Daily Archives: 1 September 2010

On Bernanke’s Speech

* Bernanke is ready to keep printing.
* STOP DEFLATION! STOP DEFLATION! STOP DEFLATION! (Deflation would actually be a very good thing. It would reveal who is productive, and who is unproductive.)
* Saint Louis Fed Chairman James Bullard DOES NOT ANTICIPATE A DOUBLE DIP RECESSION. Let’s remember he said this. Shall we?
* Bill Ford, former Atlanta Fed Chairman, makes the same prediction — no double dip recession, though he offers some good analysis. Perhaps that’s why no longer with the Fed.

Ron Paul on Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” speech

Congressman Ron Paul today released the following statement on President Obama’s speech from the Oval Office last night:

“The President’s announcement that all U.S. combat troops have left Iraq is no more believable than the ‘Mission Accomplished’ declaration was in 2003.

“Once again, we are being told the mission has been accomplished and our brave men and women are coming back home. Though the people are hopeful they remain skeptical, and rightfully so.

“The biggest problem is that success in Iraq is undefinable since the mission was never defined. The reasons given for the invasion were based on misinformation. Now, the war has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and this has contributed significantly to our economic woes.

“Forty-four hundred Americans are dead, thirty thousand severely wounded, and more than a hundred thousand are suffering from serious health problems related to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. This alone should tell us that it was not worth the investment and the needless sacrifice of our young people and the taxpayers.

“It is deceitful to imply we will avoid hostilities with this new policy. We still have to contend with:

* the 50,000 troops carrying weapons remain in Iraq
* the 100,000 contractors that remain with more expected to go to Iraq
* the 9,000 special ops personnel trained in assassinations that remain in Iraq
* a huge embassy, bigger than the Vatican, that will remain
* Dozens of military bases that will stay
* Al Qaeda organizations that did not exist before the war
* Muqtada al Sadr, a strong nationalist who has gained much political power
* The fact that Iran benefits tremendously with the Shiites now in power in Iraq and is a close ally of al Sadr

“Osama bin Laden wins by ‘proving’ that America has an agenda of occupation in the Middle East. And, we continue to walk into his trap and hand him up his best recruitment tool in his efforts to incite hatred and terrorism against the United States.

“What’s worse, President Obama made it clear last night that the troops and resources leaving Iraq will not come home to defend our country or ease our economic woes. They will instead be diverted to Afghanistan, perhaps also Pakistan and, I fear, even Iran.

“From my viewpoint we are the losers in this fool’s errand of endless war. Tragically, this new policy is not one of peace but merely a charade that will severely undermine our national security and continue us down the path to bankruptcy—a threat that we best not long ignore.” (Read more from eon.businesswire.com)

CIA role claim in Kennedy killing

The evidence was shown in a report by Shane O’Sullivan, broadcast on BBC Newsnight.

It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after the shooting on 5 June, 1968.

The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles.

Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-War ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House when he was shot in a kitchen pantry.

A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin and notebooks at his house seemed to incriminate him.

However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time. (Read more from news.bbc.co.uk)

Palestinians & Zionists doing battle on Wikipedia

The next battle in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be fought on the pages of the internet site Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia which anyone can edit.

Abed A-Nassar, chairman of the Association of Palestinian Journalists, has already begun preparing for the conflict, calling on Palestinian institutions to make Wikipedia pages more pro-Palestinian.

His call follows a recent article in Haaretz on a class organized by settlers to teach supporters how to register and edit Wikipedia pages, in order to make them more representative of the ‘Zionist’ viewpoint.

Organizers of the Israeli course say their aim is twofold: to affect Israeli public opinion by having people who share their ideological viewpoint take part in writing and editing for the Hebrew version, and to write in English so Israel’s image can be bolstered abroad.

Palestinians must now launch a counter-attack against Israel’s latest “public relations war”, Nassar said. (Read more from myantiwar.org)