If the American public doesn't find out about it from the pro-Israel biased media, they don't have a chance. And that's the issue we have here in America. It's very, very concerning, and it's very dangerous.

A prominent political analyst says that all Republican presidential candidates -- with one exception -- are working with Israeli lobbies to expand the wars in the Middle East.
PRESS TV has conducted an exclusive interview with James Morris, editor of america-hijacked.com, to further dissect the issues.

The following is a transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Let's look at Ron Paul's comments about the situation in dealing with Israel and possibly attacking Iran. What makes Ron Paul able to speak in the way that he does? Because we know, in general, with anyone running for president in the United States, if they do not come a straight beeline in support of Tel Aviv policies, basically, they're finished. What makes the situation a little bit different for Ron Paul? And, thanks so much for being with us.

Morris: Thank you very much for having me on Press TV, again. I should put a disclaimer out there that I'm an ardent Ron Paul supporter. I voted for him as a candidate in the last election, and I will do so again even if I have to do so as a write in.

You know, I didn't completely agree with everything Ron Paul said with regard to allowing Israel to attack Iran. But I did agree with most of what he said especially with what you mentioned here in the newscast. He can say what he just did because he's not owned by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby - the American Israel Public Affairs Committee - and the neo-conservatives.

There's been a long running rift in the Republican Party, the neo-conservatives such as American Enterprise Institute which sponsored that debate tonight. And, mind you, it was hosted by the former AIPAC news letter editor, Wolf Blitzer, who use to be a correspondent for the hawkish Jerusalem Post whose issue really set the context for that too. And he's been pushing for war with Iran as well.

For former Republicans like myself, I'm a registered independent now, I did that last year, we're sick and tired of the neocons hijacking, and the Republican Party and these perpetual wars for Israel.

And Ron Paul's voice is actually out there reflecting my voice and millions of other Americans who are just tired of it. And he can get away with saying that because he's got nothing to lose. He knows America is on the brink. If we do another war for Israel with Iran, we'll go broke; and not only that but it could result in a wider war in the region which could result in the next World War if China and Russia get involved.

I also think it was very interesting how Ron Paul touched on the Patriot Act, as well, in his opening comments that you had. Ed Meese, who was an Attorney General, he was basically [endorsing the Patriot Act].

If you look at why we have the Patriot Act come into play and all our civil liberties being eroded as a result after 9/11, we got hit on 9/11 because of support for Israel. And after that the Patriot Act was put in.

And none of these neo-conned Republican candidates including Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich - who is a favorite of the AEI neocons, the American Enterprise Institute, again, who they sponsored this debate - one thing they want to touch on is why we have a terrorist problem, and they all claim that Israel is an ally of America.

Well, I suggest they do some historical research and look at when Israel murdered 34 American sailors and marines on the USS Liberty and wounded 174. They all conveniently looked past that.

And they all also said they like to listen to the generals and take advice from the generals. Why don't they listen to what General Petraeus had said when he conveyed to Congress last year that US support for Israel is a threat to US troops in theater? He conveyed that to Congress, and the pro-Israel biased media barely touched on that.

I had email exchanges with General Petraeus to show how much influence another neo-conservative, Max Boot, had on him but yet that was overlooked by the pro-Israel, neocon biased American media. And I think we saw an example of that tonight.

We have AEI, the basin of neo-conservativism with Paul Wolfowitz and the Jewish neocon Fredrick Kagin who came up with the “Iraq Surge”, all for Israel, of course. They went into Iraq for Israel with a neocon claim break agenda. And it just shows you how much of a grip the neocons still have in the Republican Party, and why many real conservatives likes myself actually left the party and became independents. And we're ardent supporters of Ron Paul, as I just said.

Press TV: You just talked about the neocons and the effect that they have on the Republican Party, but let's look overall on the American populace as more and more of these Occupy movements take hold in the United States. Do you think there's becoming a greater awareness by the average American in dealing with Israel and how the American-Israeli policies have actually harmed the United States?

Morris: Well, the problem is, as I mentioned last time I was on Press TV, most Americans don't know. They don't know about the 9/11 connection to support for Israel being the primary motivation as former CIA Ben Rodenyuden and Michael Sheuer had said on CSPAN's Washington Journal program. That was said to all of America.

He responded to a telephone call that I had, you can go to it be visiting [tinyurl.com/911motivemediabetrayal]. And he had said that Israel is a threat to American troops in theater, the same thing that General Petraeus had said which the pro-Israel biased American media hadn't touched on.

None of these neo-conned Republican candidates during the debate touch on it. All they wanted to do, like Mitt Romney, is fall over each other for how much they support Israel so they can get the Jewish vote in America, get Jewish campaign donations to get the support of the neoconservatives, the upper echelon of that pro-Israel lobby and, of course, AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt write about in their excellent book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

Just to touch on this too, they were all advocating an attack on Iran which is very concerning. And that's for Israel, as well. I mean, they brought up Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria - these are all Israeli problems, not American problems. But because of the effectiveness of the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, and the neo-conservatives which is the upper echelon of it, we're talking about wars now not only with Syria but Iran. And it's all for Israel. It's about time it comes to a stop.

But like you said, back to your question about Occupy Wall Street, if the American public doesn't find out about it from the pro-Israel biased media, they don't have a chance. And that's the issue we have here in America. It's very, very concerning, and it's very dangerous.

PRESS TV

Arrests continue in major cities

AS cities throughout the United States step up the police crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street movement, evidence has emerged of a conspiracy between city officials—possibly coordinated with federal intelligence agencies—to shut down the occupy encampments on the basis trumped-up charges of sanitation and public safety.

In an interview with the BBC Tuesday, Oakland mayor Jean Quan said that she had coordinated her efforts to crack down on the occupation with the mayors of other major cities.

“I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation where what had started as a political movement and a political encampment ended up being an encampment no longer in control by the people who started them,” said Ms. Quan.

City officials were quick to deny that the meeting referred to by Quan, which was held Nov 10 and organized by the United States Conference of Mayors, was aimed at shutting down the protests.

A spokesman for Portland Mayor Sam Adams told The Atlantic Wire, “The mayors talked about how difficult it is to communicate with the leaderless movement,” adding that “It was not a strategy session” and “not a coordinating session.” The spokesperson said that the mayor’s staffer referred to the meeting as “group therapy.”

A spokesperson for the US Conference of Mayors told Mother Jones magazine Wednesday that the call Ms. Quan mentioned was one of numerous conference calls—which included mayors and top police brass—that focused on discussing “efforts cities have made to accommodate the demonstrators and maintain public health and safety.”

A report in the Associated Press gave a summary of tips given out to city administrations in these discussions: “Don’t set a midnight deadline to evict Occupy Wall Street protesters—it will only give a crowd of demonstrators time to form. Don’t set ultimatums because it will encourage violent protesters to break it. Fence off the parks after an eviction so protesters can’t reoccupy it.”

Rick Ellis, a Minneapolis reporter at examiner.com, wrote that an anonymous federal official informed him that “in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules.”

Mr. Ellis continued, “Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.”

These reports come together with mounting evidence of federal involvement in police repression at the demonstrations. Last month, officers from the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service arrested a photographer at Occupy Portland.

US President Barack Obama was conveniently out of the country during the crackdown on Zuccotti Square, but White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted to reporters Wednesday that the federal government was not coordinating the attacks, saying that “every municipality has to make its own decisions about how to handle these issues.”

Meanwhile, the police assaults against Occupy protesters continue unabated. On Tuesday evening, police indiscriminately sprayed large bottles of pepper spray into a peaceful demonstration in downtown Seattle. The victims included an 84-year-old woman, a priest, and a pregnant woman who was sent to the hospital as a result.

An Associated Press photo of 84-year-old Dorli Rainey with her face covered in pepper spray was widely viewed online Wednesday, becoming one of the symbols of police repression against the Occupy movement.

In response to popular outrage, Seattle police responded that pepper spray is “not harmful,” and that “Pepper spray was deployed only against subjects who were either refusing a lawful order to disperse or engaging in assaultive behavior toward officers.” The evening’s events resulted in six arrests.

The same night, five people were arrested in Pittsburgh and charged with defiant trespass, failure to disperse and obstruction of roadways. They were part of a group of about 200 participating in a protest downtown.

Police cleared out Occupy San Diego at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, arresting 9 people, saying that the encampment was an unlawful assembly, and that the raid was a response to “a significant increase in the number of violent acts” at the protest.

Police likewise raided a portion of the Occupy San Francisco encampment Wednesday morning, arresting seven people and dismantling 15 tents.

Tuesday’s clearing of Zuccotti Park, in which 200 people were arrested, was only the most prominent in a string of crackdowns in dozens of cities. The morning before, police had cleared out the Occupy Oakland encampment, arresting 33 people.

On Sunday, police cleared a camp in Portland, Oregon, arresting 50 people. On Saturday, the occupation in Denver, Colorado was raided, resulting in 17 arrests, and the Salt Lake City, Utah occupation was shut down with 18 arrests. The day before, police in St. Louis, Missouri cleared the occupation there, arresting 27 people.

In Columbia, South Carolina, police acting on the orders of Governor Nikki Haley arrested 19 Occupy protesters on Wednesday evening. While Haley claimed to be upholding a legal ban on staying overnight on the grounds of the State House, she was under pressure from Republican state legislators who claimed the protests were disrupting preparations for the state’s presidential primary January 21.

The attacks on Occupy encampments that began in the United States have spread to other countries. Australian officials ordered protestors in Melbourne to remove their tents, and police in London pinned eviction notices to the encampments outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, demanding that they be taken down by 6 p.m. Thursday.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said Tuesday that he wants to see the city’s encampment “gone before the Grey Cup weekend,” referring to the Canadian football game scheduled for November 27.

In response to the arrest of ten reporters during the clearing of Zuccotti Park, including those working for NPR, AP, and the New York Daily News, Free Press, a media nonprofit, called on mayors throughout the US to “honor the 1^st Amendment and drop all charges against journalists.”

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Predawn police cordon of Zucotti Park after clearing occupiers [Photo: Nick Gulotta

In a police state-style operation, beginning around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning, the New York Police Department (NYPD), led by specially trained cops from the Emergency Service Unit, moved in against around 220 occupiers, most of whom were sleeping at the time. As the attack began protesters were deafened by orders being barked over a truck-mounted loudspeakers and blinded by powerful klieg spotlights.

The police sealed the area off with metal barricades. They closed Broadway—the main thoroughfare in the area—for several blocks and shut down nearby subway stations to prevent supporters from reaching the protesters. They then systematically went through the tents and kitchen area over the next three to four hours, roughing up protesters, and using police shields, batons and pepper spray to drive them out of the park and surrounding blocks.

Those who resisted and tried to defend the camp—dubbed Liberty Square—were slammed to the ground, cuffed in plastic restraints and thrown into waiting paddy wagons. One video showed several cops physically lifting an occupier over the barricades and dumping him on the concrete sidewalk outside of the park. At least one protester was hospitalized.

Police with bulldozers tore down tents and “destroyed everything” while forcibly removing protesters who had locked arms, Chris Porter, 26, a welder from Indiana who joined the protest in the park about a month ago, told the media. Before the siege, reporters were ordered out of the park, others were barred from entering the area, and press helicopters were evicted from the airspace above the park. A blogger from the New York Times was one of those arrested.

The attack was carefully planned and coordinated by the city’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and the NYPD, which consulted with its counter-parts throughout the country that have carried out similar evictions.

Tuesday’s raid came just days after similar actions in Portland, Oregon; Denver, Colorado and Oakland, California. Last week, occupiers and students protesting tuition hikes in Berkeley, California were attacked by police. Eviction notices also went out occupiers in London, England. British protesters issued messages of solidarity with their counter-parts in New York City, noting that the US frequently issues hypocritical statements about violations of democratic rights in other countries while it was carrying out mass arrests of protesters at home.

The police action enjoys the backing of the Obama administration. While previously feigning sympathy with the protesters, the White House is deeply concerned about the widespread support for a movement that has taken aim at social inequality and the Wall Street banks, which the president has dutifully served since taking office. The attack in New York was launched while the president was in Hawaii for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference.

The New York City operation, led by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, had been planned for weeks, according to an article in the New York Times. Police officials “watched how the occupations in other cities played out. They held conference calls with colleagues in other cities. They increased so-called disorder training—counterterrorism measures that involve moving large numbers of police officers quickly—to focus on Lower Manhattan.

“The last training session was on Monday night, on the Manhattan side of the East River. The orders to move into Zuccotti Park came down at the ‘last minute,’ said someone familiar with the orders, which referred only to the assignment as ‘an exercise.’”

The action took place when police believed the fewest numbers of protesters would be in the park and also on the eve of a protest Thursday to “shut down Wall Street.”

During a Tuesday morning City Hall press conference Mayor Michael Bloomberg took credit for issuing the eviction order, claiming protesters posed a health and safety risk to the public and had to be removed to “to reduce the risk of confrontation and to minimize destruction in the surrounding neighborhood.”

“The First Amendment protects speech,” Bloomberg said, “It doesn’t protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space.” He insisted, “no right is absolute, and every right comes with a responsibility.”

The mayor simply ignored a temporary restraining order obtained by protesters at 6:30 a.m. barring police from stopping the occupiers from returning to the park with their tents and other equipment. Bloomberg insisted the park would remain closed until “we can clarify the situation,” and city attorneys appearing in the state Supreme Court made outrageous claims that protesters had “a significant number of items that could potentially be used as weapons, including mace and knives” and posed a “substantial threat to public safety.”

Later in the day, state Supreme Court Justice Michael D. Stallman ruled for the city, saying protesters could go into Zuccotti Park but could not take their tents and sleeping bags.

After the decision, protesters were allowed to return to the park Tuesday afternoon, passing through a gauntlet of riot police one at a time. The mayor reiterated that they would face arrest if they violated park rules, including a ban on sleeping at the park overnight. As of this writing, police continued to surround the park.

The New York City mayor, a Wall Street media mogul with an estimated net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, is a living example of the financial oligarchy’s control over the American political system. Bloomberg, the country’s 12th richest person, has overseen vicious attacks on city services and public employees over his decade in office, while transferring even greater wealth into the hands of the ruling elite.

Bloomberg has moved in and out of both the Democratic and Republican parties, depending on electoral advantage, and has cultivated close ties with New York City trade unions, which have collaborated with him in the destruction of the jobs and living standards of teachers and other city workers.

Over the last several weeks, the news media around the country has decidedly turned against the protests, seeking to condition public opinion for the police attacks by condemning protesters as a public nuisance. In New York, this has not only included the right-wing gutter press like the New York Post. The mouthpiece of the liberal establishment, the New York Times, has expressed its exasperation with the continued protests, and hailed the professional “clean up” job the police carried out Tuesday.

Protesters at Duarte Square

On the eve of the police raid, the Times carried a piece asserting that many residents near the park were annoyed by the sound of drumming from protesters that allegedly “scare young children.” Further down, the article acknowledged the bulk of the complaints came from “a tall building that overlooks the park and contains sprawling, multimillion-dollar condominiums.”

The anti-Wall Street protests continue to enjoy broad popular support. Up until this point, this support has not been actively mobilized because of the lack of political perspective and the virtual ban on any discussion of political strategy, program and leadership enforced by many of the movement’s leaders and various pseudo-left organizations.

This orientation, despite the self-sacrifice of many of the protesters, has left them vulnerable to the efforts, led by the trade unions, to subordinate the movement to the Democratic Party and Obama’s reelection campaign. The trade unions, which have done nothing to defend the protests against police attacks, are allied with the very same politicians, whether it is Bloomberg in New York or the Democratic mayors in other cities, that are suppressing the protests and doing the bidding of Wall Street.

WSWS

A US Predator drone firing a Hellfire missile (file photo)

AT least 35 people have been killed after US assassination drones launched aerial attacks in southern Somalia near the border with Kenya, Press TV reported.

A Somali military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Press TV that the remote-controlled aerial vehicles struck the outskirts of Kismayo, a strategically important port city on Somalia's Indian Ocean coast located some 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of the Somali capital Mogadishu, on Wednesday morning.

He added that dozens of people were also injured in the attacks.

Somalia is the sixth country where the United States has used assassination drones to launch deadly missile strikes.

The US military has also used drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen.

On October 28, the United States admitted to flying the terror aircraft from a base in Ethiopia.

"The US has unarmed and unmanned aircraft at a facility there (Ethiopia) to be used only for surveillance as part of a broad, sustained integrated campaign to counter terrorism," said Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby.

The confirmation appeared a day after The Washington Post revealed in a report that the US flies “armed” drones from an airfield in Ethiopia's southern city of Arba Minch.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world.

NOT many people have the “honor” of having the city near where they grew up named as the Worst City in America. I am one of those unfortunate souls. In 1996, Money magazine ranked the mid-sized rust belt burg of Rockford, Illinois, dead last among 300 U.S. cities in terms of quality of life. Money’s reasoning was simple: “few jobs and not-great health care.” And this was at a time when the tech-boom was fueling one of the fastest periods of economic expansion in recent American history.

By the time that article came out I had graduated from college and was long gone to the East Coast, but I was taken aback that Rockford could be named the worst of the worst. Surely, I thought, the place couldn’t possibly have become THAT bad in the half-decade or so since I had split town for good. Could the hometown of notable Presidential candidate John Anderson, the great classic rock band Cheap Trick and early 80s porn star and long time Charlie Sheen girlfriend Ginger Lynn Allen really have sunk so low?

Obviously, Rockford wasn’t always the butt of such derision. In fact, back in 1949 Life magazine actually said, “It is as nearly typical as any city can be.” Okay, so maybe that doesn’t bring to mind a glorious land of milk and honey, but it sure sounds like a pleasant place to live rather than an absolute urban hell hole.

So what happened? Well, unfortunately for Rockford and surrounding environs more than half of its earnings back then came from manufacturing…well above the national average at the time. Sundstrand Corporation, Woodward Governor Company, Airbrush Manufacturing, Hanson Clock Company and Hess & Hopkins Leather Company were just some of the industrial concerns headquartered there. In 1965, a major Chrysler assembly plant also opened in nearby Belvedere. Rockford was a town where things were built, and for nearly a century it formed part of the vital backbone of the American economy and supported tens of thousands of good paying blue-collar jobs.

Starting in the 1970s, however, all of that began to change as American corporations started to export manufacturing jobs overseas in search of cheaper labor. The trend accelerated in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, a politician who was revered as a near-deity in conservative Rockford despite the fact that he repeatedly knifed its working class labor base in the back. The final nail in the coffin then came under Bill Clinton, who despite being a Democrat and alleged union supporter, pushed through “free” trade agreements like NAFTA, completing the process of globalization that was the demise of manufacturing cities like Rockford.

Rockford’s downfall from the kind of place where working men (and later working women) were proud to raise a family to a post-industrial wasteland was a bipartisan effort more than a quarter-century in the making. It all boiled down to the fact that there was more money to be made in destroying America’s manufacturing base than there was in preserving it. Some cites that have fallen victim to this vicious turn in the business cycle have tried to arrest their decline by transforming themselves into tourist Meccas. But a place like Rockford, situated as it is among the Illinois cornfields and possessing little of historical interest, hardly has that option. The only factor preventing a complete collapse in the local economy to date is that the eastern section of the city lies close enough to the ever-expanding Chicago suburbs to derive at least some economic benefit.

Like the scenes in Michael Moore’s stinging documentary, Roger and Me — about the similar decline of his own hometown of Flint, Michigan — where hapless local officials try to arrest the decline of their city with increasingly desperate economic development schemes, Rockford’s city leaders have tried their best to revitalize the town in recent years. Their lack of success can be measured by the fact that Forbes magazine just recently ranked Rockford as the 14th Most Miserable City in America, stating:

Once known as the Screw Capital of the World because of the billions of screws and bolts made locally, Rockford has struggled with high crime as well as soaring unemployment, which is expected to average 16.9% this year.

But, hey, at least the locals can take comfort in the fact that so many other places have been hammered even harder the past few years that they aren’t dead last anymore.

With economic collapse sure to accelerate in the coming years, distressed places like Rockford are going to decline even faster. It is as inevitable as the fact that all those abandoned factory buildings will never be reopened. Thus we will witness the downward spiral into economic oblivion of countless American communities that not too long ago people were actually proud to have called their hometowns.

William Hicks lives in Northern Virginia writes about peak oil and economic issues on his blog, The Downward Spiral, a Requiem for the American Dream.

THE Bolivian President and a Russian political leader have launched a campaign to revoke Obama's honour after the US attacked Libya.

Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader and Vice-Chairman of the State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovsky released a statement today calling for the Nobel Prize Committee to take back the honour bestowed on US President Barack Obama in 2009.

Zhirinovsky said the attacks were "another outrageous act of aggression by NATO forces and, in particular, the United States," and that the attacks demonstrated a "colonial policy" with "one goal: to establish control over Libyan oil and the Libyan regime." He said the prize was now hypocritical as a result.

Bolivian President Evo Morales echoed the call: "How is it possible that a Nobel Peace Prize winner leads a gang to attack and invade? This is not a defence of human rights or self-determination."

Morales won the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights in 2006.

He is amongst a number of left-leaning Latin American leaders who have denounced the attacks against Libya. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Cristina Fernandez of Argentina have all criticised western media coverage of the Libyan crisis.

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples." The Committee praised the "change in the international climate" affected by Obama's presidency.

In his Nobel Lecture, he discussed the "hard truth" of the inevitability of war, saying: "There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified."

A message has been widely retweeted on Twitter today: "Obama has now fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined."

DIGITAL JOURNAL

President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011.

MEMBERS of the corporate political duopoly switched seats and sat next to each other making it even harder to tell the corporate welfare party from the crony capitalist party.  Sadly, the spokespersons for both failed to learn the lessons of history and as a result the American economy will continue to falter with U.S. militarism continuing to expand.

Listening to the saccharin rhetoric of President Obama one would think the nation’s economy was flourishing and the military was winning wars.  The truth, that the economy is still in collapse and the military is stuck in war quagmires all piling up record debt, was hard to see through his veil of words.

Debt, the bi-partisan duopoly mistaken priority, was the problem the president acknowledged offering two McCain campaign promises – no more earmarks which make up less than 1% of the federal budget; and a partial budget freeze, excluding national security.  When McCain proposed a freeze during the campaign Obama mocked it saying a “spending freeze is a hatchet, and we do need a scalpel.”  Gimmicks, not solutions

In fact, the economy continues to be in crisis with high levels of unemployment, record foreclosures and record poverty. The best lesson for how to get out of the economic mess of today comes from the depression.  It is important to look at the facts rather than the myths. The pre-WWII New Deal era from 1933-1940, even if you include the recession of 1937-38, saw the single biggest drop in the unemployment rate in U.S. history. According to the census, the unemployment rate in 1933 was 24.7% by 1940 unemployment had dropped to 14.5%. This was accomplished by massive federal spending focused on job creation.

Obama came into an economic crisis and wasted the opportunity by re-enforcing concentrated corporatism rather than challenging it, investing in Wall Street rather than creating jobs, re-enforcing insurance-dominated health care and failing to face up to uncontrolled spending for the military industrial complex. From last night’s speech, we can expect more of the same and a floundering economy as a result.

But the Republicans were even more out of touch with the lessons of history and the needs of the day. A second economic downturn officially began in May 1937 when FDR responded to deficit hawks and slashed spending programs to balance the budget. These premature spending cuts caused another severe recession. Cutting government spending brought unemployment back up to 19% in 1938 from 14% in 1937.  The recession ended after 13 months in June 1938 when FDR reversed course restarting economic growth. By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the unemployment rate was down to 9.7%

Even more absurd are calls to cutback Social Security and Medicare. These areas of spending have their own lines of funding from payroll taxes and therefore do not affect the deficit.  They need small changes to continue to make them self-supporting, but they have been self-supporting for decades prior to this recession. Breaking this contract with Americans, making the elderly poorer and unable to spend, is no way to stimulate the economy.

Neither the crony capitalist nor corporate welfare party are facing up to the cuts needed in the largest area of discretionary spending, the military.  Obama has created record DoD budgets, record intelligence budgets and record arms sales.  Those who profit from weapons and war have done well in the Obama economy. The cuts being talked about by outgoing Secretary Gates are a miniscule fraction of what is needed.

Unlike the era of FDR, war will not get the economy moving. The U.S. has been engaged in the longest war in our history in Afghanistan, still has tens of thousands of troops and mercenaries in Iraq and is expanding the war in Pakistan. Wars are not creating the kind of WW II war economy as the methods of war have changed.  At a cost of $1 million borrowed dollars per troop per year in Afghanistan the war is a drain on the economy not a stimulus.

Spending on military certainly creates jobs, just not many compared to other spending or tax cuts.  Spending $1 billion on the military creates 8,555 jobs while spending the same amount on mass transit would create 19,795 and on education 17,687.  Even spending on tax cuts, not a great form of stimulus, is more efficient than the military, creating 10,779 jobs. Health care and infrastructure spending create about 12,800 jobs.  The U.S. needs WWII in reverse, a rapid switch from a military-dominated economy to a civilian-dominated economy.

There are some signs of recovery finally, but there are also signs of frailty.  At best the economy will recover hesitantly, but another collapse is also possible. The failure to heed the lessons of history increases the chances of the economy faltering rather than growing, and with that the debt will grow as well. This is  not a time for sacchrin and gimmicks. It is time to face reality and institute paradigm shifting change. It is time for a democratized economy that benefits all of us and to end an economy designed for concentrated corporate interests that benefit few.

Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters for Peace.

DISSIDENT VOICE

By RADY ANANDA

IN response to public and pilot outrage at sexual assault by transportation security authorities and to the carcinogenic x-ray machines used to scan flyers, New Jersey lawmakers announced on Monday the introduction of several resolutions banning such practices. Additionally, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security is holding a Transportation Security Administration Oversight Hearing today (10 AM Wednesday).

Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, noted:

In England where they spent about a third of all [their] security budget on video surveillance, there is study after study after study that shows that those who observe the surveillance are tracked to look at pretty girls’ special parts, and to use those kinds of technologies to essentially violate women’s privacy, or children’s or boys’ or whoever we might be looking at.

The same danger exists here, and that’s something we should be aware of. It’s been absolutely consistent in the tests. Some jurisdictions have even stopped using these technologies.

Assembly member Valerie Vanieri Huttle noted, “England repealed these procedures after four years.”

New Jersey’s bills SR91 and AR127 urge the Transportation Security Administration to terminate recent changes to its procedure for conducting pat down searches at airport checkpoints.

Huttle acknowledged what many people understand: These pat down procedures cause psychological trauma, as we saw in the video of three-year-old Mandy Simon who screamed in terror, “Stop touching me!” (That video has since been pulled by CW-39.com, a Houston, Texas news station. Mandy’s father, Steve Simon, works as a reporter for CW-39.)

Midwives believe that trauma can cause a baby to turn breach. In 2002, Nicholas Monahan recounted the traumatic experience he and his pregnant wife endured at the hands of airport security in Portland, Oregon. His wife burst into tears after TSA agents exposed and fondled her breasts. He was then arrested when he reacted in anger, and later convicted of a misdemeanor and fined. He concludes:

I can never prove that my child went breech because of what happened to us at the airport. But I’ll always believe it. Wrongly or rightly, I’ll forever think of how this man, the personification of this system, has affected the lives of my family and me. When my wife is sliced open, I’ll be thinking of him. When they remove her uterus from her abdomen and lay it on her stomach, I’ll be thinking of him. When I visit her and my child in the hospital instead of having them with me here in our home, I’ll be thinking of him. When I assist her to the bathroom while the incision heals internally, I’ll be thinking of him.

… There is now a division between the citizenry and the state. When that state is used as a tool against me, there is no longer any reason why I should owe any allegiance to that state. And that’s the first thing that child of ours is going to learn.

Huttle, along with Assembly Members, Alison Little McHose, John DiMaio and Erik Peterson, also introduced SCR135 and ACR160, which call on Congress and the President to address concerns raised by advanced imaging technology employed at airports or to discontinue their use.

At the press conference, Senator Diane Allen focused on the dangers of radiation. “Certain Americans, including cancer patients and survivors who are being treated or have been treated with radiation therapy are told by their doctors to avoid unnecessary exposure to additional radiation. As a cancer survivor myself, the new imaging equipment used for full body scans concerns me greatly. The U.S. government has not provided adequate information on the potential health impacts of these machines- to say nothing of the invasive nature of the alternative presented to passengers.”

She emphasized that “David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University has in fact said it is likely that at least some people who are exposed to the new scanners will develop cancer as a result, with frequent fliers and children among the most susceptible.”

Several lawsuits have already been filed, as Paul Joseph Watson reported today. One case involves “a woman who had her blouse pulled down in full public view by TSA goons who then proceeded to laugh and joke about her exposed breasts.”

Watson uncovered that 2002 report, as well other lawsuits: one in Miami and one by pilots. John Tyner, of “don’t touch my junk” fame, told Alex Jones he will countersue TSA if they pursue their $10,000 fine against him.

At a Monday press conference, Federal Security Director Mike Aguilar, TSA director for San Diego, promised to prosecute Tyner for his refusal to submit to the carcinogenic body scanner as well as  sexual assault.

TSA chief John Pistole would only say, “If somebody doesn’t go through proper security screening, they’re not going to go on the flight.”

Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security, so far has refused to hear the public outrage at her invasive and perverted procedures.

On November 24, flyers are urged to Opt Out of the body scan.

Rady Ananda began blogging in 2004. Her work has appeared in several online and print publications, including three books on election fraud. Most of her career was spent working for lawyers in research, investigations and as a paralegal. She graduated from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture with a B.S. in Natural Resources.

WASHINGTON:

The decision came in the first test to reach the Supreme Court after the September 11, 2001, attacks of a case pitting the right of U.S. citizens to speak and associate freely against the government's efforts to fight terrorism.

In a victory for the Obama administration, the justices voted, 6-3, to reverse a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that declared parts of the law unconstitutionally vague.

The law barring material support was first adopted in 1996 and strengthened by the USA Patriot Act adopted by Congress right after the September 11 attacks. It was amended again in 2004.

The law bars knowingly providing any service, training, expert advice or assistance to any foreign organization designated by the U.S. State Department as terrorist.

The law, which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison, does not require any proof the defendant intended to further any act of terrorism or violence by the foreign group.

MORE DIFFICULT CASES COULD BE AHEAD

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said the law was constitutional and rejected the specific challenge before it. He said the court did not address the "more difficult cases" that may arise under the law in the future.

The legal challenge had been brought by groups and individuals who wanted to help the Kurdistan Workers Party in Turkey and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. The State Department designated both as foreign terrorist groups.

The Humanitarian Law Project in Los Angeles had previously provided human rights advocacy training to the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, and the main Kurdish political party in Turkey.

The Humanitarian Law group and others sued in an effort to renew support for what they described as lawful, nonviolent activities overseas.

"The Supreme Court has ruled that human rights advocates, providing training and assistance in the nonviolent resolution of disputes, can be prosecuted as terrorists," said Georgetown University law professor David Cole, who argued the case.

"In the name of fighting terrorism, the court has said that the First Amendment permits Congress to make it a crime to work for peace and human rights. That is wrong," Cole said.

Obama administration lawyers defended the law and called it a vital weapon in the government's effort to fight terrorism.

Since 2001, the United States has charged about 150 defendants with the material support of terrorism and about half have been convicted, the Justice Department said.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented with Breyer saying the court majority ultimately "deprives the individuals before us of the protection that the First Amendment demands."

He said the court failed to examine the government's justifications for the law with sufficient care.

The Supreme Court cases are Holder v. Humanitarian Law project, No. 08-1498, and Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, No. 09-89.

Agencies