The World According to AmericanGoy

Pushy Israelis in American Malls: rebuttal

2009-11-09T06:47:00.000-08:00

Remember my Pushy Israelis in Every American Mall article?

I have gotten a rebuttal of sorts in my comments, so I thought it would be best if I reprinted it here in full.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Pushy Israelis in Every American Mall":

Hi, I'm a Kiosk owner. So I'd like to set the record straight. (Whether you believe me or not). Firstly kiosks are ALWAYS owned by an American. The business itself isn't illegal and we pay taxes like everyone else. The Israeli employees come on H2B though I'm sure that their are illegals, most of us owners wouldn't risk our future (and apparently we do very well) when we can get an H2B for just 200-300 dollars.
Now for some real answers.

You compare these "communities" to terorist cells. There are two reasons why everything is set up for these people. 1) Israelis are a very close community. They feel very alone in the US and even the world. The owners try and make life for them here as comfortable as possible. Most of these workers are kids and miss their friends and family. So we try our hardest to make them feel like they're not just here for work but here as part of a greater experience.
Whether or not you feel this is like terrorist cells doesn't matter if there is no terrorist plotting... After all you can say that Church groups and the YMCA act in the same way. It's called being there for people. Besides, we're not going to bring them 1000miles and let them just figure stuff out for themselves.
2) The second reason why they get so many perks is very AMERICAN. Supply and demand. There's a lot of compitition and many companies they can go to. Sometimes it comes down to who can offer a better living experience.

These Israelis actually don't think that most Americans are dumb as you say. They think that they have so much money that they don't know what to do with it. This is no ones fault but our own cultures. We live on credit and we have to much disposable income. (i.e. our current financial meltdown)

These workers are rude, they are ruthless, they are good at what they do but they shouldn't carry a stigma any worst than your average used cars salesman... certainly not that of a mossad agent!

I don't know any mossad agents but i'm pretty sure you can't become one when you're 20yrs old! They did do a mandatory 3 yr army term but most of them never even saw action. Most of my employees had desk jobs or were technicians. One was a cook! The army is helpful in allowing them to be dissiplines enough to focus on nothing but sales for 12hrs a day, sometimes 6 days a week. And that's why Americans can't do the job. Cus trust me it costs us a lot of money to house and find these Israelis. I tried using Americans and most of the time it doesn't work because of a lack of focus. They've got family, friends, school, boyfriend problems... you name it. An Israeli want nothing more than to run away to South America for 6months to a year and knows exactly how much money he needs to do that.

In short, Israelis are nothing to fear. They love this country. They love that you don't have to fight for everything and that people (even strangers) are generally nice to them. So even though when at the kiosk they take advantage of that niceness. They leave here loving that niceness and spreading the truth about us Americans; That we are kind and friendly (and gullible with crappy mud :)

To the guy who wrote about "Islamic terrorist plots" Wow. That's a shame. You might unknowingly be agreeing with many of these Israelis. LOL! Who are JEWISH and also fear such attacks!

Well, I hope I calmed some of you people down. Next time you see a pushy guy or girl at a kiosk. Take the time to talk to them about what they hope to achieve in their future and you'll see that their answers are genuine. These are kids with big dreams and no money... But they're trying.

Notable bloggers on Obama's farcical Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T18:45:00.000-07:00

Last minute edit:
My buddy and all around good guy, Frank Hope, has a post about this travesty also.
Read it here.

His blog is also worth reading - one of those private blogs (like my own) that quietly gets a powerful message across.

Here are others, all of them much better writers and bloggers than yours truly:
The superb Chris Floyd

Arthur Silber

Information Clearing House; Paul Craig Roberts

Now, I have never asked for money.

And I am not now.

I am very well off, making a 6 digits figure salary, well over the 100K mark.

Arthur and Chris are much better bloggers, much better writers, and they need all the help they can get. Reading them is reading great literature - more, you feel that they bare themselves and show you their beautiful, inner soul.

Arthur, especially, was very, very sick and of course, in this country being sick costs you a lot of money, if you are unfortunate enough to survive and require long term care.

So give away; Thank You.

PS
Might as well give to antiwar.com, because on top of everything else they have Justin Raimondo

Conflict of Interest

2009-10-08T17:14:00.000-07:00

The Doctors
Just listened to NPR on my way home. The program was about doctors and a study done in 1970 onward, putting ALL that state's doctor care in one huge database.

A stupendous task.

It came out that care and procedures varied from town to town, county to county. In one town much more of a certain medical procedure was done to women, for example, than in all the other ones.

As I was listening in and weaving in and out of traffic, something interesting caught my ear.

Paraphrasing:
"A doctor was asked why certain towns had done more procedures than others, and an anonymous doctor answered it thusly:

A small rural town with one ophthalmologist, that doctor will do cornea operations for people with 20/80 vision - a very bad vision. A small rural town with two eye specialists will do operations on people with 20/60 - pretty bad eyesight. A small rural town with three ophthalmologists - those doctors will perform operations on people with 20/40 vision - which is not bad at all (20/20 is perfect eyesight)."

Catch my drift?

Just to ram the point home, a doctor's voice came over the radio and he stated:

"Hey, I want to keep busy. If there are more doctors, of course I want to keep busy performing procedures".

Which neatly led to the taboo, verbotten subject that the study performed in Vermont nor a formal effort by an organization polling doctors on why and how they treated patients a certain way (again done in Vermont) never asked.

Money
Doctors get paid for each performed action. They get paid small amounts for advising a client and perhaps proscribing medicine (a patient visit) but get paid big money for performing operations.

Now ask yourself - assuming the doctor is honesty personified, but the decision she is mulling over in her head is to advise you let her hospital perform that CT scan on you or perhaps that CT scan is unnecessary?

Which way would the nice lady doctor be swayed?

A woman was profiled on the radio show; she was in a car accident. Her back was hurting, rarely, every few hours she got some pain.

Her doctor - a specialist - advised her to get an operation. And another. And another. And a third one. And a fourth.

Now she is in pain not rarely, not once or twice per day, but all the time.

Cha-ching, you stupid bitch!

She trusted her doctor, but as an American you must, absolutely MUST remember - you are not a patient, you are a client - in effect, a number.

The doctor does not have your best interest at heart; the system makes it much more profitable to make you sick enough so that an expensive procedure is performed... by the doctor who advises you to do it.

Ben Franklin said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of treatment later.

In America, with doctors profiting off you getting sicker and your condition becoming worse, so that an (ka-ching!) expensive operation is performed to treat you, prevention is anathema, an enemy, and prevention will never be mentioned, or rarely.

Do you trust your doctor still?

What about...

The Lawyers
Do you trust these fuckers?

Oh, "kill all the lawyers", "lawyers are scum" - these are things people of all social strata, from the poor to the rich, say.

But what happens in a divorce?

Family example - a husband was so pissed off at his wife (and vice versa) that he got a lawyer, and, by gawd, he will sue her for everything she is worth!

After all, he worked hard, and made the majority of the money in this (un)holy union.

And, of course, the crying, desperate mother went and tried to get herself "lawyered up" too.

Because her English was somewhat bad, and definitely not good enough to really understand all the "lawyer speak", she took her smart-ass 15 year old son with her.

After speaking to several lawyers (free consultation) one lawyer (an inexperienced sucker) let slip that the state law stipulates that in a divorce both parties receive 50-50 of everything.

Curious, mom and son probed; so, why even get lawyers then?

Stuttering, asinine explanation, followed by "Well, good lawyers can turn this into 55-45, or even 60-40".

The smart-ass kid went on the internet and researched divorces, jumping from lawyer fees per hour (at that point the kid did a double take) to "no-fault divorce" to the 50-50 settlement law, in existence in almost every state of this union.

Next, a phone call to dad.

"Dad, you are a fucking idiot. Do you know about the 50-50 state law? Do you know how much it will cost you and mom to fight it out in court? By the time it gets to 45-65 settlement, much of the assets and money will be gone".

"But but" blah blah blah I made all the money I deserve more.

"OK, why not come to the house, sit down and we will fight it out without lawyers, and discuss this like adults? Lets see if we can divide everything and do the cheaper amicable divorce".

Which happened.

There was discussion, negotiation (a very civil one, surprisingly) and finally, after several meetings, an agreement.

The father let his lawyer go ("what's the point of keeping him?!") but the parasite did not let him go.

He was owed money, and the case was held up, preventing it from going to Court until he was paid.

Do you see any difference between doctors and lawyers?

"But but... doctors save lives, and lawyers..." blah blah blah, confused American thinking.

Shut up.

Think.

Both of them have to work in the same system.

Pay for play, pay for service.

A doctor WILL advise you to have that operation that will pay him more, and not recommend a simple procedure which has just as much chance (if not more!) of healing you for much, much less expense. A doctor will work on your fears and emotions, saying in a serious voice that yes, you do need that complicated operation.

A lawyer WILL advise you to SUE THE BASTARD!, FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS!, stoking your anger, playing your emotions while you are so vulnerable and unable to think logically.

Guess what assholes - competing lawyers do not directly talk to each other, but there is a tacit understanding between them - an agreement on how to play you, the suckers, for your money.

Think of a poker table with three people "in-the-know" and you sitting down to play a friendly game with some money involved.

The three sharks do not speak to each other - there is no need - they know what's up and that a victim - a mark - an idiot - has walked in ready to lose his money.

Same here.

And same with doctors.

There is a tacit understanding in the profession, and if there is a malpractice suit there are very few specialists who will come to say that "yes, that other doctor made a mistake".

Same as with....

The Policemen
Policemen in this country are a law unto themselves, and this is true that,as they proudly say it to others, "the police are the biggest gang in this country".

A policeman can beat you, taser you, stop you at a checkpoint and if you are a "smart-ass" give you a breathalyzer that YOU WILL FAIL, 100% guaranteed (and there are 30 other cops at the checkpoint who will verify that you were drunk, although, of course, you did not imbibe anything but 7-Up that night).

It used to be thought that policemen were the pillars of the community, but in reality, these are truly dumb, bored men, who get off when they see you in fear and watching you squirm under their questioning... And of course, the ultimate thrill is tasering some poor sucker or better yet, being "assaulted" by a driver who is sitting in the car, and then grabbing him by the collar and slamming his head against his car.

But who watches the policemen? Who watches the watchmen?

Oddly enough, other policemen.

Seen any cops on the stand being witnesses on the stand in police corruption cases?

Me neither.

And, even more surprisingly, this "self-policing" is happening in almost all areas of life in this country.

Lets take a look at...

The SEC
The SEC, standing for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is an agency charged with overseeing the stock markets.

It is nominally independent of the government, and so technically should do a good job.

A few problems - systemic issues - are present which make it a joke, however.

The first problem is that there is no incentive - no monetary incentive, no cashola, no big payday - for an SEC investigator to catch a white collar criminal.

So, in truth, much depends on the diligence of your boss and your own set of ethics and morals and work rate.

But, of course the American system has found a way to fuck that up.

You see, the incentive is for the SEC "investigators" to NOT pursue the criminals and to not catch anybody.

SEC employees make decent money, but the wages do not compare to the astronomical amounts that the private sector financial specialists make each month, each day even.

Right off the bat you (hopefully) see that only the dumbest, least motivated go into the SEC (the best go into the private sector to really make money), or the truly motivated, crusading types (very few Elliot Ness' around these times, n'est ce pas? Of course there was Elliot Spitzer, but he was taken down and removed from his government post in a classic whore-entrapment operation - he was becoming too dangerous to the establishment).

But looking at the SEC, one surprisingly finds that very few young people who join it make it a career.

What happens is that the young "investigators" gain experience, learn how the system works and how to game it, and then... well, you guessed it - they join a private firm to make real money.

Since every young inexperienced straight-out-of-college or long-term-loser SEC'er dreams of joining a private firm, is it REALLY in their interest to catch any corporate malfeasance?

Do you think a successful SEC investigator will get many offers to come work for a private investment firm? A hedge fund will not come a-calling for a motivated, ethical, moral and successful modern Elliot Ness.

Mr. Bernie Madoff run the most successful (known) ponzi scheme in the world, EVER.
He was investigated multiple times, and SEC agents visited him personally, even at his office and home.

And then they shit their pants - Madoff was the founder of NASDAQ, one of the most powerful stock markets in the world, and to say that he had connections and pull is akin to saying that Hitler killed a few people.

I guarantee you that if Bernie was in a bad mood one day, and was visited by an SEC "intern", if Bernie told that intern to fuck off, the SEC'er would snap to attention, drop his trousers and attempt to insert his dick into his anus.

So that is why you do not hear the names of successful SEC investigators.

Because there are none.

But the system, the so called capitalism, is build so that the CEO and leadership of a company has the best interest of company they lead at heart, right?

There are incentives built into the system to make that true, right?

Riiiiiight...

The Chief Executive Officer
Lets include the CEO and the top tier of a private firm, any firm, whether a car making company, a toy making company, or a company gaming the stock market which does not produce anything and is, in effect, a parasite.

Lets talk about the CEO, the Chief Financial Officer, the top accounting, the operations guy, other executive officers, partners, the top, top 1-2% of a company.

In the American fucked up system, these people are paid a wage, but to spur them to action most of their monetary gains are tied to the price of their company's stock.

Hopefully you realize at this point that the stock market is irrational, guided by rumours, innuendos, planted (true or false) information, raids by giant hedge funds and corporate raiders onto companies to drive down (or up) a company's stock price (people can make money off a falling stock price on "put options" just as well as on a rising one).

In this environment, the CEO and his band of merry cronies and yes-men (and some women) will do everything in their power to keep the stock price as high as they can.

This leads to a very dangerous "short-term profits" mentality among our ruling elite.

Let me explain.

It is in the interest of a given company's employees, and their customers, and sometimes even a nation if a company is big and/or important enough that the company prosper in the long term.

A CEO and his cronies do not give a shit about that - they are there for a few years at most.

What is their motivation?

Like any American's - get rich quick (not much different than a black gangbanger on the street, really).

There are many ways to accomplish this "get rich quick" scheme for a CEO.

Lets start with the fact that the stock market likes layoffs - nay, adores layoffs.

Any company that sheds employees gets an instant boost in its stock price.

Think of this scenario - a CEO and his henchmen realize they may have a few years before a market bubble crash.

They will institute short term policies to maximize profits NOW, produce/serve more, ramp up capacity, expand, and not plan for the (inevitable) downturn coming up in 2-3 years (or sooner).

If they time it right, they are proclaimed as great captains of an industry, and as they leave the company (counting their millions) like rats leaving a sinking ship, the market tanks (which they have foreseen but made no action to prepare their company for), and now the overgrown, bloated, over-capacity company is in great trouble.

Employees laid off, factories close, losses mount... and the CEO and his buddies golf on their own private island.

Isn't capitalism great?

Another example - from the most recent stock market bubble crash.

Banks were competing with other banks and "investment banks" like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock (these are not really banks... well, they are now, as they were reclassified by our paid-for government to allow them to receive TARP money; think of them as parasites that live off the stock market trading and suckers like you investing in your pitiful 401K)

The market was so good, the SPY index and S&P 500 was always going up, that any idiot who put money into it made more money.

And the more money a bank (or "investment bank") put in the more money they made.

The firms that tried to be prudent and hedge their bets, who tried to play it safe, were crucified by their shareholders, the greedy American fucks that they are.

Greedy American idiot: "Bank A makes more money than us, bank B. Why?"

Responsible CEO of bank B: "Well, we foresee a stock market correction soon, and the stock market will fall a bit. We are trying to hedge our bets, keep some money in reserve and be responsible".

Greedy American idiot: "What! I am moving my money! Am buying bank A stock!"

Of course, that didn't happen. What did happen was that lower level employees did their research, thought a bit, and wrote alarming memos to their bosses - the CEO's and CFO's. For their due diligence and being right, they were usually either fired or demoted.

Remember - the CEOs were in hog heaven, making the big score and trying to time it right to exit juuuuuuuust before the crash.

Of course, the shareholders - the small fry like you and me having our 401K's and private stock portfolios, as well as the big players, like hedge funds, pensions, foreign governments - are not amused as we look at this fucked up system, and we glance at our 401K's.

But it - the system - has provided an independent watchdog, a non-government, private organization to oversee the CEO and take action if he (she) gets too wild.

They have the power to vote the CEO out, to appoint a new one, they dictate to the company because they, in effect represent the actual owners of said company, they are...

The Board of Directors
A board of directors is a grand thing; per Wikipedia, it is "a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company".

In effect, a cop, a policeman who represents the interests of the shareholders, the people who bought stock and are interested in the well being, especially (well, this used to be true - stocks were used to be held for years before the advent of day-trading and algos ruining the stock market - more on the stock market hanky-panky in another article coming up) long term well-being, of a company.

Hooray!

Capitalism works!

This board of directors is a splendid idea, and they do have a vested interest in making sure the interests of the shareholders - remember, the owners - of the company are represented and they watch like a hawk over the well being of the company.

But just to double check, lets ask a simple question - actually who is on a board of directors?

Lets look at most bloggers' favorite target, the Goldman Sachs' board of directors.

There is Lloyd C. Blankfein, the CEO.

His second in command, Gary D. Cohn, President and Chief Operating Officer.

And here come the watchdogs, unchained, wary, yapping, sniffing, watching Lloyd's and Gary's hands... uh....

Lets go one by one, and examine each member of the board a bit.

John H. Bryan - the retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sara Lee Corporation.

Claes Dahlbäck - currently serves as a Senior Advisor to Investor AB, a Swedish-based investment company.

Stephen Friedman - has been Chairman of Stone Point Capital, a private equity firm, since June 2006; prior to that, he was, since May 2005, a Senior Advisor to Stone Point Capital.

William W. George - was Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic, Inc. from May 1991 to May 2001 and its Chairman of the Board from April 1996 until his retirement in April 2002.

Rajat K. Gupta - has been Senior Partner Emeritus of McKinsey & Company since 2003. He previously served as McKinsey & Company’s Worldwide Managing Director from 1994 until 2003.

OK, lets stop.

This is enough.

Can you spot the pattern (if you can't - what are you, an idiot?).

All of these members of the board are either active or ex members of the management of other companies.

These are CEO's, CFO's, executive officers of other companies, and many even of the same industry - financial fleecing of America industry, aka "investment banks".

And you can probably guess how this works now, can't you?

Executive officers of company A sit on the board of directors of company B, watching, controlling, sniffing for any wrong doing so they can pounce, while, vice versa, executive officers of company B sit on the board of directors of company A.

Simplistic example, but in many true life situations this is exactly true.

Whose interest do these people represent - shareholders or their own?

Imagine two CEO's playing golf in Grand Cayman:
"Say, Bob, I noticed that you did some hanky panky last week at your company - buying your own company stock with your company's own money and hiding it in a financial maneuver - I'll bring that info to the next board meeting."

"Say, Joe, I am good friends with three guys in your board of directors - and they will fuck you up so bad you'll be lucky to open a mom-and-pop store in this town, so fuck you!"

"You're right, what was I thinking - lets play the next hole!".

This is unrealistic, of course, because in an industry - just like between lawyers, doctors or pimps or policemen - there is a tacit understanding and unofficial code of behaviour.

No policeman will testify in a trial against another policeman's criminal wrong doing. When such a thing happened, movies are made of such incredible events (actually, I can only think of one - Serpico. It is pretty rare, n'est ce pas?).

Do you see CEO's lining up to change the system for the better?

Or to testify against each other?

But wait, there are other organizations and agencies that oversee the private corporations.

What about the fine, upstanding accounting profession...

The Accountants
Their one and only job is to watch a company's money.

Watch their stocks, delve into a corporation's ledgers, look over their Excel spreadsheets, actually count the money in the register, so to speak.

They are paid to be professional, truthful, and do a good job - they are private companies paid to to this one and only job, and paid very well, in fact.

Being private companies, they are paid by... the companies they are overseeing (auditing, to use the business lingo).

Think on that for a second.

Lets say I got into trouble, smack my wife a bit, and a judge placed me under house arrest.

Lets say the crazy libertarians get their way, and the probation officer is a private company employee, paid - by me - to watch over me so that I can only leave my house to go to work and back and get 2 hours of shopping / free time, supervised, of course.

Since I pay him, I try to hire the best private probation watchdog.

I think I will hire the one who winks and nods and allows me to spend 4 hours away from my house.

Heck, I will pay a lot more and get the best of the best in private probation officer companies (PPOC - catchy) - and that probation officer will allow me whole days away from the house, while sitting in my house and wearing the electronic collar/tracking device himself.

Enough time for me to visit that bitch-of-a-wife of mine and really smack her up to show her the error of her ways.

This is how the paid for by the companies they audit accounting firms operate.

There are other agencies that have an impact on a corporation, which are paid to judge the performance of a corporation and give their unbiased verdict, similar to a teacher giving a grade to a student, AAA, BBB...

The Rating Agencies
Per the Credit rating agency Wikipedia page:
"A credit rating agency (CRA) is a company that assigns credit ratings for issuers of certain types of debt obligations as well as the debt instruments themselves. In some cases, the servicers of the underlying debt are also given ratings. In most cases, the issuers of securities are companies, special purpose entities, state and local governments, non-profit organizations, or national governments issuing debt-like securities (i.e., bonds) that can be traded on a secondary market."

Basically, these agencies grade all the shit you can think of.

Corporations, government bonds, banks, firms - all given a neat grade of "very good" all the way to "fucked up!".

Having just read the section above about the accounting profession, you know what question to ask:

Who pays them?

You probably already guessed the answer.

The companies that want to be graded (or are required by law to be graded) pay for the privilege.

Is it in the rating agencies own self interest to give a bad grade to what are, in effect, its clients?

How does this work in the real world?

It fucking doesn't, that's how.

JAMES N. BODURTHA, Jr., Georgetown University - McDonough School of Business Associate Professor of Finance and International Business:

Credit-rating agencies, the independent securities analysts that pass judgment on a company's financial fitness, saw signs of Enron (news/quote)'s deteriorating finances by last May. But the agencies — Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings — did little to warn investors until at least five months later, long after more problems had emerged and Enron's slide into bankruptcy had accelerated.

And of course, the most recent case of Lehman Brothers, AIG and all the other firms which were in the business of leveraging $40 to $1 or even (yes, that is a true record) $60 to $1 - meaning, in English, that for each dollar held in the piggy bank the bank/company/entity loaned out/invested 40 or 60 dollars.

All of these were rated "superb", "very good", AAA+ by the credit ratings agencies - I mean, what rating do such responsible companies deserve (perhaps, after Enron and the current financial crisis, there should be a new "AFU" rating - "all fucked up").

So what good are they, you may ask?

They give dupes - idiots like us - a false sense of security, as well as cover for Wall Street to perform their extreme risk taking, akin to betting all-in on black on roulette in a casino, and being told that that is "responsible" and being graded AAA on ethics and responsibility.

AAA rating, indeed.

In every Western democratic, first world country (save one - ours) there is a final, desperate organization that is supposed to represent the common man, the rube, the sucker, man on the street, the common citizen, Joe Six-Pack... me...

The Government
I have followed the zerohedge blog, which is superb, save for the inane comments made by crazy libertarians sitting in darkened rooms, with windows curtains drawn, shotgun in one hand and a half-finished (cheap) Whisky bottle in the other, nervously eyeing the door, expecting the black clad government commandos to helicopter in and storm their parents basement (sorry, just having fun here!).

There is a debate happening on that blog, as well as on a great majority of the internet these days - from reddit, all kinds of liberal and conservative blogs to newspapers publishing articles online and providing fori for discussions.

This is the government regulation vs. the free market believers debate.

On one side we have the free market, magical, "invisible hand of the market" believers in Ayn Rand religion.

On the other side, we have people who believe in the honesty, morality and common sense of our politicians (hah... hahaha!).

So, having got this far, your brain fried from reading this wall of text, you stop and ask yourself: "Wait, did americangoy just say that both sides are in the wrong here?".

Correct.

This is a FALSE argument.

Let me start with examples - this should help to illustrate my point.
Remember my SEC section?

Young "interns" join the SEC, but their only dream is to join a private firm, preferably an "investment bank", such as Goldman Sachs or BlackRock, or, say, a Bernie Madoff fund.

Oddly enough, once they reach high enough, members of the private firms, corporations, "investment banks", leave the lucrative private sphere and join the government.

Goldman Sachs is an extreme example, to tell the truth, but as good as any, so hop on over to an old, 2006 FOXnews article:

Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs has a long list of alumni who have gone onto government service

A the top of the list are names like New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Corzine was CEO of the brokerage before he won a Senate seat in 2000. Until taking up work with the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000, Bolten was executive director for legal and government affairs at Goldman Sachs International in London. Rubin was co-chairman of Goldman Sachs until 1992, when he was confirmed for his Cabinet seat in the Clinton administration.

But company officials have filled in heavy-lifting posts in less visible areas, too.

The Goldman Sachs' alumni who have served in government include Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick; former president and chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States Kenneth D. Brody; chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and former director of the National Economic Council Stephen Friedman; Reagan Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead; and Reagan Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs Robert Hormats. Goldman Sachs' graduate James Johnson served as president and CEO of quasi-government housing lender Fannie Mae.

Part of the reason for such prominent roles might be due to a corporate culture that pushes it. A letter to the company's investors accompanying the 2005 annual report notes that "Goldman Sachs has a long tradition of public service. Many of our people have gone on to significant positions in government and the not-for-profit sector and their achievements are a source of pride for all of us."

Re-read the last part.

Part of the reason for such prominent roles might be due to a corporate culture that pushes it. A letter to the company's investors accompanying the 2005 annual report notes that "Goldman Sachs has a long tradition of public service".

Do you think these ex-Goldman Sachs people - when they reach a government position - not have a soft spot for their old company?

During the bailout, a competitor of Goldman Sachs - Lehman Brothers - was allowed to fail, and was destroyed.

The company ceased to exist because the government refused to bail it out.

However, when Goldman Sachs had the exact same issue - too much $40 to $1 leverage - the government announced that the financial system needs a bailout, and that banks will receive our tax money to save them... then promptly declared Goldman Sachs a bank.

More, Goldman Sachs invested (stupidly, but so did everyone else) in certain very risky securities, but they hedged their gambling by insuring their bets in the insurance company AIG.

When the shit hit the fan, AIG did not have enough insurance to cover Goldman Sachs losses. Not to worry, our heroic government gave another bailout (billions, again) to AIG to help it - which money AIG promptly paid to Goldman Sachs to cover its obligations.

Obviously, Lehman brothers did not have a corporate culture which pushed its employees into "public service".

More examples.
Christian Science Monitor, In stock market, US senators beat averages:

A report showing outsize portfolio gains for US senators is raising new questions about ethics and conflicts of interest for Capitol Hill power brokers.

The study found that during the boom years of 1993-98, a majority of US Senators were trading stocks - and beating the market by 12 percentage points a year on average. By comparison, corporate insiders beat the market by 5 percent, and typical households underperformed by 1.4 percent.

Here is (yet another) smoking gun, showing you what's going on, how the real world works (Libertarians, you with me here? See how reality is a bit different than Ayn Rand?).

These are lawmakers who are charged with overseeing the stock markets, to regulate them.

"The public perception is that when a member has a stock in an industry he or she is regulating, there is a potential conflict of interest," says Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, which was not involved in the research.

No shit, Sherlock?

Remember Vice-President Cheney?

Project Censored: Cheney’s Halliburton Stock(...):

Sources:

Sources:
Raw Story, October 2005
Title: “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Rose 3,281 Percent Last Year, Senator Finds”
Author: John Byrne

Senator Frank Lautenberg’s website
Title: “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Soar to $9.2 Million”

Faculty Evaluator: Phil Beard
Student Researchers: Matthew Beavers and Willie Martin

Vice President Dick Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over $8 million in 2005, an increase of more than 3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to rake in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit government contracts.

An analysis released by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) reveals that as Halliburton’s fortunes rise, so do the Vice President’s. Halliburton has already taken more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney administration for work in Iraq. They were also awarded many of the unaccountable post-Katrina government contracts, as off-shore subsidiaries of Halliburton quietly worked around U.S. sanctions to conduct very questionable business with Iran (See Story #2). “It is unseemly,” notes Lautenberg, “for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his administration funnels billions of dollars to it.”

Do you see this situation for what it is?

A vice president being (in effect) paid by a private company while he is a vice president, probably the second most powerful man in the world (OK, lets not kid ourselves, 'W' Bush was - and is - an idiot, and it was Cheney and his cabal who ruled the country).

In what other (non banana republic, or crazy African dictatorship) country would this happen?

Do you get it now?

This is how the real world works, people.

There are no two sides, no government regulators trying to reign in the free market corporations.

These are one the same people, on top of the government and on top of the private corporations.

Think of them as the elites.

Think of yourself as a number.

It is us vs them.

Conflict of Interest.

Anti Ballistic Missile Shield in Poland and Czech Republic - the Great American Scam

2009-09-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

Read timesonline article on what happened before you delve into my analysis, please (if you are familiar with the whole anti-ballistic missile (ABM) plan that was to happen in Eastern Europe, skip it).

Of course, the ABM system to be deployed was to be targetting Russian, and not Iranian, missiles, statements by 'W' Bush and Obama and others notwithstanding (look at a map. Note where Russia is, then note where Iran is. Think for yourself. Thank You.).

But the whole thing was (and is) a sham, a scam, to begin with.

USA, neither under Bush nor Obama (like it matters), ever wanted to really deploy those missiles (are they really anti-ballistic missiles? what kind are they - would the czechs or poles really know if they wouldn't be medium range tactical nukes?).

Let me repeat: this was never the plan.

The plan was to threaten and posture and grandstand about near future deployment of missiles in Poland and Czech Republic, and then withdraw that action magnanimously, leaving Russia feeling like they accomplished something...

... When in reality the real action is on the borders of Russia, in Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and other "ex-Soviet republics", now independent countries, where American air force and army is moving in.

The anti ballistic missile shield was used as a bluff to deflect attention from American (and Israeli) activities much closer to Russian borders (if you have doubts, please note an official American military base in Kyrgyzstan as well as look for articles on the right hand side under the section The Ossetia War Collection).

Poland and Czech Republic just got a real lesson in realpolitik, and both those countries and Russia were played for the idiot suckers that they are.

Also, to prove my point: President Obama has given some speech about placing this ABM system on ships which will be cheaper, more reliable, and those ships will be deployed in the Mediterranean Sea.

There is no such ABM ship based system in existence, and there are no plans to build one (which would include ships with radar able to detect ICBM launch and track an ICBM in orbit and have missiles on deck to intercept and destroy them. Short or medium range missiles also cannot, as of now, be intercepted and destroyed from American Navy ships, as anti-air ship systems were designed exclusively for short range defense of the ships themselves).

Also, there is absolutely no Iranian threat of ICBM nor of any tactical missiles armed with nuclear weapons as of today.

This whole activity was a scam played on Russia, Poland and Czech Republic by a very shrewd America.

Bonus Material
Bloomgerg article: Raytheon, Lockheed May Win in Obama Missile Plan:

Raytheon Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. may be winners in President Barack Obama’s decision to shift a proposed missile-defense network in Europe toward a more flexible system, said Rob Stallard, an analyst at Macquarie Capital Inc. in New York.

Obama’s plan would place anti-missile systems aboard destroyers at sea and include mobile land-based radar.

Again, such a system does not exist.

It is not built, and there are no actual plans for it.

Obama called for current and future variants of Standard Missile-3 interceptors and the AN/TPY-2 transportable radar, both made by Raytheon, and destroyers equipped with the Aegis Weapon System, made by Lockheed.

Orbital Sciences Corp., of Dulles, Virginia, which has a contract to build 44 ground-based interceptors for two U.S. sites, was to build 10 interceptors for the proposed Eastern European missile shield, Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, said in an e-mail. Orbital hasn’t received a contract for the European system, he said.

The company has not received a contract from the U.S. government because those anti-ballistic missiles are not needed.

It is vaporware, a pie in the sky project.

Lockheed “is not involved in the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program,” said spokesman Jeffery Adams. With the administration’s decision to end plans for a European ground- based system, “we are prepared to work with the U.S. and allied governments to apply our capabilities wherever needed.”

Lockheed was not given a specific requirement nor a contract for any anti-ballistic missile work nor to make a new radar.

The Pentagon has yet to release long-range procurement plans for the Standard Missile-3 and improvements to the Aegis Weapon system, Steve Zaloga, a missile-defense analyst at Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia, said in an interview.

The ship mounted short range air defense missile system called AEGIS needs to be completely changed, revamped, and improved to make it into a tactical nuke killer.

I'll believe this when I see American ships working in tandem with American Army land based radar (mounted on what? trucks?) successfully test firing improved AEGIS (or some other type of air-defense missile) at a dummy missiles fired, say, from Turkey, flying over the Mediterranean Sea.

For now I call bullshit.

Addendum:
Finished here?

Well and good.

Hop on over to Sibel's site, and read about Sunlight Foundation’s Second Exposé: The Turkish Lobby.

I told you to read her blog before, didn't I?

She is it today, if you want to know all the inside stuff and dirty deals going on.

Read her before she is "suicided".

Scams

2009-09-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

This is going to be short and sweet (finally a short article).

I and my friends have been scammed three times in a very short period of time.

I thought I would share with you because, I feel, this is interesting and also highlights how real this "recovery" really is.

Scam 1.
My friend received a ticket, while his car was parked on a residential street. Originally we thought that the ticket was for some kind of an illegal parking, and as we walked to the parking spot the next day we could not see any signs that would state no parking or permit required.

I was very familiar with the street and knew that it was legal to park there, and it is a small, quiet residential street.

Walking a bit further (a block, actually) I noticed that one tree (one tree only!) had a paper sign on it that stated that from such-and-such day to such-and-such day for these hours parking is prohibited.

These are called "temporary tow zones" and are because of an upcoming parade or a marathon or some such event.

This, being a small, side street, there is no chance that such an event is likely in the near future.

Needless to say the government thugs show up after people go to work in the morning (after people leave for work) or at night, the notices of "no parking" are plastered on a few trees haphazardly, or are found on the ground, they are hard to spot in any case, and the tow trucks and police are waiting with their fangs bared for the exact minute when the tired, after-work motorists park their cars as they always did, legally, for years on end, on the same home street, waiting for the time when it is, per the "tree" notice, illegal to park there (say, 5AM or 7PM).

Read up on this and see the "tree notes" on the theexpiredmeter.com site, worth a quick look.

Scam 2.
Another Chicago motorist story.

A friend received what we thought was a parking ticket, but it wasn't.

Illinois has draconian laws, and one that just changed is a ticket for having tinted windows.

The fine went from $25 to (wait for it...) $250.

It was, of course, passed UNANIMOUSLY by every single alderman (their care for the safety of the citizens endangered by mildly tinted windows which protect from the sun glare is touching).

There is no test applied by a police officer to spot if a window is tinted legally or not, nor any method of measurement used.

Simply put, the law puts the decision squarely on a policeman's shoulders.

Needless to say, ANY tint on your car windows WILL result in you supporting Daley's Olympic adventure (and his real estate builder buddies who are itching to build useless stadia and apartment complexes, especially in this horrible economy, all paid by for us, the taxpayers) and Stroger's big family, ALL of whom are employed in state government in various positions, making an annual average $100,000... each (Stroger's big family all of whom are basically employed by the local government is a legend in Chicago).

Violation is 9-76-220 (a) or (b), with the letters standing for moving or parked violation.

$250... you have been warned.

Scam 3.
I noticed on my grandma's cell phone account that she was paying $15 more than usual. I checked it out and lo and behold, in the Other Charges section there was an entry entitled Love (?) Soulmate (?) and then an 800 number.

I called the cellphone provider and told them about it.

The nice lady at the other end of the line informed me that this is a premium texting service, all quite legal, and that my grandma has enrolled herself in it.

I asked her how my grandma could manage that and the nice lady told me that my grandmother went to an internet web page, applied there, and THEN sent a text back to them with a special numeric code.

Which is somewhat funny as my grandmother does not have a computer nor does she know how to get on the internet, and also the fact that she never texted anything on her cellphone to anybody... ever.

The official lady was quite adamant that it must have happened this way, but as I talked to her and fished for information (basically very nicely interrogating her) she let slip that:

* the cellphone companies work hand in hand with the so called premium services, going so far as to give them their clients information (perhaps they look for older folks, hmmm?)

* there are various ways to enroll in this scam, for example, calling American Idol and voting automatically enrolls you in such service (there is yet another reason to hate that haltura show).

Of course, I was told to pay my cell phone service provider the full amount, and the lady told me that I have to call the scammers myself and stop the service myself.

I countered (very nicely) that I will only pay what I owe for the service, and that the service provider better cancel the service NOW and also that she better apply for a refund for this scam ASAP.

Which was done, although I was told that the provider may cut my service if I don't pay the full amount (which includes the scam amount), as the refund may take a month to clear... or more (or who knows when the scammers will deign to return the stolen money).

To which I replied that in that case I would start a class action lawsuit, because this has been going on for a while and my family is not the only victim of this bullshit.

If they force me to pay for this scam I will switch providers - in fact, I should do that anyway, as this cellphone company works hand in hand with scammers providing them with their clients' information (hey lady, guess what - this phone call is RECORDED for YOUR protection, ALSO).

Bonus Scam: Can't prove it's a scam but I just know it is scam
Vapsup virus.

I have (had, actually - past tense) a free anti virus called PCDoctor. Running its scan at 6PM, as usual, it got a bunch of hits with low threat rating, mostly cookies and such.

Lo and behold, one entry I got was a medium threat called VAPSUP trojan.

Trojans are bad news, as they are basically a means for a third party (black hat hacker) total access to your computer, including installation of keyloggers that will steal your credit card numbers and passwords, as well as them getting all the info you keep on your computer.

Trojans are bad news.

I did what I always do when I discover a virus on my PC, I googled.

I got a lot of hits, two pages worth and more.

Interestingly, they ALL led to pages which claimed that PCDoctor will detect this trojan, but that to remove it one better purchase the full version of this software.

EVERY web page that had VAPSUP trojan information led to a commercial/ad to buy/download PCDoctor (which is, or in my suspicious mind was, a legit antivirus software, pretty good in fact).

There was even a short film on a webpage, with an English accented guy talking about how to remove this trojan.

And would you believe it... he recommended PCDoctor.

EVERY SINGLE PAGE that dealt with removing VAPSUP led to PCDoctor as the solution.

No other products (such as the superb malware bytes - highly recommended, free scanner, best on the market in my opionion, nor Avast, nor AVG, nor Kaspersky) mentioned this mysterious, new Trojan - only PCDoctor can cure it... once you purchase it.

Of course, I am just paranoid and stupid and much too much suspicious...

All of which leads me to my final point.

These are desperate economic times, in fact, these are desperate times.

People are not paying their balances, are foreclosing their homes and walking away from it all, their credit rating be damned.

There is no recovery (more on that in my next post, which should be HUGE... a typical americangoy doozy of a post) except for the rally / bubble in the stock market, artificially pumped up by politically connected private firms (like Goldman Sachs) who use complicated computer programs (algos) to squeeze ordinary Joe Schmoe investors / daytraders puts and shorts and use High Frequency Trading to pump up the volume and gains.

Again, next article will be a bombshell explaining about HFT, the "recovery" and how things work - the no bullshit version of what's happening now, goy style (stay tuned).

...In the meanwhile, go read Sibel Edmonds

2009-09-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the inactivity.

In the meanwhile, please hop on over to the Sibel Edmonds' blog.

My personal view is that I do not believe as gospel anything I read or watch through any media unless sufficient corroboration is found.

However, Sibel is a whistle blower on Israeli and Turkish spying activities in America, which include blackmailing American politicians with sexual entrapment.

Her story, told under oath, is studiously ignored by the American mass media.

I do not know whether all she says is true - go on over there and make up your own damn mind.

AG

Added musings: Sibel is, if not a plant to spread disinformation, that rare creature in American narrative - a patriotic immigrant. I feel kinship with that woman, as she bravely tries expose corruption and venality for all to see (to no apparent effect, apparently).

Of course, she went the whole hog, exposing herself publicly (and probably putting her life in danger). She is much braver and much more important than my obscure little blog (I am, after all, just a guy with a google account).

And she is much better to look at than me (you will have to trust me on that one).

Israeli spying in America: 2009

2009-08-26T18:18:00.000-07:00

Added a new section on the right hand side.

It includes my articles dealing with Israeli (and Turkish) intelligence operations in America, targeting our politicians and our country as a whole.

Figured that this scandal deserved its own section - after all, the Ossetia war has its own section, and this is much more pertinent to this country.

Please spread the word - not necessarily by telling people about this blog, but more subtly.

"Hey, dude, google Jane Harman and AIPAC - some weird shit, man!" should work as a starting point.

After all, if you tell people that this woman worked with Israeli spies to unseat Nancy Pelosi to become chairwoman of the Congressional Intelligence committee (where she would in effect be the boss of American spying, while working for Israel) is too outrageous, and will probably result in people judging you as insane...

That it happened, however, cannot be denied.

Or that Sibel Edmonds, ex translator for American counter intelligence, testifying under oath that Turkish agents videotaped a Congresswoman who is a closet lesbian (she has a husband and children) and then blackmailed her to work for them - Americans will smirk and walk away, while thinking you are crazy.

That it happened, however, cannot be denied.

So spread the word.

"Hey, dude, google Jane Harman and AIPAC".

"Hey, man, google Sibel Edmonds, what the fuck, dude".

Get to it.

Baby steps, people, baby steps.

Health care reform

2009-08-19T20:14:00.000-07:00

I wrote this rant on reddit, and before posting it here I wanted to lengthen and "beautify" it...

But you know what? Fuck it, it works fine just the way it is.

There are two options for America.

1) Go capitalism - insurance only used for catastrophic coverage, just like car insurance, and you would pay your own money to visit a doctor for day to day care.

This option would allow doctors and healthcare providers to compete on price and service, and would be something akin to a free market.

Again, think car insurance - when you visit your mechanic for normal repairs, you pay, when you get in a serious crash (cancer, etc) the insurance pays.

This would eliminate the bureaucracy in-between doctors and patients, a middleman who is basically useless and results in a corrupt system.

I prefer option two:

2) Go socialism - single payer, government provided healthcare, which incidentally, is what EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD IS DOING.

This would allow the government to bid for the price of medicines and health services, using its economies of scale. Think Walmart prices undercutting for decent health care provider services.

But this is the Yoo Ess of Ey.

We will combine the worst features of both these systems, and come up with a horrible third option:

3) Go Lobby Power - Everyone is forced to get insurance, just like car insurance, resulting in millions of new (forced) customers that have to buy private healthcare insurance.

Team Obama already has said that it will not seek to negotiate prices with healthcare insurance nor big pharma for prices of services, medicines, hospital stays - no government negotiation.

So, basically, nothing changes, except for you being forced (now you can opt out if you are young, soon it will be forbidden) to buy health insurance, prices will go up way past inflation, just like they always did, healthcare insurance will try to not pay you due to pre-existing condition, doctors will try to scam both you and insurance, there will be no government regulation...

Question: perhaps it is time to take a look at our so called "democracy", and especially the part LOBBIES play in it? Also, take a look at "free speech" as it is applied to corporations...

Statement: People who are republicans scare me. Most of them make less than 30,000, and are complete and utter morons (old people with Medicare shouting "take government out of my health!" at town home meetings).

People who consider themselves intelligent, and support democrats, I laugh at. Do you realize that the same people pay republicans and democrats? The same PACs, the same lobbyists?

Don't worry, Americans - Israel is guaranteed a $3 billion per year (officially), and that's the only thing that counts in Washington these days.

Sibel Edmonds, David Krikorian and the ever growing spying scandal

2009-08-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

Via Larissa's at largely, pointing at bradblog.com.

(Funny how the internet works).

Bradblog has been doing live blogging (that's live reporting, kids, something that the mainstream media has ceased to be doing except in extreme cases of celebrity gossip).

And it's a bombshell.

Sibel Edmonds (seriously, google her, please) did some talk-talk at the National Whisteblowers Center:

told me [Krikorian -AG] in a brief phone conversation during the break: "Bruce Fein is raising objections to everything," though that's to be expected. She said she's been asked, and has answered, questions on Dan Burton (R-IN), Dennis Hastert (R-IL) (who is now a lobbyist for Turkey), and Stephen Solarz (D-NY), as well as other questions on those high-ranking officials and lobbyists in her "State Secrets Gallery."

The story is that Turkey is Israel's ally, and they have basically teamed up and become actual allies, and they cooperate in many spheres - in anti-terrorism, training of special forces, and spying, including spying in the United States.

Independent.co.uk:

Jerusalem draws in the Turks to spy on Arab foes

FOR MONTHS, Israeli and Turkish intelligence officers have manned joint listening posts on the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian borders, sharing information on guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) and Syrian and Iraqi military movements.

In Ankara and Jerusalem, Israeli and Turkish officials have also shared their experiences of two similar occupation zones - Israel's in southern Lebanon and Turkey's so-called "security zone" in northern Iraq. Israeli jets now regularly fly along the Turkish-Syrian frontier and - according to Syrian sources - over northern Iraq as well.

(...) Israeli planes are now training in Turkey, using Turkish bombing ranges, just as Turkish pilots are now flying in the skies over Israel. The Americans chair a regular meeting of Turkish and Israeli intelligence officers in Tel Aviv

Turkey has successfully sought the help of Jewish lobby groups in New York and Washington to cosy up to the Americans and emphasise Turkey's strategic importance to the Middle East in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse. Inevitably, pro-Israeli groups have now begun to sympathise with Turkey's contention that the 1915 Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenians did not constitute genocide and may not have been - despite absolute proof to the contrary - the century's first holocaust.

Jamestown.org:

Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul Visits Israel, dateline November 3, 2008,

Turkey’s Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul visited Israel on October 29 and 30 to expedite the Turkish Armed Forces’ (TAF) purchase of 10 Heron Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) from Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI). He was accompanied by a large delegation that included Undersecretary for Defense Industries Murad Bayar and several military officers and civilians. The meeting also provided opportunities to discuss regional diplomacy and bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel.

In 2005 Turkey awarded a $180 million contract for the off-the-shelf purchase of 10 UAVs to IAI and Elbit Systems, which outbid offers for the U.S. Predator UAV (Zaman, October 25).

So you see, there is history of close cooperation between Turkey and Israel.

Back to the Sibel Edmonds whistle blowing, from bradblog.

David Krikorian (google him also, do you expect me to do all the work?!) has this to say about her deposition:

From my opinion, if I'm some of the current members of Congress, I'd be very very worried about the information that's going to come out of this. There are current members of Congress that she has implicated in bribery, espionage. It's not good. It's crazy, it's absolutely crazy. For people in power situations in the United States, who know about this information, if they don't take action against it, in my opinion, it's negligence.

It is not negligence, it is treason.

We are at war, currently.

Do you kids know what happens to traitors, during war time?

[Which current members have been implicated?]

[Dan] Burton (R-IN), described as basically accepting bribes and involved in espionage for the Turkish government...she could not discuss the extremely illegal activities that Mr. Burton committed against U.S. interests, as she put it.

Also, a current female Democratic [ed note: I misheard, he later said he didn't know if she was Dem or Rep] member of Congress who has been blackmailed by the Turkish Government...called a 'hooking exercise'...she's apparently bi-sexual and they bugged her apartment, she's married with children, and they set up a relationship with another female who went in and had sexual relationships with her. And they had all the episodes bugged within this current Representative's home and they blackmailed her. ... She wouldn't give her name, but her photograph [is the one with the question mark on it in the "Sibel Edmonds Rogue Gallery." ]

An entrapment operation, a classic.

And the stupid Congress woman has fallen for it and now is on the hook.

Interestingly, at-largely blog's Larissa Alexandovna has stated that she knows who this entrapped Congress traitor is.

Bradblog continues its reporting; they asked Sibel some questions:

First, I asked if she specified whether the sitting bi-sexual, married Congresswoman who had been taped sleeping with a woman, without knowing, and then bribed by Turkish interests with the tape, to vote against the Armenian Genocide resolution had been a Democrat or a Republican. She said she is a Democrat, and that she testified to that during her deposition. (See Krikorian's long statement above for more details on that woman.)

Second, I asked about the "real" story on Brewster Jennings, as opposed to the "crap...from the media" as she mentioned at the venue.

"Basically," she said, "I told them how [third-ranking State Dept. official in the Bush Admin and former Ambassador to Turkey] Marc Grossman disclosed" that Brewster Jennings was a CIA front company to the target of an FBI investigation. "And it was under oath and that some lives may have been lost."

"Novak has nothing to do with it. Wilson has nothing to do with it. Valerie Plame has nothing to do with it. The whole operation has to do with something totally different and it had to do with the American Turkish Council and the Turkish clients who were about to hire Brewster Jennings as an analyst ... and Grossman found out about it, and tipped off his diplomatic contact who was a target of the FBI counter-intelligence, and that person notified the ISI [Pakistani intelligence agency], etc."

She says that Brewster Jenning was then "dismantled as soon as the FBI notified the CIA," after which "FBI requested CIA to do a damage assessment, to see if lives would be lost."

All of this, she re-iterated, was "long before, three years before," Novak outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his newspaper column.

Brewster Jennings was a CIA front company, a cover for its agents.

So Marc Grossman, an official in the GW Bush administration, disclosed this fact to an (unspecified) target of an FBI investigation.

And because of that, people (CIA sources, perhaps CIA operatives, Americans, also) died.

Think on that for a minute, let it sink in.

A Bush flunkie talks to a target of an FBI (counter intelligence, aka catching foreign spies in America) investigation, and informs him (her?) that Brewster Jennings is a front for the CIA.

People died.

Question: why is Marc Grossman not questioned, right fucking now, by the Congress? By the FBI?

Question two: why isn't this on American television?

Bradblog ends its reporting with:

For those not fully up on Edmonds' story, her job at the FBI was to listen to wiretaps in the counter-intel department, to translate foreign targets caught on those taps. Presumably, that's where her details on the destruction of Brewster Jennings comes from. She was hired by the agency shortly after 9/11.

Bombshell enough for ya? Let's see if anyone in the corporate media bothers to agree, and/or pick up on this --- now that it's officially "on the record" and, as Edmonds took pains to point out: under oath!

Yes, Sibel Edmonds, the woman who was an intelligence officer, a translator, has stated all this under oath.

Go to bradblog, and Larissa, and read up.

Now turn off your TV, take a deep breath, and think on the state of our "democracy".

P.S.

Gallery of traitors, as alleged by Sibel Edmonds:
justacitizen.com

and the explanation of who they are:
letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com.

This is an incredible story, Sibel has told it under oath (this cannot be stressed enough), and needs to break into the mainstream media and the stupified, American Idol watching American "citizen", and also needs to be followed up by the FBI and Congressional committees.

Watching real football on TV live right now...

2009-08-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

It is an exhibition game between an American team, DC United, and the Spanish super star, perhaps the richest sports team in the world, Real Madrid.

The match is taking place in America; it is a friendly game.

Every touch of the ball by the superstar team is cheered, there are ole!'s when the superstars lazily pass the ball to each other, and of course, the stadium erupts when Real Madrid scores.

Meanwhile, the home team is met with half-hearted reactions when they make some good plays.

Shots of the crowd show everyone wearing white (the Real Madrid colors) and none wearing black.

There are now "Americans" chanting 'Madrid, Madrid!' throughout the stadium.

...

Of course, this is not as bad as being an American supporter of football trying to support the United States National Team playing a Latin American team, god help you if it is Mexico.

You will be the 1% of the crowd, surrounded by an ocean of green jerseys, with the obligatory bags with urine being thrown at you.

So, America - the hodgepodge of various people, of various races, nations, tribes, each of which is trying desperately to be named a minority, each of which tries to be a "professional victim", each of which takes umbrage whenever a joke about their country, ethnicity or tribe is told...

But, curiously enough, not when the joke is about how America sucks or how Americans are stupid or fat or... then no offense is taken.

Is this grand experiment called the United States of America working?

The example of any football game in America... says no.

And, lets go into personal musings here - being born in Europe - you know, the part of Central Europe which had the majority Jews throughout the Middle Ages all the way to the Germans' ethnic cleansing in '41-43 - I was raised with football, and find American curios - baseball, American football, basketball - boring and pointless and just media vehicles to put as many commercials (and breaks in the action) as possible.

Go figure.

So I was watching Gangland on TV and...

2009-08-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

I decided to google.

Chicago gangs came up, go to forum, first post and...

What can I say, life is cheap in this country.

12 st players, read it all the way through and tell me what reaction you have to this bullshit.

I pity the young black kids in the ghetto, they truly live in a fucked up situation...

The hidden bailout

2009-08-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

FT.com (Financial Times):

Wall Street banks are reaping outsized profits by trading with the Federal Reserve, raising questions about whether the central bank is driving hard enough bargains in its dealings with private sector counterparties, officials and industry executives say.

The Fed has emerged as one of Wall Street’s biggest customers during the financial crisis, buying massive amounts of securities to help stabilise the markets. In some cases, such as the market for mortgage-backed securities, the Fed buys more bonds than any other party.

However, the Fed is not a typical market player. In the interests of transparency, it often announces its intention to buy particular securities in advance. A former Fed official said this strategy enables banks to sell these securities to the Fed at an inflated price.

A former official of the US Treasury and the Fed said the situation had reached the point that “everyone games them. Their transparency hurts them. Everyone picks their pocket.”

Here is how the FED works this scam, this hidden bailout.

They announce, ahead of time, that they will sell some security at, say, price of $10.

A week later they announce that they will buy the same security at, say, price of $11.

No politically dangerous bailout needed, no senators need to be kept in the loop, and no need to alert the media to the oh so complicated way the financial world works.

Any questions, children?

Put the DIGG here.

Bonus Material

If you are interested in more detail, and also on how the TARP "they paid the taxpayer back!" really worked, one of my favorite blogs has a piece on this topic.

Mosey over to nakedcapitalism.com

Goldman is a great firm with a stellar culture, and in most circumstances it's risk management and funding practices have been second to none. Except when the crisis hit. It stood with the rest of Wall Street as a firm with longer-dated, less liquid assets funded with extremely short-dated liabilities....In exchange for giving the firm life (TARP, FDIC guarantees, synthetic bail-out via AIG, etc.), the US Treasury (and the US taxpayer by extension) got some warrants on $10 billion of TARP capital injected into the firm. While JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon prefers to poke a stick in the eye of the Treasury, seeking to negotiate down the payment to buy back the TARP warrants, Lloyd Blankfein smartly paid the full $1.1 billion requested. He looked like a hero for doing so, a true US patriot repaying the US Government in full for its lifeline, thanking the US taxpayer in the process. $1.1 billion... $1.1 billion...Hmm...something doesn't seem right. You know why it doesn't seem right? BECAUSE THE US TREASURY MIS-PRICED THE FREAKING OPTION.

See how it works?

Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall, slowly.

Re-discovering Mark Fiore

2009-07-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot about this great cartoonist.

I re-discovered this great liberal cartoonist at my favorite conservative blogger, Dennis Perrin.

I know what you are thinking, but in reality conservatism and liberalism is NOT what you see on TV and late saturday night at a local bar.

Here's a few good ones:

The funny thing is, when you read Perrin and watch Fiore's movies, you will see that they agree.

On everything.

Really.

I know, blew your mind, right?

I mean, intelligent conservative and smart, witty liberal... have the same views?

Hopefully you will turn on your TV and re-idiotize your brain, otherwise this might become dangerous.

American pop culture: a few observations

2009-07-29T18:48:00.000-07:00

Ex-Idol Contestant Says Show Is Rigged, by Lyndsey Parker in Reality Rocks, Yahoo, no less.

Some ousted season 8 American Idol top 36 semi-finalists--including Felicia Barton, Kendall Beard, and Ju'Not Joyner--participated in an online chat with the Idol website AI Now today. And during his frank online conversation with fans, Ju'Not came right out and said that the TV talent show is in fact rigged, and that its contracts are unfair to contestants.

"It's a fixed thing if I ever saw one," he boldly declared--much to the shock of many naive chatters, who responded with capslocked interjections and frowny-faced emoticons.

The name Ju'Not Joyner cracks me up - don't know why, perhaps I am racist.

But "he boldly declared--much to the shock of many naive chatters, who responded with capslocked interjections and frowny-faced emoticons" made me literally barf my milk onto my flat screen.

Moving on, this is lil wayne, aka weezy, the newest hottest singing sensation in America.

The aka is because he has a speech problem - he literally has trouble speaking and, well, makes this weezing sound.

My personal theory is that this strange character is also retarded, but hey, lets not pile it on on the poor retard, shall we?

Since this is black America pop culture, lets move on to what whites like in America.

This is UFC, ultimate fighting.

This is like wrestling... except the fighting is for real and even more degenerate and barbaric than the old, fake wrestling matches.

And there is blood.

And trauma.

And real pain.

And the animalistic, base, degenerate, bored witless crowd in crowded pubs and bars, puffing their shoulders, talking with gravitas like a TV expert about the stock market, about how one fighter used submission (choked) or did a takedown or just a loud, weird YEEEAAARGHHH as one fighter pounds the other one bloody.

And of course, living vicariously one's violent fantasies, the other end of the spectrum, lust, must also be catered to.

UFC, like every violent sport in America (except Karate, which is surprisingly the least violent sport in America) has its share of floozies.

Vacuous look, empty stare, smile that does not hint of one iota of intelligence, and the obligatory badly applied makeup / rouge, which makes a plain girl into a skank.

This, err, beauty, is a ring girl, walking with a giant sign with the round's number on it - to the accompaniament of whistles, loud yells and the loud, weird YEEEAAARGHHH shouted by fat, sexually frustrated males.

I guess this is the new, modern American:

Homo Americana, indeed...

And last, but certainly least, women's fashion.

I went shopping with my girl (was dragged, as usual, to a shopping mall) and, as usual, when we hit the women fashion area of a big mall store our expressions varied from horror, to amusement, to bewilderment.

There are two main trends for women for this spring/summer season.

One, and perhaps the most popular, is the mumu.

A mumu is exactly what it sounds like, a large bag with three holes in it, one for the head and two for the arms, open at the bottom.

No, I am not kidding - that's what's being sold to American women, from JC Penney to Target to the more expensive boutiques.

A mumu is great for a fat woman, because it makes a fat woman look exactly like a slim one.

A beautiful woman is turned into a shapeless, contourless, curveless slob in a mumu, but since most American women are overweight (from slightly to the oh my god! range), perhaps this fashion trend (perhaps I should put fashion in quotation marks?) is what female Americans need (shudder...).

The second trend in American women fashion is hmmm... lets call it "what would your grandma wear?" trend.

A blouse like this is much more complicated to manufacture, and perhaps that is why the mumu is the, by far, the most numerous in American malls.

After all, it is made by prison/slave labor in China, and making this mess is much more work.

But anyway, let me draw your attention to a few things.

The first thing is the puffed, extremely short sleeves, which make even the most feminine shapely arm look like a weird, twisted, gnarled misshapen mess and the woman look like an arthritis sufferer.

The next thing that struck me is the bow tie in the front of the blouse.

A bow tie like that was popular in Europe... in the 1800's... for SMALL, kid girls, ages 2 to 9.

At age 10 any self respecting, non retarded girl if told to wear a blouse like that by her mum would either take a sharp utensil and take the tie bow off, or use said sharp utensil to kill her mother.

Last is the abundance of frills at the bottom.

As if there are not enough things that distract your eyes from the figure of an American girl wearing this travesty, the frills are the final straw.

Being somewhat conservative in how I like my girl to dress, the KISS principle - keep it simple, stupid - is the one that comes to mind.

Classic dresses, with NOTHING on them, no fucking bow ties, no frills a la 19th century, no silly puffy extremely short sleeves - just plain, one color, shapely dress, or a plain, simple blouse with jeans.

Sexiness, defined - timeless.

But instead, we get this in American stores:

The horror.

The horror.

International Jewish Mafia human organs theft ring

2009-07-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

Please go to Cannonfire blog article for a great article connecting the dots.

This is a story which has disappeared from the media as it does put a few of the "chosen" people in a bad light.

The details are fascinating and horrifying to read.

Here are some highlights:

The probe also uncovered Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who is accused of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. According to the complaint, Rosenbaum said he had been brokering sale of kidneys for 10 years.

"His business was to entice vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000," said Marra.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley, was and is very clear as to Rosenbaum's role in the ring.

"He is the main U.S. broker for an international trafficking network," she said.

Her sources include a man who started working with Rosenbaum imagining he was helping people in desperate need. The man then began to see the donors, or to be more accurate, sellers, who were flown in from impoverished countries such as Moldova.

"He said it was awful. These people would be brought in and they didn't even know what they were supposed to be doing and they would want to go home and they would cry," Scheper-Hughes said.

The man called Rosenbaum "a thug" who would pull out a pistol he was apparently licensed to carry and tell the sellers, "You're here. A deal is a deal. Now, you'll give us a kidney or you'll never go home.'

The Romanian Embassy in Israel has asked for, and received from the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, a list of all children born in Romania who have been brought to Israel for adoption in recent years. The Romanian officials are trying to ascertain if all such children arrived in Israel with all organs in their bodies.

It is OK to throw up when reading this article.

Once again, splendid work by another blogger, read up cannonfire.blogspot.com.

This, of course, ties in with my article on the New Jersey massive corruption case, right below this entry (...including rabbis).

... including Rabbis

2009-07-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

I was in shock today.

For the first time ever in my memory I heard the phrase "including rabbis".

I was listening to NPR as I made my way home from work and was dumbstruck.

Bloomberg.com, dateline July 23 2009:

The mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, New Jersey, and five rabbis were among 44 people charged by the U.S. with public corruption and money laundering.

This is the first time I have ever heard anything bad said about rabbis.

Ever.

It might sound strange, but I challenge you - when was the last time you have ever read anything bad said about rabbis in the national media?

And every time this story was told, on NPR, on TV, it always included the phrase "including rabbis!".

As if a threshold was passed, as if the forbidden was suddenly allowed, as if somehow it was naughty, strange, and exhilarating to say anything bad about them.

So what the hell happened?

Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, 32, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, 64, and Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez, 42, all Democrats; Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega Jr., 59; State Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, 44, a Republican from Ocean Township; and Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith, a Jersey City Democrat, were charged today in an FBI complaint.

Heavy hitters.

The corruption probe, based in Hudson County, netted many public officials accused of pledging assistance for bribes. A cooperating witness in that probe also infiltrated a “pre- existing money laundering network” that moved “at least tens of millions of dollars through charitable, non-profit entities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey,”

Re-read that.

An organized network of money laundering organized by rabbis.

The cooperating witness laundered $3 million through the rabbis and also made bribe payments to public officials, prosecutors said. Investigators made hundreds of hours of audio and video recordings of illicit transactions, according to prosecutors.

The witness, wearing a wire, himself laundered $3 million.

Alone.

Think on that, and think about the amounts of monies involved, and about the size of this operation.

So who is that mysterious cooperating witness?

The cooperating witness is Solomon Dwek, a real estate developer in Monmouth County, New Jersey, who was charged on May 11, 2006, with scheming to defraud PNC Bank out of $50 million, according to three people familiar with the matter. Dwek is a rabbi’s son who was vice president of the Deal Yeshiva School in West Long Branch, New Jersey.

A rabbi's son.

Caught trying to defraud a bank out of $50 million.

Wow.

So, how many rabbis - names, please.

And where did the money go?

The rabbis were Saul Kassin, 87, chief rabbi of Sharee Zion, a synagogue in Brooklyn, New York; Eliahu Ben Haim, 58, the principal rabbi of Congregation Ohel Yaacob in Deal, New Jersey; Edmond Nahum, 56, of Deal Synagogue in Deal; Mordchai Fish, 56, of Congregation Sheves Achim in Brooklyn; and Lavel Schwartz, 57, Fish’s brother.

The rabbis were charged with laundering money that often was sent to Israel.

Why did the rabbis launder this money to Israel - what was in it for them?
Lets go to another article, just for this part (from Philly.com):

The rabbis are accused of money laundering using charitable nonprofit groups they or their synagogues controlled, and taking 5 to 10 percent for themselves.

But it gets worse - much worse.

Goy has several meanings - one of them is a "non-Jew", a nigger, if you will.
A goy is also a sort of cattle, to be used and abused by it's betters.

Lets drive this point home (from Bloomberg again):

Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, 58, of Brooklyn, was accused of conspiring with others to acquire and trade human organs for use in transplantation. Rosenbaum, who was “purportedly” involved in real estate, was approached by a cooperating witness and an undercover FBI agent about buying a human kidney from a human organ broker, according to the complaint.

Rosenbaum said it would cost $150,000, with half payable up front, according to the complaint. Rosenbaum said some of the money would go to the donor and some to doctors in Israel, according to the complaint.

“One of the reasons it’s so expensive is because you have to shmear (meaning pay various individuals for their assistance) all the time,” according to the complaint. “It’s illegal to buy. It’s illegal to sell.”

So...

How do you feel about things after reading that, fellow cattle?

Analysis
I'll keep it short and sweet.

The American intelligence people are pissed, both in the CIA and the FBI.

Make that EXTREMELY pissed off.

After seeing Israeli spies get off scot free (if you haven't, please read The AIPAC Treason Trial: Larry's Story), again and again, after seeing Cheney's Office of Special Plans, staffed with Israeli agents of influence, cherry pick American intelligence to lie to America to justify the Iraqi invasion, they have had enough.

These arrogant men, speaking heavily accented English and wearing cheap cologne strolling through newspaper bureaus, FBI offices, Congressmen offices, as if they own Washington (they do...) have pissed off too many people.

American patriots in the intelligence organs tried to build a fool proof case against Israeli spies operating in America, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman and Larry Franklin.

Hundreds of hours of wiretaps, of movies, of incriminating evidence - and the case was dismissed by a judge whose professional career will surely now take off as a reward for treason.

This is a second salvo in the now open war that elements of the American intelligence have declared on Israel.

The funny thing is that American intelligence targeted the international (Jewish) mafia in this probe, and the cooperating witness (the rabbi's son, remember) was used. They did not dream of netting the mayor of Hoboken or the other such high level officials in their net - they must have been shocked at how their investigation has turned out!

There are still (and it is heartening) patriots in the CIA, in the FBI, in the Justice Department and they notice how this country has been hijacked.

Don't get me wrong - we will not see dead Jewish Americans mysteriously "faint" and die right before they enter an Israeli embassy, and the arriving police finding materials marked "Pentagon - Ultra Secret" in their briefcases.

This is all going to be done legally, with evidence, bulletproof, irrefutable evidence, and criminal cases.

LOTS of criminal cases.

But if recent modern history is any guide, this second salvo will also sputter and die as paid off judges dismiss this and many other, upcoming ones.

Then...

Then all bets are off.

You can only push American intelligence so far.

There is only so much LAKAM and Office of Special Plans spying a country can take before there is a response.

On the other hand, this story shows how Israel is tied very much to the Russian (in reality, Russian/Ukrainian/Chechen and definitely Jewish) international mafia.

In fact, I would venture to say that Israel at this point is basically a mafia country, what with ex gangsters in their government (euphemistically called "a bar bouncer"), with tens of thousands (50,000... more?) trafficked Eastern European women kept as slave-prostitutes in brothels for Orthodox Jews to have sex with on religious holidays (they pay extra for sex without condoms), with the global Extasy drug being a 90% controlled by Jewish mafia from Israel.

Go grab Slave Hunter by Aaron Cohen.

Interestingly, almost all chapters are previewed online, EXCEPT, OF COURSE, THE PART WHERE HE DISCOVERS HOW PERVASIVE WOMEN SEX SLAVE TRAFFIC IS IN ISRAEL (imagine that, hmmmm?). That chapter is, er, missing.

Of course, you will not hear stuff like from our wonderful media.

And if you think that I am crazy, do your own research.

Go to your local bookstore, and ask for that book "Slave Hunter".

Read up on Israel.

Make up your own damn mind.

Cliques: This Is What The Bailout Is All About:

2009-07-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

Lets compare two financial companies, Goldman Sachs and CIT Group.

Goldman Sachs is a, um, well... it is very hard to describe what exactly it is.

It is not a bank (although to get our tax money, the so called bailout or even more laughable name "economic stimulus") it became one.

I think the best definition is of a leech on our financial system.

A leech is a parasite, an organism that feeds off its host while giving nothing back in return.

There, lets keep it simple, I say.

Huffington Post:

No wonder it's called "Government Sachs."

It seems that every few weeks, another Goldman Sachs executive goes to work for a government agency, with bankers landing in positions of power at the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and pulling the levers of the massive trillion-dollar federal bailout.

At the same time, the bank, which announced on Tuesday that it was hiring former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt, has received $10 billion in TARP funds.

This dual role - with former Goldman executives directing the financial rescue even as the bank took TARP funds - has aroused concern about potential conflicts of interest and excessive influence.

Goldman Sachs is "a political organization masquerading as an investment bank, and they're sitting at the table with the top people in government," says Goldman critic Christopher Whalen, the managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, which rates banks and provides customer analytics. He calls Goldman "the most political firm on Wall Street."

Do tell more.

Examples include former Goldman exec Henry Paulson, who led the Treasury Department when the bailout was first formulated last September, and who appointed former Goldman vice president Neel Kashkhari to oversee the massive $700 billion TARP fund. There is also the current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who installed a circle of former Goldman bankers to help him navigate the country through the financial crisis.

In case you missed it, libertarians, here is how the REAL WORLD works.

The corridors of power are populated by cliques. A clique is a group of allied individuals, who help each other overtly and covertly.

A perfect example is when you get a job in a company, and then try to get your buddies in there also. I know, I did it myself - not only is it more pleasant to work alongside intelligent, like minded folks whom you trust but also you get allies in the political backstabbing office games.

Oh wait - if you are a white American, you were taught to go it alone and compete based on merit.

My, you ARE a moron, aren't you, my naive whitey-American?

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out as the nice Indian manager replaces, quietly and slowly but always steadily, everybody in his department with his buddies.

Ahem, sorry for the tangent, but this will help explain the following.

Goldman Sachs is a clique, the most successful clique in the US government right now.

"He who controls the gold makes the rules", right?

Well, as you should have gotten from the article I quoted from, Goldman works exactly like the Indian manager in your office, like me in your office (even though I am white, I am an immigrant, and know about cliques. I am NOT like you at all. Beware).

Goldman guys got into the government, and each one tried (and succeeded) in pulling his buddies into positions of power.

One person joins an organization, gets others in, and if it so happens that he is an incompetent boob and one of his buddies gets promoted ahead of him - no worries, he will get pulled up alongside others.

The group takes care of its own, the group moves as one, and the idiotic "strong individuals", who whine about fairness, ethics and, this is most funny, libertarianism are laughed all the way out of the workplace - whether it is a corporation's office, or the US government.

Now you can read this sentence from the article and understand it fully:
There is also the current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who installed a circle of former Goldman bankers to help him navigate the country through the financial crisis.

Yes, I am sure that Timmy boy got all his buds from Goldman Sachs into government positions... for the good of the country.

And Goldman has more than 30 ex-government officials working as registered lobbyists on staff, including former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) to represent its interests on issues related to TARP, according to Mother Jones.

This is a great clique, indeed.

Just to ram this point down your throat into the places where the sun don't shine, and then out again, lets go to another random article on the web.

The Nation: 'Government Sachs' Strikes Gold... Again :

Remember that Lehman Brothers, Goldman's competitor, was allowed to go bankrupt. The Paulson crowd wouldn't let Lehman change its status to that of a bank holding company and thus qualify for federal funds; soon afterward, Goldman was granted just such a deal, worth a quick $10 billion. Much is now made of Goldman paying back part of its bailout money, but forgotten is the $12.9 billion that Goldman got as its cut of the $180 billion AIG payoff. That is money that will not be paid back.

Lehman Brothers was a competitor of Goldman Sachs, but, alas, they were clueless about how the game of life is played.

And so they were fucked.

To receive government bailout money, YOUR tax money, your organization could not have been a financial Wall Street predator - it must have been a bank.

Why, Lehman Brothers, you were an investment predator, and made some bad calls and trades, lost your money, so kindly roll over and die, mmmkay?

On the other hand, Goldman Sachs, which was exactly the same kind of a Wall Street financial predator, was allowed to become a bank overnight and then receive unlimited funds to help it out in its time of need.

Another thing that not many understand is that Goldman Sachs DID NOT pay back the money it was given by the government.

Oh, they paid back the TARP money all right - and the paid media, like the GE channel with "money honeys" will say this again and again, but the real bailout happened differently.

AIG, the insurer, was used by the financial predators to insure the bad investments and loans they made and increase their ratings (so a bunch of shitty loans, rated F for "fucked up never will get repaid" became insured through AIG and suddenly, through the magic of the capitalism fairy, became AAA++++++++ superb investments - I wrote about that before - look at the post below, in fact).

But then AIG (and the rest of the used patsies) caught on to the fact that even though the CDS, CDO and whatever the fuck else acronym was made up and then insured was shit and worth nothing... or close to nothing.

And AIG guys noticed that they do not have enough money to pay out all these insurance claims on these superb AAA rated financial doo doo.

Government to the rescue - and, while Americans were told that AIG, the insurance giant, must be rescued, in reality AIG was simply a funnel through which the government gave money to the Wall Street financial predators.

So, now you understand the two sentences from the 2nd article:
Much is now made of Goldman paying back part of its bailout money, but forgotten is the $12.9 billion that Goldman got as its cut of the $180 billion AIG payoff. That is money that will not be paid back.

Slate.com:

For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman's collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG's inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG's trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.

It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure.

Repeating - the taxpayer money funneled through AIG to Goldman Sachs (and others) will NOT be paid back.

It leads us back to the concept of a clique.

It helps when reading this sentence from this 3rd article I linked:
(...)we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke(...)
to realize that all the names mentioned who were deciding which financial predator, bank and investment organization would receive the most money, and how, and which organization would get less, much less, all of these names are either current members of or past members of Goldman Sachs... well, except for Ben Bernanke.

Odd man out, I guess.

So, in effect, to make it painfully obvious, the men were deciding whether to help their own organization which made them (and continues to make them and their cronies) rich.

I wonder how long they debated IF your tax money should be funneled to Goldman Sachs through TARP and then, by way of deception, through AIG.

But why do I (and Matt Taibi and others) call Goldman Sachs a vampire - indeed, I call it a leech, a parasite?

Because it brings nothing to the system, it is a leech.

The following also illustrates the concept of the GS clique, and brings another player from the past - Rubin, as well as showing what Goldman actually does (from The Nation again):

Before Paulson ran the Treasury Department, another former Goldman head, Robert Rubin, pushed through the repeal of the Glass-Steagall controls on banking activity. While some now play down the significance of this radical deregulation, not so Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein--at least not back in June 2007, when the markets were still doing well. "If you take an historical perspective," Blankfein told the New York Times by way of explaining his company's spectacular success at the time, "we've come full circle, because that is exactly what the Rothschilds or J.P. Morgan the banker were doing in their heyday. What caused an aberration was the Glass-Steagall Act."

That 1933 act was repealed in a law signed by President Bill Clinton at Rubin's urging, and in the following eight years Goldman Sachs recorded a 265 percent growth in its balance sheet. "Back then," the Wall Street Journal reports, "Goldman was churning out profits by trading credit derivatives, speculating on currencies and oil and placing big bets [on] the stock market."

Goldman was churning out profits by trading credit derivatives, speculating on currencies and oil and placing big bets [on] the stock market.

To those laissez faire, libertarians and other assorted idiots who state that trading in this way in the market is what capitalism is all about may I give a hearty FUCK YOU!

A Joe Schmoe investing in a company and holding the stock, that is bringing something to the market - that is helping the economy by giving funds to companies so they can produce, provide services, and employ people like you and me.

A bank getting your money and then giving you a small percentage interest each month while loaning this money to businesses and making even bigger profits that way - that is the way capitalism works.

A gigantic clique of ultimate government and business insiders, manipulating the market for bigger personal gains, gaming the marketplace by "pump and dump" and now using more and more sophisticated computer programs to shave nanoseconds off a transaction (yes, my naive libertarian friend who is a day trader - that is what you are up against) brings nothing to the marketplace or the economy.

That is not capitalism - that is laissez faire gone amok.

Speaking of craziness:

High on the list of victims are state governments that have to turn to Goldman for money because the federal government that saved the banks won't do the same for the states, which have watched their tax bases shrink because of the banking meltdown. As the WSJ noted, "issuing debt to ailing governments" is now a growth industry for Goldman.

But wait, I started this article promising to compare and contrast two financial companies, Goldman Sachs and CIT Group.

I hope you get the general idea of what Goldman is - a leech, a parasite.

Time to look at CIT Group.

Lets use wikipedia, why the hell not.

CIT Group Inc. NYSE: CIT (an abbreviation of an early corporate name of Commercial Investment Trust) is a leading global commercial and consumer finance company, founded in 1908. CIT has more than $70 billion in managed assets. CIT is a Fortune 500 company and is a part of the S&P 500 Index, and is a leading participant in vendor financing, factoring, equipment and transportation financing, Small Business Administration loans, and asset-based lending, and does business with more than 80% of the Fortune 1000.

Got that?

CIT Group is a bona fide small business lender.

When a small business needs money, it cannot do what the savvy politically connected big boys at Goldman do and simply tell their buddies now in government to "gimmie!".

A small to medium business goes to a bank, to a credit union, to CIT Group.

To get equipment, to buy factories, to get trucks, trains, product, to employ people like you and me.

This is a pillar of capitalism - without credit to small and medium business everything stops and you get the financial catastrophe that we have now.

CIT Group is EXACTLY the kind of a company that should be first in line to receive financial help from the government.

Guess who got unlimited financial help and who didn't?

That's right!

Washington Post:

CIT Group, an important lender to smaller companies, said last night that it had failed to persuade the federal government to provide further financial assistance to help it avert a likely bankruptcy filing that could hurt thousands of clients ranging from small clothing manufacturers to retailers such as Dunkin' Donuts and Dell.

Riiiight - obviously Goldman Sachs is much more important to the US economy than CIT Group. A company that manipulates the market to make financial profit based on financial and accounting tricks and market manipulation (ohhhhhh, unproven, of course, and Matt Taibi is so full of it, right?) is much more useful than, say, a financial company that loans money to American business.

The people who steal money from the system - in effect, from you and me - are bailed out, while the people who make a living giving loans to small and medium business - you know, the ones who keep US employed - are NOT important.

Here's zerohedge:

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT), a leading provider of financing to small businesses and middle market companies, today announced that it has been advised that there is no appreciable likelihood of additional government support being provided over the near term.

Feel free to click on that link and join the outrage.

Bravo, Obama, fucking B R A V O.

Highly topical - please re-read the How the financial crisis came about from March 3 2009

2009-07-14T17:24:00.001-07:00

The article is here, and that it is a bit long goes without saying...

Different laws for different folks

2009-07-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

We all should be familiar with how "justice" in America is done.

If you are black and young, and you have the misfortune of being nearby a crime scene, chances are a cop car will come, break, and police officers will swoop down and take you in... for "questioning".

Hell, these days, if you are young and white, cops will swoop in and take you in.

And if you are brown and moslem - man, I feel sorry for you.

But what happens when you are a 250 pound (or more) drunk white guy at a bar, and, upon being told by a petite woman bartender that you drunk too much and should go home, beat her.

Beat her so that she falls down.

Beat her as she writhes on the floor.

Kick her.

Then beat her some more.

And kick her again.

And again.

Oh, one caveat - you are a cop.

You should know the answer to this question, of course - nothing happens to you.

This is how "justice" is done in America.

Look at this piece of shit, all smug and a GW Bush patented smirk on his face, walk away from the court as if he owned the place.

As if he owned my city - Chicago.

And, you know - he is right.

He is obviously above the law, and if this piece of shit stopped me at night, and proceeded to beat me, I, all bloody and clothes in tatters, would be taken to jail for "resisting arrest".

After all, a cop's testimony in court is sacred, and I happen to be a young guy...

And, if this piece of shit walks around as if nothing can touch him (he's right), and as if he owns this city (he does), and as if that woman, you and me are vermin whom he can abuse at will (he's right about that too, even if he is out of uniform), imagine how smug the people who REALLY own this country must feel.

People like the CEO of Goldman Sachs, people like Rahm Emanuel, people like Geithner or Bernanke.

If this fat piece of shit is untouchable and can beat a woman on camera, with lots of witnesses, imagine how above the law people like that are.

The AIPAC Treason Trial: Larry's Story

2009-07-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

Short recap: Two Jewish Americans used a non-Jewish American to spy for Israel. The two (former) AIPAC staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, passed information that Larry Franklin provided them to Israeli nationals residing in USA (spymasters, or controllers of spies).

The FBI caught on to the spying, and "turned" Franklin - he was told that if he cooperated with the investigation into Israeli/AIPAC spying in America, he would be given a lenient sentence.

Larry Franklin agreed.

Despite blatantly catching the two Jewish Americans, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, in the act of handing classified information to their Israeli controllers, you can guess what happened next.

This being America, the two Jewish Americans were immediately pronounced innocent, and the goy traitor, the opportunist, was handed the jail sentence.

But even that was changed to "community service".

What does that tell you about America and what is really going on here?

The man himself, the goy Larry Franklin, has decided to come forward and to defend his record. He did so on the pages of a Jewish American newspaper (of course...), The Forward.

It is an amazing piece and I want to spend a few paragraphs analyzing it.

The title of this (well, lets call it what it is) whitewash is:

Once Labeled An AIPAC Spy, Larry Franklin Tells His Story
In an Exclusive Interview, Talk of Antisemitism and Betrayal
By Nathan Guttman

From the title itself, we see that the poor Larry guy was a victim of anti-semitism, those terrible, terrible people in the FBI who prosecuted him for no reason.

He, the Irish Catholic, claims as defense of his actions persecution by the teeeeeerrible anti semites.

Wait, it gets much better.

We are just getting started here.

Lets take this whitewash apart.

He [Larry Franklin -AG] still keeps his weekend job, mopping the floors at a nearby Roy Rogers restaurant. In recent years, Franklin also has gained experience in parking cars, digging trenches and cleaning cesspools. In between, he has been searching for a publisher for his book — a manual for saving America from the Iranian threat.

The wet dream of the neocons has even been for the USofA to "take out" Israel's enemies in the Middle East, therefore saving the Israeli Defense Forces for the really important tasks - like enforcing their apartheid policies in Gaza and protecting more and more settlers as they ethnically cleanse (albeit slowly) Palestinians from their own land.

America was stupid enough to listen in to the "experts" from "think tanks" and "institutes", writing policy papers and op/ed pieces warning of mushroom clouds and other scary things, and that Saddam was a new Hitler, and so that it is only right and proper that America "take out" Iraq.

If you have read my articles and/or following the story, the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) was born a few years after a policy paper was written by AMERICAN Jewish citizens for ISRAELI government of the time on how to best protect Israel in the near future.

Simply put, the "Clean Break" paper advocated the "taking out", destabilizing if not outright destroying three main Israeli enemies: Iraq, Iran and Syria.

(However, the "Clean Break" did not say who would be doing the "taking out" and paying the price in blood and money to accomplish those goals).

Surprisingly, the PNAC project advocated the same thing - that (and this is crucial) America "take out" enemies to further its sole superpower status in the world - and on the list of targets were (surprise?) Iraq, Iran and Syria.

THAT is why GW Bush and his neocon band of merry traitors turned 9/11 into a pretext to "take out" Iraq - America went into Afghanistan reluctantly, and if you want to prove it to yourself, read some Bob Woodward books in which GW exclaims (on day 1 of 9/11, without any proof that Iraq had anything to do with that attack on America) - "use this to get at Iraq".

GW, in my view, was simply an overmatched idiot, surrounded by neocons who used his boyish fantasy of one-upmanship with his father (remember - his father was smart enough to NOT go all the way into Iraq during the first Gulf War) to further Israeli goals.

And, if you have been paying attention, it should not be surprising that the "Clean Break" policy paper advising Israel to destroy its enemies and PNAC read like the same thing - they were, after all, written by the SAME people - the SAME Jewish Americans (If you do not believe me or my articles, google together "Clean Break Perle" and then "PNAC Perle" and go from there...).

But lets continue with poor Larry Franklin, the victim of anti-semitism.

Franklin’s narrative of his ordeal (snip) reflects a mixture of naiveté, frustration with government bureaucracy and a deep belief that his views must be heard, even if it meant breaking the rules.

His views must be heard!

Remember that key point - this is Larry's defense.

Some in the government, he believes, “had some fantasy of a conspiracy” that had continued, unabated, after the 1985 arrest and 1987 conviction of Pentagon intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard on charges of spying for Israel.

According to Franklin, the investigators he dealt with believed “that Pollard had a secret partner, a mole, probably in the OSD.” This quest to expose the mole, Franklin said, was, in part, “energized by a more malevolent emotion — antisemitism.”

Finding spies of an Israeli enemy (lets not kid ourselves here) intelligence service in American intelligence establishment is, according to Larry, "anti-semitic".

Passing documents to Israeli (Jewish American) spies is okee dokee, though - no problems there!

“I was asked about every Jew I knew in OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], and that bothered me,” Franklin said. His superiors at the time were both Jewish: Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, whom Franklin believes was a target of the investigation. “One agent asked me, ‘How can a Bronx Irish Catholic get mixed up with…’ and I finished the phrase for him: ‘with these Jews.’” Franklin answered, “Christ was Jewish, too, and all the apostles.” “Later I felt dirty,” he added.

Larry remembers that the deputy secretary of defense of the USofA was Jewish, and the undersecretary of defense for policy also happened to be Jewish.

Hmm, interesting.

Larry here establishes his credentials as a country bumpkin - and the article references this meme with Larry's job being the cleaning up of a restaurant, as well as parking cars, cleaning cesspools and other assorted nonsense, alongside the fact that he is not Jewish and yet is persecuted for his association with (very influential) Jewish Americans - anti-semitism against a goy!

Of course, the article shoots itself in the foot with this:

Franklin, who speaks seven languages and holds a doctorate in East Asian studies, tends to weave historical references easily into his discourse, from ancient Greece to the modern days.

Country bumpkin he is not - I do not see a hick idiot becoming an intelligence analyst for the American intelligence.

President, yes, an intelligence analyst - no.

Lets continue with the article:

In exchange for his cooperation with federal prosecutors, Franklin was initially sentenced to 12.5 years in prison as part of his plea agreement. But before entering his plea in 2005, he was approached by two people who suggested he fake his suicide and disappear to avoid testifying in court. At the request of the FBI, to which he immediately reported the encounter, Franklin had several follow-up conversations on the phone with one of them. “I thought I was in a movie,” Franklin said of the episode. Details of the event are still under court seal, and Franklin declined to identify the individuals who approached him or to offer further details.

Larry was approached by two men who told him that it would be better if he faked his own suicide and disappeared.

Scared for his life (the two Israeli hitmen were probably deadly serious about the "suicide" part, but not too clear about the "faked" bit), Larry went to the FBI for protection. And got it.

And in case other spinsters want to spin this as some surreal situation where Larry was not threatened, but was gently asked by the two (99% sure) Israelis to fake his own suicide... Come on! Of course Larry's life was threatened by the Israeli hitmen!

Of course, it is patently obvious, it was a threat on Larry's life, scaring him shitless.

The amazing thing (well, this is America, so it is normal here) is that we do not know the names of the Israeli thugs who threatened Larry's life, nor will they be ever revealed.

It is acceptable in America for Israeli agents to threaten the life of an American and get away with it, apparently.

Larry, shitting himself, reported all of this to the FBI, who protected him.

Why was there an investigation into Israeli spies in America, in the first place?

Why, anti-semitism, of course.

In part, it [the investigation into AIPAC spying -AG] was also fed by a deep suspicion toward Israel. “In the intelligence community,” he said, “you refer to Israelis as ‘Izzis’ and it doesn’t have a pleasant connotation. They can’t get away with kikes, so they say Izzis.” This suspicion became clear to Franklin as he learned of the way investigators viewed activists of the pro-Israel lobby.

He said it was made clear to him by the FBI that Rosen, then AIPAC’s foreign policy director, was the target of the investigation and had been followed by the FBI for years. “The bureau told me Rosen was a bad guy,” he said. Believing that he himself had “done wrong,” Franklin agreed to cooperate with the FBI investigation.

Larry was caught red handed by the FBI, on tape and recorded, as he passed information to Rosen. Having no choice, he turned and started to (for the first time in his life?) work for his own country, the United States of America.

This cooperation culminated in a June 26, 2003, meeting at an Italian restaurant in Arlington, Va., where Franklin was sent by the FBI to carry out a sting operation against the AIPAC lobbyists. Before his meeting with Weissman, agents wired Franklin with microphones and transmitters and provided him with a fake classified document alleging there was clear life-threatening danger posed to Israelis secretly operating in Iraq’s Kurdish region. Passing on the information would help seal the case against the AIPAC staffers.

“At the time, I believed they were guilty,” Franklin said of Weissman and Rosen. Yet he still came to the meeting with mixed feelings. He put the document on the table, but hoped Weissman would not reach out for it. “And when he did not take the document, I did breath a silent sigh of relief,” he recalled. In retrospect, Franklin sees that moment as “one I am not proud of.”

Though Weissman didn’t take the document, he read its content, which was allegedly classified, and the sting operation succeeded. Weissman hurried back to AIPAC headquarters with the supposedly classified information disclosed it to Rosen, who subsequently relayed it to an Israeli diplomat.

Read the last sentence.

Understand.

Larry gives a classified document to Weissman, an AIPAC member. Judging that the danger of actually taking the document was too much (Weissman was trained well in spycraft), he nevertheless got the information memorized, hurried to another AIPAC staffer, Rosen, and then Rosen quickly passed the info to an Israeli Embassy official - a resident spy.

The reason why the sting worked was that the information (the fake information provided by American intelligence) was "hot" - Israeli lives were supposedly in danger in Iraqi Kurdistan, and so the two "Americans" (well, American citizens in legality, but hardly in reality) hurried to get that information to their Israeli spymasters at the Israeli Embassy.

(Brief note: so there are multiple Israeli agents in Iraqi Kurdistan then?! What the fuck are they doing there?!).

The meeting of Rosen with that Israeli embassy official (still unidentified - you can be sure that that person is STILL not thrown out of the country, is not a persona non-grata and continues to happily spy for Israel in America) did not take place at the embassy.

It was an emergency, the information was hot, so that Rosen made a phone call the the "emergency" phone number he knew to call when Israeli lives were in danger, and within a short while met the Israeli "diplomat" in an out of the way place.

All of this was on tape, recorded by the FBI, very professionally trailing Larry, Weissman and Rosen without them noticing (Who said Americans are stupid? What a great job at covert surveillance - kudos to you, patriots!).

Larry now tries to bolster his "country bumpkin" defense:

Franklin said he felt betrayed by the two former AIPAC staffers. He believed that he was sharing information with them so that they could pass it to other government officials, and was disappointed to learn they conveyed it to Israeli diplomats and to the press. “I do think they crossed a line when they went to a foreign official with what they knew was classified information,” Franklin said.

You see, Larry wants us to believe that the information he passed to the Jewish Americans would be passed to some more important AMERICAN government officials, because all that he, Larry, wanted was to warn American government officials of the danger of the Iranian threat.

Franklin warned that Americans “would return in body bags” from Iraq because of Iranian intervention, and called for a preliminary show of force against Iran before invading Iraq, but got no response. Viewing the AIPAC lobbyists as well connected, Franklin bypassed his superiors and asked Rosen to convey his concerns on Iran to officials at the National Security Council, to whom he believed the influential lobbyist had access.

“I wanted to kind of shock people at the NSC,” he said, “to shock them into pausing and giving another consideration into why regime change needed to be the policy.”

Riiiiight - so to get to the National Security Council, Larry the silly country bumpkin passed classified documents to AIPAC staffers, whom everybody KNOWS spy for and work for Israel and Israeli interests.

Larry wanted to steer America into a "show of force" against Iran BEFORE invading Iraq, because (and here the logic of his defense gets murky) Larry wanted Iran to, uh, be so afraid of America that they would not interfere against the American invasion.

Also Larry wanted to impress upon the NSC that "regime change [in Iran- AG] needed to be the policy"

And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

No, what Larry and his spymasters wanted was to broaden the Middle Eastern shit that the USA was stepping in - remember, "Clean Break" writers and then PNAC writers (they are the SAME people, by the by, recall?) wanted America to take out multiple Israeli enemies - Iraq, Iran and Syria... and Lebanon for good measure.

So Larry's "show of force" had every chance of becoming a hot war between Iran and America before the American invasion of Iraq.

And of course Larry had only American interests at heart, and the poor American boys coming home in body bags, because a "show of force" on Iran which had every chance of becoming a hot war necessitating American bombing (and "liberation"?) of Iran alongside Iraq was in American interests.

That it just tailored so well with the "Clean Break" Jewish American neocons plans was just a coincidence, of course...

But Larry's history of pushing for an American war with Iran goes farther.

Do you remember the Niger yellowcake story, planted by pro Israeli agents in America (who knows - perhaps Rosen and Weissman were involved in that operation too)?

No?

Let me refresh your memory.

In the days before America invaded Iraq, Israeli agents in America (called the neocons), the same people who wrote "Clean Break" and "Project for the New American Century", were desperately trying to seize the historic moment and make America attack Iraq.

One of the fake stories planted was the "Niger yellowcake" story.

I remember the case vividly, but you might want to refresh your memory with this article - Wikipedia: Niger uranium forgeries.

Someone (cough Israeli agents cough) planted forged documents stating that Iraq was purchasing uranium from the African nation of Niger. This was done in Italy, and the forgeries were used by the neocons writing their op/ed articles in American newspapers and the neocon "experts" screaming at us from the TV screens about the simple case that Saddam was Hitler and he wants to eat American children for breakfast... and so we must "take out" Iraq.

And isn't it interesting who was involved in this case?

Lets go to Raw Story, a pretty astounding article, dated April 20, 2006.

The Department of Defense and Vice President Dick Cheney have retained the services of Iran-Contra arms dealer and discredited intelligence asset Manucher Ghorbanifar as their “man on the ground,”

(snip)

Speaking on condition of anonymity, three intelligence sources identified the Iran-Contra middleman as having been put back on the payroll, acting as a human intelligence asset and monitoring any movement in discussions about Iran’s alleged burgeoning nuclear weapons program.

Ghorbanifar was also present at discussions in Rome in 2001 – talks which have received much attention because they were attended by Pentagon and Iranian officials. According to neoconservative Michael Ledeen, who participated in the talks, the topic was Iran. A second set of meetings later took place in Paris.

So, the guy who worked as basically as an intermediary, between America and Iran during the Reagan era Iran-Contra scandal (the one where the USA sold weapons to Iran and used the profits to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, without Congressional approval or knowledge), was back in the American intelligence business.

And Michael Ledeen.

Remember my crazy assertion that there was a conspiracy by Jewish American neocons to steer America into taking out Israel's enemies?

Democraticunderground.com:

Ledeen concluded his remarks by declaring, "the time for diplomacy is at the end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon."

I realize that this might sound far fetched, crazy and preposterous - but I (and many other, much smarter and erudite people) have spent some time researching this and the conclusion is unmistakable - as is the significance of the timeline. First "Clean Break" was written, then PNAC was born, 9/11 hit, then soon came the screams of neocons to "take out" Iraq, Iran, Syria (all enemies of Israel).

Significantly, the writers of PNAC actually wrote that America needed a "new Pearl Harbor" for their plan for America the stupid becoming a patsy to Israel and making war on its enemies in the Middle East - and magically, 9/11 just happens at the exact time that a "new Pearl Harbor" is called for...

But the most interesting part comes now.

Lets go back off the tangent and back into the Niger yellowcake story.

In an exclusive interview with Newsweek late last year, Ghorbanifar stated that the meetings in Rome and Paris were about regime change in Iran. The meetings included Larry Franklin, a Pentagon Iran analyst who has been convicted for passing secrets to an Israeli lobby, and Harold Rhode, a Defense Department consultant also under investigation in the case.

So, we find our "country bumpkin", Larry Franklin, deep in the "deep state", the secret world of regime change and spying.

Larry Franklin actively working for regime change in Iran under Bush and Cheney.

Per Daily Kos diary, which is superb by the way, "Harold Rhode, a member of the Office of Special Plans, protege of Michael Ledeen and the liason between the administration and Ahmed Chalabi"

Ledeen is, of course, Jewish American.

So what we have was the conspiracy, under the guidance of Cheney who was then American vice president, with full support by Israel and its servants in America, the neocons, against Iran.

The realization of "Clean Break" and PNAC goals - after Iraq, Iran was to follow.

You must understand that GW and Cheney and their neocon merry band of traitors were hell bent on America invading and "liberating" Iraq, all for their own reasons, of course.

GW Bush, the boy emperor, wanted to "one up" his dad, to show him that he was better than him because he had the balls to finish his dad's job.

Cheney was seeing $ signs - any reconstruction of Iraq would involve his pet money making projects, Haliburton and Bechtel.

And the Jewish American neocons were simply realizing "Clean Break" - "taking out" Israeli enemies using American blood and treasure.

Bonus Information:

The Daily Kos article is simply superb.

I am going to quote parts of it in full here.

But now, the long and winding road leads us at last to Washington DC and the FBI investigation into the AIPAC spy ring. Here we find the usual suspects.

Keyser Soze aka Michael Ledeen.

Michael Ledeen was one of the founders of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). He holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank for AIPAC. He is co-founder of the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. As far back as 1980, the CIA allegedly listed Ledeen as an agent of influence of Israel. Ledeen is the main foreign policy advisor to Karl Rove. Ledeens main obsession seems to be to overthrow Iran.

In 1972 he published the book Universal Fascism, in which he expounds upon "the rightness of the fascist cause." In Universal Fascism, Ledeen first builds his case that fascism was the "20th Century Revolution" and that "people yearn for the real thing - revolution". It's the blueprint for a fascist revolution.

In 1980 he collaborated with Francesco Pazienza of SISMI and P-2 in the "BillyGate" affair. This is the same Pazienze who was recently found out to belong to the parallel intelligence agency in Italy. In 1985 Pazienza was found guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of terrorists. Ledeen is identified in court documents as an agent of SISMI.

The Pentagon downgraded Ledeen's security clearances from Top Secret-SCI to Secret in the mid-1980s, after the FBI began a probe of Ledeen for passing classified materials to a foreign country, believed to be Israel.

In 2001, Ledeen was hired by Feith to work on contract for the Office of Special Plans.

It was Ledeen who got Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard his job in the Navy.

[AmericanGoy here - re-read the last three paragraphs. Pentagon downgrades Ledeen's security clearance, because it is believed that he passes classified documents and info to Israel. In 2001, Douglas Feith, another JEWISH American hires Ledeen to work in the Office of Special Plans.

OSP was Cheney's baby, and it was setup to bypass the CIA analysts and analyze data about Iraqi threat - in effect, to cherry pick the intelligence to find the most alarming, thereby justifying America invading Iraq.

Ledeen got Pollard, the Israeli spy in American jail - imagine that! - his job at the Navy.

Amazing set of "coincidences"]

It was Ledeen who insisted on using Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Mossad double agent, in the Iran-Contra affair.

It was Ledeen who organized the meeting between Rhodes, Franklin and Ghorbanifar on Dec. 1, 2001 in Rome.

On Dec. 12, 2001, U.S. Amb. Sembler has a private dinner with Ledeen and the Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino. Ledeen and Martino begin discussing the previous meeting with Ghorbanifar which they had both attended. Sembler, deeply concerned that a secret meeting had occured with the recipient of two CIA "burn notices", informed the CIA which in turn informed the White House, specifically Stephen Hadley. Hadley told Ledeen and Co. to back off of Ghorbanifar. But that order was ignored and communication between Ghorbanifar and Rhode continued up to their second face to face in June 2003.

Rhode also met with AIPAC lobbyists, Ahmed Chalabi, Israeli agents and SISMI during this time.

Harold Rhode.

Rhode is a member of the Office of Special Plans. He fervently pushes for the invasion of Iran. He's the main liason between the White House and Ahmed Chalabi. He is a 20 year Middle East expert. He has close ties to Michael Ledeen.

"According to one former senior U.S. intelligence official who maintained excellent contacts with serving U.S. intelligence

officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, "Rhode practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalab's office." This same source quoted the intelligence official with the CPA as saying, "Rhode was observed by CIA operatives as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel," and that the information that the intelligence officials overheard him passing to Israel was "mind-boggling," this source said. It dealt with U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects, discussion of Iraq assets, and a host of other sensitive topics, the former senior U.S. intelligence official said." FBI probes DOD office - (United Press International)

Larry Franklin.

Larry Franklin, a Col. in the US Air Force, is considered the Pentagons top Iran analyst. He attended the meeting in Rome with Ghorbanifar. He works for the Office of Special Plans and is a fervent believer in the need to invade Iran. He is now under arrest for allegedly giving state secrets to Isreal through AIPAC.

FBI investigators indicate that they are looking for more than one person. Michael Ledeen and Harold Rhode have to be considered primary suspects.

Let me now include the US District Court Statement of Facts - PDF document for posterity, which, point by point, shows how Larry Franklin spied for the two Israeli agents (I am sorry, innocent victims of anti-semitism...) Weissman and Rosen.

Now, after reading this far, congratulations.

You now know more than 99.999999999999999% of your fellow Americans.

It should be obvious that Larry Franklin was an "agent of influence" (google that term) for Israel for some time now. He is far from a country bumpkin "mopping the floor" of a restaurant, and participated in some brilliant intelligence coups (and some failures - like the Niger yellowcake forgery) to steer America into war on virtually the whole Middle East - every country that Israel dislikes.

Rosen and Weissman were also caught red handed, recorded and taped as they passed classified information to their Israeli contacts from the Israeli embassy.

(Just so I don't get arrested and waterboarded - Franklin, Rosen and Weissman are innocent, of course, after all, the American justice system said so).

What is your reaction?

Amazement?
Disgust?
Shrug of your shoulders?

Just the way things are?

War with Iran is the neocons wet dream.

And it will come.

Whether under Obama or some other schmuck pushed in front of the camera for the stupid Americans and the rest of the world to admire.

Well, admire away:

Bonus Reading

A few of my articles, some original research and rants into this whole preposterous, insane, incredible, and frankly, impossible conspiracy of Israel using its agents in America to steer American foreign policy (and war making) to suit its own interests.

Why can't you see how cynically we are manipulated?!:

former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton announced on Fox News his belief that “the use of military force” against Iranian training camps “is really the most prudent thing to do.” Responding to a Telegraph report on his comments today, American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Ledeen declared that Bolton is “right.” Adding that he’s “been proposing this for years,” Ledeen also said that “we should do the same thing to the Syrian camps as well.”

The plan all along...:

Autumn 1992: Influential Neoconservative Academic Advocates Breaking Up Middle Eastern Countries, Including Iraq

Princeton University professor Bernard Lewis publishes an article in the influential journal Foreign Affairs called “Rethinking the Middle East.” In it, he advocates a policy he calls “Lebanonization.” He says, “[A] possibility, which could even be precipitated by [Islamic] fundamentalism, is what has late been fashionable to call ‘Lebanonization.’ Most of the states of the Middle East—Egypt is an obvious exception—are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common identity.… Then state then disintegrates—as happened in Lebanon—into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions, and parties.” Lewis, a British Jew, is well known as a longtime supporter of the Israeli right wing. Since the 1950s, he has argued that the West and Islam have been engaged in a titanic “clash of civilizations” and that the US should take a hard line against all Arab countries. Lewis is considered a highly influential figure to the neoconservative movement, and some neoconservatives such as Richard Perle and Harold Rhode consider him a mentor. In 1996, Perle and others influenced by Lewis will write a paper for right wing Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu entitled “A Clean Break” that advocates the “Lebanonization” of countries like Iraq and Syria

The plan was to take out 7 countries, starting with Iraq...ending with Iran:

General Wesley Clark speaks about the plan for America to "take out" seven (yes, seven) countries:

And finally "Not attacking Iran is viewed as being anti-Israel":

Chuck Hagel, democrat:

Says Hagel (Senator Chuck Hagel): "The political reality is that... the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here." Hagel then related a meeting he had in New York with a group of supporters of Israel who are pushing the U.S. to attack Iran. When Hagel said it hadn't worked out that well in Iraq, a couple of members of the group said he wasn't supportive enough of Israel.

When Hagel said it hadn't worked out that well in Iraq, a couple of members of the group said he wasn't supportive enough of Israel.

Hagel spoke firmly: "Let me clear something up here if there's any doubt in your mind. I'm a U.S. Senator. I'm not an Israeli senator. I'm a U.S. Senator. I support Israel... But my first interest is, I take an oath to the constitution of the United States. Not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel."

John Sununu, republican:

It's like a handful of pebbles in the shoe. It's there all the time, and this process of not permitting anything that's trying to tug in the other direction, to gain root and thrive, is almost automatic. And it's not just AIPAC, it happens all the time, everywhere. Every congressman, every senator, before they win, is being soft lobbied on the issue. Whether it's their friend that owns 40 acres down the street whose grandfather happened to have come from Kiev, goes in and talks to him about helping him, developing a social relationship on an issue that has nothing to do with the district, begins to communicate their interest. And rightly so-- pulling on their end of the rope. It happens almost invisibly. But across the board. There is nobody who has run for office in this country who has not been soft lobbied the day they announce that they are going to run and not been hard lobbied after they win.

Finally, I leave you with this - Mr. Weiss at his finest:

Russert's follow up was (during the television presidential debate - AG), " What do you do to assure Jewish Americans that, whether it's Farrakhan's support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel..."
(...)
Why is it that a candidate must assure Jewish Americans about his being "consistent" on a foreign country, Israel? Isn't this an acknowledgement that American Jews feel dual loyalty? Isn't a call to consistency code for political correctness on this issue, rather than exploration of a miserable situation in Israel/Palestine? Should Russert be honoring dual loyalty feelings, or challenging them? Wasn't Irish-American support for the IRA a controversial issue, rather than a Law of Politics, as Russert seemed to say? And is supporting Israel an American interest or a Jewish American interest? If only the latter, shouldn't that be the subject of journalism?

I finally got: THE NEW DEAL!

2009-06-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

Man.

That took me too long to finally understand.

The whole point of FDR's New Deal in the 1930's was not to alleviate the symptoms of the Great Depression.

It was not done to help ordinary Americans, either (who cares about those idiots?!).

No, the whole point of it was to placate the middle and lower classes with enough busy work, enough government money so that they would not revolt and start hanging the elites from the nearest trees.

Remember your history?

You must remember from school that in the 1930's the Soviet Union was a powerful symbol, basically a big fuck you to the world led by the "democratic" elites.

This was very alarming to the Goldman Sachs types of the day and it was decided that action must be taken, so that the unwashed masses would not, you know, clench their fists, wave red flags and start, you know, going into the multi million dollar mansions and, well, shooting the man and lady of the house (and their children just back from the private school to tidy up).

It was only later that the world learned that a certain ethnic minority had the biggest role in the so called Russian revolution, and that the leading role of this leading minority was only finally curtailed by Stalin - he simply murdered them alongside some random victims in the so called purges.

And of course, even if you don't know anything about history, the name of Hitler must be somewhat familiar to you.

The Germans did not get any New Deal, or any deal at all.

Ordinary Germans did not get any help from their government...

...and their middle class got a tad bit restless... the rest you know.

Lets fast forward to today.

There is no Soviet Union. In fact, there is absolutely no challenge to the American global supremacy.

Worst case scenario:
Going with the idea that the elites of today are more greedy and yet more stupid than the ones of years past, the American middle class will be offered exactly nothing.

Well, some things will be changed by the greatest PR machine in history - the Obama machine. Credit cards will now print their statements in a legible, non-nonsensical form (wow! progress!). Perhaps Obama will smile more on TV than usual. Things like that.

But other than superficial nonsense along those lines, nothing will change, and you can be sure that something as radical as forgiving a person's credit debt or making a government healthcare program to compete with for profit non-healthcare private firms (note: the healthcare insurance business model is this: the more healthcare they deny you, the more money they make) is out of bounds.

There will be war, if not Iraq than something else will come along. In fact, it seems that Afghanistan is a more profitable enterprise than Iraq - drugs, you know. Even the Russians are making noises that Americans are going too far in this whole capitalism thing - in case you don't remember, use the godly google and find out for yourself the following fact - that while Taliban was in power, ALL opium production was stopped.

Stopped, 100% gone.

Now, with the Americans in charge, Afghanistan is drug central, billion dollar traffic going into Europe and USA.

War is great for the system.

The only hope for this country is reforming - as in destroying completely - the lobby (legalized bribery) system. And Mr. Hope and Change has no inkling for even minimally curtailing the power of the lobbies, so that our politicians will not be bought by private corporations and foreign countries

That is out of the question - after all, lobbying = free speech!

So, hope and change is exactly that - keep hoping for that change! And watch that TV - American Idol is on!

So, since a New Deal is no needed - after all, Americans are far too stupid, too hassles, too busy, too stupified by TV and other media, no Soviet Union agents of influence to stir up trouble - what is going to happen?

Are the elites going to throw the idiot masses a mangy bone, like they did in the 1930's?

Hell no.

The worst case scenario is simply this: the only thing the American middle class is gonna get from the elites is a middle finger.

I finally got BORAT: the movie

2009-06-26T18:04:00.000-07:00

Man.

I can't believe I haven't written about this (perhaps because I have never seen the movie).

This is so simple.

The whole movie has two messages, and, if you think about it for one second, you will see them.

Message one: eastern Europe is shit, and is populated by nasty, brutish, beyond neanderthal people who hate Jews.

Message two: Americans are yokels who are easily led by any conman who comes along.

Thinking about how AIPAC and Israel operates in America, I think that one of these messages is true.

PS
"Jak sie masz?", the Borat trademark, is polish for "How are you".
Just FYI.

New blog on the reading list

2009-06-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

Added a small blog of an online friend of mine, Frank's.

Futurenewstoday.

He is a small time, unpaid blogger, just like me.

Feel free to peruse his stuff, he has some good articles.

Matt Taibbi on Goldman Sachs

2009-06-25T18:04:00.000-07:00

There are two writers whom I not only respect, but admire.

Who ask questions, analyze, connect the dots, and give you the straight shit.

One is Justin Raimondo from antiwar.com

The other is Matt Taibbi.

This is probably the most important article you could read this week.

Please read it in full.

The Great American Bubble Machine by Matt Taibbi

Thank You.

United States of America 1776 - 2009

2009-06-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

This is simply too outrageous.

This makes me mad.

Lets start with this tidbit:

JTA:

A former Pentagon analyst who pleaded guilty to passing secret information to two former AIPAC staffers had his sentence drastically reduced.

Larry Franklin was sentenced to probation and 10 months of "community confinement," or a halfway house, along with 100 hours of community service. In 2005 he had received a sentence of 12 1/2 years in prison but was free pending his cooperation with prosecutors in the case against the two formers AIPAC staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Federal prosecutors dropped the charges last month against Rosen and Weissman for passing classified information, saying that restrictions the judge had placed on the case made the government unlikely to prevail.

In a Thursday afternoon hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., prosecutors asked Judge T.S. Ellis to reduce Franklin's sentence to eight years, saying he played an important role in the case but was "not what you'd call an ideal
cooperator." Franklin attorney, Plato Cacheris, said Franklin had "paid his penalty and suffered greatly," and should not have to serve any time in prison.

So not only do the two spies for Israel, who were caught red handed, by a team of FBI agents, passing classified Pentagon documents to Israeli citizens, free - nay, they are writing op/ed pieces about Iran ("we need to bomb them"), still shaping American foreign policy, still leading the (stupid, pathetic, pitiful) Americans by the nose.

The Pentagon analyst, the only one who was charged and given a penalty for treason, will now not be paying any penalty.

Franklin has said he leaked information to the former AIPAC staffers, as well as an Israeli diplomat, because of "frustration with policy" on Iran at the Pentagon. He believed that they would be able to relay that information on Iran to friends on the U.S. National Security Council.

You see, this guy was A-OK!

All he wanted to do was to give some info to the American National Security Council - and to do that, he gave top secret Pentagon documents to AIPAC officials and an Israeli citizen (a foreign spy, if you are too dense to understand) in the US.

Makes perfect sense to me - clearly this guy is innocent.

Lets tie this spy scandal with an even bigger scandal - the one I described here.

What was it all about?

Ms. Harman [an American senator -AG] was recorded on a wiretapped call offering to intercede with the Justice Department on behalf of operatives for Aipac, the pro-Israel group, who were under investigation for espionage, in exchange for help in pressuring Ms. Pelosi to award her the chairmanship of the House intelligence committee.

No big deal - in return for interceding on behalf of the two traitors to America, Rosen and Weissman, an (Jewish) American politician was promised a position as the boss of the House intelligence committee.

You know, the committee that handles sensitive, top secret data and documents.

The kind of documents that Rosen and Weissman were in trouble for handing over to Israeli spies.

So the plan here is obvious - Israeli intelligence wanted to do two things here at once.

They wanted Rosen and Weissman off the hook, and, more importantly, get an American (Jewish) politician as the boss of the House intelligence committee.

Which would allow Israeli intelligence to then blackmail Ms. Harman, and force her to do Israel's bidding.

She would be on the hook.

What happened then (and this is my speculation) is that someone in the American intelligence community, a mysterious patriot, released the wiretaps which proved that a US Representative, a very powerful political figure (after all, she aspired to be the boss of the, possibly, most important committe in the House - the intelligence committee).

What that patriot expected is for the media to pick this story up, for the Americans to become outraged, for the ordinary Americans to start asking questions, say, who really pushed us into the Iraq War?

Or, who are the neocons, really (and why are they all Jewish)?

Or, why is Israel spying on us?

But what happened next probably made the American patriot who released the incriminating evidence about AIPAC and Ms. Harman do a double take.

Or a fifty take, if there is such a thing.

The media did pick up the story...

If by media you mean blogs, some mainstream internet sites, and the Daily Show on Comedy Central.

This was an Orwellian non-story, in other words.

A foreign intelligence operative, in technical parlance an agent, was recruiting an American politician, as a future spy (when the blackmail would be used against her), and promising her the key position on a committee that deals with spying.

Not a big deal, say the US media.

Par for the course.

Oh, this is normal, oy vey, what's the big deal?

Right?

Frankly, I expect a massive manhunt in the FBI and indeed throughout the whole American intelligence community - can you imagine, an American patriot in American intelligence? Not serving Israeli interests?

We can't have that!

I wonder what would happen if it was another country which pulled something like this.

Say, Iran. Or China. Or, heck, France.

Do you figure the mainstream media TV pundits would scream at the top of their voices on FOX, CBS, NBC: "Foreign power spies on America - tries to get their spies off the hook!"

Followed by:

"American politician promised the top spymaster job in the nation's House of Representatives - in return for helping foreign spies get off the hook. Oh, the irony! What outrage!".

But this is America.

And this is Israel.

And there was no mainstream media pundits' shouting.

Not even a whimper.

Not a mewling, pathetic attempt to inject this into the talking heads on TV.

Nothing.

So, to sum up - the two (Jewish)Americans get off scot free; more, they are comfortable enough to go on TV, radio, write articles about American foreign policy (which all boil down to one thing - "lets bomb Iran!").

The (non Jewish) American, as the goy, was the fall guy in this case, and now even he will not have to spend a day in jail.

He has "paid his penalty and suffered greatly," says the lawyer.

You can expect the judge in this case, the esteemed Judge T.S. Ellis, to, in the near future, have his professional career take off.

Serving the masters has its rewards.

Per politico.com:

Judge T.S. Ellis, who imposed the first 12-year prison term several years ago, re-sentenced Franklin to probation and 10 months home confinement. (The Pentagon official never started his original sentence; he had been free pending Rosen and Weissman's trial.)

So not even the (non Jewish) goy fall guy will serve a single minute in prison.

The funny thing is, the only guy who was supposed to go to jail and actually pay for his treason was the only guy who was cooperating with the prosecution.

In a normal country, both (Jewish) gentlemen from AIPAC, Rosen and Weissman, would be in jail by now.

In a normal country, Ms. Harman would be forced to resign from the House of Representatives.

Following a Congressional investigation, she would be stripped of any immunity whatsoever, and also would be, by now, in jail.

And of course so would Mr. Franklin.

But this is America.

So what happened is that, (again), Rosen and Weissman are able to give speeches, are invited to TV shows, write op/ed editorials in newspapers, Ms. Harman is going to win a (laughable, no money) challenge from a naive high school teacher, Marcy Winograd (story here - notice that the mainstream media does not write about this Winograd character - she is a non-person).

What - do you expect an Israel first (and America last) candidate to lose to a no name, no money, challenger?

No one is punished, no one is even criticized for spying on America.

Par for the course.

Entirely normal in America.

Life goes on.

But wait, there is more.

Going back to the politico.com article:

Two people asked a Pentagon official cooperating with prosecutors in an investigation into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to fake his own death to avoid testifying against two pro-Israel lobbyists charged in the case, according to the Justice Department.

"Just prior to the entry of his guilty plea, Franklin was approached by two individuals who made a pitch to Franklin about faking his death by suicide and disappearing, thus thwarting any cooperation in the case against Rosen and Weissman," prosecutors wrote in a brief filed in connection with a motion to reduce the 12-year prison term Franklin was originally sentenced to.

My opinion - the two individuals, katzas from Israel, big and burly, sun tanned guys just off a training camp in the Negev, told Mr. Franklin that if he continued to cooperate with the American government, he would be "suicided".

That's the story I am reading between the lines here.

The prosecution claimed that Franklin was asked to fake his own suicide.

Lets play a scenario.

Lets say you are a witness in a mob case - you have witnessed some mafia hanky-panky.

One day two burly, pretty scary looking individuals show up at your door and ask you, nicely, to please stop cooperating with the prosecution, and, you know, to, please, fake your own suicide and disappear.

Would you be afraid for your life at that point?

Would you seriously think that you were asked to stage a suicide and disappear?

Or would you think that the two gentlemen, if you continued to cooperate with the government's case against the mob, would "suicide" and disappear you.

Important nuance there, no?

The great Phillip Weiss sees through this, saying

Interesting that Franklin was approached by one of his own targets, which suggests that the individual was part of the Israel lobby; that the individual was not indicted; and yet the person's suggestion--fake your own death--has the sound of a threat.

Are we the only people seeing this, Phil?

This AIPAC case is the second biggest spy scandal in American history, the biggest being, in my opinion, the Soviet spy ring which stole atomic bomb secrets for Stalin.

The fact that no one, absolutely no one took any punishment, that there was no consequence for any player in this drama - nothing happened to Rosen and Weissman, Franklin, Harman - tells me that this country no longer exists.

And, just to add icing on the Israeli cake here:

Phil's blog again:

Last week we passed along a report from Joshua Ruebner about his efforts to attend the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs “mark-up” session on the FY2010 budget. He was interested because they were supposed to discuss the United States sending Israel $2.775 billion in weapons for FY2010. Unfortunately, he wasn't even allowed in to the session.

Well, yesterday Ruebner tried again. The budget is now in front of the full House Appropriations committee, but Ruebner, and other US citizens wanting to see how their tax money is being spent, were not allowed in again.

In the end, the House Appropriations Committee voted to recommend $2.775 billion in military aid for Israel without any debate.

Democracy.

American style.

This America - it is no longer a sovereign country.

A foreign power is dictating American policy, a foreign power is in control, through its agents in country, through its lobby which pays politicians to do its bidding, through its attack dogs in the media.

I see America for what it has become - a patsy.

And Americans for what they truly are - a pathetic, ignorant mass of idiots too busy, too hassled to pay attention to anything other than American Idol and baseball scores.

After the Iraq war, after millions of Iraqi dead, after Abu Ghraib torture (the media concentrated on asking whether waterboarding is torture, bait-and-switch'ing the public from rapes, electrocutions, dogs being sicced and sodomization which was ALSO in the (unreleased by US government) photos....

After our endless support for the racist, apartheid regime of Israel, which is the only so called "Western" nation with an openly racist system ("here's another $3 billion, Israel; enjoy!" - paid by American taxpayers)...

This AIPAC spy case - with Rosen and Weissman and Franklin and Harman - broke me.

I am now ashamed to be called an American.

Perhaps if we ever get our country back from a foreign power which so clearly calls the shots, I will become proud again.

But now, I will no longer display the stars and stripes.

I do not know how to react to American Iraq war veterans - it will be hard to not laugh hysterically as they strut and puff their chests and proclaim themselves heroes, serving their country.

What can one say to a war veteran who lost his (or her) legs in Iraq?

That Israel thanks them for their sacrifice?

That the people who send them to die there were not serving American interests?

I am broken.

Might as well raise the Israeli star of David flag in the yard, and sing the Israeli national anthem when the American anthem is sung, getting dirty or, perhaps more probably, quizzical looks from the fat, obese, sloppy sheep standing around me.

This is it.

America lost.

We lost the country.