French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the grouping “will build peace in the Mediterranean together, like yesterday we built peace in Europe”.

The Hour of Truth: The Euromediterranean Project To Become the Mediterranean Union
March 4th 2008 - the above story appeared on a blog in Europe. They warned the Irish not to buy into the plan. Ireland voted down the opportunity to join,… then the real pressure started!

On an Ancient Sea, Europe Dreams and Schemes The “Ancient Sea…” article above is from the New York Times
August 5th 2007
“The latest example comes from France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose efforts to move Europe, not to mention French arms industries, closer to northern Africa are being presented within a vision of a new union of nations along the Mediterranean.”

(I recieved an email asking if the launch of the Mediterranean Union signed a few days ago might be the start of the 7 year tribulation? - Then I was forwarded this email from a friend comparing two maps that detail the Roman empire and the plans for Europe now. Seems that history is a broken record, broken record, broken record)

Map of The Roman Empire

This map shows the extent of the Roman Empire at three times in history: at the death of Caesar (44 B.C.E.), at the death of Augustus (14 C.E.), and at the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 C.E.). The gains are cumulative: this means that Aurelius’ empire included the areas that were in Caesar’s and Augustus’ realm, not just the areas colored red.

Caesar re-founded Corinth in 44 C.E., when the Roman Empire had spread to the darker orange color. This area plus the green area gives an idea of the extent of the Roman Empire during the time of Paul.

“The politics [foreign policy] of a state are in its geography.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte I, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, and Mediator of the Helvetic (Swiss) Confederation

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Back on July 2, Barack Obama read his “public service” address, and it contained this line that hasn’t received much notice:

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set… We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

LOL What? Obama’s going to create a civilian national security force as strong as the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines — combined? With the same budget? And hardware, apparently? Holy %^&*!

This inconceivably vast proposal is hardly being mentioned by the MSM; just a throwaway line in last week’s speech about voluntarism. But what will this “civilian national security force” do? Obama didn’t say. Where will they get their funding? Didn’t say. Wouldn’t this force be at least extra-constitutional, if not unconstitutional? Who would control them? Would service be mandatory like his other youth “volunteer” initiatives? ::shrug::

At this same speech, he promised to withhold funds from school districts that don’t make their junior high and high schoolers serve 50 hours a year. 100 hours for college students, provided their type of service is deemed acceptable by a sprawling new Federal bureaucracy.

Oh, and Obama’s going to double the size of the Peace Corps while quadrupling AmeriCorps. I’m curious if anyone will be left to fill all the newly vacated private sector jobs. St. Barack concluded his speech with this gem: “Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it.”

But what if I love my country the way it is?

Throwing more kerosene on the mob’s torches, Obama is moving his nomination acceptance speech to Denver’s 75,000-seat outdoor stadium. And is thinking about a speech at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. Odd that he didn’t choose Nuremberg.

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No matter what you think of blogging, Internet-based citizen journalism is a real threat, not just to traditional media business models but to totalitarian governments. How do we know that bloggers are drawing blood? Because some governments are hitting back harder and harder; last year saw a tripling in the number of bloggers arrested around the world compared to 2006, according to a report from the University of Washington
Last year, 2007, was a record year for blogger arrests, with three times as many as in 2006. Egypt, Iran and China are the most dangerous places to blog about political life, accounting for more than half of all arrests since blogging became big,” said Assistant Professor Phil Howard, lead author of the World Information Access Report. Howard also suggests that the real number of arrests may be much higher, as not every arrest makes it into the media.
The report separates the reason for arrests into six categories: violation of cultural norms, blogging involved with social protest, blogging about public policy, blogging about political figures, exposing corruption or human rights violations, and finally “other.” In addition to Iran, Egypt and China, Middle Eastern regimes in Syria and Saudi Arabia, and South East Asian nations such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand also figure in the report. 2007 saw 36 bloggers arrested around the world, and since 2003 at least 64 have been arrested, with a total of 940 months of prison time served.

Even liberal democracies are not immune; France, Canada, the USA, and UK have all arrested people following their blogging activity since 2004. However, some of these cases might not seem so egregious; last year a blogger was arrested in Los Angeles following his postings about his attraction to young girls, and the beginning of 2008 saw an arrest in the UK after one Gavin Best used his blog to threaten a police officer’s family following his arrest for a large number of thefts.

Another troubling trend has been the complicity of western Internet firms such as Yahoo and Google, both of whom have handed over details of bloggers to the Chinese government, despite publicly condemning such policies.

The Internet isn’t just landing people in prison; occasionally it helps get them out too. Earlier this year there was the widely publicized case in Egypt where US blogger James Buck used Twitter, the microblogging platform, to alert his friends and colleagues to the fact that he’d been arrested following his efforts to cover an anti-government protest.

Meanwhile, the worldwide blogging community shows no signs of going away, although fear of persecution may drive more of them to do so anonymously. But long may they continue to show that the pen (or, in this case, the keyboard) is mightier than the sword.

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A controversial plan to study and profile domestic terrorism was scrapped after popular push back, however, the spirit of the legislation lives on in Senator Joe Lieberman’s office.

HR 1955, “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007″ passed the House in October 2007 with almost unanimous support. The bill immediately came under fire from civil liberties watchdogs because of what many saw as a deliberate targeting of Muslims and Arabs and the possible chilling effect it might have on free speech.

The original bill intended to set up a government commission to investigate the supposed threat of domestically produced terrorists and the ideologies that underpin their radicalization. The ten-member commission was to be empowered to “hold hearings and sit and act at such times and places, take such testimony, receive such evidence, and administer such oaths as the Commission considers advisable to carry out its duties.” The bill also singled out the Internet as a vehicle for terrorists to spread their ideology with the intention of recruiting and training new terrorists.

After significant public pressure, the bill stalled in the Senate. However, Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut), the current chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has embraced the thrust of the legislation and has been working to push forward some of the goals of the original bill, including an attempt to weed out terrorist propaganda from the Internet.

Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the non-profit Center for Democracy and Technology has spoken out against the assault on Internet speech. “I have more concern about what Senator Lieberman is doing than about HR 1955. [Lieberman] is no friend of civil liberties,” Dempsey told Truthout, adding “there is concern that what he has planned will be worse than HR 1955.”

Dempsey spoke out in favor of the spirit of HR 1955, calling the outpouring of criticism “hypothetical and hyperbolic.” In his view, the study of radicalization and home grown ideologically based violence is worthwhile. However, he objects to recent actions taken by Lieberman.

On May 19, Lieberman sent a letter to Google Inc.’s CEO Eric Schmidt demanding that Google “immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations from YouTube.”

“By taking action to curtail the use of YouTube to disseminate the goals and methods of those who wish to kill innocent civilians, Google will make a singularly important contribution to this important national effort,” Lieberman wrote.

Google fired back, refusing to take off material that did not violate its community guidelines. “While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view,” Schmidt said in response, adding, “we believe that YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate, we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds.”

Google removed some of the videos that violated their rules against posting violence and hate speech, but made a point to write, “most of the videos, which did not contain violent or hate speech content, were not removed because they do not violate our Community Guidelines.”

“I think that Senator Lieberman’s actions vis-a-vis Google were improper,” Dempsey said. “A blame the messenger approach doesn’t make sense as a response to radical violence. The notion that taking the videos off of YouTube will accomplish anything shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Internet. Take the videos off of YouTube and they’ll appear elsewhere.”

Senator Lieberman’s staff failed to return calls for comment.

A New York Times editorial called Lieberman’s claims about the Internet “ludicrous,” and warned of an attempt to censor the Internet. Lieberman defended himself in a response letter, saying, “the peril here is not to legitimate dissent but to our fundamental right of self-defense.”

According to civil liberties activists, Chairman Lieberman has been spearheading an effort to censor speech on the Internet. His committee recently released a report titled “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, And The Home Grown Terrorism Threat,” (PDF) a report detailing the use of web sites and Internet tools to spread pro-terrorism propaganda.

The report repeatedly blames Internet web sites and chat rooms for “radicalization,” calling the web sites “portals” through which potential terrorists can “participate in the global violent Islamist movement and recruit others to their cause.” As civil liberties groups have pointed out, the report focuses solely on terrorism seen as associated with Islam.

Also, the report relies heavily on experts from inside the US national security apparatus, with only one research study cited. The study by the New York Police Department details a hypothetical four step “radicalization process”. The report was criticized by a coalition of civil liberties groups as “statistically and methodologically flawed,” in a letter they wrote in response to the report.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington, DC, legislative office, said that Lieberman “is trying to decide what he thinks should go on the Internet,” which, she said, “reeks of an interest in censoring all sorts of different dialogs.”

“If someone criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and favors Hamas, should that be censored?” Fredrickson asked.

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Behind the Rise in Prices: The Plan to Torpedo the Dollar By Danny Schechter

Who do you think was one of the Bush Administration’s key players on the economy?

If you say Paulson or Bernanke, you might be half right. But there’s another no-name lurking around in the background who tends to be doing the wrong thing at every key moment in the covert history of the Bush (or should we day “Bush League”) Republic.

His name is Jim Wilkinson. He helped organize the GOP “protest”/obstruction of the Miami election recount in 2000. He was the White House’s key media spinner at the Doha Coalition Media Center in 2003. A reporter from Texas said he used techniques first perfected by Stalin. He was an architect of the Republican convention in New York in 2004. He was later dispatched to keep an eye on, and act as “dissembler-in-chief” for Condi Rice.

But at a crucial moment in the history of the Western world, Mr. “I work in the shadows” Wilkinson became chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the Goldman Sachs embed in the Cabinet.

Operative Wilkinson was then given the assignment of monitoring the world’s financial markets in a secret operation modeled no doubt on the great intelligence plan that produced the Iraq War.

His qualifications for this historic role?

See above.

As Mike Whitney reported for Information Clearing House at the end of October in 2006 — a day before Halloween — the US was then engineering the drop in the dollar to “improve competitiveness” — i.e. subsidize US exports in a flawed attempt to reduce the growing balance of trade gap. Was it a trick or treat? Read on.

The result was summed up in his headline: “The U.S. Dollar is kaput. Confidence in the currency is eroding by the day.”

Whitney saw then what our media has still yet to report or understand.

“The financial crisis that we now face was created by design. It is intended to destroy the labor movement, crush the middle class, quash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, reduce our foreign debt by 50 or 60%, force a restructuring of America’s debt, privatize all public assets and resources, and create a new regime of austerity measures which will divert more wealth to the banking and corporate establishment.”

This was months before the sub-prime meltdown in August 2007, or the more recent hike in food prices and oil prices. Their plan, blessed by business and the banks, was implemented step by step. The consequence was intended.

News, as we know, passes by so fast, and unless a story is repeated ad nauseam, no one remembers it or looks for the context and background of breaking developments.

Whitney referenced Richard Daughty’s prescient article, “The Phase of Impact.” According to Daughty, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Dept. have already manned the battle stations.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Mr. Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury, is, by virtue of his ascension to the throne, now the head of the shadowy President’s Working Group of Financial Markets (which was created by Presidential Order 12631) and he is insisting that they meet more often, namely every 6 weeks!

This whole Working Group thing was originally set up as a fallback, ad-hoc, if-then defense to deal with possible economic emergencies, but now they are routinely meeting every 6 weeks. He has even ordered Jim Wilkinson, his chief of staff, to ‘oversee the creation of a Treasury Command Center to track markets world-wide and serve as an operations base in a crisis”! (Wall Street Journal) World-wide!!

The American government is moving to take control of the world-wide economy as the result of an anticipated crisis? Yikes!”

Now let’s fast-forward to the present, well after this widely foreseen crisis erupted. As oil prices climb, the public is angry. And who do they mostly blame — the oil companies and the oil-producing states, of course. They have no clue that this crisis was the consequence of decisions made by the Bush Administration to devalue the dollar with its “crisis manager” Jim Wilkinson playing a central role.

Political writer Jerry Policoff questioned the “politicized polls” on who is responsible for the oil hikes. He noted that most people and pollsters don’t realize that the fall of the dollar precipitated all of this.

I asked him if he thought this squeeze had been orchestrated.

His response:

“I don’t think there is any doubt about that, and the Saudis said as much when Bush asked them to rev up production to bring down the price. Their reaction was pretty much that the U.S. should stop undermining the value of its own dollar before asking other countries to take a financial hit on oil.”

And sure enough, once again, as AP reported last Friday, President Bush “failed to win the help he sought from Saudi Arabia to relieve skyrocketing American gas prices.”

The President’s own bombast was also faulted for driving oil prices higher, as Bill Scher noted, “Bush’s saber-rattling with Iran raises concerns of war and more disruption of oil supplies, which prompts speculators to raise prices.”

A day later, Paulson was asked what he was going to do to strengthen the dollar. He waffled — claiming a “strong dollar” is important but then changing the subject to “market fundamentals” in a speech to pump up CONfidence. (The first three letters of that word gave the real mission away.) He avoided a straight answer with a flurry of “uh, uh, uh,”, halting phrases and contradictory assertions. The speech was characterized as “optimistically pessimistic.”

Ach, so maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye and the wallet. In Europe the press is already blaming the banks for their role in the continuing economic collapse. On May 13th, the President of Germany, Horst Kohler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund lashed out at bankers, calling them, get this, MONSTERS.

It takes one to know one.

In a page one story in the Financial Times, Kohler said global financial markets have become a “monster” that must be “put back in place” for their “massive destruction of assets.” He called for tougher and more efficient regulation.

This is the strongest criticism of bankers by a European leader since 2005 when German Vice-Chancellor Franz Muntefering attacked hedge funds as “swarms of locusts” whose profit maximization strategies “posed a danger to democracy.”

No one was listening then. Is anyone listening now?

Crises just don’t happen out of the blue unless there is a natural disaster, and even those are made worse by a deranged military junta like the one in Burma, inadequate preparations, and flawed building standards thanks to corruption.

When I was in China visiting the Three Gorges Dam, for example, I was told about a major revolt in the National People’s Assembly against the dam because it was in a known earthquake zone. The leadership rejected the concerns and imposed its will. So far, the big Dam is safe, but 400 others aren’t. 32,000 people are not alive either.

There is a financial quake still underway today with its own shocks and aftershocks. Will anyone in our media look at the precipitating role played by the bankers and the Bolsheviks including our old friend/fiend Jim Wilkinson?

You can almost predict that wherever he shows up, there’s gonna be a disaster.

And you can also predict that the mainstream press will be looking the other way, more than happy to attack any critics suspected of telling the truth or living in what the all knowing New York Times columnist David Brooks so cleverly sneers at as “Noam Chomskyland.”

Ha! Ha!

Tell that to the cashier the next time you pay too much for a loaf of bread.

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Dear Mr. Bush,

Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable. Let me remind you, Mr. Bush, of your words today:

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Bush said at Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Well Mr. Bush, the only thing this comment lacked was a mirror and some historical facts. You want to discuss the crimes of Nazis against my family and millions of other families in Europe during World War II? Let me revive a favorite phrase of yours: Bring. It. On!

The All-American Nazi

Your family’s fortune is built on the bones of the very people butchered by the Nazis, my family and the families of those in the Knesset who applauded you today:

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, government documents show.

Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Fritz Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism.

–snip–

Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel that were confiscated by the U.S. government during World War II.

Union Banking was seized by the government in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Oh, but there is much more too:

The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war, Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of “state sovereignty”.

I cannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kind of lineage. Can you? No, I don’t think so. But you can lie brazenly and attack a sitting US Senator on foreign soil by comparing him to Nazi sympathizers? Let us continue down memory lane to help those who applaud you understand just what it is they are celebrating.

The All American Traitor

You family did not stop with supporting fascists and Nazis abroad, did they Mr. Bush? Surely you must know of your grandfather’s role in the treasonous plot of 1933 to overthrow democracy in America? Let me remind you.

Grandpa Bush - that is to say, your grandfather - wanted fascism imported into the United States, or as you now call this type of transformation, “exporting democracy.” Prescott went so far as to subsidize a coup attempt in order to achieve his dream of a fascist America (see BBC report below):

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American

In other words, not only was your grandfather a self-professed fascist, he was a Nazi sympathizer and a war profiteer who should have stood trial at the Hague instead of buying his way into the US Senate. He was also a traitor, twice over.

Now clearly the crimes of Prescott Bush are not your fault, Mr. George W. Bush. Let us therefore judge your actions and words on their own merit.

Iraq is your Poland

Your reminiscence today about the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany should have been seen as your own condemnation of your own abhorrent actions against Iraq. The morbid irony of what you said will likely never register with your or your speechwriter. To truly grasp the grotesqueness of what you said requires that you have both a conscience and some understanding of history. We know you possess neither.

I will therefore make your history lesson brief, but to the point. The unprovoked attack on Poland by Germany was a war crime just as your attack against Iraq - based on lies - is a war crime. This is not my opinion. This is not a political attack. This is a fact. Consider the words of the esteemed former chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, regarding your war of aggression against Iraq:

“…Prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.”

Moreover, your reckless verbiage and partisan pandering using something as tragic and criminal as Germany’s war of aggression against Poland is an insult to all victims of those atrocities.

My grandfather’s sister and parents were having supper in their Warsaw home when a German bomb erased them from this planet. Your evoking the German atrocities against Poland in order to play dirty politics against Democrats is as offensive to me as if you had pinned a swastika onto your lapel.

Even your own words appear to be penned by Hitler’s ghost all the while you imply that Democrats are Nazis and/or terrorists - something you have done over and over. Your lies and Hitler’s lies even have the same purpose.

When you, Mr. Bush, said “see in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda,” were you aware of Adolph Hitler’s eerily similar statement? Hitler said “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”

Yet if words alone were your only weapon and words strung together into lies your only crime, you might be seen as simply the loathsome, unethical dilettante and despot that you are. Unfortunately, your crimes are many and so similar to those of the Nazi regime that at times one wonders if you are not yourself reenacting that very history you used today as an insult against a political opponent.

Your very own concentration camps

You ordered the creation of secret camps all over the world and on US territory where you also authorized the torture of countless men, women and children is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, international law, and domestic law. In other words, you authorized war crimes.

We don’t know the number of people you have had disappeared, tortured, and possibly murdered. Although we have some idea of what these numbers may be, I doubt the full truth of it all will ever be known.

In 2005, I had a CENTCOM document leaked to me illustrating that since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, more than 70,000 men, women, and children have been detained at one of your various camps Mr. Bush. We don’t know what happened to them, if they were tortured, raped, or murdered. What we do know is that less than 2% of those 70,000 had any sort of charge brought against them in a court of law. None of those alleged crimes, by the way, were acts of terrorism. We don’t know if that 70,000 figure was the actual and full count of detainees in US custody around the world in 2005. But it is safe to say that in the last 3 years since this document was published, the number of detainees has likely grown.

What we also now know, in great horror, is that at least one of your camps had a crematorium in it, which some of the US soldiers stationed there suspected was used for burning bodies:

“We had some kind of incinerator at the end of our building,” Specialist Megan Ambuhl said. “It was this huge circular thing. We just didn’t know what was incinerated in there. It could have been people, for all we knew–bodies.” Sergeant Davis was not in doubt. “It had bones in it,” he said, and he called it the crematorium. “But hey, you’re at war,” he said. “Suck it up or drive on.”

What we also now know is that Dick Cheney and senior members of your administration carried out a plan of torture and abuse that violated international and domestic law with regard to human rights, down to the type of torture tactics that would be used against prisoners in our custody. This plan, we now know, was approved by you.

Has the mirror cracked yet from this much fact or are you still peering into the political sphere hoping to ascribe your own crimes to others? It won’t work. It never has and it certainly won’t work now. We know far too much about you and yours.

I could continue listing the litany of your crimes, both against the United States and against foreign nations. I won’t. We know what you are and what you have done. Having roughly 1,000,000 dead Iraqis under your belt should have shamed you into the parasitic hole you came out of, attaching yourself to the blood of this nation and sucking it dry. Instead, you parade around, the globe-trotting horror show and anti-Semite that you are.

Yes, you are an anti-Semite

Would you say no, you are not an anti-Semite? Consider your own words when you thought no one was keeping score:

“You know what I’m gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don’t you Herman?” a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.

When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line: “I’m telling ‘em they’re all going to hell.”

Only an anti-Semite would think this type of humor is acceptable. Did you tell the Jews of Israel they were going to hell? No, instead, you told them that American Democrats are Nazi sympathizers and in an act of sheer indecency, the right wing Likud party orchestrated the greatest applause you ever got. For shame!

What this blind adoration finally proves to me is that the right-wing regime that has overtaken Israel cares nothing for its people, its heritage, and the tragic history that they now honor by applauding a man whose family-fortune was built on the bodies of their loved ones. Like their Republican (and Lieberman) counterparts in the United States, Likud does not represent its people, rather, it represents its owners. Likud has traded Israel, its Jews, their heritage and history for the same golden calf purchased and sold by the far-right wing in the United States.

I am ashamed of you Mr. Bush. I am ashamed of those who applauded your political porn played out against the hallowed backdrop of the Holocaust. I am ashamed of those reporters with you, who between them could not muster the moral courage to call you out on your ugly rhetoric and ask you about your own family Nazi ties. You are, sir, the most abhorrent human being of my lifetime. I dare say, in the lifetime of this nation.

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After several months of meeting with his top economic and military strategists, President George W. Bush gave what many consider his last important press conference, in which he formally declared war on the American Economy.

As the president stated earlier today, “The economy has been slowly stealing jobs from Americans, hitting them where it hurts most. Today, I formally announce our mission to retaliate in full force”. He went on to say that the war would continue until “the American economy was irreversibly annihilated”.

Several critics have already claimed that this declaration is a publicity stunt, since it is well known that “Bush was waging war on the Economy since 2001″. Other detractors have stated that this will only “distract the President from his War on Affordable Healthcare”.

Making a direct plea to everyday Americans, the President stated: “My fellow Americans: are you not tired of being held hostage by our invisible enemy? Rising gas prices, home foreclosures, outsourcing of jobs–the economy is to blame. Join our fight to help us bring democracy to the American people”.

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were not available for comment. However, Senator McCain was quick to say he supports the President’s decision and “was the first one to suggest taking military action against the economy”. He also stated he was “willing to bomb Iran, if that helps”.

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It is interesting that we have all the news about Britney, Lindsay, and of course, the latest on what the publicity hound Rev. Wright has just said which can be replayed for hours and hours, analyzed, dissected and discussed endlessly by serious looking idiots errr… pundits.

So, lets see how the peace negotiations are going in Israel. We sent an envoy there don’t you know (I bet you don’t… sad, but realistic).

The American bodyguards of a Bush administration envoy who was dispatched to the region to monitor the implementation of the road map engaged in a violent confrontation with right-wing Israelis who sought to disturb a visit to Hebron on Friday, Israel Radio reported.

One of the rightists is reported to have driven his jeep into the convoy accompanying General William Fraser. Subsequently, one of the vehicles in the convoy heavily collided with the jeep, according to Israel Radio.

Re-read the last paragraph. A crazed settler drove a jeep into the American envoy’s convoy, violently colliding with a car.

Now, a standard procedure in a situation like that is to:
1) avoid the incoming car and
2) open fire on it, to disable it

Because a speeding car which is driving straight towards you, in the Middle East, almost certainly can mean a suicide bomber.

Now, imagine for a second what would happen if an American envoy was in Hamas controlled territory, and a crazed Arab guy drove a jeep into one of the diplomatic convoy’s cars.

The bodyguards would probably open fire immediately, killing the driver and making a shishka-bob out of the car, while the cars of the convoy themselves swerved and drove away at full speed - after all, who knows if there isn’t a bomb in that car?

But most importantly, whatever would happen during the incident, you can be sure that the US TV “news” would be informing about this incident 24/7, the pundits would discuss the incident endlessly, while calling Hamas a terrorist organization that has no control over the territory it polices.

But the incident happened in Israel, and involved a bunch of Israeli settlers, so - no TV reports. No outrage. Nothing happened at all, according to the TV news - focus on Rev. Wright, that’s what Americans need to see!

A fracas ensued between the guards and the rightists before the Americans decided to cut the visit short, Israel Radio reported.

A fracas? Does that mean that the settlers engaged the bodyguards in hand to hand combat or a shoving match? Why didn’t the bodyguards use their guns and/or tasers?

And where the hell was the Israeli police/Army anyway?

Keep in mind, the incident was serious enough so that the American envoy cut his mission to Israel and run back to the USA.

So what will happen now?
Well, the incident will NOT be reported on American TV “news”, instead we will get the smiling mug of Rev. Wright - again, for 20th night in a row.

Israel will get its $5+ billion “aid” money this year, as it gets it every single year.

And, while before, in the days of the Liberty Incident, Israel at least apologized to America when it did an outrage towards this country, these days don’t expect this. Israel will simply ignore this and pretend nothing happened - it’s not like our president or our Congress people will ask Israel about this incident, much less nicely ask Israel to explain things, or perhaps ask it to apologize for assaulting an American envoy…

No, the last one is pure science fiction - which American politician would even dare to utter under his breath something along the lines of “Perhaps we should ask Israel to explain the incident which just happened, when the American peace envoy was attacked by Israeli citizens. We need answers, and we need an official apology from Israel for this disgraceful behaviour!”.

Well, any politician who would say something like that would be labeled by the TV pundits an anti-semite, as clearly going overboard, overreacting and criticizing our greatest friend and ally in the world, and the AIPAC and the rest of the pro-Israel Lobby in the USA would mark him and give moneys to his opponent during his next election.

I wonder how the professional pro-Israel apologists will try to spin this one, as they bury the story in digital media.

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Every 30 days, our U.S. Congress imports 182,000 immigrants into the United States. About 100,000 arrive legally and from 82,000 to 100,000 arrive illegally each month. They flood our cities at a rate of 2.2 to 2.4 million annually. Several other sources show greater numbers from visa overstays, chain migration and anchor babies that never make the population charts.

While the U.S. maintains a stable population via balanced births and deaths of its own citizens, these immigrants make America the third fastest growing nation in the world behind China and India.

Jim Motavalli, editor of “The Environmental Magazine” May/June 2008 wrote, “Destination America: Immigration, The Environment and Big Population Numbers” stated that the United States via immigration races toward 1 billion people in 90 years.

Most immigrants arrive from third world countries without the ability to speak English, without job skills and without an education. All of them arrive without jobs.

The ones that arrive illegally cost American taxpayers, according to the National Research Center’s economist and financial analyst Edwin Rubenstein, $346 billion annually, year in and year out. (Source: www.thesocialcontract.com)

The 1.2 million immigrants that arrive legally enjoy taxpayer support for resettlement welfare that I couldn’t find any numbers showing those costs, but I suspect it’s into the billions of dollars of your money.

One aspect of this massive human armada remains true: every immigrant that arrives displaces an American citizen from a job or costs an American taxpayer a lot of money. Every immigrant that arrives brings children that require ESL and special services like breakfasts, lunches and tutors. Millions arrive from incompatible cultures that create havoc in local communities as to religious rituals–practices such as female genital mutilation, animal sacrifices, rooster fighting, dog fighting and gang wars such as you saw in Chicago with nine killed and 36 shootings last week.

What makes this invasion more ironic against the citizens of our own society?

We import enormous numbers of immigrants annually in light of the fact that we suffer 14 million unemployed Americans. Over 1.5 million Americans walk our streets homeless and jobless. In excess of 13 million American children live below the poverty line. A gigantic 47 million Americans cannot afford health insurance. As reported by NBC’s Brian Williams, 1.2 million American kids do not graduate from high school annually.

While immigrant numbers pile up on our shores like a human avalanche, our national debt exceeds $9 trillion. Our consumer debt grows at $2 trillion while the average credit card debt runs at $9,240.00. Our taxes swirl the toilet drain at $3 billion a week in Iraq and Afghanistan. We pay $400 million daily on the national debt. Analysts tell us immigrants send $80 billion back to their countries annually in cash transfers. All the while, illegal aliens do not pay $401 billion in IRS taxes annually as they work off the books.

All the while, illegal migrants avalanche into our hospitals with their medical needs, anchor babies and health care—paid by U.S. taxpayers! Because they escaped health screening at the border, they carry pernicious diseases from the third world like tuberculosis, leprosy, Chagas disease, hepatitis, tapeworms, head lice and dozens of other maladies that infect our citizens.

What reasons does Congress present to the American people for this “Human Katrina”? Where will we escape in our own country after another 20, 40, 50 or 100 million of them arrive in our nation as projected by the latest PEW report? Why do our U.S. Senators stand by while watching this accelerating nightmare of 182,000 immigrants added to our country every 30 days?

Is there a single American that demands this massive population overload? Do you see anyone marching in America’s streets advocating we pile ourselves higher and deeper in human beings? Is there a strategic plan to handle the next added 100 million with our current water shortages, environmental problems, price of gas and horrific crowding in our cities and along our Interstates?

In a small town in the United States, the mayor said, “It’s not if we’re going to grow, but how!”

To that, Dr. Albert Bartlett of Colorado University replied, “Regional and local civic groups are promoting economic development, which is the politically correct name for growth. Predictably, this will produce more homeless people, more employed people, more unemployed people, higher average salaries, more people living below the poverty line, more traffic congestion, higher parking fees, more school crowding, more crime, more unhappy neighborhoods, more expensive government, more tax revenue, higher taxes, more fiscal problems for state and local governments, more tax limitation measures, more air and water pollution, more water shortages, higher utility costs, less democracy, more crowded highways, more unmanageable costs maintaining public infrastructure, higher food costs and more destruction of the environment.”

Bartlett called credentialed growth experts “innumerates”, which means the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy. Anyone that promotes unending growth fails to understand the basic understanding that after maturity growth becomes either obesity or cancer. That definition makes President Bush and all 535 congressional members, save Tom Tancredo of Colorado, Brian Bilbray of California and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a bunch of flaming illiterates.

At what point do we come to terms with the mathematical fact that we cannot continue importing 182,000 jobless immigrants into this country every 30 days?

It’s up to you to drive this issue to the front burner of our ‘illiterate innumerates’ Senators Obama, Clinton and McCain.

All three of them voted last year to double legal immigration and give amnesty to all 20 to 30 million illegal aliens while they supported 400,000 annual anchor babies and unending chain migration. Can another word top ‘innumerate’ for just how inept these candidates prove themselves?

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Poultry giant Tyson Foods has 14 days to dismantle a national multimillion dollar ad campaign centered on the claim that its chickens are raised without antibiotics, a federal appeals court in Richmond ruled yesterday.

Tyson, based in Springdale, Ark., will have to remove posters and brochures from 8,500 grocery stores nationwide.

“We’re disappointed the motion for a stay has been denied and are evaluating our legal options,” said Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods. “We continue to believe we have acted responsibly in the way we have labeled and marketed our products and intend to stand our ground.”

The ruling is a setback for Tyson in its ongoing battle with two of its competitors Sanderson Farms, based in Laurel, Miss., and Perdue Farms, based in Salisbury, Md. The two companies jointly sought an injunction to stop Tyson’s ad campaign, arguing the “raised without antibiotics” claim misleads consumers by making it appear Tyson’s chicken is safer or more healthful.

Sanderson and Perdue initially based their legal challenge on Tyson’s practice of feeding chickens ionophores, an antibiotic used only in animals raised for food. Sanderson and Perdue also use ionophores.

Then during trial in federal court in Baltimore, Tyson officials acknowledged they also inject eggs several days before they hatch with antibiotics that are approved for use in humans. Dave Hogberg, Tyson’s senior vice president for consumer products, said it is a common industry practice.

Hogberg said injecting eggs with antibiotics did not undermine the “raised without antibiotic” label because the term “raised” is understood to cover the period that begins with hatching.

More consumers are becoming concerned about the use of antibiotics in poultry, swine and cattle because they and many public health experts think that it contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant viruses in humans.

The dispute between Tyson and its competitors began last year, when Tyson announced it would raise its chickens without antibiotics, as part of a larger effort to relaunch its brand. It sought approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the use of the label “raised without antibiotics.” USDA initially approved the language, then last fall reversed itself, saying it had made a mistake.

Tyson came up with a new label that said, “raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans” that the USDA greenlighted.

The resulting advertising campaign proved a huge success. In a February conference call, Tyson chief executive Richard Bond told analysts the company has had double-digit increases in sales of fresh chicken raised without antibiotics, totaling an additional 70 million pounds of chicken a year.

But Tyson’s success came at a high cost for its competitors, said Randall K. Miller, a partner at Arnold and Porter and lead counsel for Sanderson and Perdue. The companies sued in January seeking to force Tyson to stop making claims that its products were antibiotic free.

Sanderson blamed Tyson’s ad campaign for the loss of a $4 million account, and Perdue blamed it for a $10 million loss in revenue. Greater damage, however, was done to the companies’ reputations, Miller said. In seeking an injunction against Tyson’s ad campaign, Sanderson and Perdue argued that Tyson’s “raised without antibiotics” claim caused irreparable harm by implying its competitors’ products contained antibiotics or dangerous additives and were therefore less safe.

Separately, Sanderson and Perdue also petitioned USDA to rescind its approval of Tyson’s “raised without the use of antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans” label, citing both the use of antibiotics in unhatched eggs and in chicken feed.

In an April 30 letter to Miller regarding the companies’ petition, the USDA said the egg injecting practice was “of serious concern.”

“Rather than discuss any specifics to this particular case, [the Food Safety and Inspection Service of USDA] has requested additional information to help us determine what the facts are in this situation,” FSIS spokeswoman Amanda Eamich said.

Hogberg said Tyson has been forthright with regulators. He said he hopes Tyson and USDA can resolve the matter quickly.

“As we did in working with them on the qualified claim last fall . . . we would hope the process would be similar so we can preserve this benefit for the mainstream consumer,” he said.

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