Gilad Atzmon

Now it’s time to rid government of Israel’s stooges

London is "angry" over the use of stolen identities by the Dubai assassins and points its finger at the Jewish state and its notorious Mossad espionage agency. The Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, was summoned yesterday by the foreign minister to “share information”. In practice Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of involvement in the scandalous assassination, however to signal its displeasure the Foreign Office ignored an Israeli plea to keep the summons secret. "Relations were in the freezer before this. They are in the deep freeze now," a British official told the Guardian.

David Miliband’s duplicity

The British anger at Israel would be a positive signal in the right direction if we were not aware of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband investing enormous efforts trying to "amend" Britain’s ethical stand just to appease Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and other Israeli leaders. The British Foreign Ministry’s reaction could almost be deemed a revelation, were we able to forget that just five weeks before Israel launched its lethal criminal attack against Gaza, David Miliband visited Sderot, an Israeli town on the Gaza border to offer his support. "No country can accept constant bombardment of its citizens”, Miliband told the people of Sderot. He then continued “Israel should, above all, seek to protect its own citizens". It was that foolish statement by Britain’s Foreign Secretary that made us all complicit in Israel’s flattening of Gaza. Bearing these facts in mind, it is rather unlikely that the Israeli Ambassador to Britain was sweating while ‘sharing information’ with the chief aid to the British Foreign Secretary.

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Stephen Lendman

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

Project Censored's top 2010 story was "US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street," highlighting that since 2001, "eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties." It's no surprise that they own them, what Wall Street Watch.org showed in a March 2009 Essential Information and Consumer Education Foundation report titled,"Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America."

The accompanying press release said:

Over the past decade, "$5 billion in political contributions bought Wall Street freedom from regulation, (and) restraint." From 1998 - 2008, "Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates (the FIRE sector)" spent over $1.7 billion in political contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists, in return for which:

-- they were freed from regulation;

-- could speculate on financial derivatives and an alphabet soup of securitized garbage, including asset-backed securities (ABSs), mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), collateralized bond obligations (CBOs), credit default swaps (CDSs), and collateralized fund obligations (CFOs) - combined, sliced, diced, packaged, repackaged, and sold in tranches to sophisticated and ordinary investors, many unwittingly through mutual funds, 401(k)s, pensions, and the like;

-- could merge commercial and investment banking and insurance operations;

-- bilk investors and the public through fraudulent schemes; and

-- get trillions of bailout dollars when the economy crashed.

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Joe Stack (1956-2010)

Text of denunciation of American tax system by alleged pilot in Texas crash

Text of a message believed to have been posted online by the alleged pilot of a small plane that crashed Feb. 18 into an office complex in Austin, Texas:

If you're reading this, you're no doubt asking yourself, "Why did this have to happen?" The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn't enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I'm not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was "no taxation without representation". I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principle is promptly labeled a "crackpot", traitor and worse.

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Deborah Stockton

Kinzers, PA – At 9:40 a.m. Thursday, February 4, only a few miles from the scene of the Nickel Mines Amish massacre of 2006, another drama against the Amish began as agents of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) came onto the property of Amish farmer Dan Allgyer, without permission, claiming to be conducting an investigation.

Agents Joshua Schafer and Deborah Haney, from the Delaware FDA office, drove past Allgyer’s “No Trespassing” signs and up his driveway almost to his barn, where Allgyer happened to be outside. Allgyer approached the car, the agents got out and Allgyer asked them why they were there. They produced a piece of paper, asked Allgyer if he was Dan Allgyer, which Allgyer confirmed, asked him his middle initial and phone number, entered the information on the paper, told Allgyer they were there to do an inspection and started reading the paper to him, saying it gave them jurisdiction to be there.

The agents – Schafer did most of the talking – said they had a right to be there because “you produce food for human consumption.” Dan asked why they believed that and they said, “Well, you have cows. You cannot be consuming all the milk you produce.” They further stated, “If you get a milk truck in to move all this milk you sell milk to the public, therefore we have jurisdiction.” Dan said, “This is a private farm, I do not sell anything to the public.” As they continued to harass him about doing an inspection, Allgyer said, “You can sit in your car. I will call my lawyer.” The agents remained standing.

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Irish4Palestine

[From Desertpeace:] "In December Al-Jazeera covered Congressman Baird’s and Keith Ellison’s efforts. Watch closely in this video. Congressman Brian Baird of Washington stood before the House of Representatives with a poster showing dead Palestinian children. He stated, “Those children deserve someone to ask, why they died” Yes they do.""

The other day our good friend at Desertpeace made a post about Congressman Brian Baird of Washington USA. Who has come out swinging (in a good way) on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

When I read DP's post I was shocked that an American congressman would have the "Chutzpah" to say things like that, what with AIPAC. I even left a comment on DP's blog where I said; I hoped Congressman Baird had a food taster and good security at his home. I also said I hoped he did not expect to ever get re-elected, what with AIPAC who will assuredly be "hot on his trail" to ensure a swift demise of his political career much like a redux of Charles Freeman.

But now I have the answer as to why Congressman Baird felt free enough to speak the truth. The answer follows an excerpt of original post below:

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Michael Hudson

Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times yesterday, February 16 outlining how to put the U.S. economy on rations. Not in those words, of course. Just the opposite: If the government hadn’t bailed out Wall Street’s bad loans, he claims, “unemployment could have exceeded the 25 per cent level of the Great Depression.” Without wealth at the top, there would be nothing to trickle down.

The reality, of course, is that bailing out casino capitalist speculators on the winning side of A.I.G.’s debt swaps and CDO derivatives didn’t save a single job. It certainly hasn’t lowered the economy’s debt overhead. But matters will soon improve, if Congress will dispel the present cloud of “uncertainty” as to whether any agency less friendly than the Federal Reserve might regulate the banks.

Paulson spelled out in step-by-step detail the strategy of “doing God’s work,” as his Goldman Sachs colleague Larry Blankfein sanctimoniously explained Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Now that pro-financial free-market doctrine is achieving the status of religion, I wonder whether this proposal violates the separation of church and state. Neoliberal economics may be a travesty of religion, but it is the closest thing to a Church that Americans have these days, replete with its Inquisition operating out of the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Columbia.

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