[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Note: This blog is based on my notes for a speech at the Harvard Class of 1957 55th reunion in Cambridge, Mass. on May 22nd.
Armageddon was threatening the financial system on Wednesday, September 17, 2008. The largest bankruptcy in American history, that of investment bank Lehman Brothers on Monday, September 15, had roiled global markets, accelerating the stupendous decline in values of every possible investment vehicle—common stocks, corporate bonds, real estate, commodities like oil, copper and gold, private equity and hedge funds alike. In the midst of the chaos Merrill Lynch, the firm that had brought Wall Street to Main Street, was absorbed in a shotgun marriage by Bank of America BAC +0%.
Only days earlier came the recognition at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and the US Treasury that AIG, the largest insurance company in the world was running out of money. This required an immediate injection of $85 billion in bail-out funds. And later another $100 billion, still not paid back to Uncle Sam.
That day, Sept 17, an even greater crisis was pending. All day long the chairman of General Electric, a company recognized across the globe as a leading industrial giant, was calling the Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson to warn that the next day, Sept. 18, that GE would no longer be able to roll over its short term debt. The American business system was on the cusp of faltering mightily. The US economy was on the brink of a precipice into the unknown.
Messrs Paulson and Bernanke, at the Fed, knew the nation could not suffer the risk of a total breakdown in industry and finance. So, they decided to instantly guarantee the $600 billion commercial paper market, which is widely used to finance day-to-day operations of all major firms. This guarantee became part of the total cost of bailing out Wall Street, which totaled over $7 trillion—when you added guarantees to loans, investments and outright grants. The bailouts were key to raising the Fed’s balance sheet from $1 trillion to $3 trillion—and to upping the nation’s total amount of debt some $5 trillion to a record $15 trillion.
Conversely, the household wealth of the nation, measured by losses in financial markets and the historic drop in residential real estate—was reduced by a sickenly humungus $12-$14 trillion at the very bottom of the whole process in March, 2009. You take that money—$12-14 trillion away from the asset side of the ledger and add another $5 trillion in debt—- and you are bound to experience a decline in the nation’s GDP and a very much slower rate of recovery from such a trauma. A recovery that could take 10 years or more according to Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff. That brings us to 2018. Need I say more?
How did we reach this very near call on a total systemic breakdown?
Firstly, there were no cops on the beat. Laissez-faire free market economics was the prevailing public policy. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan spoke of irrational exuberance but took no steps to cool off markets in the late 1990s. In fact, he was asked by Loews chairman Larry Tisch and former Goldman Sachs co-chairman John Whitehead to raise the margins on trading, and refused, claiming falsely that such a move was up to the SEC—and not the Fed. Not true.
In 1999 the Glass-Steagall Act—which had separated commercial banking from investment banking for 66 years, was overturned—a move that opened the door to more speculative trading on the part of Wall Street firms.
Then, in 2000 Messrs. Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Rubin and his successor Lawrence Summers pressed to pass a bill that would prohibit the regulation of derivatives—the fastest growing and most complicated and murky new financial product. This was an incredible mistake, as derivative contracts like mortgage backed bonds and credit default swaps mushroomed in across the globe without any oversight, strict capital requirements and on an organized exchange where buying and selling were handled daily.
The result of this vacuum; no one anywhere knew who owed what to whom across the world. Despite the danger lurking in the rapid depreciation of these contracts, Bernanke publicly stated the absurd amount of sub-prime mortgages being sold to unsuspecting buyers would not spread to a much wider, deeper crisis. He didn’t know what he was talking about, sadly..
Lastly, in 2004 the major firms convinced the SEC to let them value certain assets on their balance sheet at values they chose—rather than marking them t o market—which would reveal what losses they were carrying. This added another dangerous laxity to financial regulation. The system was falsifying its accounts believing the investments would bounce back.
The entire catastrophe’s underlying theme was summed up later by this admission from former Fed chairman Greenspan . ” I made a mistake,” he admitted in a hearing, “in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.” And we made this man into the wise parental guardian of American capitalism for 18 years. We journalists, that is.
Pressed again later on, Greenspan admitted to “shocked disbelief, (because his whole) intellectual edifice had collapsed.” Naive at minimum. At worst, locked into a narrow limited ideological viewpoint that set the stage for the meltdown. Let Goldman Sachs and Citigroup master their own appetite for profits. So much for reining in animals spirits.
Secondly, the banks and investment banks were using reckless amounts of leverage. They borrowed, in many cases, $30 to $40 of debt for every dollar of capital they had. In truth, this was a recipe for disaster, since a decline of only 4% in their capital put them on the road to insolvency. It was as if you bought a million dollar house, put down a payment of $30,000 and borrowed $970,000. What sense of irrational optimism allowed this mad way of doing business.
By the fall of 2008 the decline in the value just of subprime mortgage backed bonds—which lost up to 80% of their value in the market—meant that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bank of America, Washington Mutual and Wachovia were in a state of peril. The only way to make money in bank stocks was to short them. My favorite day trader told me after it was all over that I should be worth $50 million. With the run on Lehman Bros. both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were in danger of experiencing a run on their accounts.
Perhaps AIG is the most extreme example of leverage as financial hari-kari. It had sold protection to banks and insurance companies across the globe by issuing $540 billion of credit default swaps, which meant AIG promised to make good on any losses in value of their mortgage holdings.
Two facts — just two — explain almost everything about Miami: In 1960, the city was 90 percent white; by 1990 it was only ten percent white. Virtually everything else about Miami today — crime, poverty, race riots, cultural decay, third-world squalor — follows from this astonishing change in population.
To be sure, it is important to understand the mix of people who displaced whites. Cubans, especially those who arrived first, have had a very different effect from that of Haitians or Nicaraguans. However, no city could show more clearly how dependent upon race and ethnicity are a city’s character and civility. No city could show more clearly that large-scale displacement of whites marks the end of everything commonly thought of as “American.”
Miami is one of the bellwethers for the nation that will result if the silent invasion from the third world continues. It is therefore important to know what has happened to the city and why.
First Came the Cubans
Cubans are now the dominant group in a city that is 63 percent Hispanic and 27 percent black. Even Dade County, which surrounds Miami, is about 50 percent Hispanic and 21 percent black, with whites making up no more than 29 percent of the population. Aside from a few quickly-shrinking enclaves of white influence, Cubans control business, politics and culture.
Related at Majorityrights
Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled to Miami after Fidel Castro’s victory in late 1958, but they did not come simply because it was near by. Florida and Cuba have connections that are centuries old, and the post-Castro migration was only part of a long history.
From the earliest times, imperial Spain had ruled Florida and Cuba under a single administration. There was no political border between the two territories until Andrew Jackson conquered Florida, and the United States annexed it in 1821.
Even before the city of Miami was founded in 1896, the area had long played a part in the ructions of Cuba’s tropical politics. The South Florida coast was an important supply route for Cubans fighting Spanish colonial rule, and the smugglers and gun runners were largely unmolested by Americans intent on building a vacation resort.
The Spanish-American war brought American-imposed stability to Cuba, but once the country tried governing itself, it reverted to opera buffa politics. In his 1917 essay, Gore in the Caribbees, H.L. Mencken describes the “Latin exuberance” of a failed revolution. “It was an exhilarating show,” he concludes, “but full of strangeness for a Nordic.”
Revolutions routinely deposited refugees and counter-revolutionaries in Miami, and former exiles would sail back to Cuba with the next violent change in government. In 1933, for example, Gerardo Machado was overthrown and Miami teemed with his henchmen. In 1952, Fulgencio Batista staged a coup and his predecessor, Carlos Prio, packed his bags for Miami. In 1958, it was Batista’s turn to move north. All three are buried in Miami, where residents got used to itinerant dictators and their hangers-on.
The immediate effect of the Castro take-over was to reduce the number of Cubans living in Miami. Many had been scheming against Batista and streamed home in the wake of Mr. Castro’s victory. They streamed back to Miami when Mr. Castro began to build the workers’ paradise.
The real exodus from Cuba did not start until a year or two after the revolution, but when it came, Miami was the obvious destination. During the Prio and Batista years, even middle-class Cubans took annual vacations in Miami, and after airplane service began it was fashionable for rich Cubans to take one-day shopping trips to Florida. The Cuban upper classes escaped to a familiar and comfortable refuge.
At first, Miami’s whites ignored the post-Castro rush, confident that like all previous waves of political casualties, it would wash out again with the next coup. Moreover, the first crop of Cubans was the wealthy, well-educated white elite who spoke English and slipped easily into Miami society. However, by 1965, 210,000 Cubans had come to Miami, and by 1973 another 340,000 had boarded the twice-daily “freedom flights” for Florida. The quality of immigrants steadily declined, though few Cuban blacks and mulattoes had yet to come north.
During this period the Miami Herald still reflected the views of whites, and its editorials echoed rising alarm over the alien invasion. However, Cubans fleeing from communism made first-rate cold-war propaganda, and the federal government flouted the wishes of whites by welcoming the Cubans as refugees. It was Mr. Castro who finally stopped the “freedom flights” in 1973, but Miami’s transformation was well under way. The first wave of Cubans came to plot counter-revolution in the hope of going back home; later waves expected to stay.
Cubans quickly established a distinct community. They came not only with a common nationality, but with a fierce anti-communism that set them apart from the soft liberalism of America. They employed and did business with each other, continuing relations that had been established for years. Some businesses simply moved across the Florida Straits. The Caballero Funeral Home, for example, advertises that it was founded in 1858, at a time when Miami did not exist. It was founded in Havana.
Many entrepreneurs had scant regard for American legalities or customs, and they brought with them a corner-cutting, under-the-table mentality that still characterizes Miami. However, Cubans were scrupulous in their relations with each other because a violation of trust meant exclusion from the community.
The fact that well-off businessmen had come first made things much easier for the later arrivals. Cane-cutters just off the plane were grateful for any kind of work, and were both loyal workers and customers for Cuban businesses. At the same time, perpetually rocky politics in Latin America sent north a steady flow of flight capital. Naturally, it went to Miami, where nervous Argentines and Colombians could count on fellow Hispanics to invest their nest eggs in solid American banks.
What was the effect of the Cuban presence on the Miami labor market? One of the few “respectable” criticisms of non-white immigration is that it displaces blacks, and it is widely maintained that this happened in Miami. In fact, it was whites who were replaced. The garment industry, for example, was 94 percent white in 1960, but by 1980, it was 83 percent Hispanic. Black participation in the industry held steady at 5-7 percent.
(Note: this article was originally written before the US assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani on January 2nd)
Trump kept the promise he made to AIPAC in March 2016: “We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.” Its fulfillment gave a timely support to Netanyahu, whose popularity in Israel is entirely based on his capacity to manipulate the United States, of which he brags. Commenting in May 2018 on Trump’s decision, Netanyahu paid him this compliment:
“This will be remembered the way we remember the Cyrus declaration of 2500 years ago, when he told the exiles of Babylon, ‘you can go back and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.’ This is a historical moment and we will always remember.”
Cyrus is that Persian king whose spirit “Yahweh roused … to issue a proclamation” and “build him a temple in Jerusalem,” according to the Book of Ezra (1:1-2) A successor to Cyrus later appointed Ezra to oversee the building. For his decree, Cyrus is bestowed the title of Yahweh’s “Anointed” (Mashiah) by the prophet Isaiah:
“Thus says Yahweh to his anointed one, to Cyrus whom, he says, I have grasped by his right hand, to make the nations bow before him and to disarm kings: […] It is for the sake of my servant Jacob and of Israel my chosen one, that I have called you by your name, have given you a title though you do not know me. […] Though you do not know me, I have armed you.” (Isaiah 45:1-5)[1]
Yahweh, who “roused Cyrus’ spirit” and “grasped him by his right hand,” stands, of course, for “Jewish Power”.
Netanyahu hailed Trump as a modern-day Cyrus on several occasions, and his enthusiasm was echoed on Fox News, when Jeanine Pirro declared: “Donald Trump recognizes history. He, like king Cyrus before him, fulfills the biblical prophecy…”
Trump was like Cyrus again in March 2019, when he signed a decree recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights (top photo). It inspired Miriam Adelson, wife of Trump’s biggest donor, to comment that the President deserves his “Book of Trump” in the Bible.[2] Israel’s history is always biblical, one way or another.
I was made aware of this “Trump is Cyrus” meme by Adam Green’s impressive film “God’s Chosen People”. It seems that Trump was already promoted as a new Cyrus to Christian Zionists during the 2016 campaign. It has also been noted that, just a couple of months after taking office, Trump used the occasion of the Persian new year (Nowruz) to mention in a White House statement to the Iranian embassy that “Cyrus the Great, a leader of the ancient Persian Empire, famously said that ‘freedom, dignity, and wealth together constitute the greatest happiness of humanity.’” Using the name Cyrus rather than the form Koresch preferred by historians is an implicit reference to the Bible story. Zionists like Jonathan Cahn believe this was a cryptic message: “It was not only that the president had issued a public statement in which he spoke of Cyrus but that he spoke words attributed to the ancient king. In other words, he wasn’t only speaking of Cyrus; he was now speaking as Cyrus.”[3] Such interpretation tells us more about the Zionists’ wishful thinking than about Trump’s real intention (who wrote that statement anyway?). But then, the Zionists have proven very good at fulfilling their wishful thinking.
Of course, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem is not exactly like rebuilding of the temple. But Trump’s announcement nevertheless boosted messianic yearnings for the Third Temple. Plans, funds, and even cultic personnel are all ready. Prayers are sent to heaven that an Iranian missile would mistakenly, by Yahweh’s hand, find its way on the Al-Aqsa Mosque to get rid of the last obstacle. Confident that Trump is the new Cyrus, the Mikdash Educational Center has minted medals with Trump’s portrait superimposed on Cyrus’ on one side, and the future temple on the other. Of course, ecstatic Jews and Evangelicals have no clue that the so-called Temple Mount never supported a temple at all: what they take for the walls of Herod’s Temple is actually the remains of the Roman fort housing the legion that destroyed the Temple (as demonstrated archeologically in the documentary “The Coming Temple”).
It is not the first time that a Christian statesman is compared to Persian king Cyrus. It was said before of Lord Balfour and Harry Truman. Netanyahu actually referred to both of them when meeting Trump in the Oval Office in March 2018:
“I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory, so we remember the proclamation of the great king, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon could come back and rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem. We remember a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember 70 years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages.”
Zion is a biblical program
Netanyahu’s declaration provides a good opportunity for reflecting on the importance of biblical narratives in Israel’s national consciousness, propaganda, diplomacy, and geopolitical strategy, and to analyze the Cyrus pattern in the history of the relationship between Israel and imperial powers.
Netanyahu is certainly typical of Israeli leaders’ tendency to see history as a perpetual reenactment of Bible stories. In 2015, he dramatized his phobia of Iran by referring to the Book of Esther, in an allocution to the American Congress that he managed to program on the eve of Purim, which celebrates the happy ending of the Book of Esther—the slaughter of 75,000 Persians.
Esther’s story is not unlike Ezra’s: through her, Yahweh “roused the spirit” of another Persian king, Ahasuerus, to protect the Jews and hang their persecutors. This last December, Trump became a modern-day Ahasuerus when he signed an executive order against anti-Semitism and Israel-boycott in university campuses.
Actually, the Book of Esther, Netanyahu’s favorite, is the only book in the Tanakh that makes no mention of God, which proves that “biblical” does not necessarily mean “religious”. This is a point sadly misunderstood in the Christian world.
The biblical foundation of secular Zionism is underestimated, even denied, by critics of Zionism, even when it is affirmed by the Zionists themselves. It is true that Theodor Herzl did not argue in biblical terms for his 1896 program, The Jewish State. Yet he named his movement after the Bible: Zion is metonymic designation for Jerusalem used by biblical prophets, especially Isaiah. Later on, the pioneers of the Yishuv and the founders of the Jewish State were steeped in the Bible. Ben-Gurion, an avowed atheist, used to say: “There can be no worthwhile political or military education about Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible.”[4] That statement should be taken seriously. If it is true for Zionists, then it is also true for the critics of Zionism: there can be no real understanding of Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible. The Tanakh is the alpha and the omega of Zionism. Moshe Dayan, the military hero of the 1967 Six-Day War, justified his annexation of new territory in a book titled Living with the Bible (1978).
One important thing that Ben-Gurion learnt from the Bible is that Israel’s destiny is not to be a nation like others, but the center of the world and the ruler of all nations. When asked in 1962 his prediction for the next 25 years, he declared that Jerusalem “will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.”[5] He was referring to Isaiah 2:2-4, announcing the messianic Pax Judaica, when “the Law will issue from Zion” and Israel “will judge between the nations and arbitrate between many peoples.” Ben-Gurion’s prophetic vision, which may be called Universal Zionism (the title of a book by the director of a Jerusalem Summit that promotes that vision), has been shared more or less by all subsequent Israeli leaders up to Benjamin Netanyahu.
It should be evident, and it surely is to Netanyahu as it was to Ben-Gurion, that for Jerusalem to become the headquarter of a “Supreme Court of Mankind” that will replace the United Nations, another world war is necessary. The fall of the American Empire, or at least its total transformation into Zionist occupied territory, is also part of the plan.
The Tanakh does not just teach Zionists the ultimate goal, it also shows them the way to go: Cyrus’ edict reproduced in the Book of Ezra, whether genuine or fake, is the blueprint for Zion’s exploitation of the Empire’s foreign policy in modern times. Transforming Gentile leaders into Cyrus-like figures is the rule of the game. That is what I would like to illustrate below.
Jeremiah, Babylon and Persia
Before we recall the way the proto-Zionists Ezra and Nehemiah worked the Persian administration into giving them control over Jerusalem, let’s go back one century earlier. In 588 BC, to subdue the rebellious Judeans, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and finally burned Jerusalem, then deported some of its elites (Jeremiah 52:30 gives the plausible figure of 4,600 people). The exiles enjoyed broad autonomy in Babylon, and some acquired wealth and influence. Speaking on behalf of Yahweh, Jeremiah wrote to them, from Egypt: “Work for the good of the city to which I have exiled you; pray to Yahweh on its behalf, since on its welfare yours depends” (Jeremiah 29:7). Yahweh even asked Jeremiah to convey the following message to the kings of Syria-Palestine:
“For the present, I have handed all these countries over to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant … Any nation or kingdom that will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and will not bow its neck to the yoke of the king of Babylon, I shall punish that nation with sword, famine and plague, Yahweh declares, until I have destroyed it by his hand.” (Jeremiah 27:6-8)
But twenty chapters later, Jeremiah announced the “vengeance of the Lord” on the Babylonians and called on their Persian enemies to “slaughter and curse with destruction every last one of them” (50:21). In the same spirit, the author of Psalm 137 wrote: “Daughter of Babel, doomed to destruction, […] a blessing on anyone who seizes your babies and shatters them against a rock!” The reason for this violent shift in Yahweh’s sentiment was that the situation had changed: in 555 BC, a prince named Nabonad seized power in Babylon. He made war against the Persian king Cyrus (Koresch). It is believed, by Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz in particular, that the Judean exiles in Babylon sided secretly with the Persians, and perhaps “opened secret negotiations with Cyrus.” That would explain “the kindness shown later on to the Judeans by the Persian warrior, and their persecution by Nabonad.”[6]
Attack likely to inflame tensions, potentially spark new conflict in Middle East.
BAGHDAD — The United States killed Iran’s top general and the architect of Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport early on Friday, an attack that threatens to dramatically ratchet up tensions in the region.
The targeted killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, could draw forceful Iranian retaliation against American interests in the region and spiral into a far larger conflict between the U.S. and Iran, endangering U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and beyond.
The Defense Department said it killed Soleimani because he “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” It also accused Soleimani of approving the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that a “harsh retaliation is waiting” for the U.S.
Iranian state TV carried a statement by Khamenei also calling Soleimani “the international face of resistance.” Khamenei declared three days of public mourning for the general’s death.
Also, an adviser to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani warned President Donald Trump of retaliation from Tehran. “Trump through his gamble has dragged the U.S. into the most dangerous situation in the region,” Hessameddin Ashena wrote on the social media app Telegram. “Whoever put his foot beyond the red line should be ready to face its consequences.”
Later commentary on Iranian state TV called Trump’s order to kill Soleimani “the biggest miscalculation by the U.S.” in the years since World War II. “The people of the region will no longer allow Americans to stay,” the TV said.
The airport strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, and five others, including the PMF’s airport protocol officer, Mohammed Reda, Iraqi officials said.
Trump was vacationing on his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, but sent out a tweet of an American flag.
The dramatic attack comes at the start of a year in which Trump faces both a Senate trial following his impeachment by the U.S. House and a re-election campaign. It marks a potential turning point in the Middle East and represents a drastic change for American policy toward Iran after months of tensions.
Tehran shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone and seized oil tankers. The U.S. also blames Iran for a series of attacks targeting tankers, as well as a September assault on Saudi’s oil industry that temporarily halved production.
The tensions take root in Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, struck under his predecessor, Barack Obama.
The 62-year-old Soleimani was the target of Friday’s U.S. attack, which was conducted by an armed American drone, according to a U.S. official. His vehicle was struck on an access road near the Baghdad airport.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 18 December 2019 06:30.
The American Enterprise Institute is a major (((neocon))) thinkthank, that conjures up ways to get poor White American boys to fight wars to “secure the realm around Israel” - i.e. Operation Clean Sweep/Project for a New American Century; and, in the case of the war in Afghanistan, to secure the opium cash crop for a corporation like the Sacklers to exploit; then if these White boys come home alive, albeit dismembered and/or mentally destroyed, they are prescribed the Sackler’s opioid product, Oxycontin, to deaden their pain until they are haplessly unable to head a family, eventually die off of an overdose or other indirect consequences of their trauma .... no worry, keep the borders open to replace their sacrifice with non-Whites.
AEI peddled fabricated stores for Purdue that Oxycontin is innocuous.
The AEI, a Major Neocon Thinktank, Implicated in the Sackler Family’s Opioid Crisis
As in The Culture of Critique, this was a top-down movement based ultimately on fake science created at the highest levels of the academic medical establishment, motivated by payoffs to a whole host of people ranging from the highest levels of the academic-medical establishment down to sales reps and general practitioner physicians.
Now Tucker Carlson has uncovered another angle intimately tied to our new Jewish elite: the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The AEI figured prominently in my article “Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement,” published in 2004:
Jewish intellectual and political movements also have typically had ready access to prestigious mainstream media outlets, and this is certainly true for the neocons. Most notable are the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The Public Interest, Basic Books (book publishing), and the media empires of Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch owns the Fox News Channel and the New York Post, and is the main source of funding for Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard—all major neocon outlets.
A good example illustrating these connections is Richard Perle. Perle is listed as a Resident Fellow of the AEI, and he is on the boards of directors of the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger Corporation, a media company controlled by Conrad Black. Hollinger owns major media properties in the US (Chicago Sun-Times), England (the Daily Telegraph), Israel (Jerusalem Post), and Canada (the National Post; fifty percent ownership with CanWest Global Communications, which is controlled by Israel Asper and his family; CanWest has aggressively clamped down on its journalists for any deviation from its strong pro-Israel editorial policies. Hollinger also owns dozens of smaller publications in the US, Canada, and England. All of these media outlets reflect the vigorously pro-Israel stance espoused by Perle. Perle has written op-ed columns for Hollinger newspapers as well as for the New York Times.
Neoconservatives such as Jonah Goldberg and David Frum also have a very large influence on National Review, formerly a bastion of traditional conservative thought in the US. Neocon think tanks such as the AEI have a great deal of cross-membership with Jewish activist organizations such as AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy [which produces pro-Israel propaganda]. (When President George W. Bush addressed the AEI on Iraq policy, the event was fittingly held in the Albert Wohlstetter Conference Center.) A major goal of the AEI is to maintain a high profile as pundits in the mainstream media. A short list would include AEI fellow Michael Ledeen, who is extreme even among the neocons in his lust for war against all Muslim countries in the Middle East, is “resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the AEI,” writes op-ed articles for The Scripps Howard News Service and the Wall Street Journal, and appears on the Fox News Channel. Michael Rubin, visiting scholar at AEI, writes for the New Republic (controlled by staunchly pro-Israel Martin Peretz), the New York Times, and the Daily Telegraph. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a resident fellow at the AEI and director of the Middle East Initiative at the Project for a New American Century [a neocon group], writes for the Weekly Standard and the New York Times. Another prominent AEI member is David Wurmser who formerly headed the Middle East Studies Program at the AEI until assuming a major role in providing intelligence disinformation in the lead up to the war in Iraq. His position at the AEI was funded by Irving Moscowitz, a wealthy supporter of the settler movement in Israel and neocon activism in the US.[2] At the AEI Wurmser wrote op-ed pieces for the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal. His book, Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, advocated that the United States should use military force to achieve regime change in Iraq. The book was published by the AEI in 1999 with a Foreword by Richard Perle.
Given this history—and understanding the Sacklers’ modus operandi—I should not have been surprised that AEI has been involved in promoting false, Purdue-funded research that doubtless had a prominent role in creating the crisis. Here’s Tucker’s segment:
Tucker Carlson on the Opioid Crisis & Corrupt Conservative Think Tanks Defending Big Pharma
“If you’re starting to suspect that the Conservative Establishment doesn’t really represent your interests, there’s a reason for that. They’re every bit as corrupt as you think they are.”
video
2:55 PM - Dec 6, 2019
In my 2017 article I described how Purdue funded research that found that Oxycontin was not significantly addictive.
Purdue essentially created a very large community of people who benefited financially from prescribing opioids. They set up and funded organizations that lobbied for more aggressive treatment of pain by treatment with opioids. Millions were funneled into organizations like the American Pain Society and the American Academy of Pain Medicine and Purdue’s own advocacy group, Partners Against Pain, as well as to medical professionals willing to provide data supporting the movement. Purdue hired an army of sales reps to promote opioids to all medical personnel, from doctors to physician assistants. A consistent part of the pitch was to minimize addiction rates. Purdue claimed addiction rates were less than 1% by cherry picking studies that did not examine the effects of long-term use. Other studies often showed much higher rates, as high as 50%. This misrepresentation was at the root of the $600M judgement against Purdue obtained by the US government.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. My Administration is committed to combating the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incidents in the United States and around the world. Anti-Semitic incidents have increased since 2013, and students, in particular, continue to face anti Semitic harassment in schools and on university and college campuses.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), 42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq., prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving Federal financial assistance. While Title VI does not cover discrimination based on religion, individuals who face discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin do not lose protection under Title VI for also being a member of a group that shares common religious practices. Discrimination against Jews may give rise to a Title VI violation when the discrimination is based on an individual’s race, color, or national origin.
It shall be the policy of the executive branch to enforce Title VI against prohibited forms of discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism as vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination prohibited by Title VI.
Sec. 2. Ensuring Robust Enforcement of Title VI. (a) In enforcing Title VI, and identifying evidence of discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, all executive departments and agencies (agencies) charged with enforcing Title VI shall consider the following:
(i) the non-legally binding working definition of anti Semitism adopted on May 26, 2016, by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which states, “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities”; and
(ii) the “Contemporary Examples of Anti-Semitism” identified by the IHRA, to the extent that any examples might be useful as evidence of discriminatory intent.
(b) In considering the materials described in subsections (a)(i) and (a)(ii) of this section, agencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment. As with all other Title VI complaints, the inquiry into whether a particular act constitutes discrimination prohibited by Title VI will require a detailed analysis of the allegations.
Sec. 3. Additional Authorities Prohibiting Anti-Semitic Discrimination. Within 120 days of the date of this order, the head of each agency charged with enforcing Title VI shall submit a report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, identifying additional nondiscrimination authorities within its enforcement authority with respect to which the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism could be considered.
Sec. 4. Rule of Construction. Nothing in this order shall be construed to alter the evidentiary requirements pursuant to which an agency makes a determination that conduct, including harassment, amounts to actionable discrimination, or to diminish or infringe upon the rights protected under any other provision of law.
Sec. 5. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
DONALD J. TRUMP
THE WHITE HOUSE,
December 11, 2019.
In Era of Hardening Identities, Trump Order on Jews Kindles Questions Old and New
The New York Times, 15 Dec. 2019:
The president said he wanted to target anti-Semitic speech on campuses, but in the time of new nationalism, nothing is really that simple.
President Trump’s executive order targeting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel speech on campuses might be framed as a narrow legal matter, but it has touched on a defining issue of our time: Who belongs, and who decides?
The order is ambiguous as to whether it sees Jews as a distinct nationality or a minority race, but either interpretation aligns with Mr. Trump’s preoccupation with defining, and policing, the boundaries of identity.
And the order’s creation of special status for Jews, but not other religious minorities, follows Mr. Trump’s habit of welcoming some demographic groups into the rights and protections of American identity and excluding others. Tellingly, the singling out of Jews for special protection in the order left some feeling still more exposed.
Such preoccupations with identity have animated not just the Trump administration but much of the global populist backlash. Leaders and movements across the democratic world are increasingly focused on enforcing narrow national identities of the sort that defined the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The era of hardening national identities includes the rise of far-right parties in Europe, white nationalism in the United States and a campaign for Hindu dominance in India.
Mr. Trump’s order, however narrow its intentions, underscores the degree to which the problems and contradictions of national identity — a distinctly modern invention that remade the world before almost destroying it — remain unresolved.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 07 December 2019 10:55.
Claire Khaw continues to sponsor directions which are beyond abject irresponsibility, to what is outright egregious misdirection for White people. This time by means of two fools, “Focken” and “Ovfuckyou”, who insist upon misrepresenting White Nationalism as synonymous with Hitler and Nazism.
Hitler was not a White Nationalist. “White” stands for the genus of European peoples and nations. Hitler was a German supremacist and imperialist, who was bound to create the catastrophe that he did for his world view, its epistemological blunders.
Donald Trump and Gen. Qassem Soleimani (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)
Related at Majorityrights
AEI peddled fabricated stores for Purdue that Oxycontin is innocuous.
