"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society."
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic, 1964

Note: clues to what's next in bipartisan global domination agenda come as no surprise -- but as urgent call to action starting with BHO's coronation
Rice: Obama to Follow Bush Foreign Policy
By Daniel Dombey in Washington
http://www.ft.com/
Barack Obama might have little option but to follow George W. Bush’s approach on a range of foreign policy issues, including Iran, said Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state.
Ms Rice told the Financial Times the new administration was likely to follow Mr Bush’s lead in the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme. During the president’s second term, the US has co-ordinated its approach with the European Union, Russia and China....“The reason why there might be some elements of continuity is that what we’ve tried to do is to arrange or organise international groupings that can first manage and then resolve these very difficult problems in a multilateral way.” She was referring not just to the administration’s efforts over Iran but also its approach to North Korea and the Israel-Palestinian issue.... Ms Rice’s words could damp expectations that the incoming administration will represent a complete break with its predecessor on foreign policy. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21515.htm

Obama wants Bush war team to stay
Bill Gertz (Contact)
EXCLUSIVE: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/22/obama-wants-bush-war-tea...
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has asked most Bush administration political appointees to stay on in the Pentagon... "I have received authorization from the president-elect's transition team to extend a number of Department of Defense political appointees an invitation to voluntarily remain in their current positions until replaced... available to all willing political appointees with the exception of those who are contacted individually and told otherwise," he stated.
The policy affects some 250 political appointees in the department....Two senior officials expected to stay are John Young, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, and James R. Clapper, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Praise from Cheney for Obama’s national security team
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=49685&s2=19

Note: Imperialist- zionist heavy-hitters in moves to integrate hard & soft imperialist power
Clinton Moves to Widen Role of State Dept.
As she prepares to helm the State Department, Hillary Rodham Clinton is seeking a bigger budget and an expanded role in dealing with global economic issues.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/us/politics/23diplo.html?th&emc=th
Mrs. Clinton is recruiting Jacob J. Lew, the budget director under President Bill Clinton, as one of two deputies, according to people close to the Obama transition team. Mr. Lew’s focus, they said, will be on increasing the share of financing that goes to the diplomatic corps. He and James B. Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, are to be Mrs. Clinton’s chief lieutenants. The incoming administration is also likely to name several envoys, officials said, reviving a practice of the Clinton administration, when Richard C. Holbrooke, Dennis Ross and other diplomats played a central role in mediating disputes in the Balkans and the Middle East.... Mr. Ross’s name has been mentioned as a possible Middle East envoy, as have those of Mr. Holbrooke and Martin Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel. As Mrs. Clinton puts together her senior team, officials said, she is also trying to carve out a bigger role for the State Department in economic affairs, where the Treasury has dominated during the Bush years. She has sought advice from Laura D’Andrea Tyson, an economist who headed Mr. Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. The steps seem intended to strengthen the role of diplomacy after a long stretch, particularly under Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in which the Pentagon, the vice president’s office and even the intelligence agencies held considerable sway over American foreign policy....
“There’s no question that there is a reinvention of the wheel here,” said Aaron David Miller, a public policy analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “... a fairly astute analysis of what’s going to work in foreign policy.” With so many problems, including Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, Mr. Miller said it made sense for the White House to farm out some of the diplomatic heavy lifting.
In addition to the Middle East, one Democratic foreign policy adviser said, Mr. Holbrooke might be considered for an appointment as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and possibly Iran. The adviser said the decision had not been made.
A transition official dismissed as “speculation” reports in Indian newspapers that Mr. Obama was considering appointing Mr. Clinton as a special envoy to deal with Kashmir issues... another transition official confirmed that Mr. Obama’s foreign policy advisers were discussing the possibility of appointing a special envoy to India. Mr. Steinberg, who is the dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, would probably coordinate the work of any special envoys, the official said.
The recruitment of Mr. Lew...a well-connected figure who was once an aide to Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill, Mr. Lew now works for Citigroup in a unit that oversees hedge funds. “If we’re going to re-establish diplomacy as the critical tool in America’s arsenal,” a senior transition official said, “you need someone who can work both the budget and management side. He has very strong relations on the Hill; he knows the inner workings of how to manage a big enterprise.” The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private, said Mrs. Clinton was being supported in her push for more resources by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Obama’s incoming national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones Jr.

For years, some Pentagon officials have complained that jobs like the economic reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq have been added to the military’s burden when they could have been handled by a robust Foreign Service. “The Pentagon would like to turn functionality over to civilian resources, but the resources are not there,” the official said. “We’re looking to have a State Department that has what it needs.”

Mrs. Clinton’s push for a more vigorous economic team, one of her advisers said, stems from her conviction that the State Department needs to play a part in the recovery from the global financial crisis. Economic issues also underpin some of the most important diplomatic relationships, notably with China. In recent years, the Treasury Department, led by Henry M. Paulson Jr., has dominated policy toward China. Mr. Paulson leads a “strategic economic dialogue” with China that involves several agencies. It is not yet clear who will pick up that role in the Obama administration, although Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is frequently mentioned as a possibility.

Guantanamo: Lawyers accuse US Defence Secretary Gates of signing "flagrantly false" affidavit
by Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, 2008/12/23
Lawyers for a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay accused Robert Gates, US defence secretary, of signing a "flagrantly false" affidavit to avoid having to disclose evidence of torture.

URGENT TO STUDY & SHARE THIS PLANNING FOR 'STRATEGIC SHOCKS'
Beside explaining all those 'clairvoyant' predictions of an early attack on Obama, and also explaining his not-clairvoyant 'new team', this is an urgent lesson in the U.S. imperialist 'peacekeeping & stabilization' already planned early in OBAMA admin. to recoup loses from u.s. terror war, expand and secure its global hegemony agenda.

YOU DON'T BELIEVE BELIEVE REVOLUTION HERE IS POSSIBLE? U.S. RULING CLASS DOES & IS PREPARED. HOW & WHEN WILL WE PREPARE ?
“Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development”
http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/
November 2008
The Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and the Strategic Studies Institute are pleased to offer this insightful monograph as a contribution to the debate on this important national security issue.

Like the attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), the subsequent War on Terrorism (WoT), and the Iraq insurgency, the next defense-relevant challenge is likely to be a strategically dislocating surprise. Without continued and more sophisticated “horizon scanning,” there is near-certainty that the next compelling defense- relevant challenge will be a “strategic shock.”5 The current administration confronted a game-changing “strategic shock” inside its first 8 months in office. The next administration would be well-advised to expect the same during the course of its first term....
DoD is now doing valuable work on strategic shocks. This work must endure and mature through the upcoming political transition. The next defense team should scan the myriad waypoints and end points along dangerous trend lines, as well as the prospect for sudden, discontinuous breaks in trends altogether to identify the next shock or shocks. Doing so is a prudent hedge against an uncertain and dangerous future...
Senior defense leaders and strategists have key questions to answer on the subject of strategic shocks.
This monograph examines the role of the strategic shock in contemporary defense strategy development. It targets the incoming senior defense team, seeking to encourage them to institutionalize defense-relevant shocks in long-range defense strategy and planning efforts. It attempts to begin answering four important questions on the subject: (1) What are strategic shocks? (2) What obstacles militate against their routine employment in DoD strategy development? (3) Why are strategic shocks important to strategy and planning? And, finally, (4) What kinds of shocks would profoundly impact future DoD decisionmaking?
Meaningful consideration of shocks in strategy development and planning would better posture DoD for an unconventional future...
Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order … An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home...DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub [e.g. military rule] for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance...DoD is already challenged by stabilization abroad. Imagine the challenges associated with doing so on a massive scale at home....

The most recent National Defense Strategy (NDS) captures this idea when it observes: “The [Department of Defense] should also develop the military capability and capacity to hedge against uncertainty, and the institutional agility and flexibility to plan early and respond effectively alongside interdepartmental, nongovernmental and international partners.”
The Department of Defense is doing valuable work on strategic shocks. That work must endure and mature through the upcoming political transition.
DoD has initiated an embryonic effort on “strategic trends and shocks.” In a critical period of political transition, it might lose momentum with the inevitable change in defense leadership. This would be unfortunate. The new Secretary of Defense and his or her team must continue to build on the work done thus far. ....

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR
NATHAN FREIER is a Visiting Professor of Strategy, Policy, and Risk Assessment at the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Mr. Freier joined CSIS in April 2008 after retiring from the U.S. Army after 20 years as a lieutenant colonel. His last military assignment was as Director of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. Prior to that, he served in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, where his principal responsibilities included development of the 2005 National Defense Strategy. Previously, he was an Army fellow/visiting
scholar at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies and a strategist with the Strategy, Plans, Concepts, and Doctrine Directorate, Department of the Army Staff in Washington, DC. Mr. Freier twice deployed to Iraq as a strategist while assigned to the Army War College. From January to July 2005, he served in the Strategy, Plans, and Assessments Directorate of Headquarters, Multi-National Force–Iraq, and from May to August 2007, he served as a special assistant to the Commander, Multi-National Corps–Iraq, in the
Commander’s Initiatives Group.

'CNAS' U.S./ SOROS FUNDED DEMOCRATS THINKTANK 'INTEGRATING' U.S. BIPARTISAN HARD & SOFT POWER FOR GLOBAL DOMINATION
South Asia: Robert Kaplan of the Center for a New American Security [CNAS] writes that as a result of the Mumbai attacks we will no longer be able to regard South Asia as a region distinct from the Middle East. Now, he says, there is only one long continuum stretching from the Mediterranean to the jungles of Burma.
Op-Ed Contributor
Trouble in the Other Middle East
By Robert D. Kaplan
Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
THE divisions we split the world into during the cold war have at long last crumbled thanks to the Mumbai terrorist attacks. No longer will we view South Asia as a region distinct from the Middle East. Now there is only one long continuum stretching from the Mediterranean to the jungles of Burma, with every crisis from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in the west to the Hindu-Muslim dispute in the east interlocked with the one next door.... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/opinion/08kaplan.html?th&emc=th

In 'the whole region we are dealing with', U.S./ Kaplan include amerikan 'homeland'
The Abduction, Secret Detention, Torture, and Repeated Raping of Aafia Siddiqui
by Stephen Lendman / December 15th, 2008
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/12/the-abduction-secret-detention-tor...
Post-9/11, the “war on terror” has been a jihad against Islam, the colonizers v. the colonized, or what Edward Said called “the familiar (America, Europe, us) and the strange (the Orient, East, them).” Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is one of its most tragic, aggrieved, and ravaged victims. Her ordeal continues horrifically.
Boston Magazine’s Katherine Oxment asked: “Who’s afraid of Aafia Siddiqui? She went to MIT and Brandeis, married a (physician, lived in Boston), cared for her children… raised money for charities… did other volunteer work, hosted play groups in her apartment, (is) deeply religious… distribute(d) Korans to inmates in area prisons,” and did nothing out of the ordinary. (She) “was a normal woman living a normal American life. Until the FBI called her a terrorist… a high-profile Al Qaeda operative,” but we’ve seen these charges before, and each time they were bogus. They’re egregiously so against Aafia — a woman guilty only of being Muslim at the wrong time in America or elsewhere if you’re on Washington’s target list.
Against her and others, no evidence exists so prosecutors invent it....
US authorities confirmed that she’s incarcerated at Carswell Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth, TX (pursuant to an October 1, 2008 US District Court, NY judicial directive) where she’s undergoing psychiatric evaluation, but not getting desperately needed medical attention.
Nazir earlier raised questions about her detention and said “she (was) physically tortured and continuously raped by the officers at the (Bagram) prison” — for over four years. He now wants her immediately released and repatriated to Pakistan after it was learned she’s held on dubious charges plus all the horrific treatment she endured — yet is guilty of nothing.... She’s been destroyed physically and emotionally. Her former being no longer exists. Her survival is in jeopardy, yet she remains incarcerated, has been indicted, will be tried, likely convicted, and may spend the rest of her life in prison. And for what? For her faith, devoutness, ethnicity, humble charity, all at the wrong time in America. The message to everyone is clear. We’re all Aafia Siddiquis.

5 Muslim Men Convicted in Plot on Fort Dix
Five Muslim immigrants accused of scheming to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were convicted of conspiracy Monday in a case that tested the FBI's post-Sept. 11 strategy of infiltrating and breaking up terrorist plots in their earliest stages... prosecutors acknowledged the men were probably months away from an attack and did not necessarily have a specific plan... Although investigators said the conspirators were inspired by Osama bin Laden, they were not accused of any ties to foreign terror groups. Defense lawyers argued that the men weren't seriously planning anything and that they were manipulated and goaded by two paid FBI informants who had infiltrated the group....
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=t&refer=http://sea...

A federal jury on Monday convicted five men of conspiracy to kill American soldiers at the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey last year, but acquitted them of attempted murder... all Muslim immigrants who lived in Philadelphia’s southern New Jersey suburbs, face a maximum of life in prison.
Defense lawyers argued that the men were never serious about attacking Fort Dix, and that the government informants repeatedly coaxed the men into making incendiary comments on government wiretaps. Defense lawyers also hammered at credibility of the informants. One is an Egyptian-born illegal immigrant on probation for bank fraud; the other has been paid about $150,000 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for making the secret recording.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/nyregion/23fortdix.html?_r=1&8au&emc=a...

Many U.S. Combat Troops To Be Reclassified
December 22, 2008, Post Chronicle
The U.S - Iraq agreement calls for the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq cities by June, but officials say many will remain as reclassified personnel renamed "trainers" and "advisers" in what officials told NYT are essentially combat roles ... According to Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in at the Brookings Institution, roughly 10,000 American troops should remain in Baghdad after next June, with thousands more in other cities around the country.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21517.htm

U.S. upgrading key Iraqi naval base:
Officials said the upgraded naval base would be located in Umm Qasr near the southern city of Basra... "What makes it unique is that I'm an air force officer managing an Iraqi Navy project for a U.S. Army organization," U.S. Air Force Maj. Dee Katzer, project manager, said. "Talk about joint and multi-National."
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/ss_iraq0738_11_24.as...

since dems. were complicit in Bush admin. crimes --- and Obama admin. has 'rehired' most of the criminals and kept the rest as 'advisers'
Obama & Biden Administration To Protect Bush Administration Criminals
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com
Obama and Biden, who promised "change" have pursued nothing but continuity, acknowledge they will protect criminals in the Bush administration from prosecution for authorizing torture, a complete violation of both the U.S. constitution and the Geneva Conventions. When ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked if top level Bush administration officials would be prosecuted for mandating prisoner abuse, Biden said he and Obama would be "focusing on the future...we should be looking forward, not backwards."... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=49805

Blix reveals threats made by Dick Cheney before Iraq invasion
In an interview with Aljazeera today, former Chief of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq told the TV that he and the Head of the IAEA Mohamed Al-Baradei were subjected to direct threats from Dick Cheney before the war. Blix said that Cheney threatened to defame both men’s reputations if they didn’t came with the "required" answers...Blix is ready to be a witness before an International tribunal on U.S. false allegations.
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=49773

THE 'INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY' AKA U.S. WORLD- DOMINANT PREDATORS PUSH WAR AGAINST PAKISTAN
The US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, top U.S. intel official, arrived in Pakistan for his second visit since the attacks for talks on "regional issues," a US embassy spokesman said. Early this month, Mullen urged Pakistan to investigate all links to Mumbai and to broaden its campaign against militants. India accused Pakistan of trying to shift blame for the Mumbai attacks and demanded it do more to dismantle militant networks
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4801569a12.html

FBI to name Pak accused
New Delhi
http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/news/top-story/fbi-t...
Dec. 23: A US Federal Bureau of Investigation team has completed its probe into the Mumbai terror attacks, which point to direct Pakistani involvement. The FBI team plans to visit Pakistan soon to file a charge sheet against the accused persons there.... America’s director of national intelligence John Michael McConnell, who met Union home minister P. Chidambaram on Monday, passed on the FBI team’s key findings to the Indian government. The US team is now busy giving final touches to the chargesheet, in which it will name the accused persons... Mr McConnell, who flew to New Delhi on Monday, met top Indian intelligence officials and discussed with them the findings of the FBI team. He is the seniormost US intelligence official and reports directly to the US President. With the Federal Bureau of Investigation winding up its investigation, which it began on December 1, a senior Union home ministry official said India was hopeful that international pressure on Pakistan to take action against perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage would be stepped up. The FBI is learnt to have found evidence that a Pakistani security establishment other than the ISI was involved in the November 26 terror strikes that left over 180 people dead. While the name of the Pakistan entity involved is not clear at this point, the sources did not rule out the possibility of the Army’s direct involvement....

US to Pak 'every single day': Take action on elements involved
Washington/Islamabad, Dec. 23:
The US government is asking Pakistan "every single day" to act against those involved in the Mumbai terror attack and has warned it to be especially vigilant against more incidents during the transition to the Osama administration here [Freudian misprint?!] officials said.
"Admiral Mullen arrived this afternoon for scheduled meetings with senior Pakistani officials on regional issues," US embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said... he stressed the need for Pakistan to do more to satisfy India which was demanding arrest of elements it said were involved in the Mumbai attacks. At the same time, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said ungoverned spaces of Pakistan together with the difficult-to-defend Afghan border have compounded the problem of fighting terrorism in South Asia. State department spokesperson Sean McCormack said Monday the US is asking Pakistan "every single day to do whatever it can" to track down those responsible for the Mumbai terror strikes and prevent future terrorist attacks, but would leave it to Islamabad how to bring them to justice.... http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/news/international/u...

USRAELI GOAL: ELIMINATE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED RESISTANCE LEADERSHIP BLOCKING GENOCIDE
Strangling Gaza to near death while pretending to be the victim
By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem
http://www.xpis.ps/
...Israel claims ad nauseam that its Nazi-like blockade of Gaza, which is a brazen violation of international law, is a response to the firing by Gaza guerillas of generally ineffective home-made projectiles known as Qassams. This is simply a big lie. The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip began immediately after Hamas won the legislative election in January 2006, and the main driving goal was to punish, as much as internationally acceptable, the people of Gaza and Palestinians in general... only after it became clear that Israel was hell bent on destroying Gaza and its inhabitants through a slow process of extermination that Gazans began firing these largely psychological weapons which inflict little damage and rarely cause human casualties among Israelis.

In June, Hamas agreed to stop all "belligerent acts and hostilities" against Israel in return for Israeli reciprocity and the lifting of the hermetic siege on the Strip which obliterated Gaza economy and caused the death of hundreds of innocent people... instead of dealing in good will with the Egyptian-mediated understanding, Israel never lifted the siege nor allowed the reopening of the border crossings. Using the words of a Gaza journalist, Israel resorted to the policy of "strangling Gaza to near death," by preventing the delivery to Gaza of most consumer goods and products from vital medical material to food products.... Israel violated the ceasefire understanding several times, killing as many as 49 Palestinians from June-19 when the truce began to December-19 when it ended... not a single Israeli civilian was killed by Palestinians in the Gaza strip. http://www.uruknet.de/?p=49782

The two main rivals in Israel's February elections both vowed yesterday to remove Hamas from power, using military means if need be. "The state of Israel, and a government under me, will make it a strategic objective to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza," said Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister who will lead the ruling centrist party, Kadima, in the polls. "The means for doing this should be military, economic and diplomatic." Binyamin Netanyahu, who leads the hard-right Likud party and who has been ahead in the polls for months, said: "In the long term, we will have to topple the Hamas regime. In the short term ... there are a wide range of possibilities, from doing nothing to doing everything, meaning to conquer Gaza."

liberal imperialist-zionists are silent about U.S. role in israeli proxy's deliberate GENOCIDE against Palestine
If Gaza Falls . . .
by Sara Roy
December 23, 2008, London Review of Books
Israel's siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then. Israel's siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population.
On 5 November the Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones, paper, glue, shoes and even teacups are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at all....
According to John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza, most of the people who get food aid are entirely dependent on it. On 18 December UNRWA suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular programmes because of the blockade.
The WFP [WORLD FOOD PROGRAM] has had similar problems, sending only 35 trucks out of the 190 it had scheduled to cover Gazans' needs until the start of February (six more were allowed in between 30 November and 6 December). Not only that: the WFP has to pay to store food that isn't being sent to Gaza. This cost $215,000 in November alone. If the siege continues, the WFP will have to pay an extra $150,000 for storage in December, money that will be used not to support Palestinians but to benefit Israeli business.
The majority of commercial bakeries in Gaza - 30 out of 47 - have had to close because they have run out of cooking gas. People are using any fuel they can find to cook with. As the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has made clear, cooking-gas canisters are necessary for generating the warmth to incubate broiler chicks. Shortages of gas and animal feed have forced commercial producers to smother hundreds of thousands of chicks. By April, according to the FAO, there will be no poultry there at all: 70 per cent of Gazans rely on chicken as a major source of protein.
Banks, suffering from Israeli restrictions on the transfer of banknotes into the territory were forced to close on 4 December... Gaza's banking system could collapse if these restrictions continue. All cash for work programmes has been stopped and on 19 November UNRWA suspended its cash assistance programme to the most needy. It also ceased production of textbooks because there is no paper, ink or glue in Gaza. This will affect 200,000 students returning to school in the new year...
13 November production at Gaza's only power station was suspended and the turbines shut down because it had run out of industrial diesel. This in turn caused the two turbine batteries to run down, and they failed to start up again when fuel was received some ten days later. About a hundred spare parts ordered for the turbines have been sitting in the port of Ashdod in Israel for the last eight months, waiting for the Israeli authorities to let them through customs. Now Israel has started to auction these parts because they have been in customs for more than 45 days. The proceeds are being held in Israeli accounts...
The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah - which has been co-operating with Israel on a number of measures...
How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza's children - more than 50 per cent of the population - benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West Bank will be next.
Sara Roy teaches at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and is the author of Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.

liberating the world for freedom and democracy -- aka U.S. capitalist 'development'
Who Can Forgive the Crime of using Depleted Uranium Against Iraq and Humanity?
Dr Haithem Alshaibani
Expert in Environmental Sciences
The first attack of nuclear strike on man kind was when the US aeroplanes bombed the Japanese city of Hiroshima, in the second world war on the sixth of Aug. 1945. On the ninth of Aug. 1945 another Japanese city was hit by nuclear bomb, which led to the defeat of Japan...
During the aggression against Iraq described in some literature as the third world war.. the US used large quantities of depleted Uranium for the first time in history.
The amount of destruction exercised against Iraq in 1991 by bombarding infrastructures using all weapons including depleted uranium, is equal from the results point of view to the amount of destruction caused by seven nuclear bombs of 20 kilo tons, which was deployed on Hiroshima including the blast, buildings’ destruction, fires and radiation contamination. ...
Peculiar scientific terms and mathematical equations will be avoided throughout the text to render it accessible for the widest possible spectrum of readers [...]
www.uruknet.info?p=49768 : www.brusselstribunal.org/ArticlesIraq4.htm#DU

PRESSURE ON ROXY INCREASES FROM BOTH SIDES
Afghan leader presses US military on strategy
KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai pressed America's top military leader Monday on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and preparations to pour up to 30,000 more forces into the country, reflecting Karzai's concerns over civilian casualties and operations in villages. Karzai asked Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what kinds of operations the newly deployed troops would carry out and told him that the Afghan government should be consulted about those missions... President-elect Barack Obama campaigned on a platform of ending the war in Iraq and refocusing American's military efforts on the Afghanistan region.... Diplomats in Kabul say Karzai, who is running for re-election next year, is making increasing overtures to his base of voters, and it's not clear what statements are for domestic consumption and what are actual demands for the international community to follow. But with Karzai casting doubt on how many U.S. troops should operate in the country, it's not clear whether the two leaders will share a similar vision for the direction of the Afghan effort. ( http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104ap_as_afghanistan.html 12/22/08 Updated 1:25 p.m. PT)

"The financial crisis drives home to other nations that 'without an America that is successful financially, economically and therefore also politically, they're not going to be successful
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, now to Obama team

No, not to 'Homeland Security' -- but eventually to Obama's SEC Chair appointment
Bernard Madoff`s Money Trail Leads to Washington
2008/12/23
...We are told that Wall Street icon, Bernie Madoff, a key player in self regulation of Wall Street, has stolen $50 billion from investors in a Ponzi scheme stretching over what is now emerging as a three-decade crime spree, or longer. Despite our sprawling Homeland Security apparatus that regularly catches Democratic governors, law enforcement did not catch Madoff; his two sons turned him in after he confessed. As of December 19, Blagojevich had been released and was in the Governor’s Mansion issuing pardons; Madoff was in his $7 million penthouse in Manhattan after being allowed to post, as collateral for his bond, the East Coast mansions he likely bought with Ponzi money stolen from an eclectic group of charities, Florida pensioners and a well-heeled country club set. Dreier was still in jail even though he stole less than 1 percent of the Madoff take. Apparently, Mr. Dreier lacks the right friends in high places.
The major beneficiary of the week was Citigroup. The leaky piggy bank disappeared from the news along with the investor lawsuit charging it with running its own Ponzi scheme on a scale to dwarf Madoff to piker status. Had it not been for the Madoff media frenzy, folks might have started connecting the dots to a $300 billion taxpayer bailout of a bank serially charged with global misdeeds, market maneuvers internally named “Dr. Evil” and “Black Hole,” and recent press reports that Citigroup had stashed over $1.2 trillion off its balance sheet....
NASD Regulation merged with the enforcement and arbitration units of the New York Stock Exchange in July 2007 to create the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). CEO of the consolidated body is Mary Schapiro, who formerly headed up NASD Regulation, one of the most conflicted bodies in the history of finance. Ms. Schapiro has just been nominated by President-Elect Barack Obama to be the new SEC Chair. [...]
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached at: pamk741@aol.com http://www.counterpunch.org

NYT / U.S. CAPITALIST-ZIONISTS USE MADOFF TO CONFOUND ZIONISM, JUDAISM, "ANTI-SEMITISM" [as if Arabs are not semites]
In Madoff Scandal, Jews Feel an Acute Betrayal
Jews are sending up a communal cry over a cost they say goes beyond the financial to the theological and the personal...
...Among the apparent victims of Mr. Madoff were many Jewish educational institutions and charitable causes that lost fortunes in his investments; they include Yeshiva University, Hadassah, the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. The Chais Family Foundation, which worked on educational projects in Israel, was recently forced to shut down because of losses in Madoff investments. Many of Mr. Madoff’s individual investors were Jewish and supported Jewish causes, apparently drawn to him precisely because of his own communal involvement and because he radiated the comfortable sense of being one of them.

“The Jewish world is not going to be the same for a while,” said Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York.
Jews are also grappling with the implications of Mr. Madoff’s deeds for their public image, what one rabbi referred to as the “shanda factor,” using the Yiddish term for an embarrassing shame or disgrace. As Bradley Burston, a columnist for haaretz.com, the English-language Web site of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote on Dec. 17: “The anti-Semite’s new Santa is Bernard Madoff. The answer to every Jew-hater’s wish list. The Aryan Nation at its most delusional couldn’t have come up with anything to rival this.”

The Anti-Defamation League said that Mr. Madoff’s arrest had prompted an outpouring of anti-Semitic comments on Web sites around the world, most repeating familiar tropes about Jews and money. Abraham H. Foxman, the group’s national director, said that canard went back hundreds of years, but he noted that anti-Semites did not need facts to be anti-Semitic....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/us/24jews.html?th&emc=th

'CHOSEN' -- AGAIN
Bush pardons man who helped Israel during wartime
In a gesture of forgiveness for a decades-old offense, President George W. Bush on Tuesday granted a pardon posthumously to a man who broke the law to supply aircraft to Jews fighting in Israel's 1948 war of independence [e.g. USRAEL'S GENOCIDAL WAR TO STEAL PALESTINIAN HOMELAND]

His obituary in The Miami Herald read, "Charles Winters, 71, aided birth of Israel."
... In the summer of 1948, Winters, a Protestant from Boston who exported produce, worked with others to transfer two converted B-17 "Flying Fortresses" to Israel's defense forces. He personally flew one of the aircraft from Miami to Czechoslovakia, where that plane and a third B-17 were retrofitted for use as bombers... Winterswas convicted in 1949 for violating the Neutrality Act for conspiring to export aircraft to a foreign country... fined $5,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison... Film director Steven Spielberg wrote a letter to Bush appealing for a pardon for Winters. "There are probably many unsung heroes of America and of Israel, but Charlie Winters is surely one of them," Two others, Herman Greenspun and Al Schwimmer, also were convicted of violating the act, but they did not serve time. President Kennedy pardoned Greenspun in 1961. President Clinton pardoned Schwimmer in 2000.

Israel Spared in Middle East Internet Cable Damage:
Internet communications began to return to large parts of the Middle East Sunday after undersea communications cables were cut. Israel was spared damage, but service in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates was severely affected... the cause of the cut is not yet known... Internet providers tried to re-route voice and date traffic. Last January, a ship anchor cut a cable, casing massive service disruptions in the Middle East.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/15785

u.s. military preps for uprising like Greece that spread through at least 12 countries
CAPITAL VS. LABOR WAR: INCREASING LABOR PRODUCTIVITY -- AND PROFITS --- PLUS AT LEAST $8.2 TRILLION BAILOUTS
More Firms Cut Labor Costs Without Layoffs using four-day workweeks and unpaid vacations, voluntary or enforced furloughs, reductions of contributions to retirement and health care plans
pension cuts and flexible work schedules.... cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor... The downturn hit so hard, with its toll felt so widely through hits on pensions and 401(k) retirement plans with the future so murky, that employers and even some employees say it is better to accept minor cuts than risk more draconian steps....these efforts are far less widespread than layoffs... Business is down sharply in some of the company’s divisions, but Pretech is also transforming to take on more work making concrete for infrastructure jobs, like the kind the government might support through stimulus efforts...
John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a company that tracks layoffs, said employers were driven now not by compassion but by hard calculations based on data they have never had before. More than ever, he said, companies have used technology to track employee performance and productivity, and in many cases they know that the workers they would cut are productive ones. “People are measured and ‘metricked’ to a much greater degree...So companies know when they’re cutting an already taut organization, they’re leaving big gaps in the work force.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/business/22layoffs.html?th&emc=th

$1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs
The 116 banks that so far have received taxpayer dollars to boost them through the economic crisis gave their top tier of executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses and other benefits in 2007 ...that amount spread among the 600 highest paid bank executives would cover the bailout money given to 53 of the banks that have shared the $188 billion rescue pkgs. to date..The AP review of annual reports that the banks file with the Securities and Exchange Commission found that the average paid to each of the banks' top executives was $2.6 million in salary, bonuses and benefits.
Among other findings:
- Lloyd Blankfein, president and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, took home nearly $54 million in compensation last year. The company's top five executives received a total of $242 million. This year, Goldman's seven top-paid executives will work for their base salaries of $600,000, with no stock or cash bonuses, the company said....It received $10 billion in taxpayer money on Oct. 28.
- Even where banks cut back on pay, some executives were left with seven- or eight-figure compensation... Richard D. Fairbank, the chairman of Capital One Financial Corp., took a $1 million hit in compensation after his company had a disappointing year, but still got $17 million in stock options. The McLean, Va.-based company received $3.56 billion in bailout money on Nov. 14.
- John A. Thain, chief executive of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses with $83 million in earnings last year. Thain, a former chief operating officer for Goldman Sachs, came to Merrill Lynch in December 2007, avoiding the blame for a year in which Merrill lost $7.8 billion. Since he began work late in the year, he earned $57,692 in salary, a $15 million signing bonus and an additional $68 million in stock options. Like Goldman, Merrill tapped taxpayers for $10 billion on Oct. 28. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28337800

“This is more than a protest, it is an anti-capitalist movement”
Marius Heuser and Markus Salzmann
Workers and youth have occupied the headquarters of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) in Athens since last Wednesday. The occupation is directed against the trade union leadership, which maintains close contact with the government and is trying to prevent the current protest movement from spreading to the factories. On Saturday, WSWS reporters spoke to some of the workers i n the occupied building. One 40-year-old building worker declared that the movement that had now developed was much more than just a youth protest. "It is a movement that is profoundly anti-capitalist," he said. Opposition to the capitalist system extends into the factories, he said, but the trade unions are doing all they can to prevent a mobilisation of workers alongside protesting youth... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=49798

u.s. imperialist executors live high off the hog
Obamas rent $9 mill. beachfront home in Hawaii on vacation

BHO admin: expanding capitalist bailout under guise of "infrastructural stimulus" & "employment goals"
Obama's team and congressional staff over the last week have been scrambling to come up with details of a plan to pump up the droopy economy aides think could swell to about $850 billion in government spending over the next few years. after negotiations with Congress ...Obama increased his employment goal with the nation's economic outlook worsening, seeking to create or save 3 million jobs in the next two years instead of the 2.5 million he proposed last month.... During the presidential campaign, Obama pledged to create or save 1 million jobs... Obama declined Friday to put a price tag on his plan, but said the economic problems require a bold approach...Obama set the more ambitious target earlier this week after meeting with top economic advisers who cautioned that the nation's unemployment rate could exceed 9 percent given the current pace of job losses...a more ambitious jobs plan, driven by federal investments in health care, education and energy that could have a stimulative effect and lay the ground work for long term reform and a more sustainable economy. Ideas included weatherizing 1 million homes, shifting to a paperless health system, investing in disease prevention and modernizing schools.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_obama_stimulus.html

capitalist charity -- capitalist 'aid' cousin
Clinton Reveals Donors:
Former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation has taken in more than $140 million in the past decade from foreign sources, including the Saudi royal family and leaders of a Middle Eastern government now negotiating a controversial deal with the U.S. government to procure nuclear-energy technologies.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122961863763818563.html

none of your business thanks to Treasury & Congress
Where'd the bailout money go ... it's a secret:
After receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money and simply refuse to discuss it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081222/ap_on_bi_ge/meltdown_secrets

USAID/SOROS HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH EXPOSED & KICKED OUT OF ANOTHER COUNTRY
NEARLY 120 SIGNATORIES
More Than 100 Experts Question Human Rights Watch's Venezuela Report
http://nacla.org/node/5334
Dec 17 2008
Various Authors
In an open letter to the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, over 100 experts on Latin America criticized the organization's recent report on Venezuela, A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela, saying that it "does not meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy, or credibility." The signers include leading academic specialists from universities in the United States, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and a number of state universities, and academic institutions in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, México, the U.K., Venezuela and other countries. The letter cites Jose Miguel Vivanco, lead author of the report, saying "We did the report because we wanted to demonstrate to the world that Venezuela is not a model for anyone…"[1], as evidence of its political agenda. The letter also criticizes the report for making unsubstantiated allegations, and that some of the sources that Human Rights Watch relied on in the report are not credible.
"By publishing such a grossly flawed report, and acknowledging a political motivation in doing so, Mr. Vivanco has undermined the credibility of an important human rights organization," the letter states. The letter notes that numerous sources cited in the report - including opposition newspapers El Universal and El Nacional, opposition group Súmate, and a mentally unstable opposition blogger - have been known to fabricate information, making it "difficult for most readers to know which parts of the report are true and which aren't." The letter also argues that the Human Rights Watch report makes sweeping allegations based on scant evidence. For example, its allegation of discrimination in government services is based on just one person whose nephew claimed she was denied medicine from a government program.
The full text of the letter to HRW Board of Directors follows:
December 16, 2008 [...]
For a more detailed but still not exhaustive account of the HRW report's exaggerations, errors, and omissions, see Gregory Wilpert, "Smoke and Mirrors: An Analysis of Human Rights Watch's Report on Venezuela" Venezuelanalysis.com October 17, 2008. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3882

a few others....

Iran Arrests A U.S. Spy Network In the Name of Liberty
by Ardeshir Ommani
TV station of the Islamic Republic on July 18 and 19, 2007 broadcasted a program in which the three Iranian-American citizens, Haleh Esfandiari, Ramin Jahan Beglu and Yahya Kian Tajbakhsh, confessed that during the last two years they were constructing a network to serve the objectives of U.S.... Yahya Kian Tajbakhsh, 46 years old, an operative connected to the “Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network” in NY..
www.mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=560520

IRAQ: NGOs Losing Face
"Iraqis used to think the regime was wrong, but now they have changed their minds because of the many false foreign NGOs that look more like contracting companies than humanitarian and human rights organisations.".... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=45920

SOROS Falls from Grace in Central Asia
http://www.newscentralasia.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=11...
After Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan has also voiced concerns about the activities of SOROS Foundation. This completes the quorum. In rapid sequence, Uzbekistan kicked out SOROS, Kazakhstan issued a back-taxes notice that is likely to lead to closure of SOROS offices, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgzstan whipped SOROS for interfering in the society and President Imomali Rakhmanov of Tajikistan told his cabinet of ministers that he considered SOROS a destructive presence for the society. Why has the entire Central Asian region united against SOROS' supposedly philanthropic organization ...

Kremlin leaves 40 NGOs in legal limbo
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1809087,00.html
Russian authorities have refused to grant legal status to 40 foreign non-governmental organisations. The groups, who have not been identified, submitted their paperwork to the justice ministry to comply with new stringent legislation that requires them to register again by October 18. Some western NGOs have said the new law will force their closure. The bill was criticised by the European Union and US….Who is behind Human Rights Watch? Freedom House? Amnesty International? George Soros. http://www.questionsquestions.net/topics/gatekeeper_recent.html