The Euro Circus Continues: S&P downgrades France, Italy, Spain, 6 others

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the government debt of France, Austria, Italy and Spain, but maintained Germany’s at the coveted “AAA” level.

The cuts, which eliminated France and Austria’s triple-A status, deal a heavy blow to the currency union’s ability to fight off a worsening debt crisis. In total, S&P cut its ratings on nine eurozone countries.

France and Austria both dropped one notch to AA+. Italy was lowered by two notches to BBB+ from A, and Spain fell to A from AA-. Portugal and Cyprus also dropped two notches. The agency also cut ratings on Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The downgrades come as crucial talks on cutting Greece’s massive debt pile appeared close to collapse Friday.

Speaking on France-2 television, Finance Minister Francois Baroin confirmed that France had been lowered by one notch. That would mean a rating of AA+, the same rating the United States has had since S&P downgraded it last August.

Baroin said France had received a change to its rating “like most of the eurozone,” referring to the 17 European nations that use the euro currency.

A credit downgrade escalates the threats to Europe’s fragile financial system. It increases the costs at which the affected countries — some of which are already struggling with heavy debt loads and low growth — borrow money.
Baroin said the downgrade was “bad news” but not “a catastrophe.”

“You have to be relative, you have keep your cool,” he said. “It’s necessary not to frighten the French people about it.”

S&P had warned 15 European nations in December that they were at risk for a credit downgrade.

Earlier Friday, as rumors of a looming downgrade swirled around the financial markets, the euro hit its lowest level in more than a year and borrowing costs for European nations rose. Stock markets in Europe and the U.S. fell.

The fears of a downgrade brought a sour end to a mildly encouraging week for Europe’s heavily indebted nations and were a stark reminder that the 17-country eurozone’s debt crisis is far from over.

Earlier Friday, Italy had capped a strong week for government debt auctions, seeing its borrowing costs drop for a second day in a row as it successfully raised as much as €4.75 billion ($6.05 billion).

Spain and Italy completed successful bond auctions on Thursday, and European Central Bank president Mario Draghi noted “tentative signs of stabilization” in the region’s economy.

Credit downgrades will drive up the cost of European government debt as investors demand more compensation for holding bonds now deemed to be riskier. Higher borrowing costs puts more financial pressure on countries already contending with heavy debt burdens.

In Greece, negotiations Friday to get investors to take a voluntary cut on their Greek bond holdings appeared close to collapse, raising the specter of a potentially disastrous default by the country that kicked off Europe’s financial troubles more than two years ago.

The deal, known as the Private Sector Involvement, aims to reduce Greece’s debt by €100 billion ($127.8 billion) by swapping private creditors’ bonds with new ones of a lower value, and is a key part of a €130 billion ($166 billion) international bailout. Without it, the country could suffer a catastrophic bankruptcy that would send shock waves through the global economy.

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos met Thursday and Friday with representatives of the Institute of International Finance, a global body representing the private bondholders. Finance ministry officials from the eurozone also met in Brussels Thursday night.

“Unfortunately, despite the efforts of Greece’s leadership, the proposal put forward … which involves an unprecedented 50% nominal reduction of Greece’s sovereign bonds in private investors’ hands and up to €100 billion of debt forgiveness — has not produced a constructive consolidated response by all parties, consistent with a voluntary exchange of Greek sovereign debt,” the IIF said in a statement.

“Under the circumstances, discussions with Greece and the official sector are paused for reflection on the benefits of a voluntary approach,” it said.

Friday’s Italian auction saw investors demanding an interest rate of 4.83% to lend Italy three-year money, down from an average rate of 5.62% in the previous auction and far lower than the 7.89% in November, when the country’s financial crisis was most acute.

While Italy paid a slightly higher rate for bonds maturing in 2018, which were also sold in Friday’s auction, demand was between 1.2% and 2.2% higher than what was on offer.

The results were not as strong as those of bond auctions the previous day, when Italy raised €12 billion ($15 billion) and Spain saw huge demand for its own debt sale.

“Overall, it underscores that while all the auctions in the eurozone have been battle victories, the war is a long way from being resolved (either way),” said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities. “These euro area auctions will continue to present themselves as market risk events for a very protracted period.”

Italy’s €1.9 trillion ($2.42 trillion) in government debt and heavy borrowing needs this year have made it a focal point of the European debt crisis.
Italy has passed austerity measures and is on a structural reform course that Premier Mario Monti claims should bring down Italy’s high bond yields, which he says are no longer warranted.

Analysts have said the successful recent bond auctions were at least in part the work of the ECB, which has inundated banks with cheap loans, giving them ready cash that at least some appear to be using to buy higher-yielding short-term government bonds.

Some 523 banks took €489 billion in credit for up to three years at a current interest cost of 1%.

Source: usatoday.com

The Marriage from Hell: Jane Harman and the Woodrow Wilson Center

“Woodrow Wilson, the 28th American president, is looking down in horror at what the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWC) is doing in his name.”

I wrote that last year in two exposés: “The Selling of the WWC”  and “The WWC Desecrates its Namesake’s Legacy”.  They revealed that the Washington, DC-based Wilson Center is violating its Congressional mandate and is up to its neck in tainted corporate cash.

A leading Congressman, a Wilson family descendant, citizens’ groups, and many others agreed. One prominent journalist called the WWC “a global joke.”

Several months ago, this Congressionally-created, multi-million dollar think tank, funded partly by taxpayers, made another colossal blunder.  It hired former eight-term Congresswoman Jane Harman (D–CA) to be its president, replacing Lee Hamilton, also a former Congressman.

Harman, like Hamilton, is not only part of the good-old-boy (and girl) network of which the WWC is so fond.   Among her other baggage, charges of illegal conduct in a spy scandal involving AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) have shadowed Harman for years.

Let’s take a closer look at Harman and the Wilson Center to see why they’re the marriage from hell.

Harman’s spy scandal

Two top AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted on spy charges in 2005 for passing classified documents to Israel.

Citing confidential sources, Time magazine, in 2006, and Congressional Quarterly, two years ago, reported that the Feds had wiretapped Cong. Jane Harman and a “suspected Israeli agent” agreeing to this deal: Harman would persuade the Justice Department to reduce the charges against Rosen and Weissman; in exchange, AIPAC and its influential supporters would persuade then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to reappoint the unpopular Harman as top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Harman apparently promised the “Israeli agent” to “waddle into”  the AIPAC scandal “if you think it’ll make a difference.”  Harman ended the exchange with “this conversation doesn’t exist.”

The Justice Department and CIA wanted to prosecute Harman.  But Alberto Gonzales, President Bush’s Attorney General, reportedly refused because – ironically – he “needed Jane” to support the government’s ongoing warrantless wiretapping program.

Shockingly, charges against Rosen and Weissman were dropped  in 2009 because a judge put constraints on Federal prosecutors.  Larry Franklin, the Defense Department official who passed the classified documents to the two AIPAC officials, wasn’t so lucky.   He pled guilty three years earlier and went to prison.

Harman has long denied any wrongdoing.  She has never, however, given a full account of her conversations regarding Rosen and Weissman.  Full accounts, as we shall see, are not one of Harman’s virtues.

Harman’s genocide flip-flop

While co-sponsoring Congressional resolution HR 106 on the Armenian genocide  committed by Turkey, Cong. Harman went behind the backs of her constituents in October of 2007 by asking then-Foreign Relations Chair Tom Lantos (D-CA) to bury the resolution.  Only after her constituents discovered this through other sources did she admit to it.

But the explanations for her flip-flop made little sense. “This is the wrong time” for the resolution, wrote Harman.  But she couldn’t cite anything relevant in 2007 that had changed regarding Turkey, Armenia, or the Middle East since she signed onto the resolution a few years earlier.

Harman claimed that a genocide resolution would “embarrass or isolate the Turkish leadership.” This claim came suspiciously soon after she met with Turkey’s threatening Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan. Apparently, recognizing a genocide requires an OK from the perpetrating country’s leader.

But Harman reached truly ridiculous heights by claiming– again, this was in 2007 – that it was “obvious” that Turkey’s “leadership” was needed for “resolving the Israel-Palestine issue.”  Turkey had never, of course, played a significant role in mediating between Israelis and Palestinians. What really caused Harman’s genocide flip-flop?

Jewish groups and Turkey

AIPAC was (and is) one of several major Jewish American organizations that have colluded with Turkey to, among other things, defeat Armenian genocide resolutions. Israel, Turkey, and Jewish groups formed their ménage-à-trois in the 1990’s.

Yola Johnston, Community Outreach Director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, has admitted that AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith, her own organization, and “the Jewish lobby” have “quite actively supported Turkey in their efforts to prevent the so-called Armenian genocide resolution from passing.”

AIPAC, reported the Washington Times last year, had “lit up the phones” against the genocide resolution when “the Turks” asked a “senior researcher” at AIPAC to do so.  That “senior researcher” and “architect of the Jewish community’s support for Turkey” was none other than AIPAC’s notorious Keith Weissman.   So the Harman-AIPAC-Weissman threesome was at the center of not only a spy scandal but also a genocide cover-up.

And there’s more. Yet another scandal may have induced Harman’s genocide duplicity.

Anti-Defamation League scandal

Harman wrote her genocide flip-flop letter to Chairman Lantos just as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was taking a beating in the U.S. and internationally for denying the Armenian genocide and helping Turkey lobby against Armenian genocide recognition.  Human rights activists, principled Jews, and Armenian Americans had just months earlier launched a campaign (see NoPlaceForDenial.com) that was to result in more than a dozen Massachusetts cities’ evicting the ADL’s so-called “No Place for Hate” anti-bias program.

The Turkish government was furious that the embarrassing arrangement among it, Jewish groups, and Israel was being splashed across the headlines.

Prime Minister Erdogan made a frantic call to Israeli President Peres, while Turkey’s foreign minister reportedly warned the Israeli ambassador that “our bilateral relations will suffer.”

Did Harman, who was certainly aware of this uproar, panic at the prospect of a further deterioration in the already strained relations between Israel and Turkey?  Did she ask Lantos to kill the genocide resolution because Turkey would blame Israel, AIPAC, the ADL, and even Harman herself if the resolution succeeded?

Considering the timing, Harman’s relationship to Israel and the genocide-denying AIPAC, and the illogical explanations for her flip-flop, it seems probable.  Though the House Committee narrowing passed the resolution, Harman had to be pleased that it did not make it any further.  Her appeasement of Turkey, however, proved to be in vain:

• Erdogan was soon calling Shimon Peres a mass murderer  (January 2009) for Israel’s offensive against Gaza.

• Israel scolded and humiliated Turkey’s ambassador (January 2010) in response to Turkish criticism and an anti-Israeli TV show.

• Israeli commandos shot nine Turks to death on a ship that had tried to break the Gaza blockade (May 2010).

• Erdogan has expelled the Israeli ambassador, cut defense ties with Tel Aviv, and threatened military retaliation unless Israeli apologizes and pays compensation for the flotilla killings.

But when, like Harman, one has few firm principles and has fooled herself into believing that a country such as Turkey is a friend, she inevitably winds up with yogurt on her face.

No self-respecting institution would have considered hiring anyone with Harman’s background.   That may explain why the Wilson Center hired her.  It has little respect for its mission or the American people.

The Wilson Center flouts Congress

The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Act of 1968 was crystal clear:  The WWC must commemorate Wilson’s “ideals and concerns” and memorialize “his accomplishments.” Yet it has ignored large swaths of the Wilson administration’s record on the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), Turkey, and the Middle East.

The WWC isn’t just thumbing its nose at Congress and taxpayers.  It has closed its eyes to a wealth of political knowledge about a region in which the U.S. has enormous interests.  The Caucasus, for example, is a major locus for producing and transporting oil and gas.  It’s also ground-zero in the new Cold War between the U.S. and Russia, particularly since the Russian-Georgian war of 2008.

Donald Wilson Bush, President of the Woodrow Wilson Legacy Foundation and a Wilson family descendant, has rightly accused the WWC of “violating [its] very own mission and purpose.”

Wilson’s Record

Wilson and the State Department’s record on the region from the WW 1 era is extensive.  Though the U.S. did not formally declare war against Turkey in WW1, Turkey was the main ally of Germany, America’s enemy.  Wilson condemned, in the strongest terms, Turkey’s genocide of Armenians and was a fervent advocate of Armenian independence.   By the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres – a product of the Paris Peace Conference in 1920 – the U.S. formally delineated the borders of that part of Armenia and Kurdistan that now lies within Turkey’s eastern regions.  Turkey later reneged on the Treaty.

Yet, despite the clear stipulation of Congress, Wilson’s record has been almost totally ignored by the WWC.  Indeed, three years ago, historian and legal scholar Ara Papian, a Canadian resident and former Armenian Ambassador to Canada, applied for a WWC Fellowship to do ground-breaking research on the U.S. archival record regarding Turkey and the Caucasus – a proposal the WWC should have jumped at.  Papian was rejected without explanation.  Ironically, several months ago Lee Hamilton told the that U.S. foreign policy officials need the views of “historians.”  Yet as WWC president, he all but ignored the history of Wilson’s Caucasus policies.

Tainted corporate cash

The WWC has been corrupted by its gluttony for corporate cash.  Case in point:  it acknowledged that money was the main reason it journeyed to Turkey in 2010 to honor a Turkish billionaire whose Dogus Holding conglomerate is a WWC donor, and to give a much-criticized award to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Cong. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, blasted Lee Hamilton for honoring Davutoglu.  Ackerman cited Turkey’s military occupation of Cyprus, closure of the border with Armenia, and denial of the Armenian genocide.  Honoring Davutoglu was “absolutely inconsistent with the mission of the WWC and the ideals that animated President Wilson’s administration and foreign policy.”

The Wilson Center, added Donald Wilson Bush, had engaged in “Turkish diplomatic appeasement.”  It had “sacrificed its legitimacy as a ‘neutral forum for open, serious, and informed dialogue.’”

“Why,” asked Claudia Rosett, “should Congress keep fueling this morally blank, misleading and venal exercise [the WWC] with millions of American tax dollars?”  Good question.

Part of why the WWC has all but ignored Wilson’s record on Turkey and the Caucasus is undoubtedly that many major donors (present and past members of its elite “Wilson Alliance”) have lobbied for, or been members of trade organizations that have lobbied for, Turkey and against the Armenian resolution.  These include Alcoa, BAE Systems, Bechtel, Boeing, Bombardier, Chevron, Coca Cola, Exxon-Mobil and Honeywell.

In fact, Harman’s predecessor, Lee Hamilton, engaged in a clear conflict of interest during his tenure by sitting on the board of BAE Systems, a defense giant which does lots of business with Turkey.  Last year a Federal judge slapped BAE’s parent corporation with a $400 million criminal fine for “deception, duplicity and knowing violations of law … on an enormous scale.”  Too bad the judge didn’t also look into the Wilson Center.

Hamilton also sat on the board of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a “global strategy firm” headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Hamilton’s WWC bio, incredibly, was dead silent about his corporate affiliations. This same Lee Hamilton co-chaired the official National Commission on the 9/11 attacks, whose report has been widely criticized as incomplete and biased.    Hamilton and Harman, you see, can be counted on not to rock the corporate establishment’s boat.

The WWC is rife with other questionable characters, including those with deep ties to Turkey, such as former board member and present Wilson Council member Ignacio Sanchez, a lobbyist employed by DLA Piper, which is a registered foreign agent for Turkey.  And former “Wilson Public Policy Scholar” Marc Grossman, ex-US ambassador to Turkey and DLA Piper bigwig.  “Coincidentally,” Sanchez and Grossman were both on the WWC Search Committee that hired Harman.

Made for each other

If ever there was a marriage made in hell, therefore, Jane Harman and the Wilson Center are it:

• The WWC receives millions in “donations” from the military-industrial complex, which influences the Center’s agenda and policies.  Similarly, Harman – a former Defense Department lawyer – has received large campaign contributions from defense and aerospace firms’ Political Action Committees and employees, including those in El Segundo, a key military–industrial center located in her former Congressional district.

“Coincidentally,” major Wilson Center donors BAE Systems (Lee Hamilton’s comrade-in-arms), Boeing, and Chevron have offices in El Segundo.  Indeed, BAE, Boeing, and Chevron were her “constituents” (and American Turkish Council members) not only when she was in Congress. Those corporations – another “coincidence” – are her “constituents” again, at the WWC.  Might the WWC have hired Harman for her expertise in raking in military-industrial “donations”?

• The WWC has ingratiated itself with Turkey.  It has given awards to its Foreign Minister and a major Turkish corporate donor, and virtually ignored Wilson’s policies regarding Turkey and the Caucasus.   Harman, too, has ingratiated herself with Turkey.  She reversed her stance on the Congress’s Armenian genocide resolution (and gave absurd reasons for doing so).

• And just as the Wilson Center has gotten away (so far, anyway) with violating its Congressional mandate, Jane Harman has escaped prosecution (so far, anyway) for her dealings with a “foreign agent” in the AIPAC espionage scandal.

No, there’s no prospect that Harman will lead the WWC to adhere to the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Act of 1968, fulfill its pledge to be a “neutral forum for open, serious, and informed dialogue,” and release the grip that mega-corporations have on it.

If Congress of its own volition will not bring the Wilson Center to its senses, then Congress must be pushed by the American people to do so.  Other possibilities are investigations and legal action by third parties.

Just don’t count on Jane Harman’s cooperation.

The Snow Fronde

After interminably long delay, the grey Moscow heavens were at long last generous with snow, dispensing heaps and heaps of the white stuff, turning cars into snow mountains and making  sidewalks  impassable. This is a nice time of  year: bare trees are covered with white foliage, skating rinks flash with skaters, girls sport their favorite minks. Snow mitigates the bitter frost, and kids are busy throwing snowballs. The big and rather well-tempered demo on Saturday Dec 24 was  probably the last splash of public activity before snow-bound Russia enters its long Christmas recess for some three weeks. Usually  Russians prepare for New Year’s starting with  Western Christmas Day and then  stay away from work skiing, boozing, or roaming overseas until their peculiar Old New Year feast in mid-January.

The big demo confirmed a new Fronde in the heart of Russia. The original Fronde was a series of anti-absolutist uprisings caused by the personal ambitions of discontented nobles; and by the grievances of the people against the financial burdens in France that lasted from 1648 to 1653. The Frondeurs came from various social strata and at times pursued divergent goals, says the encyclopaedia, and this definition fits Russia’s new Snow Fronde to a tee.  The Russian Frondeurs are a varied lot:

• bright young men and women looking for more participation in the run of their country;
• sincere professionals worried by the lack of development;
• anarchists and the gay community;
• political figures from the 90’s,  once defeated and trashed by Putin and now looking for revanche;
• like the Fronde of old, this on included princes and nobles: ex-president Mikhail Gorbachev (he did not come to the rally for health reasons), ex-Deputy Prime Minister Nemtsov and ex-Prime Minister Kasyanov;
• professional rebels like Edward Limonov and Sergey Udaltsov;
• best-selling writers Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov;
• oligarchs Prokhorov and Berezovsky of London;
• Vanity Fair, high fashion and gossip personalities Xenia Sobchak and Bozhena Rynska;
• nationalists and racialists Vladimir Tor and Constantine Krylov;
• and last but not least powerful new protest leader Alexei Navalny, whose  rabble-rousing unnerved more timid protesters.

The most senior attendee and speaker at the rally was ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, recently fired by Medvedev. Mr Kudrin is a favourite of the IMF and of the US Administration, the man who kept Russia’s savings in US treasury notes. He is competing for the title of “most hated” with Anatoly Chubais, the man behind Yeltsin’s privatisation and fake auctions. He is a serious, powerful man, and his presence was an important sign to young and not-so-young protesters alike. He can be compared to Gadhafi’s Minister of Justice Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the most senior Libyan minister to switch sides and legitimise the rebellion.

Now the authorities have a longish time-out for month or two, until  the  revving up of  the March Presidential elections. Nor have they wasted their time: after the unexpectedly large turnout  at the previous demo on December 10, protesting the results of the Parliamentary elections, a flurry of government activity was unleashed.  This  counterattack by Putin consisted of promising more democracy, more anti-corruption measures and more political manoeuvring while blaming the US for the current unrest.

The administration took a few practical steps:

• the new Parliament was sworn in, effectively closing off discussion of electoral fraud;
• almost all alternative candidates for the Presidency were blocked and de-listed, leaving the field to tired old politicians with one exception:
• Playboy oligarch Prokhorov was given green light to run for the presidency in hopes of placating and involving the pro-Western electorate, eliminating the possibility of electoral boycott;
• the Russian envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, was brought home and appointed  Deputy Prime Minister for Defence. Rogozin is a more nationalist voice, and his appointment is supposed to placate Russian anti-Western nationalists.
• Vladislav Surkov, the éminence grise of the Kremlin, became the head of the presidential administration, a position of power. Surkov is the smartest man at the top, and his stratagems will be needed and heeded.
• A dirty trick was played on Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the Snow Frondeurs – his phone was hacked and his calls were recorded and made available on the web. They were extremely outspoken and included curses heaped on his ostensible partners.
• The post-election campaign peaked with Putin’s live marathon TV  question-and-answer show. This time Putin broke his own record by answering questions by Russians for over four and half hours. He did not hesitate to answer even the most awkward questions by callers from all over the vast country –  from the Pacific to the Baltic coast.
• A few days later  incumbent president Medvedev made a speech to the nation promising more democracy, a lowering of the electoral threshold and an easing of restrictions on party registration.
• In a widely reported meeting with the energy sector, Putin promised to uproot  corrupt officials and put a stop to their practice of passing profitable contracts  to their sons or spouses.

Putin promised to make state governors electable by popular vote instead of appointing them, as is the rule now. He reminded people  that when state governors had been elected in the past, these positions were snapped up by the oligarchs or their protégés, who were often connected to organised crime. Perhaps true, but at the moment all (but one) of the appointed governors belong to the United Russia party, and this does not seem right or fair. So the promised freedom to elect governors (with some caveats) went over well with the people. This was reiterated by President Medvedev in his speech to the nation a few days later.

Though the claim of fraudulent elections has been somewhat exaggerated, Putin promised to install a web camera at each polling station to eliminate the possibility of fraud.  Putin was rather dismissive of the rally, saying that the white ribbons of the participants looked like condoms – and some began to style the emerging movement the “Condom Revolution”.

Putin answered the two questions I asked, too ( probably they had been posted by many others as well). He promised to stop one of the most insidious developments in modern Russia: the proliferation of offshore trusts and companies and their active participation in Russia’s daily life. These companies rip off the citizenry, pay no taxes and busily take their ill-gotten gains away to tax-free havens. Usually they operate the Enron-style racket  familiar to Americans : they take over existing systems and fleece thecustomers.

The weekly Russian Reporter published a story about a Cyprus-based offshore company which took over municipal heating for a small Urals township of Pervouralsk. They bought heat at a fixed price from the producer and charged triple that price to the customer. The Cyprus company belongs to oligarch Mr. Victor Vexelberg who was able to ensure that their bid for the contract would be accepted. Vladimir Putin mentioned many similar cases of  high-ranking state officials who grant profitable contracts to offshore companies closely connected to their friends or relatives.

He also says he does not intend to raise the taxes or make them progressive – like a right-wing utopia, Russia has a flat rate (15%) tax. He also refused to deal with the hated oligarchs. Putin openly admitted that they obtained their assets by subterfuge and theft, but he said it can’t be taken back. This was a big disappointment for many listeners. Still, if Putin will implement what he promised: restrict offshore companies and give more power to the electorate, the bottom line of the rallies will be positive. The authorities should be pushed, otherwise they do not move. For this reason I, for one, see these rallies as a  positive development.

Meanwhile, the parties called their supporters to participate in separate demos on December 18; all – from the Communists to the moderate Yabloko – had little success with attendance about three thousand max. Apparently people are not in the mood to join street democracy; or perhaps they are not happy with these old parties either.

Most probably there will be a Christmas recess timeout, but  trouble will come to the fore in March, if not sooner. Ordinary Russians outside Moscow are quietly accepting Putin without much enthusiasm, but his position in Moscow is not secure. The top men of the Fronde are well connected with wealthy and powerful insiders who dislike Putin’s regim; they feel that he limits their ambitions. They would like to have more. It’s not like they have too little: Russia is awash with millionaires and billionaires, but they want torule too. This new super-rich class has its representatives in the Kremlin, and apparently they have working arrangements with state-owned and private-owned media. Some Russian observers connect incumbent president Medvedev with this submerged group; others see Mr Prokhorov as its preferred leader.

While a plurality of voters voted for communists, the people in power have quite different desires. In 1990, the people who destroyed communism and the Soviet Union were leading members of its own  party cadres; it is possible that the Putin regime will be undone in turn by its own nomenclatura. This is likely to happen if Putin fails to seize the initiative.

Some  of the Putin regime’s defences, namely the United Russia party and its youth movements, appear weak. The new structure, the Popular Front, is still untried. People do not know how serious Putin is about power. Putin’s true test will be in deeds, not words. If the heads of the hated and allegedly corrupt officials (including Mr Anatoly Chubais) were to roll, if the offshore companies were to be forced to reveal its real owners and pay taxes, if  resources were taken away from the oligarchs and re-nationalised, people would feel they have a reason to defend Putin. As things now stand, though the Snow Fronde (aka “condom revolutionaries”) are not well known outside of Moscow, people in general would passively accept the fall of Putin, just as they previously accepted the  fall of the Tsar and of Gorbachev, or indeed, as Alexandre Pouchkine makes the point in his Boris Godunov (now made into one helluva film), as they typically acquiesce to  the fall of any ruler.

Making Sense of The Russian Elections

Moscow is unusually warm: the temperature refuses to dip below zero degrees Centigrade, the freezing point.  Instead, it is wet and dark. The sun gets up late and goes to sleep early. To make matters worse, President Medvedev decided to keep Russia on daylight savings  time throughout winter. To offset this stupid decision, Christmas illumination was turned on a month before the usual time, in order to cheer up the voters. Now it lights the way for the armoured vans of the riot police sent in to pacify the cheery electorate.

The parliamentary elections were deemed in advance as a futile and vain exercise of no practical importance. “It does not matter how you vote, what matters is how they count”,  pundits said. But the results were quite impressive and they point to great changes ahead. The Russians have said to communism: “Come back, all is forgiven.” They effectively voted to restore the Soviet Union, in one form or another.  Perhaps this vote will not be acted upon, but now we know – the people are disappointed with capitalism, with the low place of post-Soviet Russia in the world and with the marriage of big business and government.

If communists proved the fallacy of their ideas in 70 years, the capitalists needed only twenty years to achieve this same result, quipped Maxim Kantor, a prominent modern Russian painter, writer and thinker. The twentieth anniversary of the restoration of capitalism that Russia commemorated this year was not a cause for celebration but rather for sad second thoughts. The Russians loudly regretted the course taken by their country in 1991; the failed coup of August 1991, this last ditch attempt to preserve communism, has been reassessed in a positive light, while the brave Harvard boys of yesteryear who initiated the reforms are seen as criminals. Yeltsin and Gorbachev are out, Stalin is in.

Despite the falsifications of election results(discussed below), the communists (CPRF and their splinter party the Just Russia or SR) greatly increased their share and can be considered the true winners. The ruling  United Russia (ER) party suffered huge losses. A loose confederation of power-seeking individuals, it could easily fall apart. There is a distinct possibility of the communists being able to form the government, that is, if they should be asked to do so by the President.

Pro-capitalist and right-wing parties were decimated by the voters. Neoliberal Right Cause (PD), the party of choice for market believers, languished with less than one per cent of the vote.  The liberal, pro-Western Apple Party (half-jokingly referred to as  “the Steve Jobs party”) did not cross the electoral threshold.  Many Russians think that, discounting falsifications, the communists “really” got over 50%, while the ER actually got less, perhaps much less. Given the chance, the people voted for communists, as had been predicted a few months ago by VT Tretyakov, a senior Russian journalist and chief editor, during an address to a Washington DC think tank. He correctly said that in fairly honest elections, the communists will carry the day, and the liberals will be gone, and he was right. If this change of heart does not find its expression in political action, people will feel cheated.

This turn towards communism took place with Russia busily restoring its lost legacy:

• The North Stream pipeline connected Russian gas with European consumers directly, leaving Poland (and by proxy, the US) without a point of leverage. Oil and gas pipelines are being built towards China, promising Russia a choice of customers.
• Putin’s idea of a Eurasian Union began to take shape. The Ukraine  has made friendly gestures, the crisis of Belarus is over, Kazakhstan is firmly inside.
• The Russian Navy aircraft carrier went to the shores of Syria, in a rare display of power, while Qatar’s ambassador in Moscow has been sent packing, as this tiny but rich emirate is apparently leading the anti-Syrian campaign.
• Last month, the fabulous Bolshoi theatre was lovingly and expensively restored to its purple-and-gold old glory. To conservative viewers’ chagrin, Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila opera (with wonderful American singer Charles Workman) was directed in an avant-garde manner, showing that the theatre will not act as a museum piece but will produce up-to-date art.
• Sochi is about to become the most expensive and luxurious sea-and-mountain resort ever in preparation for the Winter Olympics;
• Moscow has been beautified; thirty-foot-high elaborately decorated Christmas trees have been placed at prominent locations around the city, making the darkness of its northern nights almost bearable. City parks have been granted huge budgets for improvement; skating rinks have been prepared. Even fountains that collapsed twenty years ago have been rebuilt.
• But the most important recent sign of a resurgent Russia took place this month: A holy relic, the Virgin Mary’s Sash, has been brought to Moscow from its repository at  sacred Mount Athos.  A staggering three million Muscovites venerated it, queuing up for twenty-four hours on average  in freezing temperatures. This was Russia’s asymmetric response to America’s Black Friday shopping-mall queues.

Russia is full of problems, too.  Russia lost twenty million lives in the transition to capitalism with little to show for it; its villages stand empty, a brain drain has sent the best and brightest overseas.  Capital flight bleeds Russia dry; every search for a company’s owners ends at a Cyprus-registered offshore trust.  Bribes and extortion are ubiquitous; infrastructure is worn down, de-industrialisation has undermined the working class; agricultural lands have been taken over by speculators. The army is demoralised, its weapons outmoded, and Russian education is as bad as anywhere.

The rich are too rich, and one per cent of Russia’s population owns much of the country’s wealth. This wealth is not considered legitimate by people: the ongoing Berezovsky vs. Abramovich court case offered legal proof that the fabulous riches of the New Russians were obtained by embezzling national wealth. What’s worse,  big business is fully integrated with the government; oligarchs and government officials intermarry and live separately from hoi polloi.

People are quite unhappy with what they see as a dictatorial or even an “occupation” regime. While Putin is considered a hostile leader by the West, the Russians think he is too obliging to the West, a centrepiece of the regime installed in the 90s. They would prefer a stronger anti-imperialist position any day.

The elections may have little direct consequence:  The Russian constitution was written by Boris Yeltsin after he shelled Parliament in 1993 and imposed his personal rule (to the standing ovation of the Western media). This constitution allows the president to disregard Parliament. But the election results show the changed public mood.

And if that’s not enough, a big demonstration of some ten thousand citizens flared up in the middle of Moscow – something unheard of since 1993. The demonstrators protested against massive falsifications of  election results. Three hundred were arrested, among them popular and populist blogger Alexei Navalny who created the meme “Party of Thieves and Cheats” for the United Russia.  The next day police dispersed another demo in the centre.

With Arab Spring in the background, the authorities are worried. Troops have been dispatched to Moscow. Though there is no immediate prospect of riots,  the traditionally heavy-handed Russian authorities never use a few policemen if they can send a brigade, and so they deployed the fearsome Dzerzhinsky Special Force brigade.

Were the elections falsified? Independent observers reported many irregularities in Moscow; probably it was even worse elsewhere. It seems that the ruling ER party activists inserted many fake ballots, and probably skewed the results in their favour. A poll made by NGO Golos on the basis of a few polling places with no irregularities showed that the communists won big, while the ER almost collapsed at the polls. On the web, there are claims of massive distortions following the vote count. It is hard to extrapolate from the Moscow results to the whole country, but the Russians believe that the results were falsified. They are also tired of their Teflon rulers.

 

	ER	SR	CPRF	LDPR
Official Results	49%	13%	19 %	11%
Popularly believed	32%	17%	35%	11%

 

This should provide a pretext for a revolution, but present-day communist leaders are not made of stern stuff like their legendary predecessors. They do not demand a recount, and generally accept their fate equivocally. In 1996, the communists won the elections, but accepted defeat as they were afraid of Yeltsin’s hit men led by the ruthless oligarch Boris Berezovsky. They are adamant about avoiding civil war; and it is doubted whether the super-wealthy will give up their wealth and positions just because  ordinary people voted this or that way. Many people believe that communist leaders are just part of the same ruling system, a kind of HM loyal opposition.

It is the right-wing opposition that is more persistent in denouncing the electoral manipulations, though no polls, independent or otherwise, indicate that their parties were successful. Moreover, this opposition is not famous for its love of democracy. Prominent Russian right-wing journalist Ms Julia Latynina has already called for the termination of  “the farce of democracy”:  the Russian people are too poor,  she said, to be allowed the right to vote, as they are likely to vote against their betters. This opinion was published in the best-known opposition paper Novaya Gazeta (owned by oligarch Mr Lebedev,  owner of the British Independent). For the Right, this is a chance to attack Putin and his regime.

The right wing is strongly anti-Putin; not so the communists who are ready to work with Putin any time. Can Putin change his spots and become Putin-2, a pro-communist president who will restore the Soviet Union and break the power of the oligarchs? He could certainly adopt some communist rhetoric and use the communist support.  Judging by his recent utterances at the Valdai forum, he is likely to turn Russia leftwards, with communists or without.

But stability of his regime is not certain. Putin should act swiftly if he wants to ride the wave of popular feelings, instead of being swept away by it.  Armoured vans are the last things he needs.

Devolving America Into Parallel Societies

Nobody really wants to speak about it, let alone write about our pending ordeal: we are turning America into parallel societies.  That condition stampedes toward us faster than anyone understands or comprehends. Once it is completed, we will all become victims.

T. R. Kelly said, “I still believe that the radical transformation of the U.S. through our immigration policy is the primary driving force behind this chaos, conflict, and division that probably will continue for the rest of this century.   The 1965 Immigration policy is an assault, conquest, and destruction of the founding nation and the Republic—meant to turn us into this multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and multi-nation country.”

In other words, the United States of America finds itself being turned into a polyglot of societies with no national allegiance or identity. It’s moving at breakneck speed as the U.S. Congress imports 3.1 million legal and illegal immigrants annually along with their 900,000 births each year—on course to add 72-75 million immigrants by 2035—a scant 24 years from now. (Source: www.cis.org)

You may remember the famous speech that Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm gave at the Federation for American Immigration Reform in October 2003:

“Here is how they destroyed their countries,” Lamm said. “First, turn America into a bilingual or multi lingual and bicultural country.  History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures.  It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.  The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way, “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy.  Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon—all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”

Today, France can no longer claim to be French.  Great Britain can no longer enjoy being British.  The same goes for Norway, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Canada and Australia.

Via their massive immigration policies, they have created parallel societies.  No Frenchman dares or chooses to venture into the 70 “no go” zones dominated by Muslim immigrants around Paris.

London, England also features the Muslim Zone and the British Zone.  Again, the British will not go into the “no go” Muslim Zone in London.  It’s not safe.

None will write or speak about it, but 95 percent of the rapes in Norway and Sweden are committed by Muslim immigrants.  My brother Rex has lived in Bergen, Norway for the past 25 years and he sent me those figures from a recent news report.  Of course, the Muslim imams immediately called the reports “racist and bigoted.”   Anyone who has watched honor killings to the tune of 5,000 Muslim women per year are killed by their husbands or brothers—understands the ordeal women suffer in Muslim lands.  Women possess few basic rights within Islam.  Where Sharia law dominates, women do not have any rights to education, free speech, voting, driving, walking outside or wearing clothing of their choice.  Muslim men prove brutally abusive.

Each year, America breaks down its basic cohesive fabric by importing millions of immigrants that cannot inculcate nor adapt to Western free-thought, education and loyalty to the American way of life.

We face, as a civilization, four competing tribes that struggle for dominance in this agitated “salad bowl” called multiculturalism.   The black-white issue has plagued America from the beginning.  Racism has never been conquered by education, the Great Society or any programs to erase it.  America lives with un-ease and separation wherever possible.  Yes, blacks and whites play professional sports together, but everybody goes home to separate communities—for the most part.

As the demonstrations in Georgia over the weekend showed, 10,000 illegal immigrants showed their muscle in Atlanta by demonstrating that they will not tolerate law and order or legal citizenship. While they are illegal, their numbers are so great, they intend to take a stand against the U.S. Constitution and all American citizens.   The Mexican/Hispanic separation will grow as their numbers will grow. Mexicans will become the dominate tribe by 2050. (Source: David Muir ABC News, June 26, 2011)  You can already witness the parallel societies developed in places like Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Chicago.  If you’re a Caucasian American, try to walk down those streets and feel welcomed.

Examples of parallel societies show themselves in America from our being forced to; “Press ‘1’ for Spanish and ‘2’ for English” on all commercial telephone answering services.  Expect Arabic next.

The growing Muslim tribe may prove the most destructive of America’s loss of itself.   No country in Europe has maintained itself or its culture and language in the face of the Islamic onslaught.  Muslims don’t assimilate, learn the language or move seamlessly into the host country.  They separate as well as force their customs and language onto the host country.  Ironically, they out-birth host countries and begin to dominate by population numbers.

In America today, we see honor killings of wives and daughters. (Source: Ann Curry, NBC News, “Honor killings in America”) We see “no go” zones in Detroit, Michigan.  We see female genital mutilation of immigrant girls.  We see arranged marriages.  We see 1,208 new mosques built within 20 years in America.

Finally, we see parallel societies developing as to illiteracy within the immigrant ranks.  For example, Detroit, Michigan features a 76 percent dropout/flunkout rate from its immigrant dominated high schools. (Source: Brian Williams, NBC News, June 2009) Welfare dominates that 83 percent minority dominated city as to assisted housing, food stamps, free breakfasts and lunches, and free medical care paid for by you.  Such situations show that 42 million people in America suffer functional illiteracy—they cannot read, write or perform simple math equations.  America tolerates a growing parallel society of literates versus illiterates.  Illiterates depend on welfare and our growing socialistic government.

Lamm continued on how to destroy America, “Invent ‘multiculturalism’ and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences!  I would make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.”

Fellow Americans, are we as a civilization in trouble or what?  Do you think we will survive this onslaught?  What are you doing to stop it?  Why haven’t 100 million Americans joined www.NumbersUSA.org to stop relentless immigration?

The following two videos should scare the hell out of you:

In a five minute astoundingly simple yet brilliant video, “Immigration, Poverty, and Gum Balls”, Roy Beck, director ofwww.numbersusa.ORG, graphically illustrates the impact of overpopulation.  Take five minutes to see for yourself:

“Immigration by the numbers—off the chart” by Roy Beck

This 10 minute demonstration shows Americans the results of unending mass immigration on the quality of life and sustainability for future generations: in a word “Mind boggling!”

Language, Culture and Country

Have you noticed dozens of languages being spoken by citizens and illegal aliens in America? Do you feel the disrespect and the separation? Do you feel violated? Are you angry that new citizens and illegal aliens disrespect us so much that they refuse to learn our language? Have you heard the growing Spanish speaking TV and radio stations across the USA? Do you feel like your country is being stolen from you along with your language? Do you feel the confusion it creates?

It’s much worse. Former President Bill Clinton created Executive Order 13166 which is an un-legislated multilingual policy that requires all government agencies like the IRS, Social Security Administration, the INS, Department of Transportation, the Department of Justice, and others to print all documents in foreign languages and provide for non-English speaking people. It costs you millions of your taxpayer dollars to service foreigners who came to our country but will not honor that privilege by speaking English.

Over 329 languages are spoken in the United States making it impossible for all minority languages to be represented in such sectors as government, education and health care. Further, it creates separation and balkanization when you can’t speak to fellow Americans.

The cost of Executive Order 13166 in the healthcare sector alone stands at a staggering $267 million of your taxpayer dollars annually. In the last California governor election, over a dozen languages were represented on the voter ballot. Whose country is this anyway? Who is paying for it? YOU!

Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm said, “A nation is much more than a place on a map. It is a state of mind, a shared vision, and a recognition that we are all in this together. A nation needs a common language as it needs a common currency. America has been successful because we have become one people. There is a social glue of a common language, a shared history, uniting symbols that tie us together. We live under a common flag, which we honor and salute.”

One scholar, Seymour Martin Lipset said, “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. France faces difficulties with its Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”

Lamm said, “Some people say Switzerland is an example of a successful bilingual country, but that claim does not survive close scrutiny. Switzerland has divided its geography into three separate areas, each of which has a common and dominant language—French, German and Italian.”

Immanuel Kant said, “Language and religion are the dividers.”

Why is EO 13166 a bad deal for Americans? It’s an outrageous rip-off for an American taxpayer as well as an administrative nightmare. It’s a monstrous burden to healthcare officials and a major injustice to immigrants. It will destroy national unity and our culture. From the melting pot, we are becoming a battle ground of language confrontation and conflict.

Cost? Hold on to your hat: Welfare/food stamp costs at $21 million for translators. Congressional Budget Office estimates costs at $150 million annually. Health care is $180.8 million for multilingual out-patient services, $78.2 million for multilingual in-patient services, $8.6 for multilingual emergency room services.

Taxpayer money funneled into Medicare is being diverted to pay for requirements to provide interpreter services. It’s killing doctor time with patients by forcing them into longer sessions with so much confusion. And, those illegal aliens are not paying for medical services. Taxpayers are!

But what about you? How do you feel about your country overrun by those who refuse to speak our language? How do you feel about your kids suffering a dozen or more foreign languages in their classrooms? It dumbs down the entire educational process for your kids. In Denver, Colorado where I live, 50 languages are spoken in our public schools. Consequently, 50 percent of the potential graduating class flunks out or drops out every year for the past five. The classroom chaos is so horrific, one in five Denver teachers quits or transfers every year. At North High School in Denver, they’re lucky if they can get half the 1,400 students to attend class each day. How do you think your kids suffer when someone that cannot speak English?
Four factors were required to make this Republic viable and the greatest success in the history of the world:

1. We have enjoyed a highly educated population.
2. We have a similar moral code which everyone follows.
3. We maintain a similar ethical standard for all citizens.
4. We have sustained one standard language so we can debate together and move forward together as a people.

Ladies and gentlemen of America—we are losing all four factors. If you look around you, we are losing the cohesive thread of our society at over four million legal and illegal immigrants annually. They are not assimilating nor are they speaking our language. The obvious result of that will be much like the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Once everyone couldn’t speak the same language, they argued, fought and separate into different factions. You’re seeing the same thing happen with blinding speed in America.

What can you do? Join www.useenglish.org and www.proenglish.org

We must mandate that English is the only official language of America and that it is the only allowed language for all official documents, schools, voter registration, driver’s licenses and everything else. We need citizens who can read, write and speak English. We must demand it for citizenship. It matters little if you speak a dozen languages, but, if you’re an American, you speak English.

“Srebrenica” and the Power of Reason

“Truth and reason are eternal,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Rev. Samuel Knox in 1810. “They have prevailed.  And they will eternally prevail . . . ” Jefferson was wrong. His belief that “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it” was naive. As Patrick J. Buchanan proves in a passing reference in his otherwise sound latest column, even men of generally sound understanding and good intentions end up the victims of the disinformation campaigns that pass for media reporting.

“In none of the Libyan towns affected by fighting in recent weeks,” Buchanan writes, “has anything like the massacre in the Ivory Coast taken place, let alone Srebrenica.”

It is noteworthy that “Srebrenica” is used here not as a geographic location that needs to be preceded by a noun (“the massacre in…”) but as a stand-alone term that denotes horror, on par with “Auschwitz,” or “Katyn,” or “Hiroshima.”

“Srebrenica” used in this sense has established itself as a myth based on a lie.  As the introduction to an enlightening recent article points out, we need to transcend the routine banalities of the Srebrenica debate which turns mostly on numbers; but the very term “debate” is rejected by those who should be on one of the two sides in that debate:

They deny as a matter of principle that there is anything to debate. So many thousand prisoners were executed and a distinguished international judicial forum of unquestioned authority has found it to constitute genocide. (These are the “routine banalities” that define the parameters of Srebrenica as an issue at least, if not as a debate.) According to our hypothetical debating partners there is nothing to debate because everything is settled and clear.

Reasonable people with no ethno-religious axe to grind in the Balkan quagmire have long fought such “routine banalities,” including the claim that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed in cold blood and  the systematicmisuse of the term “genocide.”

BACK TO THE NUMBERS—The fact beyond dispute is that during the Bosnian war thousands of Muslim men were killed in the region of Srebrenica. Most of them died in July of 1995 when the enclave fell almost without a fight to the Bosnian Serb Army and the Muslim garrison—the 28^th division of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Army—attempted a breakthrough. A significant number reached safety at the Muslim-held town of Tuzla, 60 km to the north; a few found shelter in Serbia, across the Drina River to the east. An unknown were killed while fighting their way through; and many others—numbers remain disputed—were taken prisoner and executed by the Bosnian Serb army.

The numbers remain unknown and misrepresented. With “8,000 executed” and—inevitably—thousands more killed in the fighting or reaching the Muslim lines, the column attempting to break out should have counted 12 to 15,000 men—an impossibly large number. There should have been huge gravesites and satellite evidence of  executions, burials, and body removals. The UN searches in the Srebrenica vicinity, breathlessly frantic at times, still falls far short of the sanctified figure of 8,000. The Islamic shrine at Potocari, where the supposed victims are buried, includes those of soldiers killed in action, Muslim and Serb, between May 1992 and July 1995.

The Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague (ICTY) never came up with a conclusive breakdown of casualties. That a war crime did take place is undeniable. The number of its victims remains forensically and demographically unproven. According to the former BBC reporter Jonathan Rooper, “from the outset the numbers were used and abused” for political purposes. The number of likely casualties corresponds closely to the ‘missing’ list of 7,300 compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Rooper says.  But the early estimates were based on nothing more than the simple combination of an estimated 3,000 men last seen at the UN base at Potocari and an estimated 5,000 people reported ‘to have left the enclave before it fell’:

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the 7-8,000 figure is that it has always been represented as synonymous with the number of people executed.  This was never a possibility: numerous contemporary accounts noted that UN and other independent observers had witnessed fierce fighting with significant casualties on both sides. It was also known that others had fled to Muslim-held territory around Tuzla and Zepa, that some had made their way westwards and northwards, and that some had fled into Serbia.  It is therefore certain that nowhere near all the missing could have been executed.

The Red Cross reported at the time that some 3,000 Bosnian Army soldiers managed to reach Muslim lines near Tuzla and were redeployed by the Bosnian Army “without their families being informed.” The number of military survivors was also confirmed by Muslim General Enver Hadzihasanovic in his testimony at The Hague.

The last census results, from 1991, counted 37,211 inhabitants in Srebrenica and the surrounding villages, of which 27,118 were Muslims (72.8 percent) and 9,381 Serbs (25.2 percent). Displaced persons from Srebrenica registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995 totaled 35,632. With 3,000 Muslim men who reached Tuzla “without their families being informed” we come to the figure of over 38,000 survivors. The Hague Tribunal’s own estimates of the total population of the Srebrenica enclave before July 1995—notably that made by Judge Patricia Wald—give 40,000 as the maximum figure. It does not add up.

Having spent five days interviewing over 20,000 Srebrenica survivors at Tuzla a week after the fall of the enclave, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Henry Wieland declared, “we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an atrocity taking place.” A decade later a Dutch field investigator, Dr Dick Schoonoord, confirmed Wieland’s verdict: “It has been impossible during our investigations in Bosnia to find any people who witnessed the mass murder or would talk about the fate of the missing men.”

A “PROTECTED ZONE”?—It is often pointed out that Srebrenica was an UN “protected zone,” but it is seldom noted that the enclave was simultaneously an armed camp used for attacks against Serb villages in the surrounding areas. Muslim General Sefer Halilovic confirmed in his testimony at the Hague Tribunal that there were at least 5,500 Bosnian Muslim Army soldiers in Srebrenica after it had obtained the “safe haven” status, and that he had personally arranged numerous deliveries of sophisticated weapons by helicopter.

French General Philippe Morillon, the UNPROFOR commander who first called international attention to the Srebrenica enclave, is adamant that the crimes committed by those Muslim soldiers made the Serbs’ desire for revenge inevitable. He testified at The Hague Tribunal on February 12, 2004, that the Muslim commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, “engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region.” Asked by the ICTY prosecutor how Oric treated his Serb prisoners, General Morillon, who knew him well, replied that “Naser Oric was a warlord who reigned by terror in his area and over the population itself… he didn’t even look for an excuse… One can’t be bothered with prisoners.”

Cees Wiebes, who wrote the intelligence section of the Dutch Government report on Srebrenica, notes that despite signing the demilitarization agreement, Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica were heavily armed and engaged in provocations (“sabotage operations”) against Serbian forces. Professor Wiebes caused a storm with his bookIntelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995, detailing the role of the Clinton administration in allowing Iran to arm the Bosnian Muslims.

On 11 July, 1995, the Muslim garrison was ordered to evacuate the town which the Serbs entered unopposed. Local Deputy Director of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, wrote in 2004 (“Was Srebrenica a Hoax?”) that Muslim forces did not even try to take advantage of their heavy artillery because “military resistance would jeopardize the image of ‘victim,’ which had been so carefully constructed, and which the Muslims considered vital to maintain.”

POLITICAL BACKGROUND—Two prominent supporters (at the time) of the late Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, his Srebrenica SDA party chairman Ibran Mustafic and police commander Hakija Meholjic, have subsequently accused Izetbegovic of deliberately sacrificing the enclave in order to trigger NATO intervention. Meholjic is explicit: in his presence, Izetbegovic quoted Bill Clinton as saying that 5,000 dead Muslims would be sufficient to provide the political basis for an American-led intervention on the side of the Muslims.

Testifying at The Hague Tribunal, Muslim Generals Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic confirmed this theory by describing how 18 top officers of the Srebrenica garrison were abruptly removed in May 1995.  Ibran Mustafic, the former head of the Muslim SDA party in Srebrenica, is adamant that the scenario for the sacrifice of Srebrenica was carefully prepared:

Unfortunately, the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business … Had I received orders to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order. I would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica, so that I can give him a gun let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to catastrophe. The order came from Sarajevo.

Military analyst Tim Ripley agrees that Srebrenica was deliberately sacrificed by the Muslim political leaders. He noted that Dutch UN soldiers “saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica past their observation points, carrying brand new anti-tank weapons [which] made many UN officers and international journalists suspicious.”

The term “genocide” is even more contentious than the exact circumstances of Srebrenica’s fall. Local chief of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, noted that if there had been a premeditated plan of genocide, instead of attacking in only one direction, from the south to the north—which left open escape routes to the north and west, the Serbs would have established a siege in order to ensure that no one escaped:

The UN observation posts to the north of the enclave were never disturbed and remained in activity after the end of the military operations. There are obviously mass graves in the outskirts of Srebrenica as in the rest of ex-Yugoslavia where combat has occurred, but there are no grounds for the campaign which was mounted, nor the numbers advanced by CNN. The mass graves are filled by a limited number of corpses from both sides, the consequence of heated battle and combat and not the result of a premeditated plan of genocide, as occurred against the Serbian populations in Krajina, in the Summer of 1995, when the Croatian army implemented the mass murder of all Serbians found there.

The fact that The Hague Tribunal called the massacre in Srebrenica “genocide” does not make it so. What plan for genocide includes offering safe passage to women and children? And if this was all part of a Serb plot to eliminate Muslims, what about hundreds of thousands of Muslims living peacefully in Serbia itself, including thousands of refugees who fled there from Srebrenica and other parts of Bosnia? Or the Muslims in the neighboring enclave of Žepa, who were unharmed when the Serbs captured that town a few days after capturing Srebrenica? To get around these common sense obstacles, the ICTY prosecution came up with a sociologist who provided an “expert” opinion: the Srebrenica Muslims lived in a patriarchal society, therefore killing the men was enough to ensure that there would be no more Muslims in Srebrenica. Such psychobabble turns the term “genocide” into a gruesome joke.

Yet it was on the basis of this definition that in August 2001, the Tribunal found Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic guilty of “complicity in genocide.” Even if the unproven figure of “8,000” is assumed, it affected less than one-half of one percent of Bosnia’s Muslim population in a locality covering one percent of its territory. On such form, the term “genocide” loses all meaning and becomes a propaganda tool rather than a legal and historical concept. On that form, America’s NATO ally Turkey—a major regional player in today’s Balkans—committed genocide in northern Cyprus in 1974. On that form, no military conflict can be genocide-free.

As Diana Johnstone explained in a seminal “Counterpunch” article, the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ is part of a dominant culture discourse that is highly relevant, some years later, to the ongoing intervention in Libya:

We people in the advanced democracies have reached a new moral plateau, from which we are both able and have a duty both to judge others and to impose our ‘values’ when necessary. The others, on a lower moral plateau, must be watched carefully, because unlike us, they may commit ‘genocide.’ … The subliminal message in the official Srebrenica discourse is that because ‘we’ let that happen, ‘we’ mustn’t let ‘it’ happen again, ergo, the U.S. should preventively bomb potential perpetrators of ‘genocide’.

The accepted Srebrenica story, influenced by war propaganda and uncritical media reports, is neither historically correct nor morally satisfying. The relentless Western campaign against the Serbs and in favor of their Muslim foes—which is what “Srebrenica” is really all about—is detrimental to the survival of our culture and civilization. It seeks to give further credence to the myth of Muslim blameless victimhood, Serb viciousness, and Western indifference, and therefore weaken our resolve in the global struggle euphemistically known as “war on terrorism.” The former is a crime; the latter, a mistake.

In more ways than one “Srebrenica is, indeed, a totem for the new world order.  And I hope that Pat Buchanan reads this.

Middle East Chaos: What To Learn And What To Expect

By Giordano Bruno | Neithercorp Press…

There are many different kinds of revolution; some more effective than others. Telling the difference between a successful revolution and a failed revolution can be tricky. Often, on the surface, they look exactly the same. The secret is to set aside what we would “like” to see, and be brutally honest about what was actually accomplished in the course of the dissenting action. Has power been fully rescinded by the offending government or regime to the people, or, to yet another corrupt bureaucracy with a slightly different face? Have the puppet strings of corporate globalists been severed from your country, or do they remain strong as ever? Has ANY corrupt official actually been punished for the crimes that led to the insurgency in the first place, or, did they fly off scot-free to their million dollar villas in Ecuador, drinking mojitos in wicker recliners and watching the disaster they created unfold on CNN? Who ultimately benefited from the event?

Today, the entire Middle East is on the verge of complete destabilization and possibly civil war. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and other nations are experiencing a shockwave of unrest not seen since the 1970’s. Western media sources are calling it a “people’s revolt”, one which the Obama administration is heartily embracing like an old relative. But are we witnessing the democratization of the cradle of civilization, or something else entirely? How will we be affected by this tide of confusion? Instead of falling into panic and fear over the growing chaos, what can discerning Americans learn from a social implosion on the other side of the world that will help us to survive a similar occurrence here? Let’s examine some of the distinct moments that have characterized the Middle East debacle, the underlying and corrupt influences that surround them, as well as certain historical facts of the region that globalist engineers would rather we forget…

Molding The Arab World

Are globalist interests involved in the breakdown of the Middle East? Most certainly. However, this much widespread resentment and pent-up collective rage is not something that can be easily fabricated. It is far more likely that anger over the feudal governing tactics of dictators in the Arab world (many of which were installed or supported by U.S. and European interests) is very real, and has been building for quite some time. So then, why are Western governments applauding the overthrow of despots they themselves placed in power?

The Mubarak regime was the second largest recipient of U.S. financial and military aid in the world. One third of ALL publicly reported U.S. foreign aid goes to Egypt and Israel:

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm

Without this vast military aid from the U.S., Mubarak would not have been able to maintain his 30 year reign. This is a cold hard fact. So then, why go against a leader you already have firmly in your grasp?

When the Shah of Iran (a violent madman we anointed) was overthrown by popular revolt in 1979, the U.S. government responded with vitriol and saber rattling. When Hosni Mubarak (a violent madman we anointed) was overthrown this past month, the U.S. government responded with cheers and warm regards. What was the difference between the revolution in Iran, and the revolutions all over the Middle East today? Insurance…

Like most puppet leaders and figureheads, Mubarak was an errand boy, a conduit for implementing globalist policies in Egypt. His relinquishment of power was in reality nothing of the kind, because the power was never his to give back. It is important to take note that Mubarak’s cabinet and most of the existing government and military structure remains firmly entrenched:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/egypt-swears-in-new-cabinet-retains-mubarak-era-ministers-1.345069

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who leads the ruling military council and has been defense minister for about 20 years, took “temporary” control of Egypt after Mubarak ceded authority. Tantawi retains very strong ties to Washington D.C. and an unerring loyalty to Mubarak’s policies, which is perhaps why Barack Obama seemed so jubilant about Mubarak’s departure. In the recent and controversial Wikileaks release of private diplomatic cables, Tantawi is famously referred to as “Mubarak’s Poodle”:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/16/501364/main20032166.shtml

The key here is that globalist circles support the change in Egypt exactly because nothing will change for the citizenry. The Egyptian people will not gain true influence in the politics of their own country, and they may have even less influence over their own lives if a military infrastructure remains embedded within their government. Their entire rebellion was diluted and redirected, because they naively focused on Mubarak as the source of all their ills, instead of the corrupt system he was a mere front-man for.

What about Libya? Muammar Gaddafi, the crazy bag lady of third world dictators, was the darling of the UN in 2009 when he was nominated the head of the African Union. He was just as much a monster then as he is today, and as far as I know his human rights record has remained dismal, but then again, he was helping the globalists by paying the AU dues of numerous countries with Libyan oil money and luring them towards centralization:

http://www.saiia.org.za/diplomatic-pouch/libya-s-oil-makes-all-the-difference.html

Apparently, Gaddafi has outlived his usefulness as international bodies now fully support the rebellion in Libya.

Remember Tunisia? That fight for freedom that the mainstream media essentially ignored until it was almost over and the two decade rule of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali (another despot with a history of human rights violations who was also installed with the help of Western interests, primarily Italy) was finally overthrown? Well, now globalist proponents suddenly “love” Tunisia and are promoting it as a “model revolution”. Why? Maybe because the dastardly duo of McCain and Lieberman are in town to offer the new Tunisian government “training from the U.S. to help Tunisia’s military provide security”:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/21/us-tunisia-turkey-idUSTRE71K2YE20110221

Yikes. These are the same guys who drafted the ‘Enemy Belligerents Act’ which would allow the U.S. government to treat any American citizen as an “enemy combatant”, removing Habeas Corpus and all Constitutional rights to a fair trial. I guess the lesson to Americans and most importantly the Liberty Movement is that if they can’t beat you, they’ll try to join you, and then co-opt you. My hope is that the Tunisians will turn down the Trojan Horse offerings of sewer rats like McCain and Lieberman, but if they do, I imagine the globalists will not be quite so friendly anymore.

What is happening in the Middle East is a perfect example of the manipulation of existing dissent towards establishment ends. The surface trigger for these events is obviously the doubling of food prices across the world in the past two years (you can thank the orchestrated devaluation of western currencies for a large part of this). People have a bad tendency to weather all kinds of atrocities as long as they are fed, but once certain necessities are taken from the masses, they WILL act, usually in a violent and unfocused manner. These revolutions are, for the most part, legitimate when they begin, but are co-opted as they progress, chiefly because the cultures involved do not understand where the real threat is coming from. Is centralization of the Middle East through catastrophe the goal? Perhaps, though, when all is said and done, I think the upheaval in the Middle East is much more about the U.S., than the Muslim world…

Déjà Vu All Over Again…

For those who really want a comprehensive sense of what is happening in the Middle East and why, I suggest a look into the last major Egyptian revolution of 1952. At that time, Britain was still the preeminent western power in the Arab world, and its control of the oil supply was absolute, much like the stranglehold the U.S. has enjoyed for many decades. Oil was pegged to the British sterling and any trade in crude required a conversion to the British currency. In fact, it was often said that the British Empire’s power after World War II was entirely dependent on its reserve currency status in oil markets. Any of this beginning to sound familiar?

In 1952, a revolution against the Egyptian puppet monarchy and its British overseers burst seemingly from nowhere, led by a group called the “Free Officers Movement”. In reality, the insurrection, fed by years of corrupt Aristocratic rule, was initiated and in some cases funded by both U.S. and Soviet agencies in tandem! In 1951-1952, nationalist police officers backed by the U.S. and Russia began supporting fedayeen terrorist groups using false flag attacks to weaken the region (is this sounding even more familiar?). Interestingly, this era was the birth of the so called “Muslim Brotherhood”, a group which has suddenly resurfaced in media discussion today.

Riots spread through Cairo, King Farouk was overthrown, the British were eventually run out, and their control of the Suez Canal was lost. But the story doesn’t end there…

The British and the French wanted the Suez back (at least that’s what they claimed), for control of the Suez meant control of Middle East oil markets. A plan was initiated by the two European powers to take back the canal using an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip as a spring board. This time, Israeli agents were used by the British to conduct false flag attacks, which were presented as a pretext for Israel to move against Egypt. The British and French followed by landing troops near Cyprus and Algeria.

The plan would have worked, except for one thing, the British were financially weak after two world wars and were completely dependent on American investment in their treasury debt. In response to the British action, the U.S. along with the UN threatened to halt investment in British debt and to stop price support of the Pound Sterling. This led to the eventual fall of the pound as the world reserve currency, and the rise of the dollar.

Official history portrays this move by the U.S., Russia, and the UN, as an attempt to undermine the long reach of the English. It is rather convenient however that the pound was dethroned just as plans for the European Union were beginning to be implemented in the early 1950’s. It seems to me that the British elites were fully aware that their futile attempts to hold onto the Middle East would result in the fall of the Pound; it was simply the British people’s turn to be taken down a few notches, and centralized. The similarities between the British Empire’s decline over Middle East oil in the 1950’s and our decline over Middle East oil today, are startling.

If history was to repeat itself, I would guess that the U.S. will soon be embroiled in political or even military operations to control the Suez, and retain its dollar peg to oil, which will illicit a negative response by international investment, causing central banks to dump their U.S. treasury investments and the dollar as a reserve currency.

Think of it as a grand theater meant to amuse only global bankers…

Energy Crisis To Strike The U.S. And Protect Globalists

An unstable Middle East benefits very few people, and that, I suppose, is the point. As we have covered here in a multitude of articles, the U.S. is on the verge of engineered economic collapse, driven mainly by the steady and purposeful devaluation of the dollar and our quickly expanding national debt. If you are a corporate central banking group seeking the death of the greenback as the world reserve currency, you face the very serious problem of avoiding immediate blame or retribution for your actions. What better way to escape the torches and pitchforks of the furious populace than to find a scapegoat, or a distraction even more terrifying than poverty?

Middle East turbulence provides the perfect smokescreen for the inflationary destruction of the dollar.

First and foremost, it hides the already skyrocketing price of energy, which was inevitable due to our devaluing currency (oil is traded primarily in dollars), but can now be blamed entirely on “Middle Eastern instability”. Already, the cost of crude has spiked to $100 a barrel, with no sign of relenting. Certainly, many Americans will now blame Egypt or Libya for their empty wallets, instead of global banks.

To add to the confusion, various agencies are feeding the MSM with a rainbow of mixed messages, which leave Americans vulnerable to uncertainty, making them far more malleable. For instance, the IMF has recently stated that the world can easily withstand $100 oil (a lie), while the International Energy Agency has stated that $100 oil would be “very very bad”, leading to a complete derailment of the global economy (which was going to occur anyway):

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-22/world-s-economy-can-survive-short-term-surge-in-crude-oil-prices-imf-says.html

http://www.cnbc.com//id/41714336

Social and economic disaster ANYWHERE in the world today will invariably cut the thin threads of psychological faith in our so called recovery. The system was a sham to begin with, and the quantitative easing methods of the Federal Reserve were never intended to actually “save” our financial house from collapsing, just prolong the event until they were ready to sweep away the ailing remains and offer us an IMF controlled replacement. It is designed to fail, and fail spectacularly. However, these facts will sink into the fog of history if Americans are suckered into fixating on a single area of the planet as the sole source of economic catastrophe.

Finally, if the tension spreads to other nations such as Saudi Arabia and triggers violent in-fighting, or Israel is tapped as an asset to instigate wider conflict, we could be looking at all out war on an incredible scale. This would be the distraction to top all distractions.

Is American Upheaval Next?

If crude oil continues to climb above $100 for more than a couple months, the negative effects will be undeniable. If you thought we had inflation before, just wait until gas hits $5 to $6 a gallon, and shipping costs for goods explode. This doesn’t even take into account the very real possibility that once the Middle East is fully destabilized, and certain political influences are dissolved, OPEC will completely de-peg oil from the dollar. From there, the sky is the limit on gasoline values. Already, Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer at Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO) is calling for a “stagflationary” market reaction to the turmoil in Libya:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-12/europe-faces-difficult-balancing-act-tackling-debt-crisis-el-erian-says.html

What will be the U.S. government response to a crashing currency and climbing costs? Austerity! Although, they will probably use different terminology to describe it. The onset of cost cutting measures is becoming more visible, especially within the states, where municipal bond investment has run screaming off a cliff. Large scale protests are erupting in Wisconsin and Ohio due to state cuts designed to help them stay financially afloat:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/22/us-ohio-protests-idUSTRE71L7SR20110222

The debate here becomes two sided; do state workers deserve to have their wages or benefits cut because state governments were fiscally irresponsible? Should states continue to run up incredible deficits just to appease state workers (who many consider overpaid) in the short term? They are both meaningful positions that need to be considered, however, these two sides miss the full picture.

The fact is, state governments are beyond broke, and eventually, they will have to nix spending and entitlement programs regardless of how anyone is affected, especially in the face of unchecked inflation. State employees and all people dependent on welfare are not necessarily the culprits behind financial clear-cutting either. The argument cannot be allowed to devolve into a mindless cage match over who deserves the money, because, first, there is no money, and second, this distracts from the original cause of the distress; the corporate banking elites who instigated the disaster in the first place. Already, I can see a certain subsection of the populace lashing out wildly at figureheads and opposition parties, just like in Egypt, instead of the corrupt system and the banking moguls who built it.

If an Egyptian or Libyan style revolt, driven by blind mob mentality, takes place in the U.S., we can expect several things to occur. Normal means of communication will be disrupted; both Egypt and Libya responded to protests by shutting down all internet and cell phone traffic. Martial Law will be enacted, and Constitutional rights suspended; continuity of government programs are already in place to legally bind states into bowing to DHS and FEMA authority in the event of any “national disaster”, including a dissenting citizenry. Immediate bank closures will follow, just as occurred in Egypt, causing a lack of liquidity in local markets and panic among those who were financially unprepared. Violence will unavoidably result, giving the Department of Homeland Security the perfect excuse to implement even more controls, all for our own “safety” of course.

Some may welcome such bedlam as a sign of change. I don’t see it that way. Revolution without direction, without a plan, and without a clear understanding of the source of the problem, is meaningless. We can allow ourselves to be herded by our own rage into even more pronounced tyranny, or we can stay focused, collected, and act with purpose by organizing our communities with the objective of self sufficiency and self protection. We can work with state legislators to bring support to Tenth Amendment issues, giving them the strength to withstand an economic collapse and the ability to turn down DHS or FEMA’s “help” when the time comes. We can organize intelligently, without centralized control, or we can hand over our destinies to yet another elite group of unaccountable autocrats. As impossible as it might seem, the choice really is up to us. How we act and react in the coming months will mean the difference between a free and prosperous America, or a scorch mark in the annals of history.

 

Richard Holbrooke: An American Diplomat

A few hours before Richard Holbrooke’s death last Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a group of America’s top diplomats gathered at the State Department for a Christmas party that he was “practically synonymous with American foreign policy.” Her assessment is correct: Richard Holbrooke’s career embodies some of the least attractive traits of contemporary American diplomacy.

As assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs under Jimmy Carter, Holbrooke was instrumental in securing continued U.S. support for Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor. In 1997 he authorized arms deliveries to Indonesia in violation of the supposed U.S. arms embargo against Suharto’s regime. It was during this period the suppression of the Christian Timorese by the Muslim Indonesians reached genocidal levels, killing 200,000 people or about a third of the island’s population. Holbrooke’s 1997 response to a reporter’s question about the tragedy to which he had directly contributed was illustrative of his character and style: “I want to stress I am not remotely interested in getting involved in an argument over the actual number of people killed. People were killed and that always is a tragedy but what is at issue is the actual situation in Timor today… [As for the numbers of victims] … we are never going to know anyway. “

True to form, Holbrooke lied to Congress in 1979 that the famine in East Timor – caused by the Indonesian army’s scorched-earth campaign – was a belated consequence of Portuguese colonial misrule. Over two decades later, in a lavish tribute to the diplomatic skill of his friend Paul Wolfowitz – who was the US ambassador to Indonesia at that time – Holbrooke boasted how “Paul and I have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep East Timor out of the [1980] presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests.”

Far from “bringing peace to Bosnia” at Dayton in 1995, Holbrooke presided over the imposition of a package broadly similar to the 1992 Lisbon Plan brokered by the European Union – the deal which could have avoided the war altogether but which was deliberately torpedoed from Washington. The chief outcome of the Bosnian war was a NATO transformed into a tool of U.S. hegemony, and the renewal of American dominance in European affairs to an extent not seen since Kennedy. The settlement at Dayton was not unlike a plausible compromise that would have been reached much earlier had America remained on the sidelines; but the meaning of Dayton was evident from Holbrooke’s boast, a year later, “We are re-engaged in the world, and Bosnia was the test.”

As special representative to Cyprus in 1997, Holbrooke irritated the Europeans by his strident advocacy of Turkey’s membership in the European Union. His bias in favor of Muslim Turks against Christian Greeks in the divided island reflected a consistent bipartisan trend in U.S. foreign policy making. Holbrooke was not the creator of that trend, but he was its enthusiastic supporter – from Indonesia to Bosnia, from Cyprus to Kosovo.

In 1998 Holbrooke was back in the Balkans, preparing the ground for Clinton’s Kosovo war against Serbia. On June 24 of that year he met with the KLA commander Gani Shehu in the village of Junik, near the Yugoslav-Albanian border, dutifully taking his shoes off like a good dhimmi. He promised American support for the the KLA campaign of violence against the Serbs. Earlier that year Clinton’s Balkans envoy Robert Gelbard correctly characterized the KLA as a terrorist organization, but Holbrooke’s visit signified a change of policy and directly led to Racak, Rambouillet, NATO bombing, and Kosovo’s transformation into the Jihadist mafia state that it is today.

The most eloquent epitaphs are crafted while the person is still alive. Borrowing a page out of Richard Holbrooke’s diplomatic manual, Vice President Joe Biden called him “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met.” Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, until last March the top UN official in Afghanistan, said five weeks ago of Holbrooke’s Afghan performance, “This is not the Balkans, where you can bully people into accepting a solution.” Eide added that the U.S. Special Envoy did not fully grasp “the complexity of the Afghan political scene.”

Holbrooke’s grasp of the complexities was illustrated by his calling the Serbs “murderous assholes” and by referring to Radovan Karadzic as the Osama Bin Laden of Europe. He was “synonymous with American foreign policy,” indeed: he was a coarse, arrogant bully who understood diplomacy as the art of imposing one’s will at the point of a gun. Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke was a bad man advocating and implementing bad policies.

The Burning Bush

Disaster in the North of Israel, at least 40 dead as fire rages across the Carmel Mountains. A mass evacuation has begun.

As I am writing these lines, Israeli Fire fighting crews are battling with the flames. They also express no hope of controlling the fire soon. “We lost all control of the fire,” said the Haifa Fire fighting services spokesman. “There aren’t enough fire fighting resources in Israel in order to put out the fire.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hurried to the scene of the fire on Thursday. He requested the help of the U.S, Greece, Italy, Russia, and Cyprus to send additional forces to aid the Israeli firemen. A normal country would probably ask for the help of its neighbours, but the Jewish state doesn’t have neighbours. It made all its neighbours into enemies.

But the story here goes far deeper.  The fire in northern Israel is far from being a coincidence. Israel’s rural landscape is saturated with pine trees. These trees are totally new to the region. They were not there until the 1930’s. The pine trees were introduced to  the Palestinians landscape in the early 1930s  by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in an attempt to  ‘reclaim the land’ . By 1935, JNF had planted 1.7 million trees over a total area of 1,750 acres. Over fifty years, the JNF planted over 260 million trees largely on confiscated Palestinian land. It did it all in a desperate attempt to hide the ruins of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages and their history.

Along the years the JNF performed a crude attempt to eliminate Palestinian civilisation and their past but it also tried to make Palestine look like Europe. The Palestinian natural forest was eradicated. Similarly the olive trees were uprooted. The pine trees took their place. On the southern part of mount Carmel the Israelis named an area as ‘Little Switzerland’. I have learned tonight that Little Switzerland is burned.

However, the facts on the ground were pretty devastating for the JNF. The pine tree didn’t adapt to the Israeli climate as much as the Israelis failed to adapt to the  Middle East. According to JNF statistics, six out of every 10 saplings planted did not survive. Those few trees that did survive formed nothing but a firetrap. By the end of each Israeli summer each of the Israeli pine forests become a potential deadly zone.

In spite of its nuclear power, its criminal army, the occupation, the Mossad and its lobbies all over the world, Israel seems to be very vulnerable. It is devastatingly alienated  from the land it claims to own. Like the pine tree, Israel and the Israeli are foreign to the region.

Multiculturalism Utter Failure Across Europe: Growing Tension

This past week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “Our attempt to have ethnic groups and religions live side by side and enjoy each other has failed, utterly failed.”

Surveys show 30 percent of Germans believe the country is overrun by foreigners. An equal number believe the foreigners come to feed off German welfare. The same figures grow in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, France, Norway, Sweden and Austria.

Merkel noted that the Muslim Turks, that arrived as “gastarbeiters” or guest workers, in the 50s and 60s, grew to 2.5 million in Germany. Arabs and East Europeans arrived later. Surveys place the Muslim population at five million.

“Multikulti is dead,” says Horst Seehofer of Merkel’s sister party, the Christian Social Union of Bavaria. He dreads further immigration of “alien cultures.”  Aliens fail to learn the German language and do not assimilate to become Germans.

9/11 A BIG PARTY BASH FOR GERMAN MUSLIMS

Pundit Patrick Buchanan said, “Awareness of deep differences with Turkish neighbors became acute for Germans when, grieving in solidarity with America after 9/11, they learned that Turkish sectors of Berlin were celebrating Islam’s victory with barrages of bottle rockets. Like all of Europe, Germany grows nervous.

“This summer, Thilo Sarrazin, who sat on the Bundesbank board, published “Germany Abolishes Itself,” which sold 300,000 copies in seven weeks. Sarrazin argued that Germany’s Muslim population is intellectually inferior and unable or unwilling to learn the language or culture, and mass immigration is destroying the nation.”

Buchanan, author of Death of the West, said that mass immigration from third world countries to first world countries destroys western culture and values. He said, “Across Europe, there is a resurgence of ethno-nationalism that is feeding the ranks of populist and anti-immigrant parties that are gaining respectability and reaching for power. Austrian nationalists triumphed in 2008 when the Freedom Party of Joerg Haider and the Alliance for the “Future of Austria” together took 29 percent of the vote. The Swiss People’s Party of Christoph Blocher, largest in Bern, was behind the successful referendum to change the constitution to outlaw minarets and prohibit the wearing of burqas.

“Hungary’s Jobbik Party, which to the Financial Times “sits squarely in Europe’s most repulsive arch-nationalist tradition and which blames Jews and Roma for the hardships of other Hungarians,” pulled 17 percent of the vote this year and entered parliament with 47 seats, up from zero seats in 2006.”

Additionally, “The Sweden Democrats just captured 6 percent of the vote and entered parliament for the first time with 20 seats, joining right-wing folk parties in Norway and Denmark.”

Another anti-immigration voice in Holland, Geert Wilders, a rising figure in Dutch politics, stands trial today for expressing his freedom of speech rights, but suffered charges of hate speech for equating Islam and Nazism.

“More security, less crime, less immigration, less Islam — that is what the Netherlands has chosen,” said Wilders.

Buchanan said, “In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy — one eye on Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, the other on the 2012 elections — rejecting cries of “Nazism” and “Vichyism,” is dismantling Gypsy camps and deporting Gypsies to Romania. Milan is now following the French lead. What is happening in Europe partakes of a global trend. Multiracial, multi-ethnic, multicultural nations are disintegrating.

Former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm spoke about it in his speech on October 3, 2004 in Washington, DC, “How to Destroy America.”

Lamm said, “Here is how they destroyed their countries: First, turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country.  History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures.  It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.  The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way, “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy.  Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon—all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”

Buchanan said, “Russians battle ethnic Muslim separatists in the North Caucasus. Seventy percent of Americans support an Arizona law to identify and expel illegal aliens. Beijing swamps the homelands of Tibetans and Uighurs with Han Chinese. India fights secession in Kashmir, Nagaland and the Naxalite provinces.”

“Wars between nations have given way to wars within nations,” said Barack Obama in his Nobel Prize address.

Germany’s condition may prove unsolvable.  At 1.4 birth rate, it’s running out of native people while Muslims reproduce at an average in Europe of 8.1 children per female.

As one Muslim said, “We won’t have to use bombs or violence; we will out populate them as Allah wishes.”

Icelanders egg PM as global protests condemn corruption, banksters

As proceedings begin against Iceland’s former Prime Minister, Geir Haarde, for the banking crisis of 2008, at least two thousand Icelanders took to the streets in two days of protest this weekend.  Iceland joins over a dozen other nations protesting economic measures taken out on the public while banks and large corporations receive bailouts. Class war is on, and it’s gone global.

Mass protests were also held in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Serbia, Romania, Poland, and the U.S., according to reports from several sources. Folks around the world reject corrupt banking practices and bailouts, while social services are cut and tens of millions have been forced into joblessness and homelessness.

Dori Sigurdsson, an Icelandic blogger, reports that when Parliament returned from recess on October 1st, they were met by a loud, angry crowd who tossed eggs, bread, dairy products and keys at them. People slept outside the Parliament building the night before its return session. He’s posted videos and several images.

Dori notes, “because of the lack of help from the Goverment for the public, many are now losing their houses and cars.” In a nation of only 317,000, 12 percent (or 40,000) have lost or are about to lose their homes, he says. Icelanders condemn the injustice of large companies and their CEOs having had their debts forgiven by government, while theirs are not.

Three other officials were charged with “misconduct in the lead up to, during and following the banking crisis,” reports Ice News. Parliament voted to prosecute only Haarde for negligence, under a 100-year-old law that has never before been used.

Icelanders are also angry that only the former PM is being charged. One commenter on the Ice News article noted, “Is this not a total betrayal of the people?”  And criminal, to reasonable minds.

Eggs hit Prime Minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, who rode into power as Iceland’s most beloved political leader with a 75% approval rating. She was installed in January 2009 after a coalition of Social Democrats and Left-Greens formed to replace the Independence Party-led coalition government, headed by Haarde, which was terminated.  Should other nations terminate their corrupt governments?

The Guardian notes widespread protest across Europe “amid growing fury at austerity measures being imposed… Disruption in more than a dozen countries this week included a national strike in Spain and a cement truck driven into the Irish parliament’s gates.”  Press TV also reported on protests planned in several nations last week. (See cement truck video here.)

Even in the US, thousands recently protested in Washington, D.C. for jobs instead of wars. ANSWER Coalition’s Brian Becker told reporters that the US spends a billion dollars every two days for its military invasions. That’s much lower than the trillion dollars a year that Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute calculates. We do know that Congress spends 58 percent of its discretionary budget on the military.

Many economists note that unemployment in the US is two to three times higher than what the Labor Dept. reports. In July, economists put the number at 28 percent, compared to the 9.5 percent rate reported by the feds. For September, the Christian Science Monitor showed unemployment at 16.7 percent, while the feds reported 9.6 percent.

In the US where 95% of the public rejected both Wall Street bailouts (under Bush and under Obama), we learned that banksters then rewarded themselves with million dollar bonuses. The boldness of their depravity is sure to have its rebound effect. Is it time to terminate this government, too?

The Guardian also reported that a “UN agency has warned of growing social unrest because of a long ‘labour market recession’ that could last until 2015.”  2015!

Thank goodness mortgage squatters are growing in number in the US. This is even before it was discovered that “foreclosure mills” fabricated documents to seize peoples’ homes. Some of those mills do not even hold legal title, Ellen Brown reports.

Another night, another 200 eggs.

In Iceland, the Guardian noted, “Birgitta Jónsdóttir, one of three MPs to join the protesters, said: ‘There is a realisation that the IMF is going to wipe out our middle classes.’” That’s true of every nation sucked into the greed of banksters, the US included.

Protesters are out again right now, Monday night, Dori told me (6 pm Eastern, 10 pm Iceland time).

“The protest is still on, and it is peaceful – but with lots of noise that can be heard in the Parliament building.”

Both images by Dori Sigurdsson, used with permission.

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