tagged w/ gov tricks
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Chas Freeman decries the accordance between Washington and Tel Aviv
The chairman-designate of the US National Intelligence Council declines to take the post citing the Israeli grip on Washington as a reason.
On Tuesday, Charles W. Freeman wrote a fiery letter announcing his withdrawal and attacking the Israeli Lobby for a smear campaign aimed at preventing his appointment. The move followed accusations of unwelcome allegiance to Saudi Arabia and China of Freeman who is known for his anti-Israeli stance.
Freeman, an outspoken critic of Israel and the US support for the Jewish entity, blamed the "unscrupulous people" of the lobby for "outrageous agitation" and "character assassination" after it was known that Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair had tipped him to head the council. The body produces the National Intelligence Estimate listing the reported threats to US security.
"The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors," Freeman wrote.
President Obama has clearly insisted on US support for Israel namely while meeting with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
"There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government - in this case, the government of Israel," the letter added.
The outspoken politician said he had clear evidence against the lobbyists who are "determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East."
During his headship of the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), allegations were leveled against Freeman that he functioned as "a mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia" in exchange for money from the Saudi royalties. He has also been accused of bias towards Beijing for constantly advising the White House to forge stronger China ties.
"I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies," Freeman continued.
He wondered if President Barack Obama's administration could formulate its own Middle East policy despite the lobby.
He also warned that the body's coercive methods ultimately "threaten the existence of the state of Israel."Chas Freeman decries the accordance between Washington and Tel Aviv
The... more
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mae37
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3 years ago
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“A sordid tale of politics and profiteering, courtesy of the Bush administration and a compliant military… A report that deserves many readers, about matters that deserve many indictments.”
–Kirkus
“Chatterjee keeps the pace of the narrative at a quick clip and nimbly marshals his extensive evidence to reveal—without sanctimony or stridency—Halliburton’s record of corruption, political manipulation and human rights abuses.”
–Publishers Weekly
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On September 10, 2001, precisely one day before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told senior staff that the Pentagon was wasting $3 billion a year by not outsourcing many non-combat duties to the private sector. “At bases around the world, why do we pick up our own garbage and mop our own floors?” he asked. Soon after, this fortuitously-timed shift in the way the military wages war would bring immense profits to Texas-based military contractor Halliburton, an oil industry service company whose former CEO was Vice President Dick Cheney. Armed with lucrative no-bid contracts, Halliburton/KBR, its affiliates, and sub-contractors would soon provide most of the infrastructure that supports the war in Iraq. Ultimately, the company would face allegations of corruption, negligence, fraud, and corporate crime.
In HALLIBURTON’S ARMY: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War (Nation Books; February 9, 2009; $26.95), muckraking journalist Pratap Chatterjee conducts a highly detailed investigation into Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR’s activities in Kuwait and Iraq, uncovering much new information about its questionable practices and extraordinary profits. Becoming a Halliburton and a KBR shareholder in order to gain access to as much inside information as possible, Chatterjee also moved to Dubai, where the company recently relocated its headquarters. This Middle Eastern base also afforded him access to interviews with many Halliburton/KBR workers, subcontractors, suppliers, and military liaisons, including Texas engineers and Filipino day laborers, who each played a part in Halliburton’s enterprise.“A sordid tale of politics and profiteering, courtesy of the Bush administration... more
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mae37
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3 years ago
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So, look again at what has been exciting us - Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands. - and realize that they are not only wonderfully healthy but fun and naturally community building. And more, they are a real economy and deeply democratic - and just at a time we need something that works economically, that supports our democratic rebirth, and that protects food itself and our easy access to it.
And it is all those things that threaten the corporations ... which is why we now have these massive "fake food safety" bills in Congress. Everything is going under thanks to these fools, and they wish to be there like vultures to make sure that every drop of blood that can be sucked out of our resources and us, is theirs. To wit, they must get rid of such good and innocent things and yet truly powerful things as:
Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands.
And how will those who contaminate our country's food with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and more, do that? Why, by setting standards for "food safety" that are so grotesquely and inappropriately and even cruelly applied to a local, independent farmers and ranchers that there is no way they can manage. Imagine your being faced with a 100 page IRS form and facing a million dollar a day penalty for screwing up. That would be in the ball park of the impossible complexity mixed with threat facing our farmers. Imagine having the government and corporations deciding every single thing you can do and must do in your kitchen and backing that up with the threat of 10 years in prison for screwing up - though you have never made anyone sick, and those corporations have. Imagine being surveilled 24 hours a day by GPS tracking devices that feed into ... a corporate data bank, one they have now moved out of the country so no one here can have legal access to see what is in it.
Imagine the devil himself - or a whole boardrooms of them, dressed in suits - defining the only safe and healthy food in this country as dangerous and burdening hard working farmers with more work then anyone could bear, while his own, their own, food is so dangerous at this point that in the last 10 years alone, diabetes has gone up 90%.
And how did they get this far with such a scheme to apply insane industrial standards to every farm in the country? Through fear of diseases and of outbreaks of food borne illnesses, both of which they cause themselves.
How it works: Tyson helps Bill Clinton get into office. Bill Clinton immediately and significantly lowers contamination standards for poultry as a thank you. And it is such contaminated waste from transnational poultry factories which is now implicated as the source of bird flu. Then fortunes on made on that fear. And then poultry industry uses the crisis they created to push out small farmers and take greater control than ever. Their mantra? Biodiversity not only be damned but be eliminated. And get rid of those damn farmers who protect it while we're at it.So, look again at what has been exciting us - Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real... more
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mae37
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3 years ago
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(NaturalNews) The FDA has, for decades, ridiculously insisted that mercury fillings pose no health threat whatsoever to children. While dismissing hundreds of studies showing a clear link between mercury amalgam fillings ("silver fillings") and disastrous neurological effects in the human body, the FDA denied the truth about mercury and effectively protected the mercury filling racket that has brought so much harm to so many people. For over a hundred years, a cabal of "mercury mongers" made up of the American Dental Association, mercury filling manufacturers and indignant dentists have reaped windfall profits by implanting toxic fillings into the mouths of children, all while insisting that mercury -- one of the most toxic heavy metals known to modern science -- posed no health threat whatsoever.
Today, that reign of toxicity is about to end. Thanks to the tireless, multi-year efforts of people like Charles Brown, National Counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice (www.ToxicTeeth.org), the FDA has now been forced to acknowledge a fact so fundamental that, by any measure of honest science, it should have adopted the position decades ago. What position is that? Simply that mercury is toxic to humans.
Why the FDA has to be sued to do its job of protecting consumers
The FDA's stonewalling on this issue has been nothing less than a circus of politically-motivated denials, much like the Big Tobacco executives swearing under oath that "Nicotine is not addictive." In similar style, the FDA insisted for decades that "Mercury is not toxic." Both statements, as any sane person can readily conclude, are the outbursts of lunatics. Sadly, those lunatics somehow remain in charge of our nation's food, drugs and cosmetics (and dental care), meaning that any real progress to protect the People must come from outside the FDA.
And that's exactly what just happened. Consumers for Dental Choice teamed up with Moms Against Mercury (www.MomsAgainstMercury.org) to sue the FDA and its commissioner whose name sounds like an evil-minded villian right out of a Marvel comic book: Von Eschenbach. The lawsuit, entitled, Moms Against Mercury et al. v. Von Eschenbach, Commissioner, et al was concluded earlier this week with a reluctant agreement by the FDA to both change its website on the issue of mercury and to reclassify mercury within one year, following a period of public comment (which the agency will no doubt try to drag out as long as possible in order to avoid actually sticking to the terms of the lawsuit agreement).
Remarkably, the FDA's website no longer claims mercury is harmless. The language has now been changed in dramatic fashion, reading: "Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetus."
There's still a lot of fudging there. Note the careful use of the word "may," which means the FDA still isn't sure whether mercury is neurotoxic, but it might be. This is the FDA's way of continuing to stonewall this issue, even as it lost its lawsuit. For any FDA officials who don't yet think mercury is toxic to the human nervous system, I invite them to chug a few milliliters of the substance themselves and find out what the effects might be. It certainly couldn't make them any more mad than they are already!(NaturalNews) The FDA has, for decades, ridiculously insisted that mercury fillings... more
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mae37
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3 years ago
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