. . . You have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees and that we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel,” said Capt. John Carr (USAF), in an e-mail sent to supervisors in the Office of Military Commissions in March 2004.

Capt. Carr, along with Air force Officers Maj. Robert Preston and Capt. CarrieWolf, requested transfers to other assignments, rather than participate in the charade of justice at Guantanamo.

Prosecutors will have one big advantage: They can’t lose. Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who was the chief U.S. prosecutor for the Guantanamo military commissions, told The Nation that “the trials are rigged from the start” and “the process has been manipulated by administration appointees in an attempt to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.”

Col. Davis described what happened when he mentioned the possibility of an acquittal to the Pentagon general counsel William Haynes (a political appointee who was overseeing both the prosecution and the defense for military tribunal commissions):

“[Haynes’s] eyes got wide, and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals; we’ve got to have convictions.’” Davis resigned a few hours after being informed that he had been placed in a chain of command under Haynes.

In the event that a miracle occurred, and a defendant is found not guilty, the administration reserves the right to hold “enemy combatants” for the duration of hostilities—even if they are acquitted by the military commission. Since most of the prisoners at Guantanamo have been declared “enemy combatants” and there is no end to Bush’s “war on terror,” you can bet that no defendant is going to be released during the Bush administration—innocent or not.

There probably are terrorists and murderers in Guantanamo prison, but there are also poor slobs who are guilty of nothing except being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or were turned in to American forces for the big rewards that were offered.

About the author: Mick Youther is a retired researcher from Southern Illinois Univ.

Source: American Free Press

Major questions loom unanswered after the election: Will President Pervez Musharraf stay in office for a full term? Will judicial independence be achieved? Will the relative calm in the security situation that has existed since the February national elections hold? And perhaps the question that most directly impacts the lives of ordinary Pakistanis: how will the new government meet the basic needs of millions facing major increases in wheat prices, power blackouts and a lack of basic services like clean water?

Several favorable conditions exist for achieving progress in Pakistan. First, the new government has thus far built on the momentum started by last February’s elections—it has moved quickly to address key challenges in the pre-election environment, including restrictions on press freedom and judicial independence imposed by the martial law President Musharraf instituted last November. Second, a vocal civil society movement, along with increasingly assertive private media outlets, has kept the debate for political reforms alive. These forces, along with the newly elected members of the national and provincial assemblies, seem to recognize the seriousness of the security and economic situation. “It’s our last chance” to address the security and economic problems, said Arbab Aalamgir Khan Khalil, a member of the National Assembly from the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), in a meeting at his home in the northwestern city of Peshawar this past Monday. “If we fail this time, the mullahs are going to take over.”

Despite the impetus for political reform, the political landscape remains fragile. The two leading parties, the PPP of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) headed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, have thus far maintained a united front. As last week’s deadly clashes in Karachi between two rival political factions demonstrated, however, the unity may quickly fray.

The overall number of terrorist attacks have declined in recent weeks compared to the closing weeks of 2007; but high-profile attacks such as last month’s double suicide bombing that destroyed the offices of Pakistan’s national investigative agency, the rough equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, leave many Pakistanis worried that the country could easily slip into even greater violence.

Yet the economic and quality of life situation is what most deeply impacts millions of Pakistanis. In interviews with leading political, security and civil society leaders over the past week, these concerns dominated discussions. Before the election, public opinion surveys showed that inflation and unemployment were top concerns among ordinary Pakistanis, rating higher than terrorism and law and order. In the weeks since the election, public anger over shortages in wheat and other basic foods, as well as inflation in fuel prices, has spilled out into street protests. On Monday of this week, violent protests in cuts in electricity services broke out in Multan, the hometown of Pakistan’s new prime minister.

The new Pakistani government has a long to-do list, and the international community can play a pivotal role in helping the government navigate these turbulent post-election currents.

The United States must lead international efforts to support Pakistan—there are too many direct national security interests at stake, including Pakistan’s impact on Afghanistan and the struggle against global terror networks, to let this important country fall to the wayside. How the United States chooses to exercise its leadership, however, matters a great deal for Pakistan and U.S. national security interests. A U.S. approach to Pakistan that is seen as pushing a narrow agenda focused simply on counterterrorism or supporting certain political forces against others will likely backfire and lead to greater instability.

The United States has a broader opportunity: to lead an international effort to help Pakistan address its considerable economic challenges. The United States government is currently revamping its economic development programs to reduce possibilities for corruption and provide more direct assistance to Pakistan’s people. Meanwhile, some members of the U.S. Congress are proposing larger aid packages. These efforts are important, but the United States can also play an important role in quietly encouraging other countries to increase support for Pakistan. Oil-rich countries in the Arab Gulf region, for example, could step up energy assistance to Pakistan as a stop-gap measure to help the country meet this year’s growing energy crisis.

Quiet, behind-the-scenes efforts will be vital if the United States is going to succeed in providing greater international support for Pakistan. Last month’s very public visit to Pakistan by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher was widely interpreted in Pakistan as a heavy-handed attempt to control the situation and dictate policy to the leaders of the newly-elected government.

What is needed is an alternative U.S. approach that gives Pakistan’s leaders the space to take the lead on addressing their country’s many problems while the United States helps to develop a unified front among global and regional powers to support progress on the security and economic situations in Pakistan. This requires a new strategy that is less fixated on individual leaders like President Musharraf and more focused on helping Pakistanis strengthen a full range of institutions needed to bring law and order and greater economic security to the country. The window of opportunity that the elections have opened will not last indefinitely. Now is the time for the United States to take on this critical challenge.

Author: Brian Katulis

Source: Middle East Progress

The fact is there were 23.1 million jobs created during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, but the increases in payrolls during his tenure have been offset by the loss of jobs in the George W. Bush [Bush 43] presidency due to foreign trade.

Is Bill Clinton responsible for these job losses? The answer is absolutely not – for two reasons.

The losses we are experiencing in labor markets are losses due to cheap labor rates in India, China and other overseas countries, not due to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Second, the North American Free Trade Agreement was a twinkle in the eye of Ronald Reagan as can be determined by the following statement made during his speech announcing his candidacy for President in 1979.

“It may take the next 100 years but we can dare to dream that at some future date a map of the world might show the North American continent as one in which the people’s commerce of its three strong countries flow more freely across their present borders than they do today.”

The Canada-United States free trade agreement, CFTA, went into effect on January 1, 1989 and was eventually incorporated into NAFTA during negotiations by the George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) administration.

Following is an excerpt made by President George H.W. Bush during the initialing ceremony for NAFTA.  This speech was made October 7, 1992 – a month before Bill Clinton was elected to office and three months before he took office.

…Today the United States, Mexico, and Canada embark together on an extraordinary enterprise. We are creating the largest, richest, and most productive market in the entire world, a trillion market of 360 million people that stretches 5,000 miles from Alaska and the Yukon to the Yucatan Peninsula. NAFTA, the North American free trade agreement, is an achievement of three strong and proud nations. This accord expresses our confidence in economic freedom and personal freedom, in our peoples’ energy and enterprise. The United States, Mexico, and Canada have already seen the powerful and beneficial impact of freer trade and more open markets. Over the past 5 years, as President Salinas reduced trade barriers under his bold reform program and as Prime Minister Mulroney and I implemented the United States-Canadian Free Trade Agreement, trade between our three countries has soared. In 1992 alone, that trade will reach an estimated 3 billion, up billion just since 1987…

His full speech may be read at the following link at the George Bush Presidential Library.

http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?&year=1992&m

The Clinton administration promoted the free trade agreement between Mexico and Canada and NAFTA would never have been passed without the overwhelming support of the Republican members of Congress.

Clinton was for free trade between the three countries, and NAFTA would be good for the US if the price of crude oil hadn’t skyrocketed over the past seven years.

The U.S. International Trade report released February 14, 2008 indicated a 2007 trade deficit with Canada of $64.2 billion,  The increase in imports from Canada was primarily due to crude oil and pharmaceuticals.

We’re also running a 2007 trade deficit with Mexico of $74.3 billion, for probably the same reason.  Mexico and Canada are our two biggest non-OPEC oil suppliers.

However, neither of the countries in NAFTA can even begin to compare with the $256.3 billion trade deficit with China for 2007.  No crude oil was imported from China during 2007.

The question that should  be asked on NAFTA is who would benefit the most from the North American Trade Agreement IF the United States was not so dependent upon crude oil as an energy source?

Three Presidents, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and William J. Clinton promoted the idea over a period of almost thirty years.

What has not been taken into consideration is the devastating effect the increased price of oil would have on trade balances between the three countries.  Just over the past 12-month period of time, imported petroleum prices have increased 66.9%.

NAFTA is good, crude oil dependence isn’t.

About the authors: Richard E Walrath and Patricia L Johnson are co-owners of the Articles and Answers News and Information sites.  You may read more by these authors at Articles and Answers or Articles and Answers 2007

Source: SearchWarp