112 Congress of the United States
24“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Matthew 6:24
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.
Section 10 - Powers prohibited of States
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Control of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
POLITICAL IRONY
Political analysts you hear regularly on The Exchange join host Ben Kieffer in a live event taped October 25 at Shambaugh Auditorium on the University of Iowa campus. The discussion examines President Obama's first term in office, the Republican candidates seeking the 2012 nomination and Iowa's role in the election process. Ben's guests are Tim Hagle and Caroline Tolbert from the University of Iowa, Donna Hoffman from the University of Northern Iowa and Bruce Nesmith from Coe College.
Download
Avraham Burg is his seminal work, The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes (2008) writes that in Israel and in America, the guilt complex over the Shoah [Holocaust] created a national obsession of exaggerated securitism, the longing for power that often morphs into primitive belligerence. In America, the collective feeling of guilt that more could have been done if the U.S. government was prodded to act sooner is ever present. I [Burg] do not know the details of the Jewish American experience, but I know that leadership pretty well. The Jewish masses are diverse and have a much more sophisticated agenda than presented and expressed by their leadership.
The destruction of the Shoah seems to have been burned into the leaders’ minds. One result is that Jewish American leaders tend to justify their government’s wars and support the most right-wing foreign policies, especially vis-à-vis Israel and the Middle East. They are against everybody, including Germany, Russia, and the Arab countries.
Furthermore, the official, organized Jewish voice is a power to reckon with in every election campaign. It is very difficult to be elected to high office in America against the wishes of the Jewish lobby can cause to unwanted candidates—turn Jewish involvement in American politics into a factor with strategic international consequences.
THE EMPRIE REBELS
The United States is cancelling funding for the UN cultural body Unesco after it voted to grant full membership to the Palestinians. The motion…
The UN cultural organisation voted in favour of giving Palestinians full membership.
There have been scenes of celebration in Paris as the UN cultural organisation voted strongly in favour of membership for the Palestinians - a…
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Burg posits that Jewish influence sometimes causes American political candidates to sound like Shoah victims. “Never again” speeches, Auschwitz themes, and black skullcaps during memorial ceremonies, complete with God Full of Mercy prayers, are frequent. The inevitable outcome of this attitude is a feeling of power, and the further erosion of the Jewish idea of revival that was the basis for the American Jewish autonomy. American Jews, like Israelis, are stuck in Auschwitz, raising the Shoah banner high to the sky and exploiting it politically. (40-1)
THE US CONGRESS AND ISRAEL’S SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
Congress’ behavior had designated Israel as the only foreign country with carte blanche to kill Americans with impunity or fear of reprisal. In other words, the US Congress has issued Israel a License To Kill Americans: Rachel Corrie and Furkan DoÄŸan.
Rachel Aliene Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003) was an American member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). She was killed in the Gaza Strip by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bulldozer when she was standing or kneeling in front of a local Palestinian's home, thus acting as a human shield, attempting to prevent the IDF from demolishing the home. The IDF stated that the death was due to the restricted angle of view of the IDF Caterpillar D9 bulldozer driver, while members of the International Solidarity Movement said "there was nothing to obscure the driver's view."[1] A student at The Evergreen State College, she had taken a year off to travel to the Gaza Strip during the Second Intifada.[2]
Furkan DoÄŸan (20 October 1991[1] – 31 May 2010) was a Turkish American who was residing in Turkey permanently. [2] He was the youngest person killed on MV Mavi Marmara ship, in the Gaza flotilla raid and became a political symbol after his death.[3][4]Furkan DoÄŸan was born to Turkish parents in Troy, New York[5][6] in the United States and moved to Turkey at the age of two.[7]
He was a high school student at Kayseri Özel HisarcıklıoÄŸlu Fen Lisesi in Kayseri, Turkey.[8] [9] [10] He wanted to study medicine.[11] He had planned to visit New York in the summer of 2010.[12]
His father, Ahmet DoÄŸan, who graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with an MBA in accounting, is an assistant professor of accounting at Erciyes University.[5] [13]
DoÄŸan was not intensely interested in politics, and his participation in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, was a result of his winning a seat on the MV Mavi Marmara in a lottery.[11] He was killed in the Gaza flotilla raid.[14] DoÄŸan's father said that "Furkan was a US citizen only and he never thought that he would be killed since he was an American citizen."[2] In his final diary entry written on the ship, he wrote about the beauty of martyrdom:
"It is the last hours to martyrdom, insha'Allah. I am wondering if there is a more beautiful thing. The more beautiful thing is only my mother, but I'm not sure. The comparison is very difficult. Martyrdom or my mother? Now, the hall has been evacuated. So far people were not serious, but they have become serious recently."[15] [16] [17]
An autopsy revealed he had suffered five gunshot wounds, to the nose, back, back of the head, left leg, and left ankle, [18] at a distance of 45 centimeters. He was shot when he was filming the events in the ship.[19] A video from Ä°HH which was posted in many websites including haber7 claims to show a person being shot by IDF soldiers. It is claimed that the person shot was DoÄŸan by haber7. [20] This video was also posted at the on-line news collective This Can't Be Happening: [3]
The autopsy report was never handed over to US authorities despite repeated requests to that effect.[21]
ALL LIVES ARE OF EQUAL WORTH BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
To Benjamin Netanyahu one Israeli life is worth 1200 foreigners lives as can be observed from past prisoner exchanges with the Arabs.
BBC WORLD NEWS PRISONER SWAP
http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/prisoner_exchange
-
27 October 2011US-Israeli citizen Ilan Grapel has arrived in Tel Aviv after being freed by Egypt as part of a prisoner exchange deal with Israel.
-
Middle East / 27 October 2011US-Israeli citizen Ilan Grapel has arrived in Tel Aviv after being freed by Egypt as part of a prisoner exchange deal with Israel. Mr Grapel,…
-
Middle East / 19 October 2011… have questioned the ethics of the interview. Sgt Shalit was freed on Tuesday as part of an elaborate prisoner exchange. Looking frail, he was…
-
Middle East / 18 October 2011Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has arrived back in Israel following his release from five years' captivity, as part of a prisoner exchange deal.
-
18 October 2011Gilad Shalit's father, Noam Shalit, is expected to speak outside the family home in Mitzpe Hila after his son was released from five years' captivity…
-
18 October 2011Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says meeting freed soldier Gilad Shalit and returning him to his family was a "very exciting moment".
-
Middle East / 18 October 2011Images from a dramatic day of events in the Middle East, as Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is released from five years in captivity, in return for…
The Israeli Justice Score is 2000 for two; the American Justice Score is Zero for two. And, as a result the 112th US Congress, the most corrupt Congress since Reconstruction, cheers and gives Netanyahu 29 standing ovations for his presentation of the religious myth for the creation of the secular State of Israel, leaving out Lord Belfour, UN Ambassador Ralph Bunche’s work, and President Harry S. Truman’s aid in declaring Israel a state. Netanyahu came directly the United States Congress demanding Regime Change in Washington, D.C., making threats against our president, and to announce that ethnic cleaning was to continue in the Occupied Territories. These actions that Lawrence Rees is trying to establish in his BBC series, The Nazis: A Warning From History where we can observe that past victimhood is no guarantee of a kinder and gentler behavior in the present when the victim becomes the perpetrator.
UNLAWFUL STATE COMPACTS
The US Citizens Finances Israel’s Debt
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007) posit that in addition to government subsidized aid and loan guarantees, Israel receives an estimated $2 billion annually in private donations from American citizens, roughly half in direct payments and half via the purchase of State of Israel Bonds. These bonds receive favorable treatment in U.S. law; although the interest paid on them is not tax-exempt, Congress specifically exempts them from the provisions of the 1984 Deficit Reduction Act, which imposed additional tax penalties on other bonds with yields below the federal rate. Similarly private donations to charities in most foreign countries are not tax deductible, but many private donations to Israel are, due to a special clause in the U.S.-Israel income tax treaty.
This flow of money to Israel has been a crucial boon to the general economy, but private contributions from U.S. citizens have also played an important strategic role, going back to the pre-independence era. Wealthy diaspora Jews, including several Americans also contributed. Today, groups like the Friends of Israel Defense Forces raise funds in the United States to “support social, educational, cultural and recreational programs and facilities for the young men and women soldiers of Israel who defend the Jewish homeland.” One recent dinner in New York reportedly raised some $18 million in contributions, which are tax deductible under U.S. law.
Other private donations from U.S. citizens have also helped subsidize Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonize the Occupied Territories. These contributions to settlements in the West Bank including those made via U.S. charities or other “Friends of” organizations are not supposed to be tax-exempt in the United States, but such restrictions are inherently difficult to enforce and were loosely monitored in the past.
ISRAEL AND US RELATIONS IN THE NEXT DECADE
George Friedman, founder of Stratfor Intelligence, notes that publicly distancing the United States from Israel would not only appear to open opportunities for Syria and Egypt, it would also present domestic political problems within the United States. The Jewish vote is small, but Jewish political influence is outsized because of carefully organized and funded lobbying efforts. Add to this mix Christian conservatives who regard Israel’s interests as theologically important and the president faces a powerful bloc that he doesn’t want to antagonize. For these reasons the president should continue sending envoys to build road maps for peace, and he should continue to condemn all sides for whatever outrages they commit. He should continue to make speeches supporting Israel, but he must have no ambitions for a “lasting peace,” because any effort toward achieving that goal could in fact destabilize the region. (102)
The things the United States needed from Israel in the past no longer exist. The United States does not need Israel to deal with pro-Soviet regimes in Egypt and Syria while the U.S. is occupied elsewhere. Nor does Israel need the financial assistance the United States has provided since 1974. Israel’s economy is robust and growing.
For Israel, foreign aid means far less than close ties with U.S. hedge funds do. Israel is quite capable of handling itself financially. What the foreign aid signifies to Israel, which has no formal treaty with the United States, is a public commitment by the United State to Israel. Israel uses that as a card both in the region and to comfort Israeli public opinion.
What the United States once got in return for that aid was a stable partner in the region, which could not manage without the money. Now the United States has a partner regardless of the aid. On the negative side of the ledger, the aid provides grounds for Islamicist arguments that the United States is the source of all their problems, including ruthless behavior on the part of the Israelis. Given that the is marginal in importance, that price is too high. Giving up this commitment to aid would actually help Israel by eliminating a prime argument of the anti-Israeli lobby in the United States. Israel does not need foreign aid and is not in strategic danger from conventional forces. There is a mutual need for intelligence sharing and weapons development, but that is by definition a fairly quiet development.
-
28 October 2011The MP for the St Paul's Cathedral area in central London said the area has become "a Third World shanty town" with protesters and their tents.
A Warning to a “Friend and Ally”
Friedman posits that there is no moral challenge here. No democratic ally is being abandoned [but pressure is/will soon be applied from the least likely source: Occupy Wall Street], and Israel’s survival is not at issue, [as Netanyahu and the lobby claim, but the United States’ as a democratic society]. At the same time, while settlement in the West bank may be a fundamental national interest to Israel, it is not of interest to the United States [other than to establish a viable two-state solution, which according to Freidman will never occur].
-
Middle East / NEW 4 hours agoPalestinians are demanding an end to settlement building. Almost 500,000 Jews live in settlements on occupied territory. The settlements are illegal
1 November 2011
-
Middle East / NEW 20 hours ago
500,000 Jews live in settlements on occupied territory. The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. 'Stealing…
-
Middle East / 1 November 2009… the region's peace process. Palestinians said Israel must freeze settlement building in the occupied territories before talks can resume. But…
-
Middle East / 31 October 2009… insisting that he will not negotiate with Israel until there is a settlement freeze. Israel is still building in the occupied territories. The…
The U.S. and Israel are two sovereign nations, which mean that both get to define the relationship [not just AIPAC]. And every relationship has to be viewed in terms of its value to the broadest sense of the national interest. What the United States needed from Israel thirty-five years ago is not what it needs today. (102-4)
MAKING THE CONNECTION
The connection between the corruption within the 112th US Congress, which resembles more a Third World Parliament than the legislative body of a liberal Western democracy codified (according to Charles A. Reich) in the late 1970s, but gained full strength with the election of George W. Bush. This phenomenon is marked by the growth of Neo-conservatism, the politicization of various sects of Right-wing Christian fundamentalism and their influence and control over the US Congress.
James Moore and Wayne Slater in The Architect: Karl Rove and The Master Plan For Absolute Power (2006) write that this control is no accident, but a well-planned political quest by one man, Karl Rove. Retaining an almost lockstep control of Congress is a small but essential part of a larger master political plan Karl Rove has been dreaming of implementing since early in his career. During interviews, speeches, and casual conversations over the course of many years, Rove has detailed his greater goal of a complete political realignment for America. By gaining majority control over U.S. political power and government institutions, he seeks to create a kind of dominance that risks turning America into a one-party nation, [the Republican Party]. (11)
The elements of his strategy involve numerous direct assaults on institutions serving the Democratic Party. While publicly Rove has indicated that a political party can only be destroyed by a lack of candidates and ideas, he’s proceeded to assist the Democrats with facilitating their demise by trying to eliminate their party’s traditional sources of funding as well as social policies that sustain their ideology and federal agencies that have historically serviced mostly Democratic constituencies. His goal is nothing less than the eradication or dramatic reformation of the government programs created under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society,” and subsequent progressive policy that might bolster the Republican opposition.
If he can accomplish these goals, Rove will realize his dream of surveying a political he can accomplish these goals, Rove will realize his dream of surveying a political landscape where the Democrats are a party in name only and the federal government renders almost no services and is so small that, in the words of Rove confederate Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, “It can be drowned in a bathtub.”
Even though Right-wing Republicans Senators and Representatives of States, plus those candidtes running for president in 2012, have sworn allegence to Grover Norquest and his Americans For Tax Reform agenda, Moore and Slater caution that there are political risks to running a government that cannot deliver essential services in critical times.
Karl Rove, though, considered the odds and thought they were good. He was always capable of taking any risk necessary, regardless of ethics or legality, to achieve a win. He was (is still out there in 2011) even more determined when it came to doing whatever was needed to give Republicans long-term political control of America. The question always lingering over Rove’s great talent was whether he would be tempted to go too far to achieve a specific end and might ever get caught doing one of the many things for which he has been blamed. He never seemed to think about such quests, however.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
David Biddle
jmac1949
Snowden
libbyliberalnyc
skypixie0
Jimmy Zuma
Salon.com
Comments
source on 45,000 annual US deaths:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/17/us-usa-healthcare-deaths-idUSTRE58G6W520090917