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Obama Not To Apologize To Pakistan: White House

December 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON — The White House has for now overruled State Department officials who favoured a show of remorse to help salvage relations after a deadly NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Citing administration officials, the newspaper said the United States ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, told a group of White House officials that a formal video statement from President Obama was needed to help prevent the rapidly deteriorating relations between Islamabad and Washington from cratering. The ambassador, speaking by video-conference from Islamabad, said that anger in Pakistan had reached a fever pitch, and that the United States needed to move to defuse it as quickly as possible, the officials recounted.

But Defence Department officials balked, the Times said. While they did not deny some American culpability in the episode, they said expressions of remorse offered by senior department officials and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were enough, at least until the completion of a United States military investigation establishing what went wrong.

Some administration aides also worried that if Obama were to overrule the military and apologize to Pakistan, such a step could become fodder for his Republican opponents in the presidential campaign.

On Wednesday, White House officials said Obama was unlikely to say anything further on the matter in the coming days.

“The U.S. government has offered its deepest condolences for the loss of life, from the White House and from Secretary Clinton and Secretary Panetta,” said Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, referring to Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, “and we are conducting an investigation into the incident. We cannot offer additional comment on the circumstances of the incident until we have the results.”

With everything at stake in the relationship with Pakistan, which the United States sees as vital as it plans to exit from Afghanistan, some former Obama administration officials were cited as saying the president should make public remarks on the border episode, including a formal apology.

“Without some effective measures of defusing this issue, Pakistan will cooperate less rather than more with us, and we won’t be able to achieve our goals in Afghanistan,” said Vali Nasr, a former State Department official who specialized in Pakistan.But David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and the author of “Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power,” said Pakistani officials need to understand that in the next year, the Obama administration will be less willing to make nice.

“I do think that it’s important for them to recognize that political dynamics in the United States will lead to a hardening of U.S. positions, and the president will have less and less flexibility to accept the kind of behaviour that he has in the past,” Rothkopf was quoted as saying. “The prognosis for U.S.-Pakistani relations is bleak.”

Source: http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/01-Dec-2011/Obama-not-to-apologize-to-Pakistan-White-House

Filed Under: NATO, Pakistan, Politicians, USA

Not Hiring Until Obama Is Gone Is A Symptom Of Broader GOP Ignorance

November 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

There are occasions that the level of ignorance some people exhibit should cause Americans to be ashamed to live in this country. Republicans have perpetuated a lie that America’s economic malaise is solely the fault of the Obama Administration and their solution is to return to the Bush-Republican policies of deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and allegiance to Wall Street’s financial corporate agenda that sent the economy perilously close to total collapse. One businessman’s ignorance epitomizes why economic pain and suffering caused by Republican policies continues and why it should engender ire in all Americans. 

Last Monday, a photo of a sign posted on a Georgia man’s company trucks went viral on the Internet, and it exemplified ignorance, vindictiveness, and contempt typical of Republican economic policies that many Americans support. The sign read, “New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone.”  The company owner, Bill Looman, said his message was not political, but representative of his belief that he cannot hire anyone because of the economy; he blames President Obama. In an interview Looman said, “The way the economy’s running, and the way my business has been hampered by the economy, and the policies of the people in power, I felt that it was necessary to voice my opinion, and predict that I wouldn’t be able to do any hiring.” Apparently, Looman subscribes to Republican rhetoric as a matter-of-course and is ignorant of why the economy is stagnate.

Without going into the stupidity inherent in Republican economic policies and to avoid portraying men like Looman as cognitively deficient conservative sycophants, there are a couple of points to make on why Looman is wrong and why the Obama Administration’s jobs plan would benefit moronic dolts like the Georgia business owner.

Looman’s business is U.S. Cranes, LLC., and he said, “Can’t afford it. I’ve got people that I want to hire now, but I just can’t afford it. And I don’t foresee that I’ll be able to afford it unless some things change in D.C.” The President’s jobs plan called for a tiny tax increase on millionaires and billionaires to fund infrastructure improvements that Looman would certainly have benefited from, but Republicans blocked job creation because of their policy of not increasing taxes for the richest 1% of Americans. Looman must suffer from amnesia besides being stupid, because the economic scene was created during the Bush years mainly through deregulation of the financial industry as well as the wealthy’s tax cuts. The economic crash of 2007-2008 was well underway before Obama was elected, and the only recovery since then was the Obama stimulus that saved the auto industry and put millions of Americans back to work.

Republicans claim the economy is not booming because taxes are too high and regulations are burdensome to business, but surveys and polls show that business owners claim it is lack of consumer spending that prevents them from hiring. In fact, taxes are at their lowest rates in sixty years and environmental regulations passed during President Obama’s first two years have not yet come into effect.  Looman said unless things change in Washington, he cannot foresee being able to afford to hire new employees. Does he seriously believe that giving the wealthy and corporations more tax cuts will encourage Americans who are losing their jobs, buying power, and their homes to begin spending money they do not have? Either Mr. Looman is a fool, or he has bought into the Republican lies that began during the Reagan administration and have finally borne the fruit conservatives planned thirty years ago.

The changes Republicans have in store if they win the White House and Congress will further enrich the wealthy and remove the last vestiges of the middle class that drive the economy, but the foolish Looman thinks GOP economic plans will drive consumer spending and fill his coffers with untold wealth and treasure. Looman should keep in mind that America has tried the Republican economic disaster for ten years and except for Obama’s stimulus, there has been a steady decline in income and spending for the sector that drives the economy; the middle class. Willard Romney’s grand economic scheme is giving $6.7 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans who have not shown any interest in creating jobs…in America.

The other point is; who is Looman punishing by not hiring new employees? Obviously, he follows the lead of vile Republicans who are hell-bent on sending more Americans into poverty to protect the wealthy and corporations. A change in Washington will finally send the economy into depression that Republicans have worked tirelessly to achieve for the past two-and-a-half years and unless Looman is part of the 1%, he will lose his business to the policies he supports. It is possible that Looman is just an ignorant dolt who regurgitates Republican and Koch brothers’ rhetoric, because he did not articulate how or why President Obama has caused slow economic growth. Whatever Looman’s reasons for blaming the economy on President Obama, they are wrong. It is still unbelievable that a company that operates cranes used in infrastructure projects blames his business’s slowdown on the President who has tried to put Americans to work rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure.

It is impossible to feel anything other than abject contempt for men, like Looman, who blindly follow Republican talking points as if they are the word of god. Reality and economic experts have verified over and over again that the economy is in shambles because of Bush-Republican policies of financial deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. It is unlikely that Looman and his ilk will ever achieve a level of economic understanding of why the economy is making a slow recovery, and it is further proof that many conservative business owners are just as stupid and contemptible as the Republicans who caused the economic disaster in the first place.

Mr. Looman is entitled to his opinion, but he is not entitled to perpetuate lies and misinformation he gleaned from the Heritage Foundation and the RNC. The message Looman is really spreading is that he is a foolish moron without the slightest hint of economic understanding and almost certainly a Republican sycophant. Like nearly all Republicans, instead of thinking or observing for himself, Looman depends on other ignoramuses to do his thinking and it informs why conservatives repeat the same economic errors at their own peril and are the reason economic recovery cannot proceed. If the change he desires comes to pass, Looman’s business will come to a screeching halt and he will have no-one to blame but himself and his inability to think or remember that Republicans crashed the economy between 2001 and 2008; eight years before President Obama took the oath of office.

Source: http://www.politicususa.com/en/not-hiring-obama-gone

Filed Under: Employment, Financial Crisis, Politicians, USA

UK Extremely Worried About Stolen Nukes

November 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Did we the British public know that our current Prime Minister was instrumental in the loss of three illegal nuclear weapons?

Is the UK frantically trying to find out where they were sold on the “Black Market”?  We know something that you don’t…… but can’t talk about it Under the Nuclear Explosions Act otherwise we will all end up in gaol for life.

Chris McGreal of the Guardian newspaper published an article 24th of May 2010 revealing how Israel offered to sell nukes to South Africa during the apartheid era. What he failed to reveal was that Israel struck up a deal with South Africa to move its technicians down to the high-security weapons research and development facilities at Pelindaba.

It was at this location that the Israeli technicians managed to covertly give themselves nuclear weapons but also under the table gave South Africa its own nuclear capability but guess what?…….the US and UK knew all about the programme but the UN did not!!!…….what was even more amazing was the fact that the UN sent a team to South Africa where they were convinced that South Africa had curtailed its nuclear weapons programme when in actual fact it had not!!

It is fairly obvious why Israel is totally consumed in trying to find these stolen weapon and needless to say the US and British Governments are equally as concerned and yet are not in a position to admit to their loss as in doing so would incriminate past and current very senior politicians including our current Prime Minister David Cameron.

It always appear to be the case that your past always comes back to haunt you. So let’s just recall the history behind these weapons that were designed and commissioned all during the UN embargo years and who was allegedly involved.

I must also make it quite clear that many of the world leaders and senior members of government have been involved in these under the table deals which has resulted in many of them accumulating much wealth either for the party election funds or for their own personal gain. When one further considers that these faceless individuals not only govern out country but are also directly responsible for the death of millions of people both military staff and civilians it is extremely hard to understand.

How can any government have such a flawed intelligence network and allow such things to take place without some sort of audit to see what is going on behind the scenes. We have seen both the US, UK, EU and Israel transfer almost everything from chemical and biological weapons to nuclear part to countries which they have since called the “Axis of Evil.”………..that statement is not totally true because the “Axis of Evil” is right here in the heart of London!!

It was in the late 1970 when the South African nuclear programme started to go into full swing with the compliments of the Israeli scientists resulting in the first test and only test firing of a nuclear weapon. The test took place on a moored vessel anchored off Prince Edward Island on the 22nd of September 1979 when a typical double flash was observed from a passing US satellite.

One has to understand that this was all under the radar of the United Nations with the full knowledge of selected members of the US and British Governments. The US immediately went on the defensive by creating their “False Flag” report known as the “Vela Incident” in which they explained the following:

The conclusions of the Presidential panel (the Ad Hoc Panel) were reassuring, as they suggested that the most likely explanation of the Vela detection was a meteoroid hitting the satellite – in part because of the discrepancy in bhangmeter readings Others who examined the data, including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the national laboratories, and defense contractors reached a very different conclusion – that the data supported the conclusion that on 22 September 1979, Vela 6911 had detected a nuclear detonation.

What I find ironic here is the fact that several agencies confirmed it was a nuclear explosion but the US Government conveniently put it to bed. I can assure you that through my own scientific contacts in the US this did actually happen and an internal memo at the Los Alamos nuclear research facility confirmed that it had been a nuclear explosion. One has to understand the high stakes involved in such programmes, especially when vast sums of money are being banded around senior political figures. This is truly corruption at its best!

The joint venture (Israel – South Africa) created 10 Battlefield Bombs and after the first test that left nine. The bombs were designed to be highly mobile and reasonably compact and could be carried by the British Canberra bomber or the Buccaneer.

It became apparent in later years that the supremacy of white power in South Africa was about to finish and so they had to open up discussion with the Americans and British as they feared these weapons getting into the hands of the blacks. It was during this time that a decision was made to ship all nine bombs to Chicago for de commissioning. However, our dear “Iron Lady” Maggie Thatcher decided that it would be a good idea to maybe acquire a few of the weapons for possible use against Iraq in the event Saddam did not toe the line.

Thatcher then ordered her Page Boy, David Cameron, to go down to South Africa along with what was believed to be the only technical man available (non other than the now( Sir) Kenneth Warren). Others also believed to be implicated was David Wilshire and many other senior members of government. In actual fact as we follow this charade up to the current time we could possible include other very senior person such as Lord McAlpine, Peter Lilley, Alan Clarke and Ken Clarke and others I have previously named in other articles.  The late Dr. David Kelly was also involved.

We have to remember that this was almost a private sector deal with many political figures implicated some of whom became share holders in the illegal nuke purchase. We are talking here about an extremely high risk deal, with little security for the weapons themselves as everything had to be done in a low-key covert way.

As we already know David Cameron was able to secure a deal for his lady mentor, Maggie Thatcher, and returned with a deal for three nuclear weapons. They were shipped to Oman whereby they were put in private sector storage and eventually stolen by John Bredenkamp, the arms dealer who sold them to Britain and then stole them back to sell on the Black market and the rest is now history.

We have to understand that British Tax Payers money was then placed in the Conservative Party Electoral Fund (£17.8m) which to this day has not been accounted for and other money was made available to Tony Blair (£1m) compliments of Bernie Ecclesone. On top of this a slush fund was also developed to silence other third parties that knew of the deal and our dear Mr. Ken Clarke then implemented his gagging orders to those involved!!

I guess you do not believe this story……why don’t you check it out yourself it is written in Hansard 22nd June 1993, and starting at Col. 197 when Lord Doug Hoyle raised the issue in the House as follows:

Mr Hoyle: If  The Hon. Gentleman will allow me, I shall tell him what information is now given to us. We understand the expenditure and what Tory central office receives. In 1992, central office received £20.7 million. When we asked about that and about company donations, the Tory party told us to look at company accounts. I repeat: in 1992, the Tories received £20.7 million. When the records were checked by Companies house, only £2.9 198million was shown in company accounts. That means that there is a deficit of £17.8 million. We want to know where that £17.8 million came from.

Mr Tim Smith: The Hon. Gentleman has made the suggestion about the accounts of the Conservative party that was made by a member of the Select Committee last week: that no accounts had been published between 1979 and 1983. They were published, and I undertook to send copies to the Select Committee.

Mr Hoyle: I gave way to The Hon. Gentleman because I expected him to tell me where the difference of £17.8 million came from. I shall give way again to him. I am told that he is a treasurer of the Conservative party. I give way to him now so that he can stand up and tell us where the £17.8 million came from. Does the hon. Gentleman care to do that? I am waiting. I do not think that we shall get the information from the horse’s mouth. We certainly did not get it from the Secretary of State.

I could write article after article on the many levels of corruption that occurred in both the US and the UK (not forgetting Israel) and the terrible consequences of this greed resulting in the death of many of our own troops and innocent civilians….all for their own pocket. Solid evidence proves that over the period of 1982-90 Iraq was supplied by the US and UK with WMD, including biological cultures and chemical precursors of nerve gases. Etcetera.

[Article by : Peter Eyre - Middle East Consultant]

Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/212022.html

Filed Under: Nuclear, Politicians, United Kingdom, Weapons

The Shocking Truth About The Crackdown On Occupy

November 26, 2011 by 3 Comments

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class’s venality

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park. 

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that “New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers” covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that “It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk.”

In New York, a State Supreme Court Justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on “how to suppress” Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors’, city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually “OWS has no message”. Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online “What is it you want?” answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, “we are going after these scruffy hippies”. Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women’s wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the “scandal” of presidential contender Newt Gingrich’s having been paid $1.8m for a few hours’ “consulting” to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies’ profits is less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congress people are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists’ privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can’t suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

Source:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy

Filed Under: Occupy, Police, Politicians, USA