Washington (BNN) – Leaders of several major American Jewish organizations met today with President Barack Obama and his national security team, offering abject apologies for the Israeli covert attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 Killed in Action (KIA), and 171 Wounded in Action (WIA).
For over 30 years the US Government has been a co-conspirator with Israel and its Zionist supporters in the US, whose campaign contributions to US Senators and Representatives were always accompanied by a note, “Forget about the USS Liberty — it was just business.”
The participants refused to discuss the specifics of the meeting. The groups at the hour-long session included the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Jewish Committee.
SUMMARY: Around the world, criminal organizations and governments are fusing to an unprecedented degree, blurring the distinction between national interests and what suits the gangsters. Mafia states enjoy the unhealthy advantages of their hybrid status: they're as nimble as gangs and as well protected as governments, and thus more dangerous than either.
MOISES NAIM is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy.
The global economic crisis has been a boon for transnational criminals. Thanks to the weak economy, cash-rich criminal organizations can acquire financially distressed but potentially valuable companies at bargain prices. Fiscal austerity is forcing governments everywhere to cut the budgets of law enforcement agencies and court systems. Millions of people have been laid off and are thus more easily tempted to break the law. Large numbers of unemployed experts in finance, accounting, information technology, law, and logistics have boosted the supply of world-class talent available to criminal cartels. Meanwhile, philanthropists all over the world have curtailed their giving, creating funding shortfalls in the arts, education, health care, and other areas, which criminals are all too happy to fill in exchange for political access, social legitimacy, and popular support. International criminals could hardly ask for a more favorable business environment. Their activities are typically high margin and cash-based, which means they often enjoy a high degree of liquidity — not a bad position to be in during a global credit crunch.
But emboldened adversaries and dwindling resources are not the only problems confronting police departments, prosecutors, and judges. In recent years, a new threat has emerged: the mafia state. Across the globe, criminals have penetrated governments to an unprecedented degree. The reverse has also happened: rather than stamping out powerful gangs, some governments have instead taken over their illegal operations. In mafia states, government officials enrich themselves and their families and friends while exploiting the money, muscle, political influence, and global connections of criminal syndicates to cement and expand their own power. Indeed, top positions in some of the world's most profitable illicit enterprises are no longer filled only by professional criminals; they now include senior government officials, legislators, spy chiefs, heads of police departments, military officers, and, in some extreme cases, even heads of state or their family members.
Phi Beta Iota strongly supports the registration of all baseball bats, and licensing of the right to own a bat, together with mandatory training in the safe use of a baseball bat. The training should be repeated every two years, as unsafe habits can creep back in without the strictest government oversight and micro-management of the extremely serious threat to our obese children that are too slow to run away from a crazed lunatic weilding a lethal baseball bat. This is of such great importance to our nation that we would like to see the Department of Homeland Security propose a Baseball Bat Authority (BBA), make that a model, and then move down the lethality pecking order to create separate new Authorities for the control of hockey sticks, lacross sticks, tennis rackets, and so on. Eventually handball players should be required to register their hands and demonstrate safe hand use practices.
A Message from the Coalition to Stop Bat Violence. (Formerly known as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence).
Setting: The Year 2020, six months after the last privately-owned gun was found and destroyed. We have finally made All Americans (including intruders) Safe from Gun Violence in Americans' Homes. But we must continue our struggle to make All Americans safe from Violence in homes and businesses, and on the streets.
“Adolpho Hernandez was executed today for the Sept. 30, 1988, robbery and murder of 69-year-old Elizabeth Alvarado who was beaten to death with a baseball bat bat inside her Lubbock, Texas, home.” (“Elizabeth's family was again devastated one year later, when Elizabeth's granddaughter, Melissa Ann Garcia, was raped and stabbed to death by Texas death row inmate Jack Wade Clark.”
1. Iran has threatened to fight back if attacked, and that's a war crime. War crimes must be punished.
2. My television says Iran has nukes. I'm sure it's true this time. Just like with North Korea. I'm sure they're next. We only bomb places that really truly have nukes and are in the Axis of Evil. Except Iraq, which was different.
3. Iraq didn't go so badly. Considering how lousy its government is, the place is better off with so many people having left or died. Really, that one couldn't have worked out better if we'd planned it.
4. When we threaten to cut off Iran's oil, Iran threatens to cut off Iran's oil, which is absolutely intolerable. What would we do without that oil? And what good is buying it if they want to sell it?
5. Iran was secretly behind 9-11. I read it online. And if it wasn't, that's worse. Iran hasn't attacked another nation in centuries, which means its next attack is guaranteed to be coming very soon.
6. Iranians are religious nuts, unlike Israelis and Americans. Most Israelis don't want to attack Iran, but the Holy Israeli government does. To oppose that decision would be to sin against God.
7. Iranians are so stupid that when we murder their scientists they try to hire a car dealer in Texas to hire a drug gang in Mexico to murder a Saudi ambassador in Washington, and then they don't do it — just to make us look bad for catching them.
7. b. Oh, and stupid people should be bombed. They're not civilized.
8. War is good for the U.S. economy, and the Iranian economy too. Troops stationed in Iran would buy stuff. And women who survived the war would have more rights. Like in Virginia. We owe Iranians this after that little mishap in 1953.
9. This is the only way to unite the region. Either we bomb Iran and it swears its eternal love to us. Or, if necessary, we occupy Iran to liberate it like its neighbors. Which shouldn't take long. Look how well Afghanistan is going already.
Bin Laden died in 2001; several fakes followed. The last Bin Laden was a patsy provided by the government of Pakistan to give Leon Panetta and Barack Obama a re-election bonanza. The SEALS figured it out and were killed over time. For Hillary Clinton to claim this as some kind of “qualification” simply sickens me. We are being led by the criminally insane.
NOTE: The Bin Laden Show is a series of many links to enable the readers to cull out the ones that matter to them. We are “sharing our confusion” and relying on the collective for additional sense-making. All the individual bits are back-dated to be in sequence from 0000 1 May, this is the only post that will move forward as it is updated. To scroll them all in reverse order, use this search <Bin Laden Show>
Phi Beta Iota: This is not correct. Bin Laden was used by politicians and the military-industrial complex to justify trillions in war-related expenses, generally co-equal to the trillion a year the US Government has been borrowing “in our name.” Immature intelligence and a lack of integrity in Whole of Government programs cost us trillions. As we document in both a chapter and a book, terrorism is a traffic accident. It is bad government that ends up costing us trillions.
There were no armed guards around the compound, said a U.S. official who asked not to be identified because the official was not authorized to speak on the record.
Image of bloodied man picked up by British newspapers has been circulating online for two years
Essence: Pictures of Bin Laden’s bloodied and shattered face were broadcast on Pakistani television, and soon found to be fake. Within hours of the pictures circulating, the US announced it hadburied the body at seain accordance with Muslim rules [actually not]. [Another report says US State Department claims to have the body.] US claims to have known of this location since August 2010. Others have documented Bin Laden's death years ago. Seal Team Six deep inland? Launched from where?
Phi Beta Iota: Who are we kidding? The gullibility and ignorance of the US public is quite troubling. Resurrect the dead, fake the death, exit Afghanistan as demanded by Pakistan. The truth will emerge eventually, meanwhile, Obama buys time for the “system” to win four more years from a population that has lost its ability to think. As a general observation, the 2001 reports of Bin Laden's death could possibly have been a Pakistani disinformation campaign, but the combination of lung and urinary tract and other infections Bin Laden was known to have could have spawned multiple variations of his death (or not), his death and a pretense he was still alive, etcetera. From where we sit until proven otherwise, this is a massive deception of the US public–Dick Cheney would be proud–and if Bin Laden was actually delivered (we tend to doubt it)–it was a Pakistani gift not the result of US intelligence. The Pakistani Air Force is neither stupid nor ill-equipped–US helicopters–including “stealth” helicopters–coming all the way in to Islamabad's suburbs from Afghanistan had to have clearance. There are just too many dangling doubts on this, including double-tap to the face instead of the body. High probability: not Bin Laden at all, or a decomposed corpse to begin with.
Interview with James Corbett. Comparison of Bin Laden with Lee Harvey Oswald–and stark absence of evidence–while validating extra-judicial assassinations (including Libyan leadership). Buries “War on Terror” as US covert operations false flag threat.
Phi Beta Iota: Many links. Not an intelligent skeptical question in the lot. This is a classic deception that seeks to bury the truth about 9/11 while enabling an exit from Afghanistan as demanded by Pakistan.
Phi Beta Iota: This is absurd. How can anyone with a brain buy into this fiction? This was staged in a Pakistani military resort town because it could not be done in Waziristan. It is highly unlikely that Bin Laden was actually here, 1.3 kilometers from the national military academy, the town would have known. At this time, all “evidence” points to a US deception operation fabricated in full partnership with the Pakistani's who donated a general officer's retreat and–if Bin Laden was there–put him in for the one night show in return for a US commitment to claim victory and leave Afghanistan. 9-11 truths remain to be brought forth.
This is Where Osama Was Hiding, According to Google Maps
