How About a War on B/S?

Juan Cole has a wonderful little smasher-of-the-common-wisdom argument today concerning Israel's 1981 bombing raid that destroyed Saddam's Osirak reactor. It's relevant because the comparison is coming up a lot now that the Iranian Bushehr reactor is coming on line.   

(Clearly, the U.S. war planners as well as the Israelis know this -- they don't  need Cole to tell them And since they know this, but are still waging war (sanctions) on Iran, clearly their purposes have nothing to do with Iranian nuclear intentions. The whole topic is irrelevant as a perspective on U.S. foreign policy except to reveal for the nth time the sharp split between real and announced aims of that policy.)

Excerpt from http://www.juancole.com/2010/08/8169.html :

   Moreover, the [Bushehr] reactor is being actively inspected by the
   International Atomic Energy Agency, which continues to certify that
   no nuclear fuel is being diverted by Iran to weapons purposes.

   And the Russians, who have been working on this reactor since the
   mid-1990s, have put in safeguards to prevent it from being used to
   produce a nuclear weapon. First, they have insisted on a light water
   reactor.

   One of the ways to create a nuclear warhead is to take the spent
   fuel from a nuclear reactor and reprocess it into plutonium of
   weapons quality. But it is much harder to do this with light water
   reactors than with heavy water ones, as Daniel Engber of Slate
   explains:
   http://www.slate.com/id/2142813

     Light-water reactors are designed for commercial use and can run
     for years at a time on a single batch of fuel. ("Light water"
     refers to ordinary H2O; "heavy water" has a higher percentage of
     deuterium atoms, i.e. hydrogen atoms with an extra neutron.) That
     long burn fills out the plutonium by-product with other isotopes
     that make it less useful for nuclear weapons. If you shut down a
     light-water reactor early--after a few months, for example--you'd
     waste a huge amount of money. . . Furthermore, it would be very
     easy to tell when the Iranians or North Koreans shut down their
     light-water reactors. To extract the fuel rods, you have to lift
     off a giant lid at the top of the reactor and take them out all
     at once. Weapons inspectors love this feature because it requires
     a large-scale operation that's almost impossible to conceal.

   So the reactor is being regularly inspected by the UN, and is a
   light water reactor which is very difficult if not impossible to use
   for the production of weapons grade plutonium. But there is more.
   Russia is providing the nuclear fuel for these reactors and then
   taking back the spent fuel, so that Iran will not even have the
   ruined light-water-reactor-produced plutonium, which even if they
   did have it could not be used to make a bomb.

   People going ballistic over the Bushehr reactor are perhaps
   remembering the 1981 Israeli attack on the French-made OSIRAK
   reactor in Baghdad. But that was a piece of counter-productive
   theater anyway. The French had insisted on constructing a light
   water reactor, and on putting in safeguards against its being used
   for weapons construction. The Israeli attack therefore did not
   forestall a weapons program; the reactor would have been almost
   impossible to use for that purpose. After the Israeli attack,
   though, Saddam Hussein launched a crash program to enrich uranium
   through magnetatrons, an effort that appears to have failed or to
   have been a very long-term proposition. It was the Israeli strike
   that convinced the Baath regime to carry out a crash program of
   nuclear weapons advances that only Baghdad's defeat in the Gulf War
   revealed. The Israelis would have been better off leaving the
   innocuous OSIRAK alone; as it was they provoked an Iraqi crash
   nuclear weapons program that might have ultimately borne fruit had
   it not been for Saddam's rash and brutal invasion of Kuwait.

   So, there is no point in attacking Bushehr and the attack on OSIRAK
   backfired big time. Bolton and others on the American Right are
   playing on people's ignorance in this warmongering.
_______________

Illegal Israeli PR in America: Declassified

Which Western hacks want free propaganda trips to Zionist central?

"Can You Identify This MOSSAD Agent?"

US Warmongers are mostly wealthy Zionist, Apartheid Loving Jews.

Israel Places Order For 20 F-35s; U.S Taxpayer. Picks Up The Tab

Could somebody please explain why America supports a racist, immoral, vile country like Israel that is populated with evil, conniving, crooked, lying, murdering weasels?

Tea party: The power elite will go to any lengths to co-opt sociopolitical movements

From The Daily Bell - 
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 – by  Staff Report

A Tea Party Manifesto ... The movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party. It is aiming for a hostile takeover. On Feb. 9, 2009, Mary Rakovich, a recently laid-off automotive engineer, set out for a convention center in Fort Myers, Fla. with protest signs, a cooler of water and the courage of her convictions. She felt compelled to act, having grown increasingly alarmed at the explosion of earmarks, bailouts and government spending in the waning years of the Bush administration. ... Today the ranks of this citizen rebellion can be counted in the millions. The rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new "tea party" from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. By doing so he reminded all of us that America was founded on the revolutionary principle of citizen participation, citizen activism and the primacy of the individual over the government. That's the tea party ethos. – Dick Armey (left) and Matt Kibbe/WS Journal


Dominant Social Theme: A glorious revolution grows up.


Free-Market Analysis: A number of month ago, we wrote a good many articles about the Tea Party movement. Along with everyone else we were trying to figure out what it was about and why there seemed to be several different movements and no real way of determining who was in charge or what the message was. It was in fact, a real example of FA Hayek's spontaneous order (something this article mentions).
Fortunately, Dick Armey is willing to set us straight. Here is the history, as he recites it in the article excerpted above: "Today the ranks of this citizen rebellion can be counted in the millions. The rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new 'tea party' from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. By doing so he reminded all of us that America was founded on the revolutionary principle of citizen participation, citizen activism and the primacy of the individual over the government. That's the tea party ethos."
Actually, as we understand it, the Tea Party phenomenon was inspired by the libertarian-republicanism of the Ron Paul presidential campaign that created small activist cells. Rick Santelli – and we have seen his "glorious rant" – had nothing to do with this spontaneous manifestation of anti-state protesting. Santelli's TV statement came much later. The reason we have concentrated on this article is because it is a superb example of how the mainstream media reworks memes to make them palatable and useful to the powers-that-be.
The Tea Party, initially, was an amorphous and generalized uprising against the modern welfare/warfare state. It was libertarian in nature and fairly specific about its point of view. Today, that specificity has been mislaid (perhaps the movement is too big for one point of view) and the mythmaking has begun. Thus the Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal provides a vast platform for the appropriate tale. And Dick Armey provides it. (In fact Murdoch's media organization is also publisher of a book that Armey has written – "Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto.")
Here is the insider's insider, a man who served as Majority Leader of the House of Representatives for a number of years and then as a US$750,000 per annum lobbyist (a berth he has now vacated). Yet Armey, by dint of his connections, ability to raise funds and incessant ambition to shape the political horizon to his liking, has attempted to remake himself as political "outsider" and in the process has seemingly launched a takeover of the inchoate Tea Party. (He denies this of course and regularly emphasizes the Tea Party has no leadership – but certainly he is available to help.)
Not only has he somehow become a high profile, de facto leader of a movement and a definer of the history of a movement that deliberately has no organizational core, he has somehow managed to link himself to a Contract From America that many so-called Tea Party political candidates have "signed." The idea is that the Contract From America emerged out of the inchoate opinions of thousands of Tea Party activists and then were codified by Armey and his staff a the Tea-Party oriented Freedomworks, which he founded in the mid 2000s. Here is the Contract From America in its entirety:
The Contract from America
August 11, 2010
We, the citizens of the United States of America, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.
1. Protect the Constitution
2. Reject Cap & Trade
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government
6. End Runaway Government Spending
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
8. Pass an 'All-of-the-Above" Energy Policy
9. Stop the Pork
10. Stop the Tax Hikes


We certainly have some problems with this contract, just as we have trouble envisioning Dick Armey leading a radical political thought-revolution. Our biggest problem is that it does not mention getting rid of mercantilist central banking (that has so debased US currency) and that it makes no mention of the incessant warring of the military-industrial complex. Since the Pentagon alone admitted (just before 9/11) that it had somehow mislaid, apparently, US$2 TRILLION, this oversight seems fairly significant. The military-industrial complex is one of the largest appendages of the modern American warfare-welfare state. The lack of inclusion of central banking and military expenditures makes this Contract From America fairly useless in our humble opinion.
In fact, from our perspective, this article grants the opportunity to see clearly how a power elite dominant social theme is shaped in modern times. Murdoch provides the platform. Dick Armey poses as a radical Libertarian and rewrites history to his liking. In this article, therefore we have the spectacle of a career politician posing as a libertarian outsider while promoting an essentially meaningless set of limited government objectives.


Conclusion: The power elite will go to any lengths to co-opt sociopolitical movements it cannot control, and perhaps it has enlisted Dick Armey to do so. But as we have pointed out before, the 21st century is unlike the 20th and "control" is an increasingly contentious issue. It is difficult to co-opt a movement that is essentially amorphous and driven by the accelerating failure of the system itself rather than by populism or personalities.

Silver: a nice double play no matter what

By Richard (Rick) Mills
Ahead of the Herd  

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

In the time of the ancient Babylonians - long before the periodic table - there were seven sacred metals: gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead and mercury.

In Roman and Greek Mythology, the First Age was called Golden, the Second Age Silver. Apollo, the god of truth and light, and teacher of medicine, carried a silver bow.
The hieroglyph of Isis (Egyptian moon goddess) is a crescent and images of her are usually reproduced with her standing on the Crescent. This has also become the symbol for silver – on old maps a crescent shows the location of a silver mine.

Islamic alchemy gave silver an important place, alchemical procedures were defined in terms of silver - the silvering of other metals, the act of giving other metals silver like qualities.

We’ve long practiced the science (metallurgy) of separating silver from lead - the earliest known workings of any significant size were those of the pre-Hittites of Cappadocia in eastern Anatolia, the first sophisticated processing of lead-silver ore was attributed to the Chaldeans around 2500 B.C.

Silver metal was recognized as more precious than gold when bartering in ancient Egypt - this recorded as early as 930 BC. Silver’s use as money in coin form began around 2600 years ago. The Lydian (present day Turkey) Trite is considered by many experts to be one of the first coins used as money. It was made of “Electrum”, a silver and gold mixture. Egyptian silver in coin form began appearing around 300BC.

Silver and gold have stood the test of time, as a medium of exchange, a storehouse of value and a safe haven in times of turmoil.

The history of fiat money has always been one of failure (most paper money economies downfall can be linked directly to the costs of financing out of control military growth and its wars). Every fiat currency since the Romans started diluting the silver content of their denarius has ended in devaluation and eventual collapse of both the currency and of that particular economy.

For the very first time in our history, all money, all currencies, are now fiat - the US dollar use to be gold backed and it was the rock all the worlds currencies were anchored to - when the US dollar became fiat, all the worlds currencies became fiat.

The Federal Reserve first issued its debt based paper money in 1913. Since then the US dollar has lost 95% of its value.
"The major monetary metal in history is silver, not gold." Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate

In this author’s opinion silver has a few unique twists:

Firstly as a much cheaper precious metal silver is winning market share from gold buyers. The higher gold prices go the more consumers will step down to silver, more so if they think silver’s price will rise substantially.

Today the gold:silver ratio stands at 65.94:1
Gold $1224 oz/silver 18.56 oz = 65.94
Historically the ratio has been 15:1

Since silver made it’s nominal high in 1984 the gold:silver ratio has held fairly steady at 45:1 - with the current ratio at 65.94:1 either gold will have to fall or silver will have to rise to $27.20 in order to get the numbers back in sync with 45:1.
To get back to the historical average ratio of 15:1 silver would have to rise to $81.60 an oz.

Silver, like gold, also performs it’s function as a precious metal – acting as a storehouse of value and a safe haven in times of turmoil - although, and herein might lie the opportunity, silver seems to have been asleep on the job what with the historical gold:silver ratio being so out of whack.

Gold does seem to be performing admirably and in this authors opinion does not seem set to significantly drop in price any time soon, the Dow on gold’s terms:

• In 2000 gold made its $260 per ounce low
• January 2000 the Dow was 10,900
• 10,900 / $260 per ounce = 41.9 ounces to buy the Dow
• Today at 10,443 DJII and $1,224 gold it’s 8.53 oz to buy the Dow

Secondly silver is an industrial metal/commodity which, unlike gold, is consumed, therefore giving you a call on an economic recovery.
“Silver is a unique metal that wins whether the economy is going well or is in bad shape. In the latter, the investor buys it as a hedge against the downturn in the economy and the markets. And if the economy improves, then the industrial demand increases.” Chintan Parikh, CPM Group commodity analyst

The bottom line? Silver gives you a nice double play with prices expected to perform well no matter what the prevailing economic or geopolitical conditions.

Third silver does not have the threat of much publicized Central Bank and IMF sales constantly overhanging it - although silver does seem to trade in lockstep with gold when this old bogey man is trotted out to the herd.
Conclusion
In this authors opinion, it’s not if, but rather when, the gold:silver ratio will revert to a more traditional number and share price upswings will trickle down to the very few junior silver producers, the soon to be producers, developers and explorers. It’s for these reasons that silver and silver junior precious metal company’s should be on every investor’s radar screen.

Are they on yours?

Richard (Rick) Mills
rick@aheadoftheherd.com
www.aheadoftheherd.com

If you're interested in learning more about specific junior silver/gold stocks and the junior resource market in general please come and visit us at Ahead of the Herd is based on community intelligence for the growth and preservation of capital from stock trading

Membership is free, no credit card or personal information is asked for.
Richard is host of Ahead of the Herd is based on community intelligence for the growth and preservation of capital from stock trading and invests in the junior resource sector. His articles have been published on over 200 websites, including: Wall Street Journal, SafeHaven, Market Oracle, USAToday, National Post, Stockhouse, Casey Research, 24hgold, Vancouver Sun, SilverBearCafe, Infomine, Huffington Post, 321Gold, Kitco, Gold-Eagle, The Gold/Energy Reports, Calgary Herald, Resource Investor and Financial Sense.
***

Legal Notice / Disclaimer

This document is not and should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for any investment. Richard Mills has based this document on information obtained from sources he believes to be reliable but which has not been independently verified; Richard Mills makes no guarantee, representation or warranty and accepts no responsibility or liability as to its accuracy or completeness. Expressions of opinion are those of Richard Mills only and are subject to change without notice. Richard Mills assumes no warranty, liability or guarantee for the current relevance, correctness or completeness of any information provided within this Report and will not be held liable for the consequence of reliance upon any opinion or statement contained herein or any omission. Furthermore, I, Richard Mills, assume no liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage or, in particular, for lost profit, which you may incur as a result of the use and existence of the information provided within this Report.

Richard Mills does not own shares in any company mentioned in this report and none are sponsors on his website Ahead of the Herd is based on community intelligence for the growth and preservation of capital from stock trading
________________


Related: Silver Prices Update: 18 August 2010
 Dumping America, Buying Gold and Going Bankrupt

Stacy Summary: Walmart and JPMorgan two ends of the same US empire coin dumped by arch-villain Soros; sounds like he believes the ‘Hindenberg Omen.’

• Soros ditches US shares; retains gold position, now 13 pc of his holdings
• US bankruptcies soar to 5 year high

Greek Bonds Slump As Austerity Backfires, Country Enters "Death Spiral", And The Violent End Game Approaches

From ZeroHedge:

Those patiently following the Greek Bond-Bund spread to its inevitable conclusion have been fully aware that the plan that Europe is betting its entire future on, is patently flawed: namely that austerity, by its definition does not, and will not work. In fact, instead of bringing stability, austerity will slowly but surely eat away at the economy of whatever country it is instituted in - in some cases slowly, in others, like Greece, very rapidly. Indeed, the Greek spread has now risen to levels last seen during the early May near-revolution in Athens, at well over 800 bps. And for the specific consequences of austerity, Germany's Spiegel has done a terrific summary of what it defines as a "death spiral" for the Mediterranean country: "Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back. A mixture of fear, hopelessness and anger is brewing in Greek society." Spiegel quotes a atypical Greek: ""If you take away my family's bread, I'll take you down -- the government needs to know that. And don't call us anarchists if that happens! We're heads of our families and we're desperate." All those who think violent strikes in the PIIGS are a thing of the past, we have news for you. The (pseudo) vacation season is over, and millions of workers are coming back. They may not have money, but they have lots of free time, lots of unemployment, and even more pent up anger. Things are about to get very heated once again, first in Greece, and soon after, everywhere else.

Spiegel summarizes the big picture for those who still don't get it:

The feast of the Assumption of Mary on Aug. 15 is the high point of summer in the Greek Orthodox world. Here in one of the country's many churches, believers pray to the Virgin for mercy, with many of them falling to their knees.

The newspaper Ta Nea has recommended that the Greek government adopt the very same approach -- the country's leaders have to hope that Mary comes up with a miracle to save Greece from a serious crisis, the paper writes. Without divine intervention, the newspaper suggested, it will be a difficult autumn for the Mediterranean state.

This dire prognosis comes even despite Athens' massive efforts to sort out the country's finances. The government's draconian austerity measures have managed to reduce the country's budget deficit by an almost unbelievable 39.7 percent, after previous governments had squandered tax money and falsified statistics for years. The measures have reduced government spending by a total of 10 percent, 4.5 percent more than the EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) had required.

The problem is that the austerity measures have in the meantime affected every aspect of the country's economy. Purchasing power is dropping, consumption is taking a nosedive and the number of bankruptcies and unemployed are on the rise. The country's gross domestic product shrank by 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year. Tax revenue, desperately needed in order to consolidate the national finances, has dropped off. A mixture of fear, hopelessness and anger is brewing in Greek society.

The specifics on how the economy is getting skewered:
Unemployment Rates of up to 70 Percent:

There's hardly a worker in the shipbuilding district of Perama who could still manage that. Unemployment in the city hovers between 60 and 70 percent, according to a study conducted by the University of Piraeus. While 77 percent of Greek shipping companies indicate they are satisfied with the quality of work done in Perama, nearly 50 percent still send their ships to be repaired in Turkey, Korea or China. Costs are too high in Greece, they say. The country, they argue, has too much bureaucracy and too many strikes, with labor disputes often delaying delivery times.

Perama is certainly an unusually extreme case. But the shipyards' decline provides a telling example of the Greek economy's increasing inability to compete. Barely any of the country's industries can keep up with international competition in terms of productivity, and experts expect the country's gross domestic product to fall by 4 percent over the course of the entire year. Germany, by way of comparison, is hoping for growth of up to 3 percent.

Sales Figures Dropping Everywhere:

A short jaunt through Athens' shopping streets reveals the scale of the decline. Fully a quarter of the store windows on Stadiou Street bear red signs reading "Enoikiazetai" -- for rent. The National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce (ESEE) calculates that 17 percent of all shops in Athens have had to file for bankruptcy.

Things aren't any better in the smaller towns. Chalkidona was, until just a few years ago, a hub for trucking traffic in the area around Thessaloniki. Two main streets, lined with fast food restaurants and stores catering to truckers, intersect in the small, dismal town. Maria Lialiambidou's house sits directly on the main trucking route. Rent from a pastry shop on the ground floor of the building used to provide her with €350 per month, an amount that helped considerably in supplementing her widow's pension of €320.

A sign on the other side of the street advertises "Sakis' Restaurant." The owner, Sakis, is still hanging on, with customers filling one or two of the restaurant's tables now and then. "There's really no work for me here anymore," says one Albanian employee, who goes by the name Eleni in Greece. "Many others have already gone back to Albania, where it's not any worse than here. We'll see when I have to go too."

A pervasive depression with no way out:

The entire country is in the grip of a depression. Everything seems to be going downhill. The spiral is continuing unabated, and there is no clear way out. The worse part, however, is the fact that hardly anyone still hopes that things will improve one day.

The country's unemployment rate makes this trend particularly clear. In 2009, it was 9.5 percent. This year it may rise to 12.1 percent and economists expect it to reach 14.3 percent in 2011. Those, though, are only the official numbers, which were provided by Angel Gurría, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Greek trade union association GSEE considers those numbers far too optimistic. It considers 20 percent to be a more likely figure for 2011. This would put the unemployment rate as high as it was in 1960, when hundreds of thousands of Greeks were forced to emigrate. Meanwhile, purchasing power has fallen to its 1984 level, according to the GSEE.

And most dangerously, 'Things Are Starting to Simmer'

Menelaos Givalos, a professor of political science at Athens University, has appeared on television, warning viewers that the worst times are still to come. He predicts a large wave of layoffs starting in September, with "extreme social consequences."

"Everything is getting more expensive, I'm hardly earning any money, and then I'm supposed to pay more taxes to help save the country? How is that supposed to work?" asks Nikos Meletis, the shipbuilder. His friends, gathered in a small cafeteria on the pier in Perama, are gradually growing more vocal. They are all unemployed, desperate and angry at the politicians who got them into this mess. There is no sympathy here for any of the political parties and no longer any for the unions either.

"They only organize strikes to serve their own interests!" shouts one man, whose name is Panayiotis Peretridis. "The only thing that interests me anymore is my daily wage. A loaf of bread is my political party. I want to help my country -- give me work and I'll pay taxes! But our honor as first-class skilled workers, as heads of families, as Greeks, is being dragged through the dirt!"
"If you take away my family's bread, I'll take you down -- the government needs to know that," Meletis says. "And don't call us anarchists if that happens! We're heads of our families and we're desperate."
He predicts the situation will only become more heated. "Things are starting to simmer here," he says. "And at some point they're going to explode."

The experiment in saving Europe is coming to a close. Germany had its miracle run as exports surged courtesy of a sub 1.20 Euro, and are now contracting, with the Fed stepping back on the printer gas. And with the imminent resumption of the contraction, the revulsion at having bailed out Greece will return, and with it all the unpleasant xenophobic side effects. Europe needed to buy 3-6 months of breathing room to get its house in order. It got it, but the house is in ever worse place than before. And now it is time for the aftermath of the expiration of the sugar high. European CDS spreads are looking way too cheap all over again.  
__________


Related: Austerity Is Ripping Greece To Shreds

Visit Israel! Enjoy colonialism and apartheid as well as repressive dispossession, displacement, and state terrorism

From Stephen Lendman:

Impact of Israeli Military Order No. 1650 - by Stephen Lendman

Located at the European University Institute (EUI), the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) conducts "inter-disciplinary and comparative research (on) major issues facing the process of integration and European society."

Prepared by Asem Khalil, its new report is titled, "Impact of Israeli Military Order No. 1650 on Palestinians' Rights to Legally Reside in Their Own Country," accessed through the following link:

http://cadmus.eui.eu/dspace/bitstream/1814/14401/1/CARIM_ASN_2010_46.pdf

Taking effect in April 2010, it defined all West Bank residents as "infiltrators" (including native born ones), requiring they get IDF-issued permits.

Order No. 1650 (Prevention of Infiltration) and Order No. 1949 (Security Provisions) were issued in October 2009 as amendments to a 1969 Order No. 329 (Order regarding Prevention of Infiltration), declaring "infiltrator" state enemies from Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon would be imprisoned and/or deported.

Potentially, all West Bank and East Jerusalemites risk dispossession and expulsion, part of Israel's longstanding policy to seize all parts of Palestine it wishes, removing indigenous Arabs from their homeland illegally, controlling those remaining under an oppressive apartheid system critics call worse than South Africa's with good reason.

It's a sophisticated form of social, economic, political and racial discrimination, strangulation, and genocide, incorporating the worst elements of colonialism and apartheid as well as repressive dispossession, displacement, and state terrorism to separate Palestinians from their land and heritage, deny them their civil and human rights, and gradually remove or eliminate them altogether.

Apartheid is the worst form of racism, Israel's militarized occupation its most extreme form, incorporating violence, military incursions, land theft, home demolitions, targeted assassinations, indiscriminate murder, mass arrests, torture, destruction of agricultural land, and isolation - measures amounting to slow-motion genocide, including suffocating Gazans under siege.

Military Order No. 1650 amended Order No. 329 (1969), the latter's 10 sections including sentencing armed and unarmed infiltrators, deporting them, evidence, unlawful stay after permit expirations, and obtaining them under false pretenses.

Order 1650 has nine sections, updating nearly all of Order 329, the latter defining an infiltrator as "a person who entered the Area knowingly and unlawfully after having been present (on) the east bank of the Jordan, Syria, Egypt or Lebanon following the effective date."

The new order calls an infiltrator "a person who entered the Area unlawfully following the effective date, or a person who is present in the Area and does not lawfully hold a permit."

Since "knowingly" no longer applies, document irregularities make anyone an infiltrator, subject to expulsion, fines or imprisonment, Israel potentially criminalizing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians as illegals in their home country, unimaginable virtually anywhere else in the world. The new Order corrupts the rule of law, placing all Palestinians at risk. Specifically:

-- any Palestinian without an IDF-issued permit is presumed to be an infiltrator;

-- the order's language is broad and vague, giving the military wide discretion;

-- this action was handled secretly;

-- it violates Fourth Geneva's Article 49 prohibiting:

"Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country...."

-- the military may prosecute, imprison, and/or deport anyone called an infiltrator without judicial review;

-- deportations may be executed within 72 hours of order issuances or sooner, and those affected may be imprisoned until deported;

-- individuals first affected may be Palestinians Israel wishes to transfer to Gaza, even those born in the West Bank or legally relocated there;

-- foreign passport-holding spouses of West Bank residents abroad are likely to be targeted; tens of thousands are affected;

-- foreign nationals called infiltrators may be jailed for up to seven years; and

-- potentially the entire West Bank/East Jerusalem population is vulnerable.

Regulating Residency Status

The term "resident" was first used in Military Order No. 65 on August 18, 1967, referring to those having permanent residency in the "Area." Subsequent Orders applied the term to permanent residents "legally" present, dependent on their having been counted in the September 1967 census. Others became immediately "illegal" for lacking lawful documentation. Henceforth to stay, they needed permits and Israeli authorization to work and engage in commercial activities. As a result, many Palestinians were fined, imprisoned or deported.

Those registered (counted) became candidates for ID numbers, strictly regulated by other Orders, including No. 297 (1969), requiring "males over 16 years old" have an ID card always on their presence to show on demand. Females over 16 were "permitted" to request them.

As later amended, they contained name, address, date of birth, gender, religion, nationality, spouse's name, names and gender of children, and their dates of birth. Order 1206 (1987) issued ID cards to children at birth, their registration linked to mothers, not fathers, perhaps for the greater chance that they were non-residents so authorities could deport them with their parent, Israel having final say. As a result, many children of non-resident parents may be denied registration at the whim of the official in charge.

Regulating Population Access and Exit

In 1967, Palestinians living outside Occupied Palestine and those who fled, can't return, the determinant being residency based on Israel's census. Those counted can stay. Others cannot without prior authorization. Those there "illegally" became aliens in their own land, hundreds of thousands displaced (called nazeheen) as a result.

Consider Israel's logic:

-- Area residents can be readmitted through borders;

-- qualifying requires being counted in Israel's census; yet

-- to be included depended on Area residency at the time it was taken.

Those absent lost it and couldn't return to be counted and registered. As a result, many became stateless. Luckier ones got temporary legal stays abroad, then became unlawful once their authorization expired, yet couldn't return to Palestine.

"Stateless Palestinians, Palestinian refugees, and those denied reentry became 'illegal' and 'unlawful' - and accordingly undesired - wherever they found themselves, no matter what they did."

Thereafter, their very existence became suspect, whether in host countries or the Territories. They were trapped in a no man's land of illegitimacy. Even "legal" residents weren't secure, their status dependent on satisfying whatever conditions Israel imposed.

Residency alone doesn't assure legal status; that is, the "right to have rights," what citizens of other countries enjoy. Israeli military orders explicitly state what non-residents cannot do without authorization. For example, they can't open, manage or work in any commercial activity with permit permission, "implying what Israel will tolerate residents doing without prior authorization. The fact that they are able to do certain things means that their freedom is not a right." Rather, it's what authorities grant.

As a result, restrictions may be imposed at any time for any reason, "even without the explicit suspension of the margins of actions tolerated for legal residents." For Palestinians, status isn't an entitlement or a right, making them vulnerable to lose residency at the whim of Israeli officials, what happened to many for "political" or "security" reasons. Others were denied reentry when they exceeded their alloted time abroad abroad or if their travel document expired while there.

Departure through Israel's airport requires a "Laissez Passer," requiring renewal within a year. Otherwise residency status is automatically revoked. Palestinians exiting through Jordan's Allenby Bridge crossing faced the same fate if staying abroad more than six years.

After the Oslo Accords, Palestinians could get a Palestinian Authority (PA) travel document, valid for three years. However, thousands who lost their ID cards before Oslo were considered non-residents, prohibited from entering the Area without (Israeli-issued) permits as visitors, or in some cases, a newly issued ID number if family unification was granted.

As occupier, Israel holds "supreme power" over borders and internal movement, for both residents and non-residents alike.

Family Unification

Those not "legally" registered can only obtain residency status through family unification, what's extremely hard to get. Otherwise, they need visitor permits for temporary stays, filed indirectly through relatives. Affected persons include:

-- Palestinians present but not counted in the 1967 census;

-- those the war displaced;

-- those outside the Area at the time;

-- those whose residency was revoked for overstaying a trip abroad;

-- children of residents not duly registered; and

-- children of non-resident mothers born between 1987 and 1995.

In all cases, Israel has full authority to grant or deny unifications for any reason. Residency is a privilege, not a right. Even granted, it can be revoked at any time for any reason, Palestinians having no rights in their own land.

Because of restrictive policies and changed rules over time, the number of families affected is high, the largest group being those where one spouse is a non-resident and needs permission to live with the other. At all times, Israel minimizes approvals for political or security reasons, its real agenda to control population growth and reduce it.

Even successful family unifications are complex, long and costly, discouraging many from applying. To enter Occupied Palestine requires temporary visitor permits, granted for three months and requiring renewal. Whenever visitors overstay, they're illegal, subject to expulsion and denial of future permission. Overall, permit issuance is frozen, 200 short visa extensions only issued in 2007, making the likelihood of family unification slim.

Palestinians of Gaza and East Jerusalem

According to Oslo, the West Bank and Gaza are one unit together with East Jerusalem - what's, in fact, denied by de facto and de jure separation, hardened with Gaza under siege.

After the 1967 occupation, both Territories were declared closed military areas while Israel annexed East Jerusalem. In 1972, a "general exit permit" was issued, marking a change in movement in Occupied Palestine. In 1991, during the Gulf War, Israel cancelled it. Thereafter, Palestinians who wanted to enter Israel needed permits.

In March 1993, Israel imposed a "general closure" on the Territories, still enforced, making it difficult to change residency from one area to the other. After the second intifada, conditions worsened, Palestinians failing to update their West Bank residency expelled to Gaza, others as punishment, and some prohibited West Bank entry after visiting Gaza.

In 2007, with Hamas in control, Gaza was declared an "enemy entity," making movement between the Territories nearly impossible. It was also harder to change residency from one area to the other. As a result, Palestinian families holding West Bank and Gaza IDs face similar obstacles to others with non-resident spouses.

Recently, Israel's High Court rejected a petition challenging the 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, prohibiting Palestinians from entering Israel and preventing thousands of couples from living normally, most unable to reunite, others residing in Israel without health insurance, work permits, or other social benefits.

According to General Uri Shoham, Israel's Military Advocate General from 1995 - 2000, "all Israeli governments from 1967 to the present have laid down a strict requirement that all activities of the Israeli military in the control of the Territories must adhere to the principle of 'the rule of law,' " the alternative being John Locke's 1690 observation that "Whenever law ends, tyranny begins."

It's why Israel issued military orders to rule, through law as it claims, no matter how repressive. Contrary to General Shoham, "is this what legality is all about and that this is what rule of law means?" Distinguish instead between "rule by" and "through" law and the rule of law. The former can be called "formal conceptions of legality," the latter a "substantial conception of legality."

The former are "value or content-free. Legality is simply converted into respecting certain principles or criteria for making new rules of law and in applying (them) whenever conflict arises." The latter "look beyond the making and attempt to reach the values behind them."

Israel uses law and legality to rule by and through law by carrying out discriminatory policies, using military orders to deny Palestinians registration, treat them as aliens in their own land, prohibit reentry, forbid family unifications, and expel, imprison or fine anyone for any reason. That's how a police state operates, Israeli policy for over 43 years.

As a result, freedom and equality are absent, Palestinians' basic rights denied. "Only a substantial conception of the rule of law - in which freedom and rights are integrated in the same concept of legality - allows law, especially positive law, to be converted into a tool for discrimination, apartheid and colonialism, and reduces legality to legalism," a tool for social, economic and political control.

Using "legality," Israel occupies Palestine oppressively, denying its residents basic freedoms, including civil liberties and human rights, controlled through, not by the rule of law. What must end one day and will. What determined resistance won't tolerate any other way.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Kicked In The Groin: Health Insurance Companies Are Dramatically Increasing Premiums Due To The New Health Care Law And There Is Not Much We Can Do About It

From The economic collapse blog: 


Wasn't the new health care reform law supposed to make health care more affordable for everyone?  Well, imagine my surprise when I opened up a letter from my health insurance company recently and found out that my health insurance premiums were going up by nearly 50 percent.  I am in perfect health and I have never had a single health insurance claim with this company.  Unfortunately, after doing a little research, I discovered that I am far from alone.  All over the United States, people are being hit with double-digit percentage increases in their health insurance premiums even as the health insurance predators continue to rake in record profits.  At a time when millions of American families are barely making it from month to month, the last thing they need is to be figuratively kicked in the groin by the health insurance companies.  But that is exactly what is happening. 


Not that health insurance companies ever needed an excuse to raise rates, but in 2010 many of them are blaming changes in health care law for the dramatic rise in premiums. 


Of course it is true that there are over a dozen new taxes on the health care industry in the "health care reform" law that Barack Obama and the Democrats rammed down the throats of the American people, and everyone should have realized that those taxes would ultimately be passed on to the consumer.
But what is also true is that the health insurance companies basically wrote large sections of the health care reform law and health insurance company stocks rose when this new law was passed.


So why is this new law so good for health insurance companies?
Well, the new health care law requires all of us to purchase health insurance from them.
We are no longer going to have the choice of opting out of their system.
We are going to be forced to buy health insurance.
And since they are all raising rates, there is no escape from the pillaging.
As the new health care bill was being debated, Obama promised that the average American family would save $2,500 in yearly premiums under the new law.
If any of you still believe that claim I have got a bridge to sell you.
The Congressional Budget office says that yearly health insurance premiums are actually going to increase by about $2,300 each year as a result of the new law, but that estimate is probably far, far too low.


The truth is that rates are already shooting through the roof.  Just consider the following excerpt from a recent article on Fox News....
Here is the terse reason CareFirst/Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Washington gave its subscribers for raising a monthly premium from $333 to $512 on a middle aged man who is healthy, is not a smoker and is not obese: "Your new rate reflects the overall rise in health care costs and we regret having to pass these additional costs on to you."
Could you afford to pay $512 a month for health insurance just for yourself?


Unfortunately, the truth is that this is nothing new.  Many health insurance companies have been increasing health insurance premiums by double-digit percentages year after year after year even as they continue to reel in record profits.
In particular, health insurance companies seem to love to stick it to small businesses and the self-employed.
According to an article on the Mother Jones website, health insurance premiums for small employers increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.
The greed of the health insurance companies seems to know no bounds.  For example, the 39% hike that Anthem Blue Cross sent some California customers last year made headlines across the nation.  But executives defended the dramatic premium hikes as perfectly justifiable.
The reality is that health insurance is becoming so insanely expensive that millions of Americans can't even afford it anymore.
But thanks to the new health care law they are being forced to keep shelling out their hard-earned money for it.


It is getting really hard for anyone to deny that the health care system in the United States is deeply, deeply broken.  The new health care law is not going to reduce costs.  It is only going to help the health insurance companies continue to rake in obscene profits.
But wasn't the new health care law supposed to prevent the health insurance companies from abusing all of us?
Well, as it turns out, the new health care law does not give the federal government much regulatory power at all to prevent premium increases.
But what about the states?
Can't they do something?
Well, yes they can, but unfortunately most state legislatures have been bought off by the health insurance industry.
Since 2003, health insurance companies have shelled out more than $42 million in state-level campaign contributions.
That is a lot of money, and they wouldn't be spending that kind of money if they did not expect a return for it.


"The pressure that the industry can bring to bear in state legislatures is unbelievable," J. Robert Hunter, a former insurance commissioner in the state of Texas recently told the Los Angeles Times. "They pretty much get what they want."


The cold, hard reality is that health insurance companies are not in business to help people and provide affordable health care.  They are in business to make money and they are very good at it.


But there are a few states that have stood up to the health insurance companies.  States that have "prior approval" laws have been able to successfully fend off some of the over-the-top rate increases that health insurance companies have been trying to ram down the throats of consumers.  For example, the Los Angeles Times recently reported on what has been happening in the state of Oregon....
Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon was forced to cut back a proposed 26.4% increase in one of its individual plans to 17.3%. Other carriers were ordered to scrap altogether hikes as high as 20%.
Unfortunately, a number of these states that have these "prior approval" laws are now being sued by insurance companies.


That is how these folks work - they will either try to buy off politicians or they will keep filing lawsuits until they get what they want.
Meanwhile, the top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States received nearly $200 million in total compensation in 2009.
Are you upset yet?
You should be.


And you know what?
When it finally comes time to actually use your health insurance, these predators will do anything they can to get out of paying up.
In fact, it has been documented that some of the largest health insurance companies actually pay their employees large bonuses for denying claims.  The employees who deny the most claims are the ones that get the largest bonuses.


The health care system in the United States is messed up beyond all recognition, and the new health care law has made things worse than ever.  Americans pay more than anyone else in the world for health care, and all that we get in return is a system that is deeply, deeply broken.
If you have a health insurance horror story of your own, please feel free to share it in the comments section below....

Mel Brooks and the Bankers

 By Thorvaldur Gylfason, from VoxEU (my emphasis):

In Mel Brooks’ brilliant film and Broadway musical The Producers, an over-the-hill Broadway producer, Max Bialystock and his hapless accountant, Leo Bloom recognize two great truths. It is very hard to produce a hit and very easy to produce a flop – and they can make more money by producing a flop than by producing a hit. Max uses his expertise to ensure that the play flops. He selects the worst play ever written (Springtime for Hitler) – an ode to Hitler, a terrible director, and an awful male lead. Max understands critics’ key role in determining the success of Broadway plays, so he pretends to attempt to bribe the most prominent critic in order to enrage him and make sure that he will pan the play.
Max then (literally) seduces his investors, raising a million bucks from “little old ladies” by selling far more than 100% of the potential profits. If the play fails almost immediately, the investors will not expect to receive any money and Max and Leo can run away to Rio with the investors’ money.
The plot fails, however, because the show turns out to be a hit. It is so excruciatingly bad that the audience assumes it is a clever satire. Bialystock and Bloom land in jail when they are unable to pay over 1000% of profits to the investors. In prison, Max and Leo promptly set out to try the same scam. The story ends there because even Mr. Brooks could not imagine what happened next.

Real-life Bialystocks and Blooms
Not all the CEOs running the fraudulent savings and loans (S&Ls) in California and Texas in the 1980s and 1990s saw The Producers, but all of them could have played Max’s role convincingly. They shared Mr. Brooks’ insight into why the massive frauds use accounting as their “weapon of choice”, structure their efforts to fail, and recruit an accountant as their most valuable fraud ally. The fraudulent CEOs and their accounting allies were the real-life Bialystocks and Blooms. They bankrupted the S&Ls, enriching themselves and their friends along the way, at the expense of stockholders, creditors, and taxpayers.
Fraudulent lenders maximize their (fictional) income by making exceptionally bad loans and growing very rapidly. Borrowers that will frequently be unable to repay their loans are numerous (allowing the lender to grow rapidly) and will pay a higher interest rate (yield). The combination of rapid growth and high interest rates produced guaranteed, record income in the near term during the S&L debacle and the current subprime lending crisis.
During the ongoing subprime mortgage loan crisis, the rating agencies and the top tier audit firms played the real life role equivalent to the critic that Max pretended to try to bribe to make sure that Springtime for Hitler received a terrible review. Unlike the critics, who Max realised he could not succeed in bribing, the rating agencies and the top tier audit firms gave rave reviews to toxic subprime mortgage paper. The rating agencies claimed the toxic waste was pristine “AAA” – the safest of the safe. The elites that we count on to advise us on quality in the real world are more corruptible than the elites in the fictional world that Max and Leo inhabited.
In the words of Professor Paul Romer (quoted from Johnson and Kwak 2010), “Over the last fifty years, the Federal Aviation Administration, the airline manufacturers, and the airlines worked together to make a highly complex air travel system more efficient and much safer… in contrast, our financial regulators and banks have made our financial system less efficient and much more dangerous.”
In time, the regulators and the American justice system caught up with the S&L frauds. More than a thousand priority white-collar felony convictions resulted from the S&L debacle. Also, high-ranking politicians who had aided and abetted the S&L operators and accepted donations from them were driven from office and power, including Jim Wright, Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1987 to 1989. The “Keating Five” were deeply embarrassed for their intervention on behalf of the most notorious fraud, that perpetrated by Charles Keating at Lincoln Savings. One senator was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee, another two were criticized for acting improperly, and two more, while cleared of impropriety, were criticized for poor judgment, including Senator John McCain, the former presidential candidate.

Repeated games
But this is a trick you can pull only once, you might think. Well, a few years later the people in charge at Enron thought they might try something similar, and for a while it looked as if they might succeed. Their fraud was exposed as well, however, and they brought down with them Arthur Andersen, one of the big five accounting firms in the US. And then there was WorldCom, and hundreds of others. Prosecutors were able to arraign only the most notorious of these frauds.
The crisis that started in 2007 also contains significant elements of fraud. The crooks still understand Max and Leo’s scam, but this time the regulators and prosecutors appear to be as clueless as the little old ladies that Max conned.
Perhaps we need to send the regulators and prosecutors to remedial showings of The Producers. Alternatively, we could have them become familiar with modern economics and white-collar criminology. Inspired by the experience of regulators who had dealt with the S&Ls and understood fraud – and perhaps also by Mel Brooks – George Akerlof, the Nobel-Prize winning economist, and Paul Romer published in 1993 a famous article entitled “Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit.” In 2005, the white-collar criminologist, economist, and lawyer William Black published a book entitled “The best way to rob a bank is to own one”. Again, the title says it all. In an appendix, the book reproduces a memo from Charles Keating that reads, in part, “get Black – kill him dead.” In the 1980s, Mr. Keating ran the Lincoln S&L Association, running it into the ground in 1989 at a cost to the federal government of over $3 billion and leaving about 23,000 customers with worthless bonds. Mr. Keating, a generous backer of the five aforementioned senators, the “Keating Five”, served four and a half years in jail.

Built to fail
Mr. Black has listed the four main characteristics of fraudulent banks.

• They grow very rapidly;
• They make really bad loans at high yields (because only borrowers who have no intention of paying back will borrow at exorbitant interest);
• They pile up huge debts; and
• They set aside pitifully small loss reserves.

This, in a nutshell, is what many of the failed S&Ls in California and Texas did in the 1980s. The key thing to realize is that such banks are built to fail. The owners and operators of the S&Ls could live lavishly as long as their scam lasted, or longer, as many of them, even after serving time in jail, walked away rich at the expense of innocent bystanders.
At some point, though, the threat of getting caught may lead some to try to subvert the law. As Professor James Galbraith put it in his testimony in the US Senate 4 May 2010, “This is where crime and politics intersect.” This is where law and order enter the picture if financial regulation has failed to rein in the banks as it did before the onset of the current crisis in 2007. The National Transport Safety Board investigates every civil-aviation crash in the US. In Europe, national Civil Aviation Accidents Commissions perform this vital role. Their principal concern is public safety. For reasons of consumer protection and public safety, finance needs to be viewed the same way as civil aviation. When things go wrong, there is a clear need for credible crash analysis to secure full disclosure. If laws were broken, the public has a right to know. Mel Brooks would agree – Bialystock and Bloom went to jail.

References
Akerlof, George A and Paul M Romer (1993), “Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit”, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2, 1-73.
Black, William K (2005), The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry, University of Texas Press.
Brooks, Mel (1968), The Producers – A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden, a film written and directed by Mel Brooks starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. Academy Award for best original screenplay.
Brooks, Mel (2001), The Producers, a Broadway musical based on the film. Three Tony Awards, including for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical.
Brooks, Mel (2005), The Producers, a film adapted from the Broadway adaptation.
Galbraith, James K (2010), “Statement before the Subcommittee on Crime, Senate Judiciary Committee”.
Johnson, Simon, and James Kwak (2010), 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, Pantheon Books.