IsRaEl

I am jewish. Up until my second year of college, at SUNY Albany, I supported Israeli in their treatment of the Palestinians. I was engrained with the view that Israel had to protect itself from terrorists. Than a friend of my mentioned another point of view on the subject in the form of some articles written on a progressive website that I still frequent, Common Dreams.org

This article showed another perspective. Forgetting what group you belong to. Forgetting what your holy book of preference is. I saw a people being mistreated. A majority of a nation abusing the minority. I saw a people who were up there as some of the most abused cultures of the century, abusing another culture. 

Being someone who has always found it easy to put myself in another's shoes I felt for the Palestinian people. If you are a human, in my view, its hard not too. And as a Jew I cannot comprehend that my culture would treat another with anything except the utmost humanity.  If i am bullied in school I know the feeling of being abused, thus making it hard for me to abuse another. But to me, that is what is happening. 

Both sides have an argument.  And if you grew up in either culture you would relate. 

If you grew up hearing stories about how your native lands for thousands of years was taken by western superpowers and given to another culture, and when your culture fought to take it back you were beaten by western military technology, how can you not be upset. 

If  walls encircle your neighborhood you should be upset. If you must pass military checkpoints to move freely and you spend half a day to go places that used to take a few minutes you should be upset.  If you relied on UN food deliveries in order to survive it has got to hurt. As a man your pride has got to be hurting. And now imagine deliveries are no longer allowed to enter, food resources, medical resources, electricity, basic components of life are taken from you, how mad would you be. Very is an understatement. 

Look at Greece. Rioting for weeks. Malatof cocktails thrown and hitting police. All because a 15 was shot and killed by the police and the town is fed up. Well right now the Palestinian people are being starved. They are firing rockets into Israel. Israeli's response is to hold back more food and more medical products.

What's the answer, I don't know. Is peace possible? Always. Are there some Palestinians and Israeli's who would never tolerate a peace, absolutely.

From the Israeli perspective, your towns are being rocketed daily. And in the late 90's during Arafats tenure and the intafada public transportation bus's were being suicide bombed on the regular. This has to infuriate israeli's. I started this by saying how can an abused culture abuse another? Some defend Israel's aggressive stance by saying they must take these actions in order to prevent another holocaust. 

But to me the answer is not to decimate an entire culture. It's not to starve an entire culture. In Iraq we only made progress by talking to our enemies. In Afghanistan, president Karzai is talking to his enemies. After WWII we helped rebuild Germany and Japan. Its the only answer in my view. Yet no one really gave the democratically elected government of Hamas a chance. 

They were elected for some reason. Meaning they have the support of the people. One argument goes, the palestinians do not want peace, Arafat was given a chance at peace and he turned it down. Well remember that Arafat represented one Palestinian faction, the PLO. Why not try with Hamas. 

But wait a minute, the palestinians only want to kill every last Jew. Really? People really believe this.  Maybe they want to but they wouldnt actually do it. I bet during the 60's in the southern USA when blacks were being lynched hourly, I bet many blacks wanted to kill every last white man. Every last christian. 

What if what we have in israel is a handful of disgruntled Palestinians who are firing the rockets, why do we need to make the entire Palestinian culture suffer? Do we in the USA solve gang violence in south central L.A. or in the Bronx by putting up a wall around the community, and eventually calling in the air-force to level the place. Why dont we? Because its wrong? Because killing 10,000 to stop 50 is not the right approach? So why is this behavior tolerated in Gaza.

All I am saying is people do strange things when you cage them, and take away their pride, hurt their family, starve them, and strip them of the bare essentials life has to offer. Think how you would act in such a situation. Imagine America was occupied by a foriegn power, colonized.  Would we revolt? Would we suicide bombs? How far would you go to ensure your family was not abused? How far would you go to feed your family?

Now start asking yourself new questions. Why does the world stand for israel but against saddam? And what i mean by that is why does Israel have the most UN resolutions condemning their actions than any other nation, but no nation has acted to stop their abusive nature, while on the other hand the world unites to topple saddam after a few UN resolutions? 

Why does the world know about south ossetia, which made the evening news regularly for a week straight while a genocide is occurring on the African continent in the Congo that some have called the first african world war, and nothing is on the tv?

These questions might lead you down a path you don't want answers for. It might change who you are as a person. Maybe the world and the people running it and the United States are not as rosey as you read about in grade school. 

But than again,maybe its me who is way off base.

eLeCtIoN fRaUd

We have all heard the theory that Karl Rove stole the presidential election for President W. in 2000 and in 2004.  We heard it was all done electronically. Where a computer program was made for the electronic voting machines that would trigger a vote for Bush when someone voted for the democratic candidate.  Now we here Karl Roves IT guru who happened to be in Florida for the 2000 election and in Ohio for 2004 was about to talk to US attorneys investigating election fraud when his plane mysteriously crashed killing him.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/114674/rove%27s_it_guru_warned_of_sabotage_before_fatal_plane_crash%3B_was_set_to_testify/?page=1

Fed lied tax payers died

Banks are not lending. That is what we were told. That is the main reason, the FED has argued that wall street must be bailed out, to get the banks to lend again. What if this main premise is false? Should we get the bailout money back? According to a report from the federal reserve lending levels are normal. hmm?

MORE TO FOLLOW

DeTrOiT 3 mUsKaTeErS

(updated 2-10-09)
Bailout craze of 08’. Where were you? First the banks and investment houses. Now automanufacturors. What’s next, Wendy’s, Home Depot? Where does it end. What gives you the right Detroit Three, to be handed a bailout loan because you don’t know how to properly run a company. The only difference between you and my uncle bert who closed up shop last year, is that you, Detroit employ directly and indirectly so many, some say up to 2.5 million could be lost in 2009, while my cousin bert only employs two.

On the surface it doesn't seem fair. You cant run a business. Tough shit. Fold up shop and try something else, like my nephew Bert. Remember that saying dont quit your day job. Time to quit that day job son.

But there is a compelling arguments against Detroit folding up shop. With our economy in the tank can this country afford to lose a million jobs. With the country’s manufacturing sector pretty much non-existent should we close down our last niche of manufacturing.

These are hard choices. And our congressional leaders and our president are inept, corrupt, and not strong enough to handle issues of such magnitude.

On the surface it appears that the elite class that runs this country is imploding. They cant run companies, they cant run government agencies (katrina), they cant run war (Iraq). They cannot watch over wall street (sec). They forgot how to watch over and protect our airspace (FAA on 9-11). Is the elite class going through a mid life crisis? Is the conservative ideology right that whatever government touches turns to shit. Or have conservatives been waging a battle, letting katrina fail, letting FAA fail, letting the sec fail, in order to prove their point, see we told you, the government cant work, must not be trusted, so lets shrink it down. (small enough to put it in a bathtub and drown it. this last part is something a radical conservative Grover Norquist truly believes.)

If my gut reaction is true, the elite class is imploding. So throwing money at them in wall street or in Detroit is not going to solve core problems. Just like America must look her soul in the mirror and question if her policies overseas is moral, America’s elite must look themselves in the mirror and ask is there ideology, their system of picking only Harvard educated rich kids from the in crowd to run the country, is that the right way to go.

A professor of mine taught me that the upper crust of society must continually call up others from others classes to join the upper crust. For fresh ideas, and a new perspective. Once the upper crust stops doing this they become surrounded by men who think like they do, who have the same experiences, and who all agree on decisions.

I think President W. Bush’s inner circle was a great example of this. After the first few years he was basically surrounded by yes men, who all believed the same things. The result was more disasters than any other presidency, at least in the modern error.

Generals not agreeing with a simple number like how many soldiers it would take to conquer and secure Iraq were fired. Government auditors who didnt agree with the “team” about how much the Medicare Part D Drug bill would cost and had the gaul to talk about it publicly were fired. What ever happened to allowing variety of views? I thought that was democracy? Could it be that for a long time we have not lived in a Democratic nation, or a Republic? Could it be that very powerful men that run this nation hate the notion of Democracy or Republic? It appears that way.

The proof is in the fruit of the tree. I am going to take you to a little area known as Israel right now. I hope not to many Jewish people are reading this. Because even though I am one, most I meet tend to side with the Israeli's and put humanity and morals on the back burner.

Under President W. our theme has been to spread democracy. Yet our actions and our fruit show otherwise. During the early years of president W.’s first term the people of Palestinian territory had a democratic election, I believe their first. Great news right. If you love humanity it was. But the men that run this country did not like the results. The election chose Hamas to run the government ousting the long running PLO organization. So our elite rewarded democracy by cutting off our funding for the Palestinian government. Funding that is like life support to a people who have no jobs, are not allowed to work in Israel, have no food, cannot grow food. These people have nothing and are living in ghettos, they rely on the world for survival and our elites cut that life line off because we didn't like democracy in action.

Our next move was to start funding and arming the PLO and war broke out between the PLO and Hamas. This is the fruit of our tree. After the fighting stopped Israel built a wall around the territory. Today the territory is so closed off and such little food and medical supplies are delivered that many are calling it a humanitarian crisis. Smells like rotten fruit to me.

Or how about the Sudan, in Africa. The government there recently found oil under tribal land in the south of the country. After a few payments to move the people off the land the Sudan government backed by western elites and the oil cartels began arming and funding militias to kill and destroy villages. When that slowed the airforce carried out large air-force strikes on villages. The government of Sudan, in the funniest statement I have ever heard (kinda funny bc the people of Sudan are definitely not laughing), said they are not bombing villages but that the villagers are moving but its because they are nomads, and thats what nomads do. Nice try. Again, more fruit from the tree of western elite cabal.

Iraq. Which had no terrorists there before 9-11. Every piece of evidence used was false. But we have caused so much violence and destruction that we have caused more recruits to join al queda than Osama could ever get on his own. Again, more fruit.

So Detroit. Who is at fault? How can this be solved? Should we just mourn the corpse of the once strong Detroit manufacturing sector. This will be the subject of part two.

Many are blaming the union. They wont make concessions we are told. They make 78 dollars an our we are informed. Or is it a civil war between the northern American autos who have the support of the Democrats vs. the Southern foreign manufacturing plants who have bought off the Republican leaders. I will break this down in a second, but from what i have learned even if Detroit doesn't pay any labor cost at all that will not change the view Americans have of Americans cars. It wont make people buy more of something they dont like. That my friends falls at the feet of management and the board. Americans typcally buy more Japanese because of reliability issues.

UPDATE
Just read an interesting plan in an article written by the documentarian Michael Moore, who began his career reporting on the Detriot auto industry. He is against giving any money to the industry because he thinks it will be flushed down the toilet, and it the companies will still cut thousands of jobs.

1.Just as FDR ordered car manufacturing plants to stop producing cars and begin producing tanks for WWII we should order the car plants to stop producing cars that run primarily on oil,and start building envirnmentally friendly cars, trains, buses, subways, and light rail.
2. Why give GM tens of billions of dollars when you guy buy all the company stock for 3 billion dollars? If your worried about government running the companies, Michael argues there are many qualified men for the job. He also points out this strategy brought success to the national rail system that was crumbling in the 70's. This strategy will not only save detriot, but create national jobs to help jump start our economy.

MaDoFf

Ponzi scheme. Thats what everyone is calling the curious case of Bernard L. Madoff. The quick story is that he owned a hedge fund that he ran basically single handedly. For years he paid out handsome profits of 10- 17%. Until recently when he declared the fund had been empty for some time. 

Arrested he claims it did not begin as a scheme, yet when he began to lose on his stock bets instead of keeping it real, he lied to his investors and continued to hand them the normal returns. But since the money was not coming from winning bets on wallstreet it began to come from new investors. 

One issue that should have raised red flags but didn't was his audit firm. With the amount of money bernie was handling most would have suspected he use a big outfit. Yet he used a small Friehling & Horowitz which reportedly had offices in strip malls and had only three emplyees, a sectratary an accountant and a partner in his 70's living in Florida. It also seems that while accounting firms are required to undergo peer review to ensure firms are standards are up to par, Friehling & Horowitz have not been peer reviewed in 15 years by claiming they do not do audits. The firm Friehling & Horowitz are now under an ethics probe by the main trade organization of accountants.

One aspect few have reported is that even if you got out of the fund a year ago with your winnings you still might have to return them, according to a previous court precedent.

In 2005 a judge ruled that based on the collapse of the hedge fund The Bayou Group, all parties who took their money out of the group had to return it.  "The idea being that the whole thing was a fraudulent undertaking, so no one should profit from it." 

The end result was that instead of a very small amount of people cashing out, every investor is able to recoup something. The case with The Bayou Group will see all investors receiving between 20 and 40% of their original return.

But this can also lead to problem. What if i spent the money after taking it out of Madoff's fund. What if its in another fund, what if I lost it in another fund? What if I am a retiree and the money i extracted from my Madoff acount is what is keeping me from foreclosing on my home and becoming homeless?

But on the side of the story, we want to know who the investors are who pulled their money. Was it a relative, a close friend? Did Madoff really lose 50 billion or is a few billion in the caymen islands waiting for Madoff to claim it?

We also have another case of the government watchdog not only sleeping at the wheel but also throwing away information of people trying to turn in Madoff, and everyone closing their ears.
One individual, Harry Markopolos has been calling Madoff a fraud for decades.

Interesting Websites

This seems it will be a recuring post.

Economy

Due to the economic problems over the past year that i believe will be a story told for many decades, I have been doing a lot of reading in this department.

Globalresearch.ca , specifically the authors Michael Chossudovsky and Michael Hudson.

npr.org/blogs/money/
credoaction.com/sirota/
cjr.org/the_audit/
Jonathan weil over at bloomberg news
Naomi Klien over at naomiklein.org/main
Naomi Prins over at demos.org

Personal Training and Total life domination

kegconditioning.com

basketballstrength.com

Jocsonhealth.com , he  is a personal trainer/shaman

futsaoyongchunkuen.com 

These four website represent 3 individuals who are changing my life in awesome ways and I cant recomend them enough to everyone looking for changes, growth, and evolution on all levels, body, mind, and soul.

Post -Bailout

For some reason I am very interested in the full story of this economic mess we are in and the way people are trying to solve it, and get rich from it. Maybe I think this is going to go down as a historic event, much like September 11th, 2001 in America.

The bailout seems to be just as murkey and illegal and greedy as the wall street bananza that got us into this mess.

According to Naked Capitolism, the fed's lending has topped 2 trillion dollars last week(with bernake promising loans up to 7 trillion today november 24), even though congress only approved 700 billion. The reason for this is that the 2 trillion dollars is a loan from the FED, which does not have to be approved by congress, i guess. And the 700 billion is the congressional approved tarp program, handed out by Treasury.

The Banks are not lending money like they said they would once they recieved this much needed capitol injection from Washington. The Fed and Treasury who lent the money attached no strings. They could have. The Government in England did.

And while the Fed is not pushing banks to lend, they are pushing banks to merge.

A little side note. While the Fed is lending money to the banks, the Fed is actually a private bank, composed of 12 banks. Guess who is getting all the bailout out money? The 12 banks that own the Fed. Just to clarify, 12 banks that own the Fed are printing money to loan to, umm, themselves.

And, Just released today by Naked Capitolism is news that in the bailout, the Treasury secretary snuck something in. Im not sure if its actually in the bill or some executive order approved by bush. But it is a law that allows banks to write off losses on their tax returns, basically saving money in taxes, or paying zero taxes. Its estimated the law will save banks 110 billion dollars in taxes. This is not a new law, but overiding a law passed by congress, that congress deemed illegal, and now Bush has found a way to change laws without congress.
In a time when our economy is hurting and our government is up to its eyeballs in debt, treasury secretary Paulson deems it necessary to cut taxes for big banks.

Another aspect of the story is how the treasury promised transparency in its bailout plan. Remember the problem with wall street was a 60 trillion dollar derivatives market, where little information is available. So far the treasury has yet to live up to this promise, prompting bloomberg news outfit to sue in court, under the freedom of information act to obtain information on 1. how much contracts are worth that the treasury department outsourced to manage the bailout, and 2. what the collateral is for the Fed loans to the banks.

Another part of the Economic story is the risky loans to those with no collateral, and how banks leveraged against these risky mortgage backed securities because standards and poors rating agency blindly gave them AAA/ no risk rating. So for years, until the collapse, wallstreet used bad collateral ( mortgage backed securities) for loans. And now treasury refuses to tell the public what type of collateral it has accepted in return for loans from the same public.

On the AIG front, once again Naked Capitolism reports in a great story how sweet of a deal AIG is getting. There originaly loan of 85 billion has doubled to 140 billion. And there payment plan has been changed from a 2 year loan at 8.5% interest to a 5 year loan at 3% interest. NC wants to know if homeowners will also get a 60% decrease in there interest rate.

A quote used from Naked Capitolism and analized:

"We said in our title that the AIG case constitutes looting. We refer to notion as set forth by Nobel prize winner George Akerlof and Paul Romer in their 1994 paper, "Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit." Its abstract:"

"Our theoretical analysis shows that an economic underground can come to life if firms have an incentive to go broke for profit at society's expense (to loot) instead of to go for broke (to gamble on success). Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations."

"This is precisely what happened at AIG. Executives there are handsomely paid, yet senior management cast a blind eye as one unit earned outsized profits while taking risks that would have driven AIG into bankruptcy were it not for the Fed's rescue. Before you say, "Well, it was just a few bad apples," the biggest single job of senior management in a financial institution ought to be to assure the health and survival of the entity, which means risk management and control is top of the list (it was at Goldman when it was a private firm). Anytime a unit starts reporting very large profits, managers should be all over it like a cheap suit to make sure the earnings are not the product of massive risktaking. It only takes one aggressive trader plus inattentive management to bring down an entire firm, as Nick Leeson demonstrated with Barings."

While the US is throwing money at banks to solve the recession, China has chosen to spend a portion of its bailout money on low-rent housing, roads, railways and airports and infrastructure in rural areas.

Update:11-17-08'

One of my favorite writers on the web is Michael Chossudovsky, and he blows the lid off the economic crisis over at Globalresearch.ca today with an article about how what we are seeing is a coup detat. Where the financial industry who:

1.caused the collapse of the economy, and

2.who has taken over the Federal reserve banking system and the Treasury department

and 3. who has gotten treasury and congress to approve 700 billion dollars to be given to the Financial industry men who created the mess in order to solve the mess. and

4. Now we find out the money given to the financial industry to solve the mess will be, according to michael, used to buy up corporations throughout america and who have fallen on hard times.

With the stock exchange in free fall, public companies stocks have fallen tremendously. Many companies are in trouble. Car makers, retailer stores, etc. And who is there to pick all the pieces, the heavy hitters of the financial industry.

Michael views this, as i see it, as a coup detat by the financial sector, that soon will take over the industrial sector. Right now he argues, and in the past, the financial sector makes its money without producing anything, very soon they will take over the production sector of our economy.

"Paper wealth accumulated through insider trading

and stock market manipulation is used to acquire control over real economic assets, displacing the preexisting ownership structures. "

Here are my questions. We know corporate america runs the country by buying political muscle so why are some companies winning and some losing? Does this show who are the power players in the corporate world. Why did wall street firms, who caused the crisis, get so much money without question, without strings attached and now the detriot car manufacturors are jumping through loops to get any money? Why hasn't anyone been arrested yet, wtf? why hasn't anyone been fired? If your job is to look over the economy and it crashes and burns you didnt just make a mistake you screwed up big time, and your out. 

Unless, just like 9-11, and katrina, and iraq, the crash, the chaos, the destruction, was all part of the plan. Plan for what? To make rediculous amonts of money. How much money has gone missing in iraq? How much money has been appropriated to rebuild Lousiana and how much of Lousiana has been rebuilt? How many laws were passed that could not have been passed because of 9-11? How much power did the executive branch grab that he would not otherwise have been able to grab, unless we had a 9-11?  You see where I am going with this? If so go read shockdoctrine by Naomi Klein, she writes all about this.

Are our elected officials that dumb? Or would they rather be called incompetent than criminals? And what do you do when the supreme court, executive branch, and legistative branch have been taken over by thugs in suits? 

Its all bush's fault, he is an idiot. Really? Did he force every member of congress except a handfull to pass the illegal patriot act? Or was that done by a Democratic congress? Its congress that runs the country not the president.