The politics of greed is what keeps this world wrapped in corruption. If you want to stick around for a while longer, I suggest you educate yourself and try to do something constructive to help save what little good, honesty, and trust we have left.

A motto for us old vets: Take one with you!

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Go to 12781
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20070930-9999-1b30inflate.html
Rating the real cost of inflation

The fedaral government says that inflation is under control at 2% to 3% a year – with prices up 15 percent since 2002 – but some key prices have risen much faster, and critics charge that the government is undercounting the pace of inflation
By Dean Calbreath
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

September 30, 2007

If you're like the average American, when you fill your car up at the gas pump, you're paying 84 percent more than you were in 2000, for an average price rise of 12 percent per year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Many of the goods in your grocery basket – such as bread, eggs, orange juice, lettuce, tomatoes and ground chuck – have risen between 4 percent and 5 percent per year. The cost of electricity has risen 4 percent a year, while natural gas has risen 8 percent. And medical care has gone up about 5 percent a year, according to those same data.

Those rates of inflation – the kind of price rises that Americans feel on a daily basis – are often far higher than the official rate of inflation, which has increased an average of 2.6 percent per year since 2000.

Although the official inflation rate includes many items that decline in price, such as consumer electronics, discrepancies such as that lead many economists to question whether the government is undercounting the inflation rate.

“Any housewife can tell you that the official inflation rate is just not true,” said William Rutherford, a former Oregon state treasurer who runs an investment management firm near Portland.

“If you don't drive or don't eat, maybe the CPI (consumer price index) has a little resemblance to your life. But I don't see how anybody with any ordinary experience could see the CPI is being accurate,” Rutherford said.

Rudolph-Riad Younes, a co-manager of the Julius Baer International Equity Fund, told Barron's magazine this month that if the government counted home prices and energy correctly, the real inflation rate would be between 7 percent and 10 percent.

John Williams, a Dartmouth-trained economist who works as a consultant for a number of Fortune 500 companies, says the only reason the inflation rate is so low is because the Reagan and Clinton administrations rewrote the way the CPI is calculated.

In his monthly online newsletter Shadow Government Statistics, Williams has painstakingly attempted to recreate the inflation rate using its older guidelines. Under his calculations, inflation is actually running at an annualized rate of 9.95 percent.

Steve Reed, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Standards, which maintains the CPI, conceded that “you do get a lower (CPI) because of the changes we've made.” He said that today's CPI might be between half a point and a full point higher using the old methods of calculation.

“The numbers (that Williams uses) don't jive with what I've seen,” Reed said.

He said the current CPI rate is accurate, but added that the government does have a vested benefit in keeping the rate lower.

Understating the inflation rate can save businesses and the government money, although it can be a burden on the elderly, people on fixed incomes or salaried workers, since wage raises, pension benefits, welfare payments, Social Security payments and other items are tied to the CPI.

“Even if the CPI was one percentage point higher, it could cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars,” Reed said.

Inflation is likely to spike further, thanks to the Federal Reserve, which last month pumped money into the economy to support an interest rate cut.

“Since the increased supply of money does not come from productivity and savings, there is no increase in goods and services to absorb the new money,” said Michael Pento, a market strategist with Delta Global Advisors in Huntington Beach. “And therein lies the problem: The result of an increased money supply without increases in productivity is higher prices. Inflation.”

One of the first major revisions to the CPI came in 1983, in Ronald Reagan's first term in the White House. One of Reagan's campaign themes was an attack on the inflation rate, which averaged more than 12 percent in the last two years of Jimmy Carter's presidency.

Inflation remained at 10 percent in 1981, Reagan's first year in office. Thanks to Fed Chairman Paul Volcker's restrictive monetary policies, it dropped to 6 percent the next year. But it took some changes to the method of counting inflation to get it to 3 percent in 1983.

Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the inflation rate was still 3 percent. But economists in the government and Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve said that was too high and once again changed the way inflation was calculated. In 1998, the first year after the recalculation, the CPI was cut in half to 1.6 percent – the lowest rate since 1965.

One change that draws criticism is the CPI's use of “substitutions.”

The consumer price index assumes that if prices get too high, consumers will start buying cheaper products. For instance, if steak gets too expensive, they will switch to ground beef.

As a result, when items in the CPI's basket of goods get too expensive, the weight that they are given in the index is lessened and more weight is put on cheaper substitutes. Naturally, that helps keep the CPI lower.

Williams said that such a move “violates the original intent, purpose and concept of the CPI,” which was to measure the costs of the same goods year after year.

Reed disagreed. “We're not substituting beef for chicken, or driving for flying,” he said. “The weight of academic expertise would argue that what we did was right.”

Another factor that draws ire is the CPI's reliance on high-ticket items – DVD players, audio equipment, televisions. Six percent of the CPI is based on video and audio equipment, sporting goods, cameras and recreation, compared with 8 percent that is spent on food at home.

Critics say that the concentration on high-tech items – which typically decline in price over time – disguises the price rises in other areas. They also say that the CPI reflects upper-class tastes and expenses that might not catch the price hikes for poorer individuals.

“If I'm not a terribly wealthy person, that might not reflect how I'm spending my money,” Reed said.

The mix of items in the CPI has left some critics scratching their heads.

Since the Reagan administration, for instance, the CPI costs for housing have been based on rental costs, rather than home ownership. As a result, between 2000 and 2006, when home prices were skyrocketing, the CPI showed a price rise of only 3.3 percent per year. Property tax payments, which typically rise with the value of a house, are not counted in the CPI.

“We wanted to be out of the business of dealing with interest rates and interest expenditures,” Reed said. “The true value is more accurately reflected in its rental value.”

The low growth rate in the CPI can have surprising consequences.

Over the past four years, for instance, the cost of construction materials rose 28 percent, while the CPI rose only about 13 percent.

When construction companies work on government projects – where contracts are typically tied to the CPI – they sometimes have to cut corners to make up for the fact that their supply costs are rising more than twice as fast as the inflation rate, said Kenneth Simonson, an economist for the Associated General Contractors.

John Browne, a former British parliamentarian who is now a financial commentator in Florida, said the low inflation rate also helped fuel the bubbles in dot-com stocks and real estate.

“The great inflation lie enabled the banking system – first under Greenspan and now under Bernanke – to lend lots of money at rates that were sometimes below the rate of inflation,” Browne said. “If you can borrow for less than inflation, you can buy anything, including assets like houses.”

Now that the housing bubble is bursting, Bernanke's response has been to inject more money into the economy, which economists fear will create more inflation.

Market strategist Pento says that even if the CPI doesn't show strong inflation now, other measures do, including this year's surges in the price of gold and the money supply.

“Gold and the money supply are true inflationary indicators,” Pento said. “If they're growing at that pace, inflation is at least in the upper single digits. At least.”

Pento warned that it is risky for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates when inflation is running at such “very dangerous levels.”

David Joy, chief market strategist for RiverSource Investment, said he worries that the latest interest rate cut means that “eventually, and possibly sooner now than otherwise, the Fed will be forced to deal with higher inflation, accelerating the day of reckoning and making it more painful.”

Dean Calbreath: (619) 293-1891; dean.calbreath@uniontrib.com



Go to 12780
http://www.rense.com/general58/over63.htm
The Overthrow Of The
American Republic - Part 63
By Sherman H. Skolnick
10-13-4

Some puzzle over the substance of this strange, purported document. It seems to ring true. Judge for yourself.

Origin: 6/1997.

De-Classification date: 6/2027

Password creator: Microsoft

Russian team leader:_____________________.

British team head consultant: Dr. David Kelly MI-6.

Detonation team totals:___________________

Paymasters: J.P. Morgan Chase; Bank of Nova Scotia; RBS Coutts,
A. Fisher; Carlyle, Frank C.. Carlucci;
National Commerce Bank, Saudi; Riggs Bank.

Guernsey lockbox:_______________________
Vanuatu lockbox_________________________

Media legend facilitators
To CNN: L. King.
To ABC: J. Bamford.
To NBC: A. Mitchell.
To CBS: J. Roberts.
To Fox: J. Ellis.

Delivery truck legends: FedEx

Final test dates: 9/8-9/2001
Seventh basement legends: routine check-up
Upper half temporary power cut-offs: electric inspections.
Limited hang-out: NRO mock-attack same schedule time.
Consultants compartamenting: Evanston and Arizona.
Prior options: Chicago Mercantile Exchange; Chicago Board Options Exchange; via Luxembourg. AMR via Boren. UAL via ER. Odigo/AmDocs. Bank Hapolim.

Secure metal removal/disposal: Sun M. Moon Enterprises, George H.W. Bush, consultant; Korean CIA. Legends supplied by Washington Times.

Reimbursed prior consultants: Hillary Rodham Clinon; Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Gold removal beneficiary: COMEX.
Airplane school legend: Warren Buffet, owner.

Still puzzled? More coming. Stay tuned.



Go to 12779
http://www.rense.com/general57/ovoer62.htm
Overthrow of the American
Republic - Part 62
Buying & Selling Elections
By Sherman H. Skolnick
9-2-4

History is a war-game. Played out, it is, on a field so vast, so intricate, that only independent score-keepers, in their bunkers of the media underground, really know what has transpired, what is happening, and what is about to unfold.

Some nations are the loudest in proclaiming that their elections and selections for high office are pure and honorable, when, too often, they are the most dirty. A few examples from the secretive score-cards.

Swept into office by what became the worst Depression in U.S. history, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew that to save those of the ultra-rich, like himself and his family, he had to somehow subdue the angers of the unemployed, the farm and residential property foreclosed, and the hungry. His family fortunes were at least two-fold. First, from the proceeds jointly with the railroad robber barons of the 19th Century into the 20th Century. Secondly, from his mother's family, Delano, and their interlinking to the British Monarchy and massive dope trafficking through the Orient. Such as through the British royals and their Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank.

FDR was the greatest Counter-Revolutionary in the history of the West. By emergency ordering the 1933 Bank Holiday, he destroyed local community banks across the nation while saving the hindquarter of the Rockefellers, the Mellons, the Marshall Fields, the British Monarchy and Vatican Treasury bankers the French Rothschilds, the pro-British House of J.P. Morgan, and others of the Ultra-Rich.

With the vast number of immigrants in the U.S. through the influx in the 1920s, FDR made them supposedly satisfied to be in America, even to sleep under bridges when it rains.

FDR felt certain to gain a second term in 1936. But a positive virus of populism was sweeping the nation. Promoted it was by the drum major of "Share The Wealth", and "Every Man A King" U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, known as "Kingfish" (D., La.)The movement was overtaking Roosevelt's giving out bags of flour to the famished and promises of better times.[By 1941, after a decade of Depression, prior to U.S. entry into war, by way of the prior knowledge of the Roosevelt White House of the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. enemployment remained a troublesome 14 per cent.]

In 1935, FDR had Huey Long shot to pieces, barely surviving. Like other political assassinations in U.S. history, unlike in Europe, it was falsely blamed on a known malcontent. Apparently corrupted doctors finished off the "Kingfish" in the hospital. [Similar it was to the murder of U.S. General George Patton. At the end of World War Two, Patton was rabidly anti-Soviet. Victim of a staged traffic accident, he was snuffed out, like Huey Long, in the hospital by doctor-conspirators. Many of the books about "Kingfish" mention FDR but conveniently censor and sidestep the role of FDR in the assassination of Huey P. Long.]

In 1960, the Democrat Party Convention was in Los Angeles. John F. Kennedy was a realist. He knew that in a contest, Convention delegates had to be paid. Brother Bobby was in charge of "The Boiler Room Women". They had color coded cards indicating how the various delegates could be bought. With hookers, with cash, with guarantees of jobs in the new Adminstration.

Obstructing the schemes of their father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was Lyndon B. Johnson who wanted to be slated as the Vice President candidate. The Kennedys did not trust him. He summoned them to his hotel room. If he is not made the v.p. candidate, he said, he was going public with the specifics of the Kennedy Family and their Nazi connections.

[See, for example, "The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben" by Joseph Borkin. The day before JFK was assassinated, LBJ told his mistress that "after tomorrow, that bastard Kennedy was not going to insult me anymore". See, "Overthrow", Part 42. By 1969, JFK and Bobby Kennedy having been assassinated, and in 1964, brother Teddy having been a survivor, thereafter with a backbrace, of a sabotaged plane crash---Teddy was framed for the drowning, in Teddy's car falling into the drink, of one of "The Boiler Room Women", Mary Jo Kopecne, at Chappaquiddick. ]

The 1960 Election JFK versus Richard M. Nixon hung on the essential Electoral College vote of Illinois. Old Man Kennedy, through Chicago mobsters and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, arranged eight thousand fake paper ballots. JFK became the national "winner".

After the 1063 assassination of President Kennedy, every occupant and tne resident of the Oval Office thereafter was part of the cover-up.

LBJ as mentioned, And that followed by Nixon who met with the murder-conspirators, prior to the bloody deed, at the mansion of a Texas oil tycoon. As President, Nixon was replaced, without an election upon his resignation in 1974, by Gerald Ford, who earlier had been a member of the Warren Commission proclaiming a "lone assassin" killed JFK. Ford's unelected but appointed Vice President was Nelson A. Rockefeller, who had been confronted by JFK's plan, scrapped by his murder, of issuing genuine U.S. paper money, not Federal Reserve Notes. Jimmy Carter continued the whitewash.

As California Governor Ronald W. Reagan refused to permit the extradiction of a key witness to the JFK Aassaintion probe in New Orleans by District Attorney Jim Garrison. Reagan's Vice President, Daddy Bush, was implicated in the JFK murder cover up. [See FBI George H.W. Bush document, attached to series, "Greenspan Aids and Bribes Bush", www.skolnicksreport.com ]

The Big Fix in the year 2000 Presidential alleged "Election" was patterned, almost identically, to the corrupted election of 1876. The book "1876" by Gore Vidal was re-issued in paperback in the Spring of 2000.

In 1876, Samuel Tilden won the popular vote. The Electoral Vote was corrupted by way of the FLORIDA Election Board officials along with the corrupting of the high court in Washington and Congress. Troops blocked the street so that Tilden was prevented from approaching the Inaugural Stand. Thereafter, the election thief, Rutherford B. Hayes was called Rutherfraud. And we, similarly, call George W. Bush, simply, Bushfraud. LikeTilden in 1876, Albert Gore, Jr. was the duly elected President NOT inaugurated.Gore never conceded defeat, merely stating that he is permitting Bush to occupy the White House.

The recount of the Florida ballots as to Gore, was stopped by corrupting, among others, various South Florida DEMOCRAT Party officials. And after that, corrupting "The Gang of Five", the 5-Judge majority on the U.S. Supreme Court sparkplugged by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, a latter-day Fascist, known for his arrogance as a :"Go To Hell" Judge.
[See, "Coca-Cola, CIA, and the Courts", part 9, www.skolnicksreport.com ]

The Big Fix for the year 2004 Presidential Election was put together four or more years prior to 2004.

The deal was started at least with Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of convenience of Senator John F. Kerry (D., Mass.) She has been a vicious, ultra-right wing long-time Republican, more accurately simply described as a Fascist, rule by the Iron Fist. Her first husband of convenience was U.S. Senator John Heinz (R., Penn.) Senator Heinz should have known better not to ask questions of fellow U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (R., Penn.) Specter had been part of the Warren Commission Staff and postulated the ridiculous idea that one magic bullet, Warren Commission Exhibit 399, had gone through Governor Connolly and then through President Kenndy. The bullet, in perfect pristine condition was apparently "found" on a hospital cart by CIA Dallas (formerly Chicago) Mobster Jack Ruby.

Wags claim that the establishment continues to assert that the bullet is still circling the planet, going through every political assassination victim, shot there by the latest "lone assassin".

In 1991, to shut up Senator Heinz's questions of Specter and others as to the murder plot against JFK, Heinz was was murdered by a strange helicopter coming up and under his private plane causing the fatal crash. Shortly thereafter, Senator John Tower (R., Texas), well-informed of the JFK murder plotters which included Daddy Bush; Tower was assassinated by a sabotaged plane crash. He had headed the so-called "Tower Commission" whitewashing the treasonous role in the Iran-Contra Affair of Daddy Bush. The Elder Bush as President appointed Tower as Secretary of Defense. Then Bush released records defaming Tower as a boozer and womanizer, causing Tower to withdraw from the appointment. Considering how Tower had covered up the traitorous dealings of Bush, Tower considered he had been stabbed in the back and was about to say so publicly just as Daddy Bush was getting set to run against fellow CIA operative William Rockefeller Clinton.

The Heinz Ketchup fortune left to the widow Teresa was in Pittsburgh, interwoven with the doings of the Mellon Bank. Right after Pearl Harbor, the Mellons, then owners of Aluminum Company of America, Alcoa, being pro-Hitler, REFUSED to step up production needed for rapid building of airplanes. The Mellons should have been prosecuted for this treason.

Like the Mellons, Madame Heinz is a super-wealthy Fascist. The idea of linking Senator John F. Kerry, a husband of convenience with Teresa, an apparent Dyke, with Kerry to be put in a position to run in 2004 against George W. Bush for President---was arranged by long-time U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.).

The Kennedy Family, with one exception, go along with covering up who all was involved in assassinating their family members. Why? For financial blackmail and gain.

With the exception of surviving daughter Caroline of JFK, the rest of the Kennedy Family wish to cover up the political murder in 1999, of John F. Kennedy, Jr., by way of a sabotaged plane crash. Teddy Kennedy issued the false report that his nephew, nephew's wife and her fetus believed to be a boy,, and sister-in-law, were all cremated and deposited in the ocean. According to the secret FBI report, Teddy actually had the bodies, in otherwise untagged containers shipped to France, presumably to be handled by Kennedy family retainer Pierre Salinger.

[Visit the series, "What Happened to America's Golden Boy?" www.skolnicksreport.com Exactly a week prior to the murder of JFK, Jr., was an unsuccessful attempt to murder Albert Gore, Jr., as detailed in that series. ]

With the connivance of Teddy Kennedy, Madame Heinz put into play John F. Kerry versus George W. Bush. As a built-in negative, Kerry said he thought he was Jewish. Was he actually a Jew, a catholic, or really a British Intelligence agent? Kerry's waffling angered many. He was purportedly a third cousin to Bush as well as a fellow member in the satanic cult, Skull & Bastards Society.

Being slightly older than Bush, Kerry, as is the tradition, participated with the satanic ritual of initiating Bush into the cult. Namely, that they, au naturel, cavorted homosexual style in a double size open coffin filled with mud in "The Tomb", the windowless headquarters of the satanic cult on the Yale University campus.

[The one apparently having the secret video of this was Bob Stevens, the picture editor of one of the publications of American Media, Inc., in Boca Raton, Florida. Somebody sent him a strange envelope, and being short-sighted, he took off his glasses and put the envelope close-up to his face. He thus breathed directly in the spores of anthrax and shortly thereafter was dead. The AMI Building where over 500 people worked on the scandal magazines, was closed up as being anthrax-contaminated and no picture or text files could be removed or examined, by orders of America's secret political police.

[In a little-known lawsuit, the Stevens widow claimed the FBI was obstructing her as to her finding out what happened to her husband.]

The AMI Building with these apparent files remained closed. The former U.S. District Attorney in New York, later Mayor of New York City, Rudolf Guilani, is the founder and head of BioOne, a firm specializing in cleaning up sites where Anthrax poisoned up the building and area. He bought the AMI Building, presumably with all its files, for a "song". While available or at the GOP Convention, late August, 2004, Guilani was asked by a woman journalist on ABC TV Network as to his prior knowledge as to 9-11 and related matters. Guilani failed and refused to answer.

So Kerry's wife of convenience, Teresa Heinz reportedly worked the deal with the Bush Crime Family, for Kerry to apparently, like a boxer or wrestler, "to lay down and play dead", that is, not asking pertinent questions of Bush, and by example of Daddy Bush, the Carlyle Group, the Bush Crime Family, as interwoven with their role as puppets, scapegoats, and stooges for the British Monarchy and their plan, started more than two hundred years previous to break up the nation into the Disunited States of America. In plain lingo, a fixed presidential Election in a nation making so much worldwide noise about Third World countries having corrupt, orchestrated elections for high office.

No long history in the U.S. of highly orrupt elections for U.S. President? Really? You believe that? [Would I, in a moment of too much candor, justifiably describe those who heckle me, as poorly-informed know-nothings?]



Go to 12778
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/26/windia126.xml
US-India defence deal 'to counter China'
By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi and Richard Spencer, China Correspondent
Last Updated: 3:37am GMT 26/02/2008

America is attempting to forge a strategic alliance with India with a series of arms deals as the South Asian nation bolsters its defences against China.

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, will arrive in New Delhi to strike a common position on Beijing with the Indian government.


India has become one of the largest buyers of defence equipment


His arrival comes as New Delhi decides whether the US firms Lockheed Martin and Boeing, or Russian and European rivals, will win a contract to supply the Indian air force with 126 combat aircraft in a £5 billion deal.

But the wider battle is for influence in Asia, with America seeking to shore up a tentative and controversial alliance with what it sees as a democratic counterweight to China.

One senior Indian military official said Washington was hoping to supply up to a quarter of India's military hardware over the next decade as its current stocks, predominantly originating in Russia or the former Soviet Union, become obsolete.

"Washington views Delhi as representing a strategic asset in the Asian region," the official said.

advertisementAmerica has already agreed to help India develop civilian-use nuclear power despite New Delhi's failure to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and its insistence on retaining its nuclear weapons arsenal.

That deal has met an impasse due to opposition from the Indian Communist Party, which sustains the coalition government of Manmohan Singh, the prime minister.

The Communists regard it as a "hegemonic" ploy to "enslave" India.

But many analysts see growing ties as inevitable as a post-Cold War realignment of strategic interests continues.

As the United States and China, which once saw themselves as informal allies against the Soviet Union, eye each other warily, Beijing has aligned itself diplomatically with Moscow.

The US, by contrast, regards India, which used to receive support from Moscow, as a natural ally.

"If the India-US civilian nuclear deal collapses, it will not impact on the growing military ties between the two countries," William Cohen, a former US defence secretary, said at a recent arms fair in New Delhi at which American companies were well represented. "In fact I see them growing."

According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, India's military expenditure grew by 24 per cent last year, as it has become one of the largest buyers of defence equipment.

India's defence purchases are projected to double to more than £15 billion by 2012, climbing to £40 billion by 2022.

China, too, has been on an arms-buying spree in recent years and has also been developing its own capacity to build missiles, fighter jets and submarines.



Go to 12777
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jGV1DEGwx0KhelN98QaRDp0HKl6A
US high court to review 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill case

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US Supreme Court will revisit Wednesday the case of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster in Alaska, examining whether the corporation should have to pay 2.5 billion dollars in punitive damages over the oil spill that occurred 19 years ago.

The court will hear ExxonMobil's appeal in the latest chapter in a long-running legal battle that has raged since the Exxon Valdez crashed into a reef in Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of crude into Alaskan fishing waters.

It was the worst oil disaster ever to hit the United States, polluting 500 kilometers (310 miles) of coastline, killing tens of thousands of birds and hundreds of sea otters. According a University of Alaska study, only a quarter of the marine life survived the spill.

ExxonMobil afterwards spent some 2.1 billion dollars cleaning up the polluted coastline and more than 300 million in compensation for fishermen and locals affected by the catastrophe.

The company also paid out more than 900 million dollars of fines in a bid to halt criminal proceedings begun against it by the US government and the state of Alaska.

But in 1994, a jury in a civil Alaskan lawsuit ordered the Texas-based firm to pay five billion dollars in damages to some 34,000 fishermen and others whose livelihoods were decimated in Prince William Sound.

The oil giant has fought that verdict ever since and in 2006, a federal court cut the punitive damages to 2.5 billion saying the amount was more in line with legal precedent.

"The evidence established that Exxon gave command of an oil tanker to a man they knew was an alcoholic who had resumed drinking after treatment that required permanent abstinence, and had previously taken command in violation of Exxon's alcohol policies," the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said in its ruling.

ExxonMobil, which posted 40.6 billion dollars in profits for 2007, argues it has taken full responsibility for the oil spill and paid all relevant fines and costs associated with the disaster.

It wants the high court to reject any punitive damages awarded against it under maritime law -- or at least consider whether such high compensation is justified.

Exxon also argues that it has been punished under the federal Clean Water Act and that more compensation is excessive.

"Imposing vicarious punitive liability on a shipowner, without requiring the jury to find that the shipowner directed, countenanced, or participated in the conduct, was in conflict with almost 200 years of unbroken maritime law," the company argues in its brief to the court.

The case is so complicated the court has scheduled an unusual 90-minute hearing instead of the customary one-hour session.

One of the nine justices, Samuel Alito, has recused himself from the case because he owns Exxon stock.

The court is expected to issue its ruling before July.



Go to 12776
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSANK00037420080227
Turkey says no timetable for Iraq pullout
Wed Feb 27, 2008
By Ahmed Rasheed and Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Turkey said on Wednesday it had "no timetable" to withdraw troops fighting Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq, resisting pressure from the United States and other allies to end the offensive quickly.

Thousands of Turkish troops crossed the border last Thursday to root out PKK fighters. The PKK has used remote mountainous northern Iraq as a base in their armed campaign for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

"Our objective is clear, our mission is clear and there is no timetable until ... those terrorist bases are eliminated," Turkish envoy Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference after talks in Baghdad with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari.

Davutoglu, chief foreign policy adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, was sent to Baghdad to explain Ankara's position on the offensive. He also met top U.S. officials in Iraq, including military commander General David Petraeus.

Acting Iraqi Prime Minister Barham Saleh said a prolonged Turkish operation would lead to "dire" consequences for the region and repeated Baghdad's demand that the incursion end.

"This would be highly destabilizing, it's dangerous to the stability of Iraq and the region as a whole," Saleh, a Kurd, told Reuters on the sidelines of an economic conference.

Turkey's military General Staff said another 77 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels had been killed in heavy fighting since Tuesday night, taking the death toll among the rebels to 230 since Turkey's offensive began.

Military sources in southeast Turkey said several hundred Turkish soldiers were ferried across the border by helicopter into northern Iraq early on Wednesday evening.



Go to 12775
http://www.naturalnews.com/022724.html
NaturalNews) Milk Thistle has been used in the treatment of liver diseases including liver cancer for years. It heals the liver by lowering enzyme levels and assisting the liver in its process of detoxifying the body. Herbalists and Chinese Physicians have prescribed milk thistle for all types of liver disorders including cirrhosis, inflammation, high liver enzymes, jaundice, hardening of the liver, hepatitis and liver cancer. Herbalists recommend milk thistle for any type of cancer as it is vital in aiding detoxification of the blood.

According to a recent report in the World Journal of Gastroenterology, scientists have now demonstrated the anti-cancer effects of silibinin, a major biologically active compound of milk thistle. Being widely used as a folk remedy for liver diseases, milk thistle is safe and well-tolerated, and it protects the liver from drug or alcohol-related injury. Silibinin is highly purified from milk thistle, with a defined chemical structure and molecular weight (C25H22O10, MW: 482.44).

The study was carried out by Dr. Ke-Qin Hu and his research team at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Hu is a well-experienced research scientist and physician in the field of hepatology. He has published over 70 scientific articles in various medical professional journals. Many of his scientific research publications are focused on viral hepatitis B and C, cirrhosis, and liver cancer, all of which have significantly contributed to our better understanding of common liver diseases.

Dr. Hu and his colleagues' discovery of silibilin's anti-liver cancer effects was recently published.*

The researchers found that silibilin can significantly reduce the growth of several human hepatoma cell lines. In addition, they demonstrated that silibinin mediates anti-liver cancer effects by:

1. reduced cancer cell proliferation and cell cycle progression;

2. enhanced programmed death of cancer cells; and

3. altered chromatin structure of the cancer cells.

Their research results indicate that silibinin can be used to prevent the development of liver cancer, one of the most common cancers worldwide. The results have also opened our minds to the possibility of testing other herbal supplements for possible treatment of human cancers.

Milk Thistle From an Herbal Perspective

Milk thistle has been observed in the reversal in symptoms of both acute and chronic liver problems. There is significant antioxidant and free radical scavenger action properties in milk thistle.

Milk thistle is beneficial for the liver in both protecting and regenerating it and is one of the best examples of preventative medicine that we have today as it not only protects each cell of the liver, kidneys, gall bladder, skin, brain and other tissues from incoming toxins, but at the same time encourages the liver to cleanse itself of damaging substances, such as alcohol, drugs, medications, mercury and heavy metals, pesticides, anesthesia, and even the most poisonous of mushrooms, the Amanita or Death-cap mushroom.

Additional Benefits of Milk Thistle

Milk thistle accelerates protein synthesis by the liver cells. It stimulates the liver to produce SOD, a potent free radical scavenger. It prevents depletion of glutathione in the liver.

Researchers have shown that milk thistle stimulates the synthesis of RNA (an important molecule that helps carry out and control protein synthesis)

Milk thistle protects the kidneys and is beneficial to those with skin problems like psoriasis.
Milk thistle blocks allergic and inflammatory reactions.

Milk thistle in mucilaginous and increases immune response, eradicates infection and soothes inflamed tissue.

Milk thistle has been found to maintain the basic function of the liver, thereby keeping the blood vascular system clean, which has an overall effect of maintaining health in the entire body.

This is an excellent herb for anyone who is under stress, uses alcohol, recreational drugs, prescription medications, or lives in today's modern times of pesticides, environmental toxins, and pollution.

Sources:

*Journal reference: Lah JJ, Cui W, Hu KQ. Effects and mechanisms of silibinin on human hepatoma cell lines. World J Gastroenterol 2007; 13(40): 5299-5305

The Little Herb Encyclopedia by Jack Ritchason: N.D. Page 146

Milk Thistle - Silybum Marianum: ((http://www.skyeherbals.com/materia_medi...)


About the author
Leslee Dru Browning is a 6th generation Medical Herbalist & Nutritionist from the ancestral line of Patty Bartlett Sessions; Pioneer Mid-Wife & Herbalist. Leslee practiced Medical Herbalism and Nutritional Healing for over 25 years and specialized in Cancer Wellness along with Chronic Illness. She now devotes her career to teaching people, through her writing, about Natural Healing from An Herbal Perspective.



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The Israeli Agenda And
The Scorecard Of The Zionist
Power Configuration For 2008
By James Petras
2-26-8

The Israeli Agenda openly defended, publically practiced and aggressively pursued by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) has greatly influenced the US Presidential elections and the likely future course of Washington's Middle East policy.

The strategy of the Jewish state is the complete Zionization of Palestine, the takeover of land, water, offshore gas (estimated to be worth $4 billion dollars) and other economic resources and the total dispossession of the Palestinian people. Tel Aviv's tactics have included daily military assaults, giant walls ghettoizing entire Palestinian towns, military outposts and controls undermining commerce and production to force bankruptcy, poverty, severe deprivation and population flight. The second priority of the Israeli colonial state is to bolster the Jewish state's political and military supremacy in the Middle East, using preposterous arguments of 'survival' and 'existential threats'. The key postulate of Israeli Middle East policy is to destroy or intimidate the principle adversaries of its Zionization of Palestine and its expansionist Middle East policy. In pursuit of that policy, it invaded southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah, bombing neighborhoods and critical infrastructure in Beirut and other cities, bombed Syria as a provocation. Earlier the Israeli state played a major role in directing the ZPC in formulating US war policy toward destroying Iraq as a viable nation. Recently Israel, through the ZPC in the US, has engaged in a comprehensive, intense and highly charged political, diplomatic, economic and military campaign to isolate and ultimately destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran as a political counterweight to its ambitions in the Middle East ("Israel: Iran building Nuclear Arms", Aljazeera February 12, 2008).

The principal propaganda tool of the ZPC and its Israeli patrons is to claim Iran represents a 'military threat' to Israel, Iraq, the Gulf oil producers and the US. This outlandish charge is repeatedly made by ZPC ideologues. According to the 2008 edition of the International Institute of Strategic Studies Military Balance, Iran's total defense spending for 2006 was nearly 55% less than Israel despite having ten times the population of the Jewish state and facing hundreds of US- supported terrorist incursions across its borders. Per capita, Israeli military expenditures were 17 times more than Iran ($1,737 per Israeli ­ not counting US direct military assistance ­ versus $110 for each Iranian citizen). It is widely acknowledged that Israel has over 200 nuclear weapons capable of striking Iranian population centers while Iran has none. Israel receives over $3 billion US dollars a year in direct US military aid, including the most advanced offensive military technology ­ while Iran receives no foreign military aid and has little defensive technology. According to US Budgetary Hearings, from 2009 to 2018 Israel will receive a $30 billion dollar package of direct foreign military financing from the US, while Iran will receive nothing from any foreign state.

Contrary to Israeli and ZPC propaganda, the Gulf States, Iraq and many US military commanders do not consider Iran a military threat, but rather a factor in stabilizing the volatile situation. The Gulf States invited Iran to their annual meetings; Iraqi government leaders meet with Iranian officials on trade and security and Saudi Arabia is following a similar course by inviting Iranian leaders to Mecca for the Hadj.

After the destruction of the secular republic of Iraq, the job of the ZPC has been to push for greater US military aggressin against Israel's perceived adversaries ­ Iran being the prime target ­ by massive falsification of the actual correlation of military forces between Israel and Iran.

Israeli and ZPC Intervention in the US Presidential Elections and Economic Policy

The second task of the ZPC in pursuit of Israel's agenda is to ensure no major political candidate debates or questions Israeli genocidal policies toward the Palestinians and its military ambitions in the Middle East. In the US Presidential election of 2008, the ZPC's role is to ensure that all major candidates endorse, support and promote the Israeli political agenda, despite its genocidal policies (see Gideon Levy, "The Lights have been turned off", Haaretz February 4, 2008) and repudiation of international law. The ZPC has imposed on all Presidential candidates Israel's bellicose posture toward Iran, and its explicit policy of liquidating Hamas political leaders. According to Israeli Minister of Housing and construction, Zeev Boim, "all members of Hamas political leadership are involved in terrorist acts against Israelso they must be liquidated." (Israeli Army Radio- Galei Tzahal, February 9, 2008 cited in Haaretz).

The third task of the ZPC is to use their strategic positions in the White House, Treasury, Pentagon and State Department to undermine Iran's economy, politically isolate it and provoke internal and external confrontations.

Israel 2008: The Theory and Practice of Genocide

Israel has totally shredded any and all verbal commitments made at the Bush-organized Annapolis Middle East Conference in November 2007. The Jewish state is building 1000 new housing units in "Palestinian" East Jerusalem. It allows 100 new settler posts to occupy Palestinian land. It has attacked and killed Palestinian civilians, police and supporters of its 'negotiating partner' Abbas throughout the West Bank. Israel retains its 300 checkpoints throughout the West Bank, undermining travel, transport, trade and medical treatment. Jewish colonial settlements expand, further encroaching on Palestinian land, under the flimsy pretext that the peace process only precludes whatever the Jewish officials designate as 'new settlements', in effect isolating and reducing Palestinian East Jerusalem into a walled enclave.

Israeli leaders have intensified their military assaults on Gaza, killing nearly 800 and wounding over 1,000 Palestinians since the democratically elected Hamas government took effective control over Gaza in 2007 ('IDF to step up Gaza Assassinations' Haaretz February 13, 2008). Worse still they have imposed the genocidal strategy of starving 1.4 million residents of Gaza into submission, practicing the internationally outlawed practice of collective punishment against civilians in order to incite them into overthrowing their elected government. Israeli officials have publicly embraced and defended their totalitarian policies of cutting off electricity generation in the Gaza Strip, thus drastically reducing or eliminating the supply of safe water, halting all sewage treatment, electricity for hospitals, refrigerators, food and vaccine storage, home, school and business lighting. The Israeli Supreme Court has approved this policy of mass, brutal collective punishment of over 1.4 million civilians. (Haaretz February 2, 2008). They have imposed a tight blockade on food and medical supplies resulting in what the United Nations officials and international human rights groups have called a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented magnitude with widespread disease and famine becoming a reality. The Israeli Army blocks even the movement of sick and critically injured children. The Israeli judicial system led by its Supreme Court judges has ruled in favor of the power cuts, bombing of generators and water treatment plants and blockage of food, providing an unprecedented 'legal' framework for genocide.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations have publicly defended Israeli genocidal policies and the ZPC has been successful in securing the support of both major US political parties and presidential candidates for Israeli collective punishment against Palestinian civilians.

Deliberate State Genocide in the Service of Colonial Aggrandizement

Israeli policymakers claim that their totalitarian tactics are a 'response to 'rocket attacks' by Palestinian 'terrorists'. In fact there are no attacks from the West Bank ­ not a single rocket attack throughout the past two years. Even more significant, Israel has repeatedly rejected Hamas offer to sign a joint comprehensive long-term ceasefire involving an end to rocket fire in exchange for an end to Israeli military air and tank assaults. All Israeli leaders have categorically rejected Hamas cease-fire offers and have refused to even negotiate with or recognize the duly elected Hamas leadership.

The Jewish state has affirmed its policy of political extraterritorial assassinations of democratically elected political leaders irrespective of rocket or other attacks as part of its strategy of practicing international state terrorism against the Palestinian people, in violation of international law.

In summary, genocide and state terror at the service of ethnic dispossession and racial-ethnic colonial settlements is the openly stated, judicially sanctioned practice of the Israeli state. There is no basis for speaking of a Jewish, Zionist or Israeli 'conspiracy' against the Palestinians. State terror is practiced openly and publicly defended by the Supreme Court while international law is publicly dismissed as irrelevant to the extent that it infringes on the freedom of action, expansion and 'security' of Jewish territorial ambitions, military superiority in the Middle East and Israeli influence over US Middle East policy.

As Israeli policy makers clearly embrace totalitarian policies, engaging and justifying international assassination of adversaries and the collective punishment of over 1.4 million civilians in Gaza, their political, academic and journalistic apologists rely on unadulterated vituperation and paranoid screeds against Israel's critics in the US. The now deceased super-Zionist Congress-person Tom Lantos (Democrat California), accused ex-President Carter of being filled with 'venom' for comparing the oppression of the Palestinians to South African Apartheid. Zionist zealot, Eugene Kontorovich, Professor of Law (sic) at Northwestern University, claims that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Israel's violent seizure and settlement of Palestinian lands (Daily Alert February 15, 2008). Alex Safian 'refutes' Professors Walt and Mearsheimer's classic study of the Israel Lobby in the United States as 'a fraud'. Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, refers to Israel's privileging of Jews over Palestinians in the Occupied Territories as 'the poisonous myth of Israel's Apartheid' (National Post-Canada cited in the Daily Alert February 15, 2008).
The violent vituperative language follows the deep frustration that Zionist leaders feel in failing to stem the growing rejection of Israel's totalitarian politics. Their belief that no one should ever attack Israel's colonial and racist policies leads them to blind rage, blacklisting, censorship and vicious character assassinations. Israel's expansionist and militarist policies, in violation of international law, are accompanied by a powerful tendency among mainstream Zionist leaders to reject international law, vilifying the United Nations and insulting the International Court of Justice.

Pro-Israel Western leaders adopt Israel's paranoid style of politics and translate it into the American political discourse. Zionist zealot and head of US Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, engages in widespread internal espionage of US citizens in violation of constitutional protections. Zionist fanatic, US Attorney General Michael Mulkasy, refused to investigate the illegal, but widely acknowledged practice of torturing suspects in US custody, including water-torture (water-boarding), considering this internationally outlawed torture to be 'acceptable under certain conditions'. The most egregious example of Israel's political and intellectual degeneration is found in the logic of its chain of enemies. Israeli military targeting starts with attacking the Palestinian armed resistance; then it extends to their family members, neighbors, their homes, schools, workshops, offices and fields. It implicates civilians, ambulances and food distribution outlets. It proceeds to target the entire community, a whole people, with round-ups of all males less than 45 years of ages. Paranoia leads to verbal assaults of overseas European and US critics of Israeli crimes against humanity. Israeli death squads cross borders and assassinate political leaders, train terrorists in Iraq, Iran, Colombia and elsewhere to weaken countries, regimes and groups, which politically support the Palestinian struggle for independence and sovereignty.

Accompanying the Israeli policy of permanent global war and paranoia are the entire leadership of the Zionist Power Configuration in the US. The ZPC's introduction of the Israeli paranoid style of politics in our country becomes one of the biggest threats to American freedoms and our desire to avoid Israeli entrapment in another brutal war in the Middle East.

The Zionist Power Configuration: 2008

The ZPC is made up of all the major Jewish organizations, pro-Israel plutocrats, media barons and government officials who are Israel Firsters. In the face of the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe imposed by Israel's food and energy blockade of Gaza, and its thorough repudiation of the terms of the Annapolis peace negotiation the Zionist power configuration had its work cut out for it in selling the Israeli genocidal agenda as a defensive, justifiable policy of a peace-loving democracy. The second task of the ZPC was to overcome the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran which refuted Israeli and White House propaganda painting Iran as a nuclear threat. The Israeli state propaganda machine went on an all out assault of the NIE, claiming to have superior knowledge of hidden Iranian research programs ­ without providing a shred of reliable evidence. Once the Israeli state defined its position to the NIE, the entire leadership of the Conference of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CPMAJO), all the major Zionist- controlled propaganda centers ('think tanks') and an army of Israel-First academics (self-styled 'intelligence experts') and ideologues deluged the print and electronic mass media with attacks on the NIE report, echoing and citing the rhetoric and claims of the Israeli state. The White House and Congress (with few exceptions) followed the line of the ZPC, downplaying and distorting the NIE, escalating their bellicose rhetoric and pressure for sanctions on Iran in the UN Security Council and among the EU and NATO countries. The success of the ZPC in sustaining US confrontational policies against Iran, and forcefully selling the Israeli policy to the US political elite even against the findings and report of all the US intelligence agencies is a measure of the decisive power of the ZPC over US Middle East policy. Never in the entire history of the US has a small and economically insignificant foreign power wielded so much influence over Washington in a strategic region through its overseas representatives over and against the advice of America's entire intelligence establishment.

The key to Zionist power is its ability to leverage and multiply its influence through non-Zionist congressional, media, pension fund managers, state and municipal officials and a host of trade union, academic and other notables and civic organizations. Strategically placed Zionists focused on the single issue of Israel, bring to bear the economic and organizational resources of their 1 million affiliates, supporters and media publicists on targeting policy makers in all relevant fields. The targeted individuals and organizations representing many millions of American Gentiles and non-Zionist Jews usually capitulate to the pressure or payoffs or are persuaded to follow the lead of the aggressive focused Zionist zealots. The propaganda value of having non-Zionists with a mass organizational base carrying out Israeli policies is immense. Leveraging the 'others' allows the pro-Israel liberal ideologues to obfuscate, downplay and dilute the real power of Israel and the ZPC in the making of US Middle East policy. As a consequence, we find what I call 'mish-mash' analyses which argue that "The Zionist pro-Israel lobby (sic) is only one of many groups and interests influencing US Middle East policy". In other words, Zionist leveraged politicians are given a degree of autonomy and attributed a set of interests, which effectively hides Zionist initiatives, pressures and tactical leverage.

In 2008 Zionist direct and leveraged power is manifested in several decisively important areas of US politics, especially in foreign policy.

The ZPC and the Presidential Elections

All of the major presidential candidates have slavishly followed the most extreme pro-Israel positions promoted by the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. John McCain, the Republican front-runner declares his unconditional support for Israel's territorial expansion, settlements and genocidal policy toward Gaza. According to the Jewish weekly, The Forward (February 13, 2008), "On Israel,McCain has been uncharacteristically conventional. He offers unqualified support, expressed in years of public statements" The same article emphasizes how in 2006 McCain capitulated to Zionist pressure in a matter of days by recanting his position on Israel returning to its 1967 borders: "I've never held the position that Israeli should return to the 1967 lines and that is not my position today." On February 7, 2008 McCain defined US-Iranian policy on strictly Zionist terms: "Those (Democratic) senators won't recognize and seriously address the threat posed by an Iran with nuclear ambitions to our ally Israel in the region." (McCain's speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, February 7, 2008, quoted in Haaretz Februaru 10, 2008). In 2007, McCain happily echoed Israeli demands to bomb Iran with the vulgar and sinister new refrain to an old Beach Boys rock song "Bomb, Bomb, BombBomb-bomb Iran".

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have supported every major position and demand of the ZPC: Both have pledged unconditional support for Israel; they have backed Israel's genocidal policies against Gaza, the expansion of settlements and the total takeover of Jerusalem. Hillary Clinton urges recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital ­ contrary to the United Nations, the European Union and even the Bush Administration's position. Zionist ideologues are among the top foreign policy and Middle East advisers of all three top contenders for their party's presidential nomination. The public record reads Zionist decisive influence over the next US President's Middle Est policy. The only possible deviation is Obama's statement that he is willing to negotiate with the Iranian government ­ a policy that the Bush regime, in part, already practices at a lesser official level via meetings in Iraq. For his minor discrepancy from the Zionist war rhetoric toward Iran, Obama was chastised by Malcolm Hoenlein, head of the CPMAJO (Haaretz January 18, 2008). To compensate for talking too much about 'change' which worries the paranoid Jewish leaders, like Hoenlein, Obama went out of his way to blame the civilians living in Gaza for the Israeli campaign to starve them into surrender and called on them to revolt against their democratically-elected Hamas government. The ZPC is the only major national political-social apparatus, which engages in a comprehensive, persistent and intensive campaign to direct US foreign policy into a full-scale (diplomatic, military and economic) confrontation with Iran.

Silencing Potential Critics of the ZPC

Almost every major centrist, leftist or progressive journal, weekly magazine, radio and web site has refused to discuss the singular influence of the ZPC over the Presidential candidates' Middle East policy - a further indication of the reach and influence of the ZPC. The best indication that the ZPC is not 'just another lobby' as Mearsheimer and Walt claim, or a simply another bellicose neo-conservative current of opinion, is found in their slavish adherence to the Israeli state's policies, even when they blatantly defy and repudiate the rightwing policies of President Bush. At Annapolis (November 2007) President Bush called on Israel to cease building new settlements in order to further peace negotiations. Exactly three months later Israel announced plans to build over 1,000 (1,250) new Jews-only homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem (BBC News, February 12, 2008). The Daily Alert propaganda sheet of the CPMAJO immediately endorsed the Israeli position and set in motion its major lobbyists, op-ed ideologues and media 'experts' to justify Israel's crass repudiation of its agreement with President Bush.

Rather than confront this flagrant, highly public, unilateral and shameful Israeli repudiation of its agreement with the White House, President Bush , Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Gates all played 'Mickey the Dunce'. White House press secretary, Dana Perino, claimed she had not seen the report about Israel's plans to build new apartments in East Jerusalem ­ though it was 'news' in all the mass electronic and print media. In fear of the ZPC, Perino responded as if the entire affair was simply a problem for the Palestinians: "But obviously, there is no doubt that an announcement of that sort (building 1,125 new Jews-only segregated apartments) would make the Palestinians concerned" (Santa Barbara News-Press February 12, 2008).

Zionist Power: Treasury Department

Within the government, the principal architect and key operative of the US worldwide campaign to strangle the Iranian economy is a top Treasury Department official, Stuart Levey, a zealous Zionist and key agent of the ZPC in the executive branch. Levey has successfully browbeat the reticent, persuaded the gullible and teamed up with co-thinkers who control state, municipal and private pension funds to withdraw investments from any enterprise which deals with Iran. Levey is a major architect of the Treasury's economic sanctions policy, which Washington has promoted in the United Nations Security Council. Levey's policies have succeeded in blocking Iranian private bank transactions. They have received the support of the White House and the National Security Council despite the NIE report, which found that Iran was not engaged in a nuclear weapons program. Mohamed El Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency have confirmed the position of the NIE (Associated Press, February 23, 2008). Unlike Levey, the NIE and the IAEA are agencies, which are not influenced by the Zionist power configuration.

Nevertheless, the Israeli demands (pushed by the ZPC) for further sanctions based on unfounded claims of continued nuclear arms programs trumps the NIE and IAEA intelligence findings. The White House, France, England and Germany demand new and harsher sanctions against Iran. Never in the history of Israeli influence over US Middle East policy has the pro-Israel power configuration so much influence as it has today: The US government (President to Congress to Presidential hopefuls) repudiate its own intelligence agencies in favor of the 'intelligence' claims of a foreign power. Never has the US Treasury Department been so influenced by Israel Firsters, like Stuart Levey, Daniel Glaser and their colleagues in putting the interests of Israel above and beyond the interests of the major US and European oil companies.

At every AIPAC meeting since 2004, in every publication of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations over the past 5 years, in each and every state and citywide conference of Jewish community councils, every effort has been made to promote US military action or economic sanctions against Iran. In fact, the ZPC escalated its campaign against Iran after the NIE was published and intensified their campaign in favor of Israel's fabricated 'intelligence claims' (Daily Alert, November 2007 ­ February 2008). The dual power position of Israel Firsters in key policy positions and civil society defines their influence over US Middle East policy.

The International Dimension

The US ZPC has been immensely aided in securing its bellicose anti-Iranian agenda by the appointments of prominent Zionists to key foreign policy positions in England and France. David Milliband, the British Foreign Minister, has close family ties with Jewish settlers from Britain colonizing the occupied West Bank. During a visit to Israel, he spent several days with Israeli officials and an evening with his relatives, while totally ignoring the issue of the 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza suffering from Israel's genocidal blockade. Milliband has been a fierce defender of keeping the 'military option on the table', heightening economic sanctions against Iran and is an unconditional supporter of Israel's brutal policy preventing the shipment of food and fuel from reaching the suffering people of the Gaza strip.

Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister is a lifelong zealous Zionist who, upon taking office, pronounced himself in favor of a military attack on Iran 'if negotiations fail'. As the new Foreign Minister, Kouchner went to US occupied Iraq and praised the occupation and puppet 'government' despite the over 1 million civilian deaths and 4 million destitute refugees which has resulted from the invasion and occupation. Kouchner (appointed by French President Sarkozy ­ under pressure from the Zionists), like president Bush gave strong backing to any Israeli 'military pre-emptive action' (offensive military assault), though a strong negative reaction from the French public forced him to tone down his overt support of Israeli military actions.

With such powerful political allies and co-thinkers in the American, French and British governments and the controlling role of the ZPC over US policymakers in the United Nations, it comes as no surprise that Israel received no reprimand for its daily murders and abductions of civilians and Palestinian officials in Gaza and the West Bank. Zion power prevents the UN from even applying its own basic international principles to prosecute crimes against humanity, including torture and collective punishment. Since its founding in the late 19th century and its spread to the US, especially after WWII, organized Zionism has never been so influential in so many spheres of government and had so much control over US Middle East policy as it possesses today. Most major pro-Israel Jewish leaders in moments of candor have publicly acknowledged that they are at the pinnacle of influence, to the effect that 'we have never had an administration as favorable to Israel as under President Bush.' Certainly this is an understatement that speaks to an underlying truth : Never has the US engaged in a very costly Middle Eastern war to benefit a foreign power; never has the US deliberately prevented big oil companies from signing billion dollar oil contracts by imposing economic sanctions on Iran in order to weaken a regional opponent of Israel.

The Show Must Go On

Not only does the ZPC directly influence US policy against Palestine, Iraq and Iran, but it has extended its campaign against 'third parties', countries like China which have economic relations with Sudan (a Muslim nation with an independent foreign policy which supports Palestinian rights). To an overwhelming degree, the propaganda campaign behind the so-called "Darfur genocide campaign' is the Israeli state and its political apparatus in the US, namely the ZPC. Most of the media celebrities, led by prominent Hollywood Zionist director Steven Spielberg, have engaged in an exercise of selective moral indignation ­ supporting Israel, while ignoring its starvation blockade of Gaza, supporting the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq while attacking China for its 'immoral' oil contracts with the Sudan. The CPMAJO has focused on the Darfur 'genocide' because by doing so it favors the brutal separatists in southern Sudan, armed and advised by Israel, as a means of depriving pro-Palestinian Sudan of a large oil rich region in the south of the country. The Darfur campaign deliberately and systematically excludes any mention of the Israeli Supreme Court's approval of Israel's food and fuel blockade and deliberate prevention of the movement of medical personnel in Gaza and the West Bank, its approval of Israel's practice of torture ('forceful interrogations'), armed assaults on the vital infrastructure and civilian population centers of Gaza.

Hollywood's Darfur sideshow is a sham propaganda effort at selective humanitarian concern, which does not deviate a millimeter from the official line promoted by the Israeli state and publicized in the US by the Daily Alert, the principle bulletin of the ZPC.

ZPC: Scorecard for 2008

From January to the middle of February 2008, Israeli had killed, wounded and arrested nearly a thousand Palestinians, mostly but not exclusively from Gaza. Over half of those killed, arrested and wounded were unarmed civilians, the rest include Hamas and PLO security officials, militia members and anti-colonial resistance fighters. Of the 700 primitive rockets and shells launched from Gaza, not a single Israeli Jew was killed and fewer than a dozen suffered serious bodily harm. Only a contract farm laborer from Ecuador died on the Israeli side from the rockets.

In a speech to Jewish-American leaders in mid-February, Prime Minister Olmert spelled out the gist of Israel's totalitarian strategy. According to the BBC News (February 18, 2008) "Mr Olmert said, 'Israel had a free hand to respond and attack anyone who has any kind of responsibility. This applied to everyone, first and foremost Hamas," (my emphasis). The entire leadership of the major Jewish organizations, whole-heartedly approved the use of unrestrained and unlimited violence (a 'free hand') against the entire Palestinian population ('any kind of responsibility'), which would include individuals who transport, feed, educate, shelter, vote for or interact with Hamas, their family members, friends, neighbors ­ 99% of the residents of Gaza. Giving priority to targeting 'first and foremost Hamas' includes several hundred thousand voters who elected Hamas in free and democratic elections.

The ZPC has succeeded in securing the near unanimous US Congressional support for Israel's mass arrests and daily assaults on Gaza, even when a few mass media outlets published photos of Israeli colonial soldiers parading eighty arbitrarily arrested Palestinian civilians bound and blindfolded to notorious Israeli interrogation centers (BBC News February 18, 2008) for unlimited detention with no legal guarantees against physical and psychological torture.

The ZPC has swamped the US mass media with praise of Israel's cross border assassinations, such as the international political murder of Hizbullah leader, Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, Syria (Daily Alert February 15, 2008). Reproducing articles from the Israeli press (Jerusalem Post, Haaretz) and Zionist think tanks and weeklys (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, New York Jewish Week, YNET News, CAMERA, New York Sun, and Middle East Strategy at Harvard) the Daily Alert has provided legitimacy to international assassinations by official state-directed death squads thereby extending the violence and counter-violence throughout the world. This is a fact recognized by the US FBI and Israeli officials. Heads of the Israeli international secret police, the MOSSAD, openly acknowledge the role of Israeli assassinations in provoking terrorist reprisals by putting a world-wide alert to Jews to avoid Islamic and Arab countries as well as locations where "there is a high concentration of Israelis" (Prime Minister's Office, reprinted in the Daily Alert February 15, 2008).

The Israeli practice of staging international assassinations of opposition leaders in major cities will not only invite retaliation against Israelis and Jews but also endanger sites in the US and EU, for tolerating these acts of state-sponsored terror. In other words, Israeli terror invites terrorist counter attacks like September 11, 2001. Israel, by provoking a new round in the Palestinian 'war through global terror' and the US and EU by embracing an Israeli car bomb assassination in Damascus endanger Western lives everywhere. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, their publicists and op-ed ideologues in the mass media are opening the entire Western world to terrorist attacks. By supporting Israeli terror and increasing the chance of Muslim reprisals, the ZPC strengthens the repressive structure of a growing police state in the US. (The 'professional' killing by Israeli operatives of a major figure in Damascus, Syria raises the question of the role of Israeli operatives in the as-yet unsolved series of car bomb assassinations in Lebanon ­ given Israel's desire to maintain a state of internal tension in that country.) The brilliant and precocious Ivy League academic apologists of each and every act of official Israeli state-sponsored international terror apparently dissociate these acts of assassination from likely reprisals in our country and the consequent further destruction of our remaining precarious democratic freedoms. Could it be that Zionist American intellectuals welcome more US police state agencies and laws in order to prosecute a rising number of Americans who are critical of Zionist influence over the American political process? They might do well to recall that police state structures and laws could be used against them in the future.

Except for a small, courageous and isolated band of Anglo-American-Canadian Jewish intellectuals and academics, all the mainline Jewish organizations raised not a single question, let alone criticism regarding Israel's role in instigating international terror.

From the beginning of the year, the ZPC has intensified its campaign to strangle the Iranian economy through US-promoted sanctions in the UN. They raised the ante in demonizing Iran as a military-nuclear threat to Israel, the US and the Gulf States. Almost a third of every issue of the Daily Alert (from January 1 to February 20, 2008) is devoted to reproducing propaganda pieces from Israeli officials claiming the Iranians are a nuclear threat and are advancing toward nuclear war. They repeat Israeli propaganda about an 'existential threat to the survival of Israel'. The CPMAJO never mention that Israel has a current Middle East monopoly of over 200 nuclear weapons and missiles. Since most leading US Zionists believe that they will not have another President as servile to Israeli interests as the current President Bush (a doubtful proposition) they are pushing hard to find a pretext for a US attack or an Israeli strike backed by Washington before Bush leaves office. While the White House has raised its bellicose rhetoric and aggressively pursued new sanctions, Washington and its backers in the ZPC have failed to isolate Iran. In late 2007 and into 2008, Iran has met with top Iraqi politicians in Baghdad and Teheran, reached agreements with US military officials to stabilize Iraq, addressed the Gulf Cooperation Council at their annual meeting in Doha, while the Saudi monarch invited Iranian President Ahmadinejad to fulfill the Hadj pilgrimage in Mecca in December 2007 ( Al Jazeera, February 16, 2008). In other words the ZPC's militarist anti-Iran strategy has succeeded in isolating the US form its conservative Gulf allies, split US civilians and military policymakers and cost major US and EU oil companies over $20 billion dollars in lost Iranian oil contracts. While the ZPC, via its influence in the mass media and contributions to the leading presidential candidates, has shaped elite opinion in defense of Israeli genocide in Gaza and war policy toward Iran, it has failed to 'turn' the great majority of the American public opposed to Middle East wars from favoring the prompt withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and condemning the officially acknowledged use of torture in detainee interrogations.

Cracks in the Zionist Monolith
There are even some cracks in the ZPC monolithic control of public debate on the Israeli colonization of Palestine and the disastrous role of the pro-Israel power configuration in formulating US domestic security and war policy. Despite the Daily Alerts reproduction of at least a dozen vitriolic, histrionic, ad hominum attacks on Professors Mearsheimer and Walt and their book on the Israel Lobby and former President Jimmy Carter's book on the Israeli apartheid policy against Palestinians, the issues they raise have circulated widely and continue to influence millions of Americans. Jewish critics, both secular and religious, Zionist and anti-Zionist (especially the younger generations), are publicly challenging the pretense of the mainline Jewish organizations' claim to speak for the Jewish community with regard to Israel and US Middle East policy.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, a primarily anti-Zionist Jewish organization, has joined with the province of Ontario's biggest public sector trade union in denouncing Israeli colonial policy in Palestine and challenging Zionist dominance of the Jewish community and influence over the Canadian trade union movement.

Major protestant denominations in the United States, including the Presbyterians and Methodists are supporting divestment of US companies aiding Israel's brutal colonial rule in the West Bank and Gaza. In the first week of February, the student government at the London School of Economics voted by an overwhelming majority in favor of divestment campaign against companies supporting Israeli occupation. A growing number of universities organized well-attended teach-ins throughout North America, protesting Israel's apartheid regime and policy, despite vitriolic attacks from prominent Jewish administrators and Zionist academics.

Top US military commanders, active and retired, have taken initiatives that directly contravene the ZPC dictates on Iran by praising its cooperation in stabilizing Iraq and playing a critical supporting role in overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The major intelligence agencies in the US report on Iran's absence of a nuclear weapon development program, contradicting the propaganda line of the Administration. This has struck a powerful blow against the ZPC warmongers and their Israel-First agents in the Treasury Department (Levey, Glaser), the National Security Council (Elliott Abrams), the White House (Joshua Bolton), State Department (Wolfowitz) and Pentagon (Shumsky).
We are engaged in a life and death struggle against war, terror and genocide ­ against Imperial and Zionist barbarism. As the ZPC push for a military confrontation with Iran before Bush leaves office; as the ZPC back Israel's policy of economic blockades to starve the people of Gaza, assassinate its leaders and shred all public order in Gaza; as the ZPC back Israeli state-sponsored extra-territorial murders (likely to provoke new terror retaliatory attacks in the US and EU and the end of democratic freedoms in America); and as the ZPC actively support the shredding of constitutional and judicial liberties of American citizens and residents and the expansion of a repressive security state, we should recognize the following: In the final instance, in fighting the ZPC, we should be aware of powerful enemies in high places, acting against the interests of our country.

However, we should recognize we also have enormous support among the American people and even tactical allies among some officials in the military and intelligence community. We have a new generation of active dissident Christian, secular and Jewish critics of Israel and the ZPC, as well as billions of supporters among Muslims world wide, among secular Arabs and the majority of citizens in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. Above all, we are defending our own, hard-won democratic freedoms, our own families' and communities' security from Israeli-provoked terrorist attacks and, even more important, our right to develop policies in the interest of the American people, free from the dictates of Israel and its agents.



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http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/israel/dimona.htm
Dimona
Negev Nuclear Research Center
Kirya le-Mechkar Garinii (KAMAG)
The Dimona heavy water reactor and an installation for processing irradiated fuel are used to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. Approximately 2,700 scientists, technicians, administrative staff, and other workers are employed at Dimona. Since the facility was constructed in the late 1950's the surrounding land has been altered to sustain groves of palms and gardens positioned to obscure the facility from the road and air.

Begining around 1958 with French assistance, Israel constructed a natural uranium, heavy-water, research reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert, about 8.5 miles from the town of the same name and some 25 miles from the Jordanian border. The Dimona facility was constructed in secret and is not under international inspection safeguards. The facility was first noticed by American intelligence when U-2 spyplanes overflew Dimona in 1958. It was not conclusively identified as a nuclear site until two years later. This reactor, nominally rated at 26 megawatts thermal, was put on line in early 1964. However according to Pierre Pean, French officials were surprised to discover that the cooling circuits designed to support three times the nominal power level, which permitted a scale-up to 70MWt without the addition of extra cooling circuits. If true, the power level of the reactor was reportedly 70MWt from the outset. Perhaps the power level has been increased to 150MWt some time after 1976, according to Barnaby.

An installation for processing irradiated fuel was completed with French assistance in the mid-1960s. Between 15 and 40-60 kilograms of fissionable plutonium can be processed annually. This facility probably has the capacity to produce plutonium for five to ten nuclear warheads a year.

In 1986, descriptions and photographs provided by the Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu were published in the London Sunday Times of the Dimona facility. This information supported the conclusion that Israel had a stockpile of 100 to 200 nuclear devices, a significantly larger nuclear capability than previously estimated.

Dimona consists of nine of these blocks called machons (in Hebrew facility or institute).

Machon 1 - The large silver-domed reactor containment vessel, nearly 20 meters [about 60 feet] in diameter, is visible from a nearby highway. Uranium fuel rods remain in the reactor for a few months before being discharged for reprocessing. The heavy water used as a moderator is cooled by ordinary water through a heat exchanger, which reportedly results in steam sometimes visible from the outside. Reports of annual production of as much as 60-kg of plutonium suggest that the reactor power level has been upgraded to 120-150 megawatts, much higher than the original power of 26 megawatts. Tritium can be produced by irradiating lithium-6 targets in the reactor. The reactor is four decades old, and may be reaching the end of its practical lifetime.
Machon 2 - Of the 2,700 employees at Dimona, it is said that only 150 are permitted access to Machon 2, which reportedly extends six floors underground. The chemical reprocessing plant removes plutonium produced in the reactor from the spent uranium rods. Before reprocessing begins, the rods are stored in water filled tanks for several weeks while the short-halflife radio-isotopes decay. The residual uranium is reprocessed to be used in new fuel rods. The facility also separates lithium-6 from natural lithium for use in thermonuclear weapons. According to Vanunu, the average weekly production is 1.2 kilograms of pure plutonium, enough for 4-12 nuclear weapons per year.
Machon 3 - The facility includes processing of natural uranium for the reactor, and conversion of lithium 6 into a solid for use in thermo-nuclear warheads.
Machon 4 - This facility is dedicated to the treatment of radioactive waste products. It includes a waste treatment plant and high-level waste storage. Low-level waste is mixed with tar, taken out in cans and buried nearby.
Machon 5 - Uranium from Machon 3 is made into rods coated in aluminum to be sent to the reactor.
Machon 6 - Supply of services to other Machons, including electricity, steam and specialized chemicals (nitrogen etc). It also hosts emergency electrical generators.
Machon 7 - Unknown - may no longer exist.
Machon 8 - Large laboratory for testing purity of samples from Machon 2, experiments on new processes. A secret unit (Unit 840) has been making enriched uranium since 1979-80 on a production scale. This may consist of a gas centifuge faclity for the production of enriched uranium.
Machon 9 - A laser isotope separation facility can be used to enrich uranium and to increase the proportion of isotope plutonium-239 in plutonium.
Machon 10 - Depleted uranium made into tips of shells for Israeli use and for export to Switzerland.
Israel may have developed a nuclear weapons capability incorporating enriched uranium. Up to 100 kilograms of enriched uranium missing from a facility at Apollo, Pennsylvania, are believed to have been taken to Israel, although other reports suggest that much of the material was recovered from the floors and ventilation ducts of the plant when it was decommissioned. In 1968, 200 tons of uranium ore disappeared from a ship in the Mediterranean Sea and probably diverted to Israel.

Plutonium production reactors which are both cooled and moderated by heavy water [like the Israeli reactor at Dimona] require about 0.75 tons of heavy water per thermal megawatt, and lose about 0.5 % of this heavy water each year.

"Dimona needed about 18t of heavy water to start operation.... France very likely agreed to supply Dimona's heavy water along with the reactor.... From 1959 to 1963 Israel imported 20t from Norway and 3.9t from the United States. This would supply Dimona indefinitely if the reactor stayed at its rated power of 24 megawatts.... For the reactor to produce the 40 kilograms of plutonium per year described by Vanunu, it would have had to be scaled up to more than 100 megawatts.... If the amount of coolant were quadrupled, which could allow quadrupled power, Dimona would need about 36t of heavy water — 12t of moderator and 24t of coolant. The 36t is slightly less than the total that Israel could have received from Norway, the United States, and France." HEAVY WATER CHEATERS by Gary Milhollin Foreign Policy Winter 1987-1988, p. 100-119.



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