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“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved fire sides to smite the foe.

– Mark Twain

Norman Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, academic and critic, is arrested in “the Middle East’s only democracy,” and banned for ten years.

Read more at normanfinkelstein.com

The Grameen bank is a private bank, pursuing their own interest as they should, but it’s telling that a bank which specializes in anti-poverty micro-lending has chosen to do business in NYC.

The irony is sickening. We’re using tax-payer money to build $200,000 schools, $10,000 retaining walls, multi-million dollar roads in Afghanistan and Iraq like it’s going out of style. We should open a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Queens, or better yet, let American workers keep their salaries and get government out of the business of redistributing wealth, let alone empire-building.

Read more from allheadlinenews.com

See also:
-Senate approves $165 billion to fund Bush’s wars for a few more months. THERE IS NO OPPOSITION PARTY IN WASHINGTON.
-Pentagon cannot account for $15 billion.
-22-Year-Old Miami Beach Resident gets $300 Million Pentagon Contract to Arm Afghan Forces, Provides Defective, Aging Ammunition.

“War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.” – Ron Paul

“One of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization’s two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post.

. . . .

Members of the Young Democrats agonized about the potential fallout of Saban’s call; his financial offer represented one-third of the group’s 2008 budget. Democratic officials and fundraisers were consulted about how to respond, and at times the discussions were ‘emotional,’ one participant said. ‘It is scary for them, Haim is very powerful, he has great influence over donors who give to them.’

Another source said that Hardt and others were acutely aware of Saban’s status within Democratic circles and were concerned that their organization would suffer long-term harm if they declined his offer or if news of the proposal became public.

‘I said I thought that the appropriate response was to call Haim back and say thank you but we are not interested,’ said the source. ‘I also said that it was surely the case that this story would get out because it is too interesting not to and they should think about how to deal with it. It was a day or two [before they responded]. They felt afraid. They were like, ‘Holy shit, this is Haim Saban.’

Nevertheless, the group declined the overture. A YDA official cited moral reservations as well as the overwhelming consensus of its members to back Sen. Barack Obama.”

Read more from huffingtonpost.com

See Also:
-Clinton insider threatens ‘open civil war’ within party if Clinton isn’t made Obama’s VP.
-Hillary cites RFK assassination as reason to stay in the primary, gives false facts about Bill’s nomination.
-The sheer hypocrisy w.r.t. Michigan and Florida.

This woman needs to be stopped.

Me to Olmert: Do it yourself, asshole

Read more from haaretz.com

He’s still running!

(Read more at dailypaul.com)

Read more from haaretz.com.

See also: Chuck Hagel Takes On McCain, Repeatedly Praises Obama from huffintonpost.com

The counting and the controversy beautifully summarized here on Bill Moyers Journal. Excerpt:

New England Journal of Medicine Iraqi Family Health Survey Study Group
Results: 151,000 civilians deaths between March 2003 and June 2006

John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Results: 654,965 additional civilian deaths between March 2003 and July 2006

Iraq Body Count Project
Results: 81,874-89,353 civilian deaths (as of February 1, 2008)

Opinion Research Business
This British polling agency which has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since September 2005.
Results: 733,158-1,220,580 civilian deaths between March 2003 and September 2007

The Brookings Institute Iraq Index
Results: 103,567 (May 2003 through February 2008)

“Security, security, security. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism.”

from a very funny washingtonpost.com column:

“Customer: ‘Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.’

Pet-shop owner: ‘No, no he’s not dead, he’s — he’s resting! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue, isn’t it, aye? Beautiful plumage!’

– From ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’

. . . .

2:57 p.m., Yeager Airport, Charleston, W.Va.: A steep descent brings Clinton’s plane to Charleston’s hilltop airport. After an appropriate wait, she steps from the plane and pretends to wave to a crowd of supporters; in fact, she is waving to 10 photographers underneath the airplane’s wing. She pretends to spot an old friend in the crowd, points and gives another wave; in fact, she is waving at an aide she had been talking with on the plane minutes earlier.”

Pathetic.

Two link-rich articles describing the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Golberg “interview” (inquisition) with Obama about his devotion to Israel:

-from Antiwar.com:
“Yet Obama still keeps trying to appease the Lobby. He’s purged staff members who so much as looked cross-eyed at the Israelis, such as one poor adviser who meekly suggested that talking to Hamas might not be such a bad idea. He was out faster than you can say Mearsheimer and Walt.

Speaking of which: the Obama-oids have gone out of their way to distance themselves – i.e., ‘reject and denounce’ – those two hate-criminals, even though, as Philip Weiss trenchantly avers, a book by Obama’s point man on the Middle East says pretty much the same thing. In response to all this, Scott McConnell, editor of The American Conservative, dryly remarked: ‘At this point one wonders whether the people who deny the dramatic influence of the Israel lobby on American politics feel a little bit silly.’

Obama’s latest ritualized act of kowtowing takes place in the pages of the online edition of The Atlantic. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg – a male Judy Miller who retailed Ahmed Chalabi’s tall tales of Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and other fables while still managing to keep his job and his reputation – Obama jumps through all kinds of hoops with admirable dexterity, while ultimately avoiding abject humiliation and even showing signs of resistance.”

-from Salon.com:
“The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg conducted what he’s calling an ‘interview’ with Barack Obama regarding Israel, but it sounded much more like an inquisition. Goldberg repeatedly demanded that Obama swear his devotion to Israel and affirm prevailing orthodoxies (‘I’m curious to hear you talk about the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?’”

See Also:
Obama campaign launches Hebrew blog in Israel

“Washington drew out a draft proposal for a security deal in January 2008, a preliminary part of which was signed by officials of the two countries on March 17.

. . . .

One look at Article 10 of the treaty makes it apparent that the US administration hopes to quietly impose the binding contract and legitimize its indefinite military presence in the country.

‘As long as Iraqi security/military forces are not well-trained, security hasn’t been ensured, the neighboring states pose a threat, and terrorist attacks continue, the treaty will be officially binding and both parties are obliged to implement it.’

The first article of the treaty allows the US Army to carry out military operations in Iraq at any time and any place.

Under Article 2, American and British troops can arrest suspects at any time without the consent of the Iraqi government.

Article 3 reinforces Article 10 by asserting that there are no time limits for the presence of American forces, thus annulling the 1790 UN Security Council anti-occupation Resolution.

The contents of the treaty will dissipate all hopes of a sovereign Iraq, turning the country into a medieval US colony.

According to Article 4, American servicemen and non-servicemen are not obliged to attend any court hearings in Iraq, literally granting them capitulation privileges.

Article 7 puts the Iraqi ministries of defense, interior and intelligence under the direct supervision of US officials, ensuring Iraq will be officially governed by the United States.

Article 6 allows the US to set up 41 military bases in Iraq; Article 8 provides American forces with the authority to supervise arms sales as well as train Iraqi military and law enforcement personnel.

Article 9 argues that as a member of the international community Iraq must recognize Israel and unconditionally support Washington’s Middle East policies.”

Read more from presstv.ir

Ron Paul’s recent statement on the House floor.

excerpt: “The first step consists of eliminating legal tender laws. Article I Section 10 of the Constitution forbids the States from making anything but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts. States are not required to enact legal tender laws, but should they choose to, the only acceptable legal tender is gold and silver, the two precious metals that individuals throughout history and across cultures have used as currency. However, there is nothing in the Constitution that grants the Congress the power to enact legal tender laws. We, the Congress, have the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, but not to declare a legal tender. Yet, there is a section of US Code, 31 USC 5103, that purports to establish US coins and currency, including Federal Reserve notes, as legal tender.

Historically, legal tender laws have been used by governments to force their citizens to accept debased and devalued currency. Gresham’s Law describes this phenomenon, which can be summed up in one phrase: bad money drives out good money. An emperor, a king, or a dictator might mint coins with half an ounce of gold and force merchants, under pain of death, to accept them as though they contained one ounce of gold. Each ounce of the king’s gold could now be minted into two coins instead of one, so the king now had twice as much “money” to spend on building castles and raising armies. As these legally overvalued coins circulated, the coins containing the full ounce of gold would be pulled out of circulation and hoarded. We saw this same phenomenon happen in the mid-1960s when the US government began to mint subsidiary coinage out of copper and nickel rather than silver. The copper and nickel coins were legally overvalued, the silver coins undervalued in relation, and silver coins vanished from circulation.

These actions also give rise to the most pernicious effects of inflation. Most of the merchants and peasants who received this devalued currency felt the full effects of inflation, the rise in prices and the lowered standard of living, before they received any of the new currency. By the time they received the new currency, prices had long since doubled, and the new currency they received would give them no benefit.

In the absence of legal tender laws, Gresham’s Law no longer holds. If people are free to reject debased currency, and instead demand sound money, sound money will gradually return to use in society. Merchants would have been free to reject the king’s coin and accept only coins containing full metal weight.”

Read more from ronpaul2008.com

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