De Pro Israel Lobby 85

Een schitterend voorbeeld van propaganda staat vandaag op pagina 5 van de Volkskrant. Midden op de pagina staat een vijf-kolommenbrede foto van twee rennende figuren. De bijgaande tekst is als volgt: 'Quds-raketten voor Israel. Leden van de Palestijnse Islamitische Jihad rennen met twee Quds-raketten door een olijfbooomgaard in het oostelijk deel van Gaza-stad. Palestijnen zijn vrijdag na een bestand van een half jaar weer begonnen raketten op Israel af te schieten. Bij een raketinslag werd zondag een Thaise gastarbeider gedood en werd een pand in Sderot zwaar beschadigd. Een hoge Israelische officier zei dat een militaire aanval in Gazastrook vrijwel onafwendbaar is geworden.'

Zo dus, het is duidelijk: zonder provocatie beschieten Palestijnse terroristen Israel met raketten, waarbij een onschuldige burger om het leven kwam. Die aanvallen moeten wel beantwoord worden met een militair optreden van Israel. Oog om oog etc. Wat klopt er aan dit verhaal niet? Welnu, het feit dat de Volkskrant de context verzwijgt, oorzaak en gevolg, de voorgeschiedenis. Dit berichtte de Volkskrant 6 dagen geleden, net als alle andere Nederlandse commerciele massamedia:

'Geweld aan vooravond eind bestand Gaza

ANP gepubliceerd op 16 december 2008 08:59, bijgewerkt op 09:02
TEL AVIV - Twee dagen voor het einde van het bestand tussen Israël en Hamas schoot het Israëlische leger op de Westelijke Jordaanoever een Palestijn dood en vuurden strijders vanuit de Gazastrook raketten af op Israël. Dat meldden Israëlische media.
Militairen in burger doodden in een dorp bij Jenin een 20-jarig lid van de Islamitische Jihad. Zij openden het vuur op de man toen hij probeerde te vluchten. Enkele uren later bestookte de Islamitische Jihad uit vergelding Israël met vier raketten zonder schade aan te richten.
Vrijdag loopt een al zes maanden durende wapenstilstand in de Gazastrook tussen Israël en Hamas af. Volgens Hamas houdt Israël zich niet aan de voorwaarden van het akkoord.'

Geen van de Nederlandse commerciele massamedia berichtte waarom aan de vooravond van het einde van het bestand Israelische 'militairen in burger in een dorp bij Jenin een 20-jarig lid van de Islamitische Jihad [doodden]. Zij openden het vuur op de man toen hij probeerde te vluchten.' Het woord 'doodden' is een eufemisme. Vermoorden was beter geweest, want de man is naar ik aanneem nog steeds een verdachte en Israel bezit geen rechtsbevoegdheid om op het grondgebied van anderen zomaar verdachten standrechtelijk te executeren. Dat recht hebben de Palestijnen ook niet, en dat zouden de commerciele massamedia ook meteen hebben laten weten in hun berichtgeving. Bovendien, hoe weet de Volkskrant zo zeker dat het hier gaat om 'een 20-jarig lid van de Islamitische Jihad.' De krant heeft dit niet kunnen checken dus moeten we ervan uitgaan dat de Volkskrant het Israelische leger klakkeloos napraat. Een journalistieke vraag is nu waarom Israel vlak voor het einde van een bestand ineens een Palestijnse verdachte vermoord? (Overigens, verdacht van wat? Wegrennen?) Die moord lijkt me niet slim, want daarmee brengt Israel de voortzetting van het bestand in gevaar, zoals nu ook blijkt. Tenzij men verwacht dat Palestijnen zich zonder verzet laten afslachten. Daarom de vraag: waarom zou Israel dit doen? De enige plausibele verklaring is dat Israel geen bestand wil, maar juist de confrontatie zoekt. Waarom zou Israel dat doen? De reden is simpel, de buitenlandse pers besteedt steeds meer aandacht aan de erbarmelijke omstandigheden waarin de bevolking van Gaza verkeert als gevolg van de Israelische terreur. En op die manier kan Israel de aandacht weer verleggen. En dat werkt zoals we aan de Volkskrant kunnen zien. De context is weer verdwenen en een verdere gewelddadighe onderdrukking van de Palestijnse bevolking is weer gelegitmeerd in de ogen van het westerse publiek. Dat is belangrijk, zeker nu de regaring Obama de macht gaat overnemen. Vandaar propaganda, en dat wordt goed begrepen door de pro-Israel lobby bij publicaties als de Volkskrant. Een nieuwe ronde moorden kan ongestoord beginnen.

Nederland en Afghanistan 187

Kunt u nog herinneren hoe zeven jaar geleden de westerse commerciele massamedia iedereen doodsbenauwd probeerden te maken met deze maffe tekeningen? Allemaal op niets gebaseerd natuurlijk, maar het verkocht wel en daar ging het mijn collega's om.

Hoe lang gaat deze Nederlandse regering nog meedoen aan het PEPEREDURE theater in AFGHANISTAN?

'Afghan leader sends demands to US on troop conduct
Afghanistan's president says he has sent list of demands to US about troops' role
RAHIM FAIEZAP News
Dec 18, 2008 09:13 EST
The Afghan president has sent a list of demands to the United States government about troop conduct ahead of the arrival of more U.S. forces, pressing for cooperation with his government.President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called for foreign troops to do more to prevent civilian deaths during strikes and raids. He also wants them to show more respect for the country's traditional Muslim culture, in which men can cause great affront by entering a house with women inside.
In a speech Thursday, he said he asked last month that the U.S. cooperate with the Afghan government and security forces in all its operations.
"Part of that list was that they shouldn't, on their own, enter the houses of our people and bombard our villages and detain our people," Karzai said.
Karzai did not say if he had received any response from the U.S., and a spokesman for the presidency could not be reached for further details. U.S. officials were not available for immediate comment.
Still, American officials have quietly acknowledged they hesitate to share detailed plans of raids against militant commanders for fear that government officials connected to the Taliban could tip off the militants.
Karzai spoke the day after the U.N. chief in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, called for international military forces to revise their agreements with the Afghan government to include practices that will better safeguard civilians.
The U.N. said in September that 577 Afghan civilians had been killed this year by U.S., NATO and Afghan troops, a 21 percent jump from 2007. However, the U.N. tally said Taliban fighters and other insurgents had killed even more civilians: at least 800 this year.
Many coalition raids and strikes do occur with Afghan army troops or Afghan police, but not all, and there is not a standardized code of conduct across forces on how to operate in Afghan towns and villages.'
Source: AP News

http://wire.antiwar.com/2008/12/18/

afghan-leader-sends-demands-to-us-on-troop-conduct/

De Israelische Terreur 490

Deze informatie van professor Richard Falk wordt door de Nederlandse commerciele massamedia verzwegen omdat het niet in de pro-Israel propaganda past. Zijn uitzetting is toch opmerkelijk nieuws, aangezien deze Amerikaanse geleerde van joodse afkomst is en Israel de staat voor Joden is.

'My expulsion from Israel
When I arrived in Israel as a UN representative I knew there might be problems at the airport. And there were
* Richard Falk
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 December 2008 11.30 GMT


On December 14, I arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel to carry out my UN role as special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.
I was leading a mission that had intended to visit the West Bank and Gaza to prepare a report on Israel's compliance with human rights standards and international humanitarian law. Meetings had been scheduled on an hourly basis during the six days, starting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, the following day.
I knew that there might be problems at the airport. Israel had strongly opposed my appointment a few months earlier and its foreign ministry had issued a statement that it would bar my entry if I came to Israel in my capacity as a UN representative.
At the same time, I would not have made the long journey from California, where I live, had I not been reasonably optimistic about my chances of getting in. Israel was informed that I would lead the mission and given a copy of my itinerary, and issued visas to the two people assisting me: a staff security person and an assistant, both of whom work at the office of the high commissioner of human rights in Geneva.
To avoid an incident at the airport, Israel could have either refused to grant visas or communicated to the UN that I would not be allowed to enter, but neither step was taken. It seemed that Israel wanted to teach me, and more significantly, the UN a lesson: there will be no cooperation with those who make strong criticisms of Israel's occupation policy.
After being denied entry, I was put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems. At this point, I was treated not as a UN representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed.
I was separated from my two UN companions who were allowed to enter Israel and taken to the airport detention facility a mile or so away.
I was required to put all my bags and cell phone in a room and taken to a locked tiny room that smelled of urine and filth. It contained five other detainees and was an unwelcome invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined, which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food and lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office.
Of course, my disappointment and harsh confinement were trivial matters, not by themselves worthy of notice, given the sorts of serious hardships that millions around the world daily endure. Their importance is largely symbolic. I am an individual who had done nothing wrong beyond express strong disapproval of policies of a sovereign state. More importantly, the obvious intention was to humble me as a UN representative and thereby send a message of defiance to the United Nations.
Israel had all along accused me of bias and of making inflammatory charges relating to the occupation of Palestinian territories. I deny that I am biased, but rather insist that I have tried to be truthful in assessing the facts and relevant law. It is the character of the occupation that gives rise to sharp criticism of Israel's approach, especially its harsh blockade of Gaza, resulting in the collective punishment of the 1.5 million inhabitants. By attacking the observer rather than what is observed, Israel plays a clever mind game. It directs attention away from the realities of the occupation, practising effectively a politics of distraction.
The blockade of Gaza serves no legitimate Israeli function. It is supposedly imposed in retaliation for some Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that have been fired across the border at the Israeli town of Sderot. The wrongfulness of firing such rockets is unquestionable, yet this in no way justifies indiscriminate Israeli retaliation against the entire civilian population of Gaza.
The purpose of my reports is to document on behalf of the UN the urgency of the situation in Gaza and elsewhere in occupied Palestine.
Such work is particularly important now as there are signs of a renewed escalation of violence and even of a threatened Israeli reoccupation.
Before such a catastrophe happens, it is important to make the situation as transparent as possible, and that is what I had hoped to do in carrying out my mission. Although denied entry, my effort will continue to use all available means to document the realities of the Israeli occupation as truthfully as possible.
€ Richard Falk is professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories

De Israelische Terreur 489

Foreign Office advises Britons not to buy Israeli settlement properties
Ian Black Middle East editor
The Guardian, Friday 19 December 2008

British citizens are to be formally advised by the government not to buy property in settlements in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, a move that marks a proactive shift of its position on a core issue of the Middle East conflict.
The advice, to be posted on the Foreign Office (FCO) website in the next 48 hours, will warn explicitly that potential purchasers of property in a settlement should consider that a future peace agreement "could have consequences for that property", FCO officials confirmed last night.
The government has long insisted that settlements beyond the pre-1967 war "green line" border, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights — both of which have been annexed by Israel — are illegal.
But it has never before linked this to purchase of property. Officials insist there is no change of policy but say that by spelling out the advice they are underlining the urgency and sensitivity of the issue.
The move follows a meeting on Monday between Gordon Brown and the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad. On Tuesday Brown also met Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister.
The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, said: "This is a dramatic change of policy by Great Britain. They have gone a long way in being critical of Israel's policies. In the past they have talked about settlement being an obstacle to peace and so on. But this is a milestone. They are now being proactive and very serious."
A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London said: "If this is true it is highly disappointing in the light of the successful visit paid by Prime Minister Olmert to the UK during which he held frank and detailed discussion of the measures Israel is willing to take to advance the peace process with the Palestinians."
Brown told Fayyad in a letter dated 9 December and seen by the Guardian: "We have long expressed our opposition to settlement activity. But that activity has continued and has accelerated since the Annapolis process was launched. I share your frustration at this. The UK is now looking at what effective action we can take to discourage settlement expansion.
"Given our clear position on settlements it follows that we would not want any British national to purchase property inside an illegal settlement."
Settler violence is also causing concern. The Israeli government depicts violent settlers as aberrant citizens engaged in rogue behaviour. But a report released yesterday by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says these ultranationalists have been encouraged by the state to take over Palestinian land and natural resources.
"Settler violence is not random criminal activity; in most cases it is ideology-driven, organised violence, the goal of which is to assert settler dominance in the area," the report on settler violence says.
Settlers have increasingly been mobilising in groups, sometimes of up to 100 people, and targeting Palestinians as young as eight and as elderly as 95, the report continues. OCHA's tally of settler violence is not comprehensive but it shows that in 2006 there were 182 attacks, with 243 in 2007 and 290 in the first 10 months of 2008.
While the number of attacks against settlers is much lower, OCHA says that in 2006 Palestinians killed 10 settlers while settlers killed four Palestinians.
In a draft warning to Britons about buying settlement properties, the FCO states: "Potential purchasers should be aware that a future peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians or between Israel and Syria could have consequences for the property they purchased." The nearest precedent is a warning to UK citizens about the risks of buying property in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus.
For the last few years real estate fairs in London and Manchester have advertised properties for sale in Israeli settlements such as Maale Adumim and Har Homa, both in the West Bank.
"The risks to someone purchasing property in a settlement could go as far as aiding and abetting a grave breach of the Geneva convention – outlawing extensive appropriation of property not justified by military necessity," said Daniel Machover, a lawyer and expert on the issue.
Britain is seeking ways to keep alive hopes of a two-state solution to the conflict despite uncertainty over the outcome of the Israel elections, the split between the Palestinian authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the interregnum between US administrations.
On another front, Britain has been taking a leading role in persuading the EU to label products made in settlements in the West Bank, some of which have been using false addresses within Israel proper.

Zie: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/19/israelandthepalestinians-foreignpolicy

Obama 71

Obama en zijn regering zijn gekozen om de blanke middenklasse te redden die onder acht jaar Bush zwaar geleden heeft. Een feit dat de Nederlandse commerciele massamedia nooit serieus geanalyseerd heeft. Omdat de VS economisch niet kan concurreren met de rest van de wereld hoopt de Amerikaanse elite dat nieuwe zogeheten groene technologie de Amerikaanse economie uit het slop zal trekken. Vandaar dat woordvoerders van de elite als Thomas Friedman nu ineens een ecologische evangelie verspreiden. Of het zal lukken is niet duidelijk, maar de koers die men gaat varen is helder.

'Biden To Chair White House Middle Class Task Force

KEVIN FREKING December 21, 2008 12:51 PM EST

WASHINGTON — As vice president, Joe Biden will oversee an Obama administration effort to find ways of building up the ranks of the middle class, that ambiguously defined segment of society most Americans identify with.
The task force will include four Cabinet members as well as other presidential advisers, the Obama transition team announced Sunday.
The goal is to recommend proposals to ensure the middle class is "no longer being left behind," Biden said. The proposals could include executive orders and legislative plans.
"Our charge is to look at existing and future policies across the board and use a yard stick to measure how they are impacting the working and middle-class families," Biden said in a statement released Sunday. "Is the number of these families growing? Are they prospering? President-elect Obama and I know the economic health of working families has eroded, and we intend to turn that around."
Overseeing a task force has become tradition for vice presidents.
Dick Cheney led a task force on energy. Al Gore had the task of reinventing government. George H.W. Bush, while serving as Ronald Reagan's vice president, oversaw a task force charged with reducing government regulation. While all of those efforts resulted in some accomplishments, it's also clear that the issues they confronted were so large and systemic that many could and did question the progress they made.
Biden said the measure of economic success in an Obama administration would be whether the middle class was growing.
The transition team promised the task force's work would be transparent, with annual reports on its findings and recommendations. Also, any submissions from outside groups are to be posted on the Internet. By comparison, Cheney, a former oil man, fought to keep the White House energy task force's deliberations secret.
Story continues below
Task force members will include the secretaries of labor, health and human services, education, and commerce, as well as the directors of the National Economic Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council and the head of the Council of Economic Advisers.
In an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Biden took care to define his role as vice president as going beyond a particular task. He said that when he discussed the job with Barack Obama during the campaign, he told Obama he didn't "want to be the guy that goes out and has a specific assignment." Rather, he wanted to have a voice in every matter of importance.'

Lees verder: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/21/biden-to-chair-white-hous_n_152651.html

Het Neoliberale Geloof 301

Obey: U.S. falling into 'massive hole'
By DAVID ROGERS 12/19/08 5:14 AM EST

There is growing alarm and anger among Democrats over the economy Barack Obama will inherit.
As Democrats move closer to taking command in Washington, there is growing alarm and anger in the party over the economy Barack Obama will inherit and the huge cost incurred after months of stalemate between Congress and President Bush over how to respond.
Thursday night, the White House was hoping to announce — possibly as early as Friday — plans to stave off bankruptcies in the auto industry by using available Treasury funds, a decision favored by Democrats. But Congress and President Bush remain at loggerheads over any larger fiscal stimulus package — even after leading economists in both parties have urged action.
Democrats are reduced to speaking of a "jobs salvaging" bill that can only hope to slow the rise in unemployment next year. Discussions have moved past just increasing food stamp and unemployment benefits and also include the possibility of Washington helping workers who lose their jobs to finance COBRA payments needed to keep their family healthcare coverage.
Given the long impasse, speed is a huge priority. The first choice seems to be a single large fiscal-stimulus bill, but it can’t be ruled out that the money could move in tranches if other legislative vehicles become available.
Caught in the middle is House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, who must spearhead the recovery package for Obama next month. He told Politico that the transition has proven to be "a disaster for the country because Bush is sitting around like Hoover did."
"The target keeps changing, it keeps getting worse," the Wisconsin Democrat said of new estimates for what will be needed to jolt the economy.
"These are calamitous events. While I think people know the economy is in trouble, I still don’t think they have a full appreciation of just how close we are to falling in the pit.
"The tragedy is [that] immense damage is going to be done to the country over the next 30 to 40 days before Obama takes office, and government is sitting here in neutral trying to decide if it is going to go forward or backward.
"We should have been able to get together with Bush and pass a major package right now. Every day we don’t makes this problem deeper and deeper," Obey said. "And the deeper it goes, the longer it is likely to last."
"It is a massive, massive hole that we are about to fall into unless we do something dramatic. And the question is whether it will be met by a massive and effective package."'

Lees verder: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16735.html

Jim Sinclair 5

'Re: Chairman's Corner - Sunday, December 21, 2008
Signs Of The Evil Pretenders -- How To Recognize Manipulation
Author: Jim Sinclair
=======================================================================
Dear Friends,
What you have not done, you may well not be able to do after Manipulation of price, a criminal, regulatory (if the regulator cares to regulate) and commercial crime of fraud subject to civil litigation and criminal law is today the major means of what funds consider trading. It is not trading but rather criminal activity with both criminal and civil law remedies. It takes the form today primarily of pool short selling or naked short selling as a civil and criminal conspiracy to defraud.
Manipulation is both on the short as well as long side. It does not matter if the direction is welcome to you, both up and down is the practice of market sociopaths. Now it is most prominent as a pounding pool short selling conspiracy, making offerings not to trade but to scare buyers and late hour or after hour computer trades where you trade with two different names - a camouflaged trading scheme with yourself.
Let's look at a few common sense rules:
1. No one throws money away on purpose. No one sells large blocks of shares at deep discounts off the price of closing on one exchange or another. Usually a computerized trading platform is the single manipulator, trading with himself via the conspiracy of another called "Pool Short Selling" or "Parking."
This can occur when a situation is running hard towards the old high with a big illegal short interest attempting to save itself.
It can also occur when a major interest is a buyer who sells in a most disorderly manner to shake out some weak longs that have followed in the footpath of the buyer buying now in front of the major interest.
This is called "Shaking the Tree."
2. Generally in the commodity world, certainly in gold and silver, the 'Bombastic Bastards" enter the market. These traders enter the market generally with the same intentions as number one, committing the same crimes as number one that are subject to civil, regulatory (if there are any or any willing to enforce them) and criminal remedies.
Equity traders they are somewhat more sophisticated in the sense that these dastardly cowards hide behind the bushes operating from the shadows for what they think is security in their misbehaviour.
First the Bombastic Bastards take their position, such as selling into a rising market that is stretched out. Now enters the BBs hitting all the small bids. As the buyers begin to fade, they offer huge amounts knowing there are no buyers.
As a result the price wilt or vaults to their advantage. The civil, regulatory and criminal event here is to move a price without taking real risk, as there is never any intention of selling the large amount offered. It is proved by same similar patterns over time.
3. The final is dirty tricks. You remember the hatchet job that was done on Royal Gold. You also remember how low it got and how high it went after that. I have always believed that RGLD has an $80 target on it. I believed that then and now.
Let me tell you about another dirty trick.
Say we exaggerated beyond belief the cost of mining for a company trying to color an entire area the same.
Cash costs of mining today is plus or minus the profit or expense of the short of gold derivative taken for that exact project.
International GAAP now demands that the short of product derivative taken must be identified when taken to the project for which it is taken. Then the profit or loss of the short of product derivative must be credited or debited to the appropriate project DIRECTLY.
To falsely define a social or political event as it applies to a company is another manipulative supporting strategy. When a company has a problem with the locals in a country known for its friendly and welcoming behaviours, you can be sure that company did something really bad and deserves it. The key here is EXAGGERATE.
This is common to anti global, anti corporate, pro-socialism organizations and follows the same exact script from one exaggeration to the next exaggeration.
I know, as I was Chairman of Sutton Resources and Kahama Mining when such an alleged event occurred. You can review that by reading the publication, "The Men Who Moil for Gold" found on the net at the site of the University of Toronto publications.
What the paid NGA (Non Governmental Agency) anti globalism organizations do is multiply the number of people and damages, all with a splash of violence for color. Next the manipulator using the NGA gets a paid friend to get the nonexistent or grossly exaggerated story on a wire service or into some publication to benefit the manipulator's position.
This is known as "Dirty Tricks."
Know that the long side manipulator is as much a criminal as is the short side manipulator. To say otherwise is to prostitute my principles.'