A QUICK SUMMARY OF PAST ARTICLES
(Google the title to read}
One of my articles "Why is Capitalism Failing Us? appeared on June 14, 2008.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/06/why-is-capitalism-failing-us/
Then on November 20, 2008 there was my "Quacking on the Eve of Disaster."
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/11/quacking-on-the-eve-of-diasaster/
On November 22, 2008 they published my "The Undiagnosed "Cancer" that Killed Capitalism."
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/11/the-undiagnosed-%E2%80%9Ccancer%E2%80%9D-that-has-killed-capitalism/
On November 29, 2009: “Why the Jump Start will not Restart Capitalism”
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/11/the-wall-street-bailout-will-not-jump-start-our-capitalism/
January 26, 2009 “Three Underlying Systemic Defects in Our Political Economy”
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/01/three-underlying-systemic-defects-in-our-political-economy-that-must-be-dealt-with/
February 7, 2009: “President Obama: Nationalize the Fed and Issue Our Own Money”
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/02/president-obama-nationalize-the-fed-and-create-our-own-money/
On February 28, 2009 they published my “The Special Danger from Obamamania”
See http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/02/the-special-danger-from-obamamania/
On March 28, 2009 Dissident Voice: http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/03/wright-patmans-prescription-for-healing-the-cancerous-us-banking-system/
On April 4, 2009 DV published my treatise on the filibuster: http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/mobilizing-with-pots-and-pans-to-reverse-a-bloodless-coup/
On April 6, 2009 DV published my urgent concern about Obama and Wall Street Banks, and the urgent need for him to change direction: http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/is-obama-even-more-dangerous-than-bush/
On April 23,2009 Dissident Voice published my article The Fall of the American Empire,,,The connection between torture, Wall Street Bank profits, and our descent into poverty at
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/the-fall-of-the-american-empire/
That is what this article is about. My friend Bill Fletcher is the editor of http://www.blackcommentator.com/index.html and he published my article about the filibuster In the November 13, 2008 issue. This is important because some Senators will use the filibuster to block Obama's stimulus package also.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
OBAMA IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN BUSH
OBAMA IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN BUSH
A Republication of an article from Dissident Voice dated April 7, 2009
December 7, 2011
INTRODUCTION
69 Million of us voted for President Obama because he promised hope and change from the disasters of the Bush Administration. Countless millions of human beings around the planet joined us in our relief and our elation when he was elected. An unthinking uncritical “Obamamania” among most of his supporters continues to prevail so far. This is dangerous for them, for President Obama and for all of us. Without critical analysis and pressure from his millions of fans, Obama will stumble into disaster.
We have carefully watched the new President’s first 100 days and we are appalled. We find that Obama has continued Bush policies affecting the abuses of Wall Street banks, and allowing Wall Street wrongdoers to manage our economy and the “recovery.”
Forget the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, the prosecution of Eliot Spitzer for his sexual indiscretion, and Bernard Madoff’s little Ponzi-scheme. What about prosecuting those bankers who profited from the most massive fraudulent swindle in human history?
Reputable commentators such as Michael Whitney, John Paul Roberts, Professor Michael Hudson, and now Professor William K. Black have spelled out the details. The CNBC TV Documentary “House of Cards” (Google the title to view) explained in detail with surprisingly candid on camera, guilt free admissions of fraud by the wrong-doers. They explained how this swindle worked at each level from the borrowers and mortgage salesmen in Los Angeles to the top CEOs of Wall Street and to the Fed. These wrongdoers who had admitted their fraud even said that they would do it again. These sources of our information have been relatively diplomatic in tone. It is time to name names and cite the fraudulent acts of those responsible, and the specific violations of law.
As we evaluate all of this, keep in mind what William K. Black said on Bill Moyer’s April 3 program about making risky loans where the ability of the borrower to repay a loan is not vetted: “We know that will produce enormous fraud under economic theory, criminology theory, and two thousand years of life experience.” Both Democrats and Republicans, hand in hand with Wall Street Bankers, by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, and by enacting The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 specifically to preclude regulation, caused the current extraordinary depression and crisis by ignoring and acting contrary to this accumulated human wisdom. Think of this when you evaluate whether their acts were knowing and intentional and whether they are guilty or innocent.
THE INTENTIONAL FRAUD OF THE WALL STREET BANKERS AND RATING COMPANIES AND THEIR CONGESSIONAL ENABLERS
The legal elements or requirements of the crime or wrong of fraud known to every first year law student are:
1. An intentional misrepresentation of facts or a false promise
2. Knowledge of falsity
3. Intent to deceive
4. Justifiable and actual reliance on the truth of what was represented or promised
5. Resulting Damage
President Obama is a brilliant lawyer, top of his class at Harvard Law, and a ten year professor of Constitutional Law. His roots are in Chicago politics. President Obama clearly knows the elements of fraud.
We know the factual details of the wrongdoing from CNBC’s video “House of Cards” where those involved in the fraud at each level made surprisingly candid admissions of what they had done. At each level, the CEOs involved felt no guilt or responsibility. They would not have changed their conduct in retrospect. Each said he had to do what he did to stay in business and to compete with others who were doing the same thing. This was the “justification” at every level from LA mortgage salesperson, to the bankers, the creators of layers of derivatives and credit default swaps to the raters who gave the derivatives that they knew or should have known were not worth their stated values, AAA ratings. All of this was happening in the context of congressionally granted exemptions from regulation, and NY Fed President Timothy Geithner’s failure to supervise and to regulate.
The Wall Street bankers deliberately made and palmed off to others loans that they knew were really bad. They made them because they were so profitable. Among themselves, they called them “liar’s loans” because they did not care if borrowers were unqualified and they encouraged them to lie about their incomes. They created the layers of derivatives based on these pools of liar loans, knowing that they were extremely risky. They pressured the rating companies to give them AAA ratings, and the rating companies complied “because the competition was doing it” when they knew or should have known that the “securities” were really not of AAA quality.
Foreign investors, domestic pension fund managers, and foreign governments and banks justifiably relied on the Wall Street banker’s sales pitch and the AAA ratings. The AAA rating satisfies the obligation of “due diligence” in checking the risk of an investment. These innocent but sophisticated investors had a right to assume that NY Fed President Timothy Geithner was doing his duty of supervising and regulating.
All of these investors were damaged when the house of cards collapsed. The investors have been damaged. We the citizens and voters and generations of our offspring have suffered almost incalculable damage…damage totaling many trillions of dollars that will plague us for generations.
This is the massive Wall Street fraud that President Obama inherited, and is now covering up, and possibly attempting to restart.
PRESIDENT OBAMA IS NOT FAITHFULLY EXECUTING THE LAW REGARDING UNDERCAPITALIZED BANKS IN VIOLATION OF HIS OATH
President Obama now has the sworn Presidential duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Thus he must “faithfully” prosecute financial wrongdoing, avoid conflicts of interest, and specifically, take certain prompt action against wrongdoing Wall Street banks as mandated by the Prompt Corrective Action Law that was enacted just following the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. This law is found in Title 12 United States Code beginning at Section 1831. There is no exception in the law for “banks that are too big to fail,” and no exception for criminal enterprises even if they are large.
Instead of bailing out wrongdoing banks with Trillions of dollars of our money, President Obama is required by federal law to appoint a receiver for the bank within 90 days after it becomes critically undercapitalized. He must prosecute those bankers who were paid salaries or bonuses while their banks were undercapitalized. There is no question that they are undercapitalized because they require Trillions just to make them function, without complying with legal standards. If “they are too large to fail,” they have seized way too much private “mafia-like” power over all of us. President Obama can and must follow the law.
OBAMA’S CHOSEN FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC ADVISORS KNOWINGLY DEREGULATED SO AS TO ENABLE THE FRAUD, AND THEN PARTICIPATED IN THE FRAUD AND PROFITED FROM IT
Obama’ Chief Economic Advisor, Larry Summers one of Clinton’s Secretaries of the Treasury, and Robert Rubin along with Republican Senator Phil Gramm lead the lobbying effort to repeal the Glass Steagall Act thereby enabling Wall Street Banks to invest in derivatives, hedge funds, and credit default swaps, and permitting Wall Street insurance companies to engage in banking.
Then the same three men, Summers, Rubin, and Gramm together with Alan Greenspan lead the effort to persuade Congress to pass a law in 2000 without debate in either the House or the Senate prohibiting the regulation of these newly enabled Wall Street financial giants. It is known as The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, and is found in Title 7 USC Section 2. The exemptions from regulation are found in Sections 2 (g) and 2(h). President Clinton signed the new law on December 21, 2000.
Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor Larry Summers and his Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner both pushed for the enactment of this law which enabled the ensuing fraud involving mortgages and the layers of derivatives that were known to be risky and worthless.
Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner, President of the New York division of the Fed where all of the major Wall Street banks are located had the following duties according to its own mission statement found at http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/introtothefed.html:
“It is responsible for
• formulating and executing monetary policy,
• supervising and regulating depository institutions,
• providing an elastic currency,
• assisting the federal government's financing operations, and
• serving as the banker for the U.S. government.”
In addition to paying his own taxes, Timothy Geithner had a public responsibility and duty to all of us. Timothy Geithner, the man chiefly responsible for avoiding what has happened, instead facilitated the fraud. He did not supervise and he did not regulate. As Professor Black said to Bill Moyers, he, along with every one else involved in the fraud, ignored the FBI’s public 2004 warning that there was “an epidemic of mortgage fraud, that if it was allowed to continue it would produce a crisis at least as large as the Savings and Loan debacle.”
PRESIDENT OBAMA IS KNOWINGLY AND INTENTIONALLY REWARDING CRIMINALS AND IS COVERING UP WALL STREET BANK CRIMES AND FRAUD
It is a felony for any person including the President of the United States to cover up a crime. 18 USC Section 4 states:
“Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Such a cover up is also criminal fraud as defined in 47USC 1001.
Such a cover up when done by a President, Vice President or a Secretary of Treasury is also a “high crime and misdemeanor” warranting impeachment under Article II, Section 4 of our Constitution:
“The president, vice president and all other civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of…high crimes and misdemeanors.”
President Obama has also taken the Presidential Oath that he will faithfully execute this cover up avoidance law as well, and not to violate it himself.
80% of the American people, according to a recent poll believe that Wall Street is crooked and is responsible for our current Depression.
Obama, in a recent speech to Wall Street CEOs telling them to “cool it” about justifying their contract rights to bonuses, said
“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
So what is he saying to the 80% of us potentially holding pitchforks who voted for him?
In effect, he is saying in his vague, charming, persuasive and hypnotic way: “I know of no crimes. I want to look to the future I will not prosecute the bankers. I will hire them as advisors. We have nothing to learn from their mistakes. We together will try to restore lending, and restart the economy as it was.”
What are President Obama’s own lawyers, Dawn Johnson Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel and Attorney General Eric Holder advising him? Are they, like John Yoo and Michael Mukasey who advised Bush that he could torture, advising Obama that he has the power to ignore the law created exactly for the purpose of dealing with failing banks because of an economic emergency? What is brilliant lawyer Obama advising himself? Where is there indication of Obama’s own integrity and inner moral compass?
WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES FOR US IF OBAMA’S MUTI-TRILLION BAIL OUT OF WALL STREET “SUCCEEDS?”
The most immediate, pressing danger is that it will not work at all. Obama may not discover this until it is too late to try another solution. The reason is Obama seeks mainly to restore the lending ability of the Wall Street banks. That will work only if we are willing to fund our purchases by more borrowing. We are not. We will not borrow. We are too frightened. The great danger is of a total breakdown of civilized democratic society.
Even if it “works,” Obama’s plan will never succeed for us. The reasons are:
• Obama and his advisors see capitalism as a stable system that only got a little off track due to unfortunate lack of regulation. It is in fact in deep trouble even aside from the banking problem due to an overproduction of goods and services that can be produced at a profit. This is the underlying “systemic defect.” Failing to recognize this defect, Obama does nothing to solve it.
• Obama aims mainly toward providing more credit, restoring the Wall Street banks’ ability to lend money.
Obama fails to deal adequately with restoring the purchasing power of consumers from our earned labor. Taken together, Obama and Bernanke are committing $12.8 Trillion to bailing out Wall Street compared to only $900 Billion to stimulating the real economy, a ratio of 14 to 1.
The inevitable result for us will be a vast inflation of our dollars, so that each dollar buys less and less. We will be like frogs placed in slowly heating water. We will notice nothing at first. The “water” will heat slowly until it kills us. It may ultimately “succeed” for the wealthiest 1% in that they will own all of the land, gold, platinum, silver, and commodities and live in guarded gated castles. Those of us who survive will do so as feudal serfs who are permitted to share-crop their land. The result for Obama is that he will lose his bid for re-election in 2012 due to the massive despair and disillusionment of voters.
WHAT COULD OBAMA DO THAT WOULD WORK?
Although his window of opportunity is very short, if Obama changed course promptly before he has put us many trillions further in debt, there are sound, historically tested things he could do. They are bold. They involve a profound change in his analysis of our problem. He could:
• Cause our government to be the sole creator of our money supply, our silver coins, our dollar bills, and our “check book” money. Lincoln did this in 1860 to finance the Civil War. The state of Pennsylvania did this successfully for 50 years prior to 1789.
• Instead of borrowing from private banks and other governments, our government could create and issue money to meet government, business and individual needs, including rebuilding our infrastructure, education through college, and universal health coverage, and to pay our government’s obligations on existing bonds as they fell due.
• Prohibit “fractionalized reserve banking,” the practice of private bankers lending from 10 to 90 times the asset-reserves they hold. Allow banks only to loan on a 1 to 1 basis, from the dollars they have on deposit.
• Impose a top limit on interest that could be charged say 8%.
• Allow the Wall Street banks to go into bankruptcy, but retain enough of the needed staff employees to implement the new way of supplying money where needed.
• Repeal the Federal Reserve Act and install the needed functions of the Fed as a division of the Treasury Department.
• Enable local banks and businesses to continue to function as they now do.
Dated: April 7, 2009
Doug Page
A Republication of an article from Dissident Voice dated April 7, 2009
December 7, 2011
INTRODUCTION
69 Million of us voted for President Obama because he promised hope and change from the disasters of the Bush Administration. Countless millions of human beings around the planet joined us in our relief and our elation when he was elected. An unthinking uncritical “Obamamania” among most of his supporters continues to prevail so far. This is dangerous for them, for President Obama and for all of us. Without critical analysis and pressure from his millions of fans, Obama will stumble into disaster.
We have carefully watched the new President’s first 100 days and we are appalled. We find that Obama has continued Bush policies affecting the abuses of Wall Street banks, and allowing Wall Street wrongdoers to manage our economy and the “recovery.”
Forget the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, the prosecution of Eliot Spitzer for his sexual indiscretion, and Bernard Madoff’s little Ponzi-scheme. What about prosecuting those bankers who profited from the most massive fraudulent swindle in human history?
Reputable commentators such as Michael Whitney, John Paul Roberts, Professor Michael Hudson, and now Professor William K. Black have spelled out the details. The CNBC TV Documentary “House of Cards” (Google the title to view) explained in detail with surprisingly candid on camera, guilt free admissions of fraud by the wrong-doers. They explained how this swindle worked at each level from the borrowers and mortgage salesmen in Los Angeles to the top CEOs of Wall Street and to the Fed. These wrongdoers who had admitted their fraud even said that they would do it again. These sources of our information have been relatively diplomatic in tone. It is time to name names and cite the fraudulent acts of those responsible, and the specific violations of law.
As we evaluate all of this, keep in mind what William K. Black said on Bill Moyer’s April 3 program about making risky loans where the ability of the borrower to repay a loan is not vetted: “We know that will produce enormous fraud under economic theory, criminology theory, and two thousand years of life experience.” Both Democrats and Republicans, hand in hand with Wall Street Bankers, by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, and by enacting The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 specifically to preclude regulation, caused the current extraordinary depression and crisis by ignoring and acting contrary to this accumulated human wisdom. Think of this when you evaluate whether their acts were knowing and intentional and whether they are guilty or innocent.
THE INTENTIONAL FRAUD OF THE WALL STREET BANKERS AND RATING COMPANIES AND THEIR CONGESSIONAL ENABLERS
The legal elements or requirements of the crime or wrong of fraud known to every first year law student are:
1. An intentional misrepresentation of facts or a false promise
2. Knowledge of falsity
3. Intent to deceive
4. Justifiable and actual reliance on the truth of what was represented or promised
5. Resulting Damage
President Obama is a brilliant lawyer, top of his class at Harvard Law, and a ten year professor of Constitutional Law. His roots are in Chicago politics. President Obama clearly knows the elements of fraud.
We know the factual details of the wrongdoing from CNBC’s video “House of Cards” where those involved in the fraud at each level made surprisingly candid admissions of what they had done. At each level, the CEOs involved felt no guilt or responsibility. They would not have changed their conduct in retrospect. Each said he had to do what he did to stay in business and to compete with others who were doing the same thing. This was the “justification” at every level from LA mortgage salesperson, to the bankers, the creators of layers of derivatives and credit default swaps to the raters who gave the derivatives that they knew or should have known were not worth their stated values, AAA ratings. All of this was happening in the context of congressionally granted exemptions from regulation, and NY Fed President Timothy Geithner’s failure to supervise and to regulate.
The Wall Street bankers deliberately made and palmed off to others loans that they knew were really bad. They made them because they were so profitable. Among themselves, they called them “liar’s loans” because they did not care if borrowers were unqualified and they encouraged them to lie about their incomes. They created the layers of derivatives based on these pools of liar loans, knowing that they were extremely risky. They pressured the rating companies to give them AAA ratings, and the rating companies complied “because the competition was doing it” when they knew or should have known that the “securities” were really not of AAA quality.
Foreign investors, domestic pension fund managers, and foreign governments and banks justifiably relied on the Wall Street banker’s sales pitch and the AAA ratings. The AAA rating satisfies the obligation of “due diligence” in checking the risk of an investment. These innocent but sophisticated investors had a right to assume that NY Fed President Timothy Geithner was doing his duty of supervising and regulating.
All of these investors were damaged when the house of cards collapsed. The investors have been damaged. We the citizens and voters and generations of our offspring have suffered almost incalculable damage…damage totaling many trillions of dollars that will plague us for generations.
This is the massive Wall Street fraud that President Obama inherited, and is now covering up, and possibly attempting to restart.
PRESIDENT OBAMA IS NOT FAITHFULLY EXECUTING THE LAW REGARDING UNDERCAPITALIZED BANKS IN VIOLATION OF HIS OATH
President Obama now has the sworn Presidential duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Thus he must “faithfully” prosecute financial wrongdoing, avoid conflicts of interest, and specifically, take certain prompt action against wrongdoing Wall Street banks as mandated by the Prompt Corrective Action Law that was enacted just following the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. This law is found in Title 12 United States Code beginning at Section 1831. There is no exception in the law for “banks that are too big to fail,” and no exception for criminal enterprises even if they are large.
Instead of bailing out wrongdoing banks with Trillions of dollars of our money, President Obama is required by federal law to appoint a receiver for the bank within 90 days after it becomes critically undercapitalized. He must prosecute those bankers who were paid salaries or bonuses while their banks were undercapitalized. There is no question that they are undercapitalized because they require Trillions just to make them function, without complying with legal standards. If “they are too large to fail,” they have seized way too much private “mafia-like” power over all of us. President Obama can and must follow the law.
OBAMA’S CHOSEN FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC ADVISORS KNOWINGLY DEREGULATED SO AS TO ENABLE THE FRAUD, AND THEN PARTICIPATED IN THE FRAUD AND PROFITED FROM IT
Obama’ Chief Economic Advisor, Larry Summers one of Clinton’s Secretaries of the Treasury, and Robert Rubin along with Republican Senator Phil Gramm lead the lobbying effort to repeal the Glass Steagall Act thereby enabling Wall Street Banks to invest in derivatives, hedge funds, and credit default swaps, and permitting Wall Street insurance companies to engage in banking.
Then the same three men, Summers, Rubin, and Gramm together with Alan Greenspan lead the effort to persuade Congress to pass a law in 2000 without debate in either the House or the Senate prohibiting the regulation of these newly enabled Wall Street financial giants. It is known as The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, and is found in Title 7 USC Section 2. The exemptions from regulation are found in Sections 2 (g) and 2(h). President Clinton signed the new law on December 21, 2000.
Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor Larry Summers and his Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner both pushed for the enactment of this law which enabled the ensuing fraud involving mortgages and the layers of derivatives that were known to be risky and worthless.
Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner, President of the New York division of the Fed where all of the major Wall Street banks are located had the following duties according to its own mission statement found at http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/introtothefed.html:
“It is responsible for
• formulating and executing monetary policy,
• supervising and regulating depository institutions,
• providing an elastic currency,
• assisting the federal government's financing operations, and
• serving as the banker for the U.S. government.”
In addition to paying his own taxes, Timothy Geithner had a public responsibility and duty to all of us. Timothy Geithner, the man chiefly responsible for avoiding what has happened, instead facilitated the fraud. He did not supervise and he did not regulate. As Professor Black said to Bill Moyers, he, along with every one else involved in the fraud, ignored the FBI’s public 2004 warning that there was “an epidemic of mortgage fraud, that if it was allowed to continue it would produce a crisis at least as large as the Savings and Loan debacle.”
PRESIDENT OBAMA IS KNOWINGLY AND INTENTIONALLY REWARDING CRIMINALS AND IS COVERING UP WALL STREET BANK CRIMES AND FRAUD
It is a felony for any person including the President of the United States to cover up a crime. 18 USC Section 4 states:
“Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Such a cover up is also criminal fraud as defined in 47USC 1001.
Such a cover up when done by a President, Vice President or a Secretary of Treasury is also a “high crime and misdemeanor” warranting impeachment under Article II, Section 4 of our Constitution:
“The president, vice president and all other civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of…high crimes and misdemeanors.”
President Obama has also taken the Presidential Oath that he will faithfully execute this cover up avoidance law as well, and not to violate it himself.
80% of the American people, according to a recent poll believe that Wall Street is crooked and is responsible for our current Depression.
Obama, in a recent speech to Wall Street CEOs telling them to “cool it” about justifying their contract rights to bonuses, said
“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
So what is he saying to the 80% of us potentially holding pitchforks who voted for him?
In effect, he is saying in his vague, charming, persuasive and hypnotic way: “I know of no crimes. I want to look to the future I will not prosecute the bankers. I will hire them as advisors. We have nothing to learn from their mistakes. We together will try to restore lending, and restart the economy as it was.”
What are President Obama’s own lawyers, Dawn Johnson Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel and Attorney General Eric Holder advising him? Are they, like John Yoo and Michael Mukasey who advised Bush that he could torture, advising Obama that he has the power to ignore the law created exactly for the purpose of dealing with failing banks because of an economic emergency? What is brilliant lawyer Obama advising himself? Where is there indication of Obama’s own integrity and inner moral compass?
WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES FOR US IF OBAMA’S MUTI-TRILLION BAIL OUT OF WALL STREET “SUCCEEDS?”
The most immediate, pressing danger is that it will not work at all. Obama may not discover this until it is too late to try another solution. The reason is Obama seeks mainly to restore the lending ability of the Wall Street banks. That will work only if we are willing to fund our purchases by more borrowing. We are not. We will not borrow. We are too frightened. The great danger is of a total breakdown of civilized democratic society.
Even if it “works,” Obama’s plan will never succeed for us. The reasons are:
• Obama and his advisors see capitalism as a stable system that only got a little off track due to unfortunate lack of regulation. It is in fact in deep trouble even aside from the banking problem due to an overproduction of goods and services that can be produced at a profit. This is the underlying “systemic defect.” Failing to recognize this defect, Obama does nothing to solve it.
• Obama aims mainly toward providing more credit, restoring the Wall Street banks’ ability to lend money.
Obama fails to deal adequately with restoring the purchasing power of consumers from our earned labor. Taken together, Obama and Bernanke are committing $12.8 Trillion to bailing out Wall Street compared to only $900 Billion to stimulating the real economy, a ratio of 14 to 1.
The inevitable result for us will be a vast inflation of our dollars, so that each dollar buys less and less. We will be like frogs placed in slowly heating water. We will notice nothing at first. The “water” will heat slowly until it kills us. It may ultimately “succeed” for the wealthiest 1% in that they will own all of the land, gold, platinum, silver, and commodities and live in guarded gated castles. Those of us who survive will do so as feudal serfs who are permitted to share-crop their land. The result for Obama is that he will lose his bid for re-election in 2012 due to the massive despair and disillusionment of voters.
WHAT COULD OBAMA DO THAT WOULD WORK?
Although his window of opportunity is very short, if Obama changed course promptly before he has put us many trillions further in debt, there are sound, historically tested things he could do. They are bold. They involve a profound change in his analysis of our problem. He could:
• Cause our government to be the sole creator of our money supply, our silver coins, our dollar bills, and our “check book” money. Lincoln did this in 1860 to finance the Civil War. The state of Pennsylvania did this successfully for 50 years prior to 1789.
• Instead of borrowing from private banks and other governments, our government could create and issue money to meet government, business and individual needs, including rebuilding our infrastructure, education through college, and universal health coverage, and to pay our government’s obligations on existing bonds as they fell due.
• Prohibit “fractionalized reserve banking,” the practice of private bankers lending from 10 to 90 times the asset-reserves they hold. Allow banks only to loan on a 1 to 1 basis, from the dollars they have on deposit.
• Impose a top limit on interest that could be charged say 8%.
• Allow the Wall Street banks to go into bankruptcy, but retain enough of the needed staff employees to implement the new way of supplying money where needed.
• Repeal the Federal Reserve Act and install the needed functions of the Fed as a division of the Treasury Department.
• Enable local banks and businesses to continue to function as they now do.
Dated: April 7, 2009
Doug Page
Sunday, July 17, 2011
FELLOW WAGE SLAVES: LET'S MOBILIZE AND ASSERT OUR CREATIVE COOPERATIVE POWER
Fellow Wage Slaves: Join our Wage Slave Association. Sign up below. Now! Send this message to 10 of your friends. Let’s mobilize and fight back before the “economic royalists” take it all. If you are like me, you are totally dependent on your pay check. Even the tenant farmers in the Great Depression of the 1930s had more security and political independence than we do. They could grow food and butcher a hog and struggle along. Now if one or two of our pay checks stop, we are out in the street and hungry. It does not matter what color or race or religion or political preference we are, whether we are salaried or paid by the hour, and whether we are union, non-union, publicly or privately employed. We are frightened, desperately dependent on our pay checks, vulnerable, and immobilized. Even if we are self-employed business or professional persons, but dependent on wage slave customers for our income, we are in the same boat with everybody else.
The economic royalists are out to get us; to take our jobs, our savings, and our retirement benefits; and to take our homes. Unfortunately the economic royalists never think they have enough money or land or political power. The want more and more and more. They are maintaining a secret class war against us for their benefit, while causing their well paid spokesmen like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck; constantly to accuse us of class war.
Who are the economic royalists? They are the very few persons at the very top levels of wealth who own and control the big banks, the CIA, the military, the armament manufacturers, and the big corporations, the media (newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, movies, advertising agencies) most churches, the charitable organizations, the academic elites and the universities. They even control the high salaried union bosses. They run our government by using their money to buy, and control the candidates they allow us to vote for. This includes our President. They cause every facet of our political economy to serve them only. They cut taxes on themselves and put the burden of taxation on us. These economic royalists control what we do, how we live, and how we think, even what we think about. They want our every human need to be privatized, so as to provide a profit making opportunity for them. They want every human need to be met either by borrowing money from them or by working for them. If neighbors work together to meet a need, they label it “socialism” or “communism.”
The economic royalists seize every possibility to eliminate our jobs. They take our jobs to Mexico to India or China, or wherever else labor costs are less. They create machines and computers to do our jobs. They take their profit making enterprises all over our planet, then use the US military to fight those residents of foreign countries who resist them, the so-called “terrorists.” This creates immense profits for them and poverty for us. We join the military services to get a job and “benefits,” then they send us overseas to fight those who resist their plunder abroad. We are kept in a perpetual state of war, and some of our dead and maimed bodies are sent home every day.
The economic royalists plunder our planet; pollute our air, water and environment all for their short term profit with contempt for conservation.
They propagate false economic neo-liberal trickle down economic theories of immense benefit to them and tell us that we have no other choice.
We try to live with all of this by becoming lonely couch potatoes, eating fast food, watching explosions, fires, rapes, and murders on TV. We think we are politically participating when we watch talking heads arguing over political “strategy” on TV, knowing full well that our votes are meaningless...
Of course we are scared. What will happen to us tomorrow? Next week? Next year? How will our children and grand children survive? So far, we dare not march, we dare not protest, we dare not speak out, we dare not join with others to enhance our power and our ability to protect ourselves.
We have only one way to stop all of this so that we can work together to do what needs to be done without being a wage slave of somebody who seeks only to make a short term profit from our work. We can avoid killing and being killed in foreign wars. We can preserve our healthy planet home. We can have safe healthy lives. We can create a banking and money system that serves us only. We can fairly tax those who have a thousand times more than they need. We can use the strategy and discipline of active non-violence against the economic royalists, just as the Blacks did in the civil rights struggles.
This is not to say that it will be easy or that it can all be done safely. It will not be. We have no other choice. We choose to live. We choose not to be wage slaves, serfs, or tenant farmers of the economic royalists. We choose to live moral, healthy lives, cooperatively helping each other, and caring for each other. This will require a vast change in our life styles, our material expectations, and an advance in our knowledge of the lies we tell ourselves and others. It will require a change in what we consider and how we measure “progress.”
Like the person addicted to alcohol who can become sober and well only by publicly admitting to himself and others that he is an alcoholic, we can become safe, healthy and well only by admitting to ourselves and others that we are wage slaves, that we are powerless by ourselves, and by working together.
To avoid being fired from your job simply for joining our Wage Slave Association, you may join using a fictitious name, or your grand mother’s maiden name and your grandfather’s first name, if you want. There are no dues. Form local Wage Slave Associations in your neighborhood, in your community so that you can meet, discuss what is going on, validate each other, and give aid and comfort to each other. From local voluntary monetary donations and contributed letters and articles, give your support to a Wage Slave Association Newsletter so that we can communicate with each other via e mail. All races colors sexual preferences and creeds are welcome.
It seems to me that human needs, human capacities, and the needs of our planet home dictate what some of the guiding concepts of the Wage Slave Association must be, but they are all up for discussion:
• We openly admit that we are wage slaves, that we are individually powerless, and commit ourselves to overcoming our plight.
• We acknowledge that we have lost our political power via the ballot box.
• We commit ourselves to active non-violence, and to learn the discipline required.
• We commit ourselves to treat each other human on the planet as we wish to be treated.
• We commit ourselves to cooperate with each other to meet our mutual needs, to care for each other and to give and to accept help from each other. We subordinate our competitive greedy selfish impulses.
• We create new standards and measures of “progress”
• We will grow as much of our own food as possible, buy food locally, and support local small food growers. We barter and we create a local currency
• We acknowledge that our planet lacks sufficient remaining resources and cheap energy to maintain the current population of humans on our standards of living, and we therefore support family planning, birth control and education of women.
• We do whatever is necessary to maintain a civilized sustainable life for all humans.
• We try to be aware of our fear, and of the jingoistic manipulation of our fear by the economic royalists.
• We refuse to serve in the military, and we refuse to fight to maintain wage slavery abroad.
Dated: July 13, 2011
Doug Page http://thenewliberator.blogspot.com/
To Join the Wage Slave Association, send an e mail to dougpage2@earthlink.net setting forth the city or town where you live, your chosen name for action purposes, and your consent for me to share your e mail address with others in your location so that you can meet with others. Blog experts, please volunteer to create a Wage Slave Association Blog.
The economic royalists are out to get us; to take our jobs, our savings, and our retirement benefits; and to take our homes. Unfortunately the economic royalists never think they have enough money or land or political power. The want more and more and more. They are maintaining a secret class war against us for their benefit, while causing their well paid spokesmen like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck; constantly to accuse us of class war.
Who are the economic royalists? They are the very few persons at the very top levels of wealth who own and control the big banks, the CIA, the military, the armament manufacturers, and the big corporations, the media (newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, movies, advertising agencies) most churches, the charitable organizations, the academic elites and the universities. They even control the high salaried union bosses. They run our government by using their money to buy, and control the candidates they allow us to vote for. This includes our President. They cause every facet of our political economy to serve them only. They cut taxes on themselves and put the burden of taxation on us. These economic royalists control what we do, how we live, and how we think, even what we think about. They want our every human need to be privatized, so as to provide a profit making opportunity for them. They want every human need to be met either by borrowing money from them or by working for them. If neighbors work together to meet a need, they label it “socialism” or “communism.”
The economic royalists seize every possibility to eliminate our jobs. They take our jobs to Mexico to India or China, or wherever else labor costs are less. They create machines and computers to do our jobs. They take their profit making enterprises all over our planet, then use the US military to fight those residents of foreign countries who resist them, the so-called “terrorists.” This creates immense profits for them and poverty for us. We join the military services to get a job and “benefits,” then they send us overseas to fight those who resist their plunder abroad. We are kept in a perpetual state of war, and some of our dead and maimed bodies are sent home every day.
The economic royalists plunder our planet; pollute our air, water and environment all for their short term profit with contempt for conservation.
They propagate false economic neo-liberal trickle down economic theories of immense benefit to them and tell us that we have no other choice.
We try to live with all of this by becoming lonely couch potatoes, eating fast food, watching explosions, fires, rapes, and murders on TV. We think we are politically participating when we watch talking heads arguing over political “strategy” on TV, knowing full well that our votes are meaningless...
Of course we are scared. What will happen to us tomorrow? Next week? Next year? How will our children and grand children survive? So far, we dare not march, we dare not protest, we dare not speak out, we dare not join with others to enhance our power and our ability to protect ourselves.
We have only one way to stop all of this so that we can work together to do what needs to be done without being a wage slave of somebody who seeks only to make a short term profit from our work. We can avoid killing and being killed in foreign wars. We can preserve our healthy planet home. We can have safe healthy lives. We can create a banking and money system that serves us only. We can fairly tax those who have a thousand times more than they need. We can use the strategy and discipline of active non-violence against the economic royalists, just as the Blacks did in the civil rights struggles.
This is not to say that it will be easy or that it can all be done safely. It will not be. We have no other choice. We choose to live. We choose not to be wage slaves, serfs, or tenant farmers of the economic royalists. We choose to live moral, healthy lives, cooperatively helping each other, and caring for each other. This will require a vast change in our life styles, our material expectations, and an advance in our knowledge of the lies we tell ourselves and others. It will require a change in what we consider and how we measure “progress.”
Like the person addicted to alcohol who can become sober and well only by publicly admitting to himself and others that he is an alcoholic, we can become safe, healthy and well only by admitting to ourselves and others that we are wage slaves, that we are powerless by ourselves, and by working together.
To avoid being fired from your job simply for joining our Wage Slave Association, you may join using a fictitious name, or your grand mother’s maiden name and your grandfather’s first name, if you want. There are no dues. Form local Wage Slave Associations in your neighborhood, in your community so that you can meet, discuss what is going on, validate each other, and give aid and comfort to each other. From local voluntary monetary donations and contributed letters and articles, give your support to a Wage Slave Association Newsletter so that we can communicate with each other via e mail. All races colors sexual preferences and creeds are welcome.
It seems to me that human needs, human capacities, and the needs of our planet home dictate what some of the guiding concepts of the Wage Slave Association must be, but they are all up for discussion:
• We openly admit that we are wage slaves, that we are individually powerless, and commit ourselves to overcoming our plight.
• We acknowledge that we have lost our political power via the ballot box.
• We commit ourselves to active non-violence, and to learn the discipline required.
• We commit ourselves to treat each other human on the planet as we wish to be treated.
• We commit ourselves to cooperate with each other to meet our mutual needs, to care for each other and to give and to accept help from each other. We subordinate our competitive greedy selfish impulses.
• We create new standards and measures of “progress”
• We will grow as much of our own food as possible, buy food locally, and support local small food growers. We barter and we create a local currency
• We acknowledge that our planet lacks sufficient remaining resources and cheap energy to maintain the current population of humans on our standards of living, and we therefore support family planning, birth control and education of women.
• We do whatever is necessary to maintain a civilized sustainable life for all humans.
• We try to be aware of our fear, and of the jingoistic manipulation of our fear by the economic royalists.
• We refuse to serve in the military, and we refuse to fight to maintain wage slavery abroad.
Dated: July 13, 2011
Doug Page http://thenewliberator.blogspot.com/
To Join the Wage Slave Association, send an e mail to dougpage2@earthlink.net setting forth the city or town where you live, your chosen name for action purposes, and your consent for me to share your e mail address with others in your location so that you can meet with others. Blog experts, please volunteer to create a Wage Slave Association Blog.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
ISRAEL HAS FORFEITED ITS RIGHT TO EXIST
ISRAEL HAS FORFEITED IT’S RIGHT TO EXIST
At long last, I have come to the conclusion that Israel has forfeited its right to exist as a State for Jews only.
The UN reflecting the horrors of the Holocaust and the guilt of nations of the world for the pogroms of the past, and their refusal to give endangered Jews a place of refuge from the vicious anti-Semitism of the Nazis, granted the Jewish people a parcel of land within a geographical area known as Palestine in 1947. This parcel was located on the East shore of the Mediterranean Sea and extended about half way to the River Jordan. Thus the UN grant did not include the West Bank of the River Jordan over to the West to the Eastern border of the UN grant to Israel.
This fulfilled the longstanding political (not necessarily religious) dream of some Zionists, that all Jews would at long last have a land of their own and a place of safe refuge for any Jew facing persecution anywhere on the planet.
Not all Jews are Zionists. There are many kinds of Zionism. Here, we are discussing the very aggressive brand of Zionism that has dominated Israel for the last 64 years from 1947 to date. It is a political doctrine that seeks ever more land for persons who have a Jewish mother. It seeks land by fair means or foul and has an immense group of spokes-persons around the world who are poised to defend its captures by logic, spinning of facts, falsehoods, and ad hominem attacks.
These Zionists have been the governing political force in Israel since 1947. Their central objective and policy became publicly evident when the during the 6 day war in 1967 with Egypt and Syria. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were innocent bystanders not attacking anyone, but Zionist Israel seized the opportunity to capture and occupy the West Bank. The Zionists in control of Israel did not withdraw its military occupation of the West Bank after its quick victory, but instead have continued their military occupation of the West Bank for the 44 years from 1967 to date. Some Jews objected at the time and urged withdrawal. The Zionists overruled them. Unfortunately, most Jews in the US continue zealously to support and to finance Zionist Israel no matter what it does.
From 1967 to date, no matter what the verbal justifications of Zionist Israel, Israel has steadfastly “established facts on the ground” to make its military occupation of the West Bank permanent. Following this obvious strategy for the past 44 years, Zionist Israel has uprooted the olive orchards of the West Bank Palestinians, established lavish settlements for Jews only, built separate highways for Jews only, and captured most of the water supplies for the Jewish Settlers and Israel. It rationed the remaining water for Palestinians to a meager amount per day.
The Zionist Israeli strategy in peace negotiations has always been to insist that West Bank settlement building continue during negotiations, and that every issue between Palestinians and Israelis be the subject of “negotiation” only between the impoverished weak Palestinians and the wealthy, powerful, nuclear armed state of Israel. Israeli negotiators then “negotiate” endlessly taking care never to reach agreement. Israel happily accepts the $3 Billion per year from the US, but insists that the US and every one else in the Western World stay out of the negotiations. The political reality now is that the Jewish Settlements in the West Bank are so large and well established, that the “two state solution” is now impractical. There is not enough land left for the Palestinians to create a viable state.
In any case, the nations of the world made a huge mistake in granting a parcel of land to Zionists in 1947. There are many reasons that become more glaringly apparent with each passing day that Zionist Israel continues to exist.
1. Zionist Israel demands rights, privileges and material benefits for Jewish people only, defined as a person with a Jewish mother, a “benefit” unique for Jewish people only with no similar benefit for any other people.
2. Zionist Israel, like the UN in 1947, simply ignores the culture, feelings, farms, and means of livelihood of the non-Jews who have lived in the same land in the Middle East for at least 2000 years.
3. Zionist Israel was never satisfied with the 1947 UN grant of land and has obtained ever more land by threats to the inhabitants, forfeiture, purchase, and by military capture. Zionist Israel, in insisting on “Israel’s right to exist,” has never stated what the boundary lines of this “Israel” are.
4. Zionist Israel’s aggressive taking of ever more land is apparently based in part on the Old Testament Bible that Jews were God’s “chosen people” and that God gave the “promised land” of Biblical Israel to the Jews. The Biblical “Israel” consisted of all of the land from the Mediterranean Sea to Iraq’s Euphrates River. This of course is a religious belief for which there is no independent secular evidence. It is a religious belief similar to the legend celebrated in the Seder that the Jews were once enslaved by the Egyptians and were liberated by God acting through Moses. There is simply no archeological or historical evidence that the Jews were ever in Egypt.
5. Zionist Israel, being a religious state, violates the brilliant insight of the Founding Fathers of the US Constitution that there must be separation of church and state. Our Founding Fathers were aware of the centuries of bloody wars fought between peoples of differing religious beliefs.
6. Zionist Israel defines Jewish people in part as “victims” of those are claimed to hate Jews irrationally, such as millions of Arabs. This stance ignores the historical evidence that Arabs and Jews have lived peaceably together for Centuries prior to the establishment of Israel. It ignores the fact that 36000 Jews live peacefully with Arabs in Teheran, Iran and refuse to move to Israel, and the fact that the pogroms of the past were in countries that were mostly Christian. .
7. Zionist Israel’s aggressive seeking of more land for Jews only unavoidably creates resentment, envy, resistance and hatred among those whose land, water, olive groves and means of livelihood are taken. Zionist Israel creates more and more anti-Semitics throughout the world daily, by its policies and actions.
8. Zionist Israel has demonstrated a regressive evolutionary dynamic of ever increasing militarism, armaments including nuclear weapons, and increasing disparity between the very wealthy Jews and the poor Jews. Zionist Israel has mutated very far from the socialist egalitarian democratic ideals of the early refugee Jewish people who moved there.
9. The wealthy powerful Zionists who now control Israel have linked themselves with the wealthy powerful elite “economic royalists” that control the US President, the Congress, the multi-national banks, the media, academia, and Hollywood, so that the policies and objectives of Zionist Israel have become almost identical with the policies and objectives of the “economic royalists” of the US . If we are ever again to establish effective democracy in the US, we will simply have to deal with Zionist Israel and with our own wealthy elites... These elites are poised to take military action against Iran for example, no matter what US voters want.
10. The savage brutality, illegality, lies, and half-truths of Zionist Israel are demonstrated by events daily over a long period of time:
• The unprovoked torpedo attack on a US Naval vessel, the USS Liberty in International waters in June 1967 killing 34 sailors and officers and injuring 170 others. From today’s vantage point, it appears this was Zionist Israel’s effort to divert attention from its illegal military capture and occupation of the West Bank.
• Zionist Israel’s paying a Zionist Jew, American Naval Intelligence officer with the very top security clearances, Jonathan Pollard in the early 1980s to spy for Israel and to transmit a large quantity of very highly classified information to Israel. Israel then passed some of these stolen secrets on to the Soviet Union at the height of Cold War as a trade for the Soviet Union’s release of Jewish residents to become settlers in the West Bank. Israel lied about its acts for 12 years and even assisted in the prosecution leading to the life imprisonment of Pollard. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during his recent visit to the US, brazenly requested the release of Pollard.
• Zionist Israel’s callously causing a driver of a large Caterpillar Tractor to drive over and crush to death a young American Jewish woman, Rachel Corrie in 2004. She was making a conscientious non-violent protest against the destruction of the homes of Palestinians.
• The incessant ad hominem attacks of the famous lawyer and Harvard Constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz against fellow academic Norman Finkelstein and the power of the Israel lobby in denying him tenure at Northwestern University and in preventing any college or university from hiring him.
• Zionist Israel’s acts and policies of collective punishment and torture of those who resist Israel.
• The cold banishment of South African Jewish Judge Goldstone who wrote a UN report criticizing the conduct of the Israeli Army in the West Bank, so that he could not even attend the Bar Mitzva of his own grandson.
• Zionist Israel’s armed attack on the Turkish vessel, Mavi Marmara in international waters in May 2010 killing 19 persons and injuring many others. Zionist Israel then took the people on board who were attempting to bring food and medicines to the people of Gaza, to jail and confiscated all of their cameras and luggage.
• Zionist Israel’s current “full-court” press including diplomatic, commercial and probable sabotage to prevent the sailing from Ireland, Greece and Turkey of a flotilla of vessels manned by Christians, Jews, and Arabs committed to non-violence who seek to bring medicines and supplies to the people illegally trapped in Gaza. Sad to say, our own President Obama is doing all he can to aid Zionist Israel in this effort.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public rejection, and defiance of President Obama when our President re-stated our long standing policy that the US supported a State for Palestinians based on the 1967 borders with agreed boundary adjustments.
• Zionist Israel’s incessant pressure aided by the “Senator from Israel,” Joseph Lieberman, (I, Conn) on the US to take military or covert action against Iran, and the threats of Zionist Israel to attack Iran itself, despite the absence of evidence of military uses of nuclear energy. Many of us consider Zionist Israel with its stash of nuclear weapons and demonstrated aggressive posture, to be a far greater threat to peace and stability of the planet than Iran, as well as being hypocritical in refusing to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The Holocaust taught a lesson for all human kind that there is a latent Nazi in each of us that can emerge under the requisite stress and circumstances and that it is the constant task of all civilized people to prevent its re-emergence. Zionist Israel seems unaware of this lesson and claims the memory of the Holocaust for Jews only to defend and justify its Zionist transgressions that sometimes seem somewhat similar to those of Nazi Germany.
It is time for us all, Jews, Christians, Arabs, and Hindus to avoid the regressive fundamentalist aspects of our religions and instead to emphasize the common theme in each that in one way or another proclaim the concept that we are to do to others as we would have them do to us, and to emphasize the spiritual foundations for what became the legal concept of equal protection of law. It is time to cease our support for the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and to support one state, a United States of the Middle East where every person is guaranteed the equal protection of the law.
July 5, 2011
Doug Page dougpage2@earthlink.net
At long last, I have come to the conclusion that Israel has forfeited its right to exist as a State for Jews only.
The UN reflecting the horrors of the Holocaust and the guilt of nations of the world for the pogroms of the past, and their refusal to give endangered Jews a place of refuge from the vicious anti-Semitism of the Nazis, granted the Jewish people a parcel of land within a geographical area known as Palestine in 1947. This parcel was located on the East shore of the Mediterranean Sea and extended about half way to the River Jordan. Thus the UN grant did not include the West Bank of the River Jordan over to the West to the Eastern border of the UN grant to Israel.
This fulfilled the longstanding political (not necessarily religious) dream of some Zionists, that all Jews would at long last have a land of their own and a place of safe refuge for any Jew facing persecution anywhere on the planet.
Not all Jews are Zionists. There are many kinds of Zionism. Here, we are discussing the very aggressive brand of Zionism that has dominated Israel for the last 64 years from 1947 to date. It is a political doctrine that seeks ever more land for persons who have a Jewish mother. It seeks land by fair means or foul and has an immense group of spokes-persons around the world who are poised to defend its captures by logic, spinning of facts, falsehoods, and ad hominem attacks.
These Zionists have been the governing political force in Israel since 1947. Their central objective and policy became publicly evident when the during the 6 day war in 1967 with Egypt and Syria. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were innocent bystanders not attacking anyone, but Zionist Israel seized the opportunity to capture and occupy the West Bank. The Zionists in control of Israel did not withdraw its military occupation of the West Bank after its quick victory, but instead have continued their military occupation of the West Bank for the 44 years from 1967 to date. Some Jews objected at the time and urged withdrawal. The Zionists overruled them. Unfortunately, most Jews in the US continue zealously to support and to finance Zionist Israel no matter what it does.
From 1967 to date, no matter what the verbal justifications of Zionist Israel, Israel has steadfastly “established facts on the ground” to make its military occupation of the West Bank permanent. Following this obvious strategy for the past 44 years, Zionist Israel has uprooted the olive orchards of the West Bank Palestinians, established lavish settlements for Jews only, built separate highways for Jews only, and captured most of the water supplies for the Jewish Settlers and Israel. It rationed the remaining water for Palestinians to a meager amount per day.
The Zionist Israeli strategy in peace negotiations has always been to insist that West Bank settlement building continue during negotiations, and that every issue between Palestinians and Israelis be the subject of “negotiation” only between the impoverished weak Palestinians and the wealthy, powerful, nuclear armed state of Israel. Israeli negotiators then “negotiate” endlessly taking care never to reach agreement. Israel happily accepts the $3 Billion per year from the US, but insists that the US and every one else in the Western World stay out of the negotiations. The political reality now is that the Jewish Settlements in the West Bank are so large and well established, that the “two state solution” is now impractical. There is not enough land left for the Palestinians to create a viable state.
In any case, the nations of the world made a huge mistake in granting a parcel of land to Zionists in 1947. There are many reasons that become more glaringly apparent with each passing day that Zionist Israel continues to exist.
1. Zionist Israel demands rights, privileges and material benefits for Jewish people only, defined as a person with a Jewish mother, a “benefit” unique for Jewish people only with no similar benefit for any other people.
2. Zionist Israel, like the UN in 1947, simply ignores the culture, feelings, farms, and means of livelihood of the non-Jews who have lived in the same land in the Middle East for at least 2000 years.
3. Zionist Israel was never satisfied with the 1947 UN grant of land and has obtained ever more land by threats to the inhabitants, forfeiture, purchase, and by military capture. Zionist Israel, in insisting on “Israel’s right to exist,” has never stated what the boundary lines of this “Israel” are.
4. Zionist Israel’s aggressive taking of ever more land is apparently based in part on the Old Testament Bible that Jews were God’s “chosen people” and that God gave the “promised land” of Biblical Israel to the Jews. The Biblical “Israel” consisted of all of the land from the Mediterranean Sea to Iraq’s Euphrates River. This of course is a religious belief for which there is no independent secular evidence. It is a religious belief similar to the legend celebrated in the Seder that the Jews were once enslaved by the Egyptians and were liberated by God acting through Moses. There is simply no archeological or historical evidence that the Jews were ever in Egypt.
5. Zionist Israel, being a religious state, violates the brilliant insight of the Founding Fathers of the US Constitution that there must be separation of church and state. Our Founding Fathers were aware of the centuries of bloody wars fought between peoples of differing religious beliefs.
6. Zionist Israel defines Jewish people in part as “victims” of those are claimed to hate Jews irrationally, such as millions of Arabs. This stance ignores the historical evidence that Arabs and Jews have lived peaceably together for Centuries prior to the establishment of Israel. It ignores the fact that 36000 Jews live peacefully with Arabs in Teheran, Iran and refuse to move to Israel, and the fact that the pogroms of the past were in countries that were mostly Christian. .
7. Zionist Israel’s aggressive seeking of more land for Jews only unavoidably creates resentment, envy, resistance and hatred among those whose land, water, olive groves and means of livelihood are taken. Zionist Israel creates more and more anti-Semitics throughout the world daily, by its policies and actions.
8. Zionist Israel has demonstrated a regressive evolutionary dynamic of ever increasing militarism, armaments including nuclear weapons, and increasing disparity between the very wealthy Jews and the poor Jews. Zionist Israel has mutated very far from the socialist egalitarian democratic ideals of the early refugee Jewish people who moved there.
9. The wealthy powerful Zionists who now control Israel have linked themselves with the wealthy powerful elite “economic royalists” that control the US President, the Congress, the multi-national banks, the media, academia, and Hollywood, so that the policies and objectives of Zionist Israel have become almost identical with the policies and objectives of the “economic royalists” of the US . If we are ever again to establish effective democracy in the US, we will simply have to deal with Zionist Israel and with our own wealthy elites... These elites are poised to take military action against Iran for example, no matter what US voters want.
10. The savage brutality, illegality, lies, and half-truths of Zionist Israel are demonstrated by events daily over a long period of time:
• The unprovoked torpedo attack on a US Naval vessel, the USS Liberty in International waters in June 1967 killing 34 sailors and officers and injuring 170 others. From today’s vantage point, it appears this was Zionist Israel’s effort to divert attention from its illegal military capture and occupation of the West Bank.
• Zionist Israel’s paying a Zionist Jew, American Naval Intelligence officer with the very top security clearances, Jonathan Pollard in the early 1980s to spy for Israel and to transmit a large quantity of very highly classified information to Israel. Israel then passed some of these stolen secrets on to the Soviet Union at the height of Cold War as a trade for the Soviet Union’s release of Jewish residents to become settlers in the West Bank. Israel lied about its acts for 12 years and even assisted in the prosecution leading to the life imprisonment of Pollard. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during his recent visit to the US, brazenly requested the release of Pollard.
• Zionist Israel’s callously causing a driver of a large Caterpillar Tractor to drive over and crush to death a young American Jewish woman, Rachel Corrie in 2004. She was making a conscientious non-violent protest against the destruction of the homes of Palestinians.
• The incessant ad hominem attacks of the famous lawyer and Harvard Constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz against fellow academic Norman Finkelstein and the power of the Israel lobby in denying him tenure at Northwestern University and in preventing any college or university from hiring him.
• Zionist Israel’s acts and policies of collective punishment and torture of those who resist Israel.
• The cold banishment of South African Jewish Judge Goldstone who wrote a UN report criticizing the conduct of the Israeli Army in the West Bank, so that he could not even attend the Bar Mitzva of his own grandson.
• Zionist Israel’s armed attack on the Turkish vessel, Mavi Marmara in international waters in May 2010 killing 19 persons and injuring many others. Zionist Israel then took the people on board who were attempting to bring food and medicines to the people of Gaza, to jail and confiscated all of their cameras and luggage.
• Zionist Israel’s current “full-court” press including diplomatic, commercial and probable sabotage to prevent the sailing from Ireland, Greece and Turkey of a flotilla of vessels manned by Christians, Jews, and Arabs committed to non-violence who seek to bring medicines and supplies to the people illegally trapped in Gaza. Sad to say, our own President Obama is doing all he can to aid Zionist Israel in this effort.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public rejection, and defiance of President Obama when our President re-stated our long standing policy that the US supported a State for Palestinians based on the 1967 borders with agreed boundary adjustments.
• Zionist Israel’s incessant pressure aided by the “Senator from Israel,” Joseph Lieberman, (I, Conn) on the US to take military or covert action against Iran, and the threats of Zionist Israel to attack Iran itself, despite the absence of evidence of military uses of nuclear energy. Many of us consider Zionist Israel with its stash of nuclear weapons and demonstrated aggressive posture, to be a far greater threat to peace and stability of the planet than Iran, as well as being hypocritical in refusing to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The Holocaust taught a lesson for all human kind that there is a latent Nazi in each of us that can emerge under the requisite stress and circumstances and that it is the constant task of all civilized people to prevent its re-emergence. Zionist Israel seems unaware of this lesson and claims the memory of the Holocaust for Jews only to defend and justify its Zionist transgressions that sometimes seem somewhat similar to those of Nazi Germany.
It is time for us all, Jews, Christians, Arabs, and Hindus to avoid the regressive fundamentalist aspects of our religions and instead to emphasize the common theme in each that in one way or another proclaim the concept that we are to do to others as we would have them do to us, and to emphasize the spiritual foundations for what became the legal concept of equal protection of law. It is time to cease our support for the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and to support one state, a United States of the Middle East where every person is guaranteed the equal protection of the law.
July 5, 2011
Doug Page dougpage2@earthlink.net
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