China / Jews vs. U.S.
From Dick Eastman
Board of Directors
Chairman & CEO
Howard I. Smith
Vice-Chairman of the board
Ellen V. Futter
Frank J. Hoenemeyer*Richard C. Holbrooke
Edward E. Matthews* Martin J. Sullivan
Thomas R. Tizzo*Edmund S. W. Tse
Maurice R. Greenberg
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AIG
76 years old
#106 on Forbes Worlds Richest People
Net Worth: $3.4 bil
Mr Greenberg is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American International Group, Inc. (AIG), a leading global insurance and financial services organization operating in 130 countries and jurisdictions worldwide (
click here for history of the company). He was President and Chief Executive Officer of AIG from 1967 to 1989, when he became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Mr Greenberg joined AIG in 1960 and was elected President of its American Home Assurance Company subsidiary in 1962.
Mr Greenberg served in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II and in the Korean conflict, rising to the rank of Captain. He is a recipient of the Bronze Star. He received his pre-law certificate from the University of Miami and an LL.B. from New York Law School in 1950. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1953. He has been granted honorary degrees from a number of institutions, including New York Law School, Brown University and Middlebury College.
He is the
Former Chairman, Deputy Chairman and Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Within the AIG Group, he is President, Chief Execurtive Officer and Director of C.V. Starr and Co., Inc. He is also a Director of Starr International Company, Inc. ('SICO'), private holding companies, and a Director of International Lease Finance Corporation ('ILFC') (a wholly owned subsidiary of AIG).
Chairman of the Board for Transatlantic Holdings
Member of the President's Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations (ACTPN)
Member of the Corporate Accountablility & Listing Standards Committee of the NYSE
Honorary Vice Chairman of the Council on Foreign RelationsMember of the Trilateral Commission
Member of The Bilberberg Group (attendee of 1991 meeting)
Former Vice Chairman, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Chairman of The Starr Foundation
Vice Chairman of the US-ASEAN Business Council
Founding Chairman of the US - Phillipine Business Committee
Director of the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA)Director of the Institute for International Economics
Director of the Atlantic Council of the United States
Trustee of the United States Council for International Business
Trustee Emeriti of the Rockefeller University
Member of the Hong Kong Chief Executive’s Council of International Advisors
Director of The National Committee on United States-China Relations
Director of the US-China Business Council
Member of the Business Roundtable
Trustee of the Manhattan Institute
Trustee of the Asia Society
Chairman of the Congressional Economic Leadership Institute
Chairman of the Starr Foundation
Director of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Honorary Trustee of the Business Council for International Understanding
Member of CECP (Corporate Philanthropy for a New Century)Member of The National Coalition on Asia and International Studies in the Schools
Patron of the American Australian Association
Board of Overseers of Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Life Trustee of the New York University
Bush “Pioneer” (raised $100,000 + for his 2000 Presidential election campaign)Sept. 19th 2002: Awarded “Civil Society Vision Award” from the American Friends of the Czech Republic.
2001: Awarded “Person of the Year” by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce
Awarded `The Eisenhower Service to Democracy Awards’ from The American Assembly
2002: Awarded the “ Albert Gallatin Medal” by New York University
Sons: Evan and Jeffrey
Howard I. Smith
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Vice-Chairman of the Board, American International Group
Mr. Smith joined AIG in 1984 as Vice President and Comptroller from Coopers & Lybrand, where he had been the partner in charge of the firm's New York office insurance practice. He was named Senior Vice President and Comptroller in 1987, and Executive Vice President and Comptroller in 1995. Mr. Smith became AIG's Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Comptroller in 1996, and at that time also assumed responsibility for AIG's Treasury, Investor Relations, Credit and Market Risk Management functions.
Director of Transatlantic Holdings
Director of 21st Century Insurance
Also serves as a director of Starr, SICO and ILFC
He is on the
Advisory Board of The Merrill Lynch Center at Hofstra University
M. Bernard Aidinoff
M. Bernard Aidinoff is
Senior Counsel to the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, from which he retired as a partner on December 31, 1996. Prior to joining Sullivan & Cromwell, he served as Law Clerk to Judge Learned Hand of the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. He is a director at AIG, a member of the Advisory Board of BNA Tax Management, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for a Civil Society and serves as Treasurer and a Director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.President of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1977-1978
He is also a
member of the Council on Foreign Relations
Eli Broad
#51 on Forbes Worlds Richest People
Net Worth: $5.2 billion
Eli Broad is a renowned business leader, "venture philanthropist" and supporter of higher education and the arts. He is chairman of
SunAmerica Inc., a leading financial services company specializing in retirement savings, and serves on the board of SunAmerica's parent company, American International Group, Inc. He sold SunAmerica to AIG in 1998 for $18 billion. He is founder- chairman of KB Home (formerly Kaufman and Broad Home Corporation).
Mr. Broad was the founding chairman of the board of trustees of The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), and is currently a trustee and member of the executive committee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). In 1984, he established
The Broad Art Foundation to foster the study and appreciation of art created in the last quarter of the 20th century. Through an active lending library program, works from its collection have been loaned to more than 400 museums and university galleries worldwide. He setup The Broad Foundation with his wife in 1999.
An avid supporter of higher education, Mr. Broad recently made a major contribution to the School of Arts and Architecture at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), toward the construction of a new visual arts facility, to be named the Edythe and Eli Broad Art Center. In 1991, Mr. Broad endowed
The Eli Broad College of Business and The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management at Michigan State University, from which he was graduated cum laude in 1954. He is a member of the board of trustees of the California Institute of Technology, where he gave the cornerstone gift to create the Broad Center for the Biological Sciences. His commitment to higher education also includes prior service as chairman of the board of trustees of Pitzer College and vice chairman of the board of trustees of the California State University.
Pei-Yuan Chia
Mr. Chia was vice chairman of Citicorp and Citibank, N.A., its principal subsidiary, from 1994 to 1996 when he retired. From 1993 to 1996, he served as a director of Citicorp and Citibank, N.A., and assumed responsibility for their global consumer business in 1992. Between 1974 and 1992, Mr. Chia held various senior management positions in Citicorp and Citibank, N.A. and was Citibank, N.A.’s senior customer contact for corporate banking activities in Asia.
Role in the
Salinas – Citibank affair
He also served as
director of CNH Global Inc for several years.
Mr. Chia also serves as:
Director of American International Group
Director of Baxter International, IncDirector of the Bank of China (Hong Kong) Ltd
Director of CNH Global IncTrustee of the Asia Society
Senior Fellow of the CSI Center for Advanced Studies in Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Marshall A. Cohen
Mr. Marshall Cohen O.C., Q.C., Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP
67 years old
Mr. Cohen retired as President and Chief Executive Officer of The Molson Companies Limited in 1996. He served with the Government of Canada for 15 years, including appointments as Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade & Commerce, Energy, Mines & Resources, and Finance. He is a director of a number of public companies and a member of various non-profit boards and organizations.
Mr. Cohen is a former International Councillor for The Center for Strategic & International Studies, a member of the Executive Committee of The British-North American Committee and a former member of The Trilateral Commission. He was also the Chairman of the International Trade Advisory Committee for the Government of Canada and is Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Schulich School of Business at York University.
A graduate of the University of Toronto, Osgoode Hall Law School and York University, Mr. Cohen was called to the bar in 1960. Mr. Cohen received the Order of Canada in 1993. (
source)Director of Barrick Gold Corporation (since 1988)Director of American International Group Inc
Director of Lafarge Corporation
Director of The Toronto-Dominion Bank Director of Collins & Aikman Corporation
Director of Haynes International, Inc
Director of Metaldyne Corporation
Director of Premcor Inc, The Premcor Refining Group, Inc, Premcor USA Inc.
Member of the International Advisory Committee at
The Blackstone GroupDean's Advisory Council of Schulich School of Business at York University, Canada
Barber B. Conable, Jr
Barber Conable retired on September 1, 1991, after more than
five years as President of the World Bank, headquartered in Washington, D.C. The World Bank is a multinational institution promoting economic growth in order to improve the quality of life of poor people in the developing world.
Mr. Conable was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965-1985. He served on the Ways and Means Committee for 18 years, the last 8 as its ranking minority member. For 14 years he served in various capacities in the House Republican leadership. He was also a member for shorter periods of time of the Joint Economic Committee, the House Budget Committee, and the House Ethics Committee.
On March 11, 1985
he was appointed by Reagan to the Chemical Warfare Review Commission, along with Brzezinski. At the time he was a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
In November 1985, President Reagan
appointed him to be a member of the President's Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management.
Following his retirement from Congress he was on the boards of 4 multinational corporations and the Board of the New York Exchange. He was also named a Distinguished Professor of the University of Rochester.
Following his retirement from the World Bank, he has served on 4 corporate boards of directors. He was on the Executive Committee of the Cornell University Board of Trustees, the Boards of both the Museum of the American Indian and the American History Museum at the Smithsonian, the Commission on Global Governance (an independent UN-related Commission), and the Security and Exchange Commission's Advisory Committee on Capital Formation and Regulatory Processes. He was a member of the Senior Advisory Committee and the Global Environmental Facility. He also serves on the Board of the Genesee Country Museum, and on the New York State Commission on Student Aid.
Mr. Conable graduated from Cornell University (A.B., 1942; LL.B., 1948). He is married, has four children, and resides in Alexander, NY. He was born November 2, 1922, in Warsaw, NY.
Director of AIG
Director of AIG GlobalMember of the Council on Foreign RelationsDirector of the National Committee on US-China Relations
Member of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution
Emeritus Member of the Board of Trustees for Cornell University
Robert L. Crandall
The Wall Street Journal has called Robert L. Crandall, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AMR Corporation and American Airlines, "the man who changed the way the world flies." During his 25-year tenure at American Airlines, Crandall was instrumental in introducing several changes which revolutionized the travel industry.
In 1973, Crandall sponsored a project to modernize American's SABRE computer reservations system, thus laying the groundwork for what eventually became The SABRE Group, now a leading provider of computing and communications services for airlines throughout the world. In 1975, Crandall created Super Saver fares, which introduced the concept of deep discounts for advance-purchase tickets. Subsequently, he led the development of the industry's first yield management system, a revenue-maximizing approach now used throughout the airline industry. In 1980, he created AAdvantage, the industry's first frequent flyer program, and in 1983, launched an expansion program which more than tripled American's size and transformed it from a medium-sized domestic carrier to one of the world's leading international airlines with revenues of more than $20 billion.
Mr. Crandall's experience as an airline executive also includes six years with TWA where he rose to vice president-data services and later vice president and controller. Earlier, he held finance management positions with Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York, and Hallmark Cards in Kansas City.
“In 1982, former company president Robert L. Crandall was tape-recorded offering to increase prices if a competitor did. "Raise your goddamn fares 20 percent and I'll raise mine the next morning," he told Howard Putnam, president of now-defunct Braniff Inc., who was secretly recording the profanity-laden conversation. "You'll make more money and I will, too," Crandall said. Putnam declined the offer and promptly turned in Crandall.
After losing in the lower court, Justice convinced the 5th Circuit in 1984 that Crandall's offer to fix prices was illegal, even though the offer was declined. That's a key decision, because much of the government's case against Microsoft hinges on allegations that the company proposed dividing markets with rivals such as Apple Corp. -- offers that were rebuffed.” –
Washington Post, November 20, 1998
Among the many national and trade publications that have honored Mr. Crandall for his achievements and executive leadership are Business Week, Industry Week, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Financial World, and Air Transport World. In April 1997, Mr. Crandall received the Horatio Alger Award, which honors individuals who have achieved success despite challenging life circumstances.
A native of Westerly, R.I., he is a 1957 graduate of the University of Rhode Island and received a master's degree in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1960.
Mr. Crandall and his wife, Jan, live in Dallas. They have three adult children.
In July 2002 he was
named in a lawsuit, along with the other directors of Halliburton (including current Vice President Dick Cheney) “for alleged fraudulent accounting practices which resulted in the overvaluation of the company’s shares, thereby deceiving investors and others.”Director of Anixter, Inc
Director of Celestica, Inc (since 1998)Director of Clear Channel Communications, Inc
Director of Halliburton Company (since 1986)Director of i2 Technologies, Inc
Director of Allied World Assurance Company (a wholly owned AIG subsiduary)Investor at Metapoint Partners
Business Advisory Council to University of Rhode Island College of Business Administration
(he also served as director of American Express from 1998- 2001)
Martin S Feldstein
Dr. Feldstein has been professor of economics at Harvard University since 1967 and holds the George F. Baker chair in economics. He is also president and chief executive officer of the National Bureau of Economic Research and, previously,
chaired the Council of Economic Advisers. He advised the senior President Bush and aggressively supported the current President Bush's tax and Social Security proposals during the 2000 campaign. He has also been cited as a potential replacement for Alan Greenspan when he steps down as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
At Harvard, Feldstein acted as advisor to
Lawrence Lindsey. Lindsey was elected to the board of the Federal Reserve by Bush Sr, and after aiding Bush Jr’s economic proposals for his election campaign, was picked to be Bush’s top economic advisor.
He is the author of numerous papers and books on economic issues and policy, including Economic and Financial Crises in Emerging Market Economies; Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation; The United States in the World Economy; Reducing the Risk of Economic Crisis; and American Economic Policy in the 1980s.
He is married to Kathleen Feldstein. She is President of Economic Studies, Inc, and serves as a
director of Bell South Corp, a director of the Bank of America, a director of John Hancock Financial Services, a director of Ionic Inc, a director of Knight Ridder and a director of Polaris Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd
President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research
George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University
Director of American International Group
Director of TRW (since 1984)Director of HCA
Member of the International Council of Advisors at JP Morgan Chase
Member
of the International Advisory Board to DaimlerChryslerMember of the
Board of advisors to the Federal Reserve Bank of New YorkMember of the International Advisory Board at Robeco
Director of the Council on Foreign RelationsMember of the Trilateral Commission
Member of the Bilderberg Group (attendee of the 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2002 conference)Director of the Economics Research Network (where he is also an advisor to the `Public Economics’ wing)Director of the National Committee on US-China relations Member of the World Economic Forum
Member of the Board of Advisors to the Congressional Budget Office
President Elect of the American Economic Association
Member of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Kiel Institute of World Economics
National Officer of the Omicron Delta Epsilon fraternity
Fellow of the Econometric Society
Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy
Member of the American Philosophical society
Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Member of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences
Member of the China Economics Network
Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Honorary Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford
Daimler-Chrysler Advisory Board (unable to confirm) - http://www.nber.org/feldstein/cv.htm
Ellen V. Futter
President of the American Museum of Natural History
Ellen V. Futter is
President of the American Museum of Natural History. She previously served as President of Barnard College for thirteen years.
Ms. Futter was graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, from Barnard in 1971. She earned her J.D. degree from Columbia Law School in 1974. She was elected to the Board of Trustees of Barnard as a student representative in 1971 and was subsequently elected to full membership to complete the term of Arthur Goldberg, former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. She began her career as an associate at the Wall Street firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy where she practiced corporate law. In 1980, Ms. Futter took a leave of absence from Milbank, Tweed to serve as Barnard's Acting President for one year. At the end of that period, she was appointed President of the College and served in that capacity until 1993 when she joined the Museum.
Born in New York City on September 21, 1949, Ms. Futter attended high school in Port Washington, New York. Before transferring to Barnard College, she spent two years at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Ms. Futter is a director of a number of corporations and not-for-profit organizations. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
Advisory Board of the Yale School of Management, the steering committee of the Financial Services Volunteer Corps, director of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, National Institute of Social Sciences and the Academy of American Poets, as well as of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the New York State and American Bar Associations.
She formerly served as Chairman of the Board of New York Federal Reserve Bank and Chairman of the Commission on Women's Health of The Commonwealth Fund. She has received numerous honorary degrees, including from
Yale, and awards.
She is currently:
Director of
American International GroupDirector of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co
Director of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
Director of Consolidated Edison, Inc
Member of the Council on Foreign Relations
Board of Overseers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
(and also a director of the American Museum of Natural History)
Carla A. Hills
Carla A. Hills is chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hills & Company, International Consultants. The firm provides advice to U.S. businesses on investment, trade, and risk assessment issues abroad, particularly in emerging market economies of East and South Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the independent republics of the Former Soviet Union.
Hills co-founded the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles & Hills, where she was a partner from 1962-1974. She was an Adjunct Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles Law School, teaching antitrust law, and co-authored the Antitrust Adviser, which was published by McGraw-Hill. Among other offices, she was president of the National Association of Women Lawyers in 1965 and she also served as president of the Federal Bar Association
She was first offered an appointment as assistant US Attorney by Elliot L. Richardson in 1973, but he resigned shortly thereafter during the Watergate scandal. The offer was renewed by his successor, William B. Saxbe, in 1974. From 1974 to 1975, she was Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice. In 1975, Carla Hills was named by Republican President Gerald Ford as
Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, becoming the third woman in the US to hold a cabinet-level position. Her lack of relevant experience was somewhat controversial during the appointment hearings. In the same year she was named as on of Time Magazine’s Women of the Year. She was succeeded - when Democratic President Jimmy Carter took office - by Patricia Robert Harris, in 1977.
Hills was chairman of the Urban Institute from 1983 through 1988, and was a member of the Executive Committee of the American Agenda, co-chaired by Presidents Ford and Carter. In 1981-1982, she served as Vice-Chairman of President Reagan's Commission on Housing and in 1985-1986 as a member of the President's Commission on Defense Management. Hills has been active in the American Bar Association, serving as Chairman of the Antitrust Section 1982-1983, and as Chairman of the Conference of Section Chairmen in 1983-1984.
Hills
served as United States Trade Representative from 1989 -1993. As a member of President Bush's Cabinet, Hills was the President's principal advisor on international trade policy. She was also the nation's chief trade negotiator, representing American interests in multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations throughout the world. A free trade advocate, Hills was the primary US negotiator of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Born in Los Angeles, California, Hills received her bachelor's degree from Stanford University and received her law degree from Yale University in 1958, marrying Roderick M. Hills in the same year. She has also studied at Oxford University.
She has previously served as a trustee of the Brookings Institution and the
Rand Corporation, and as a director of AT&T, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Corning Glass Works, the Bechel Group, United Airlines and the Federal National Mortgage Association and for the US-China Business Council. She also served in 2000 as an advisor to the Presidents Appointee Initiative of the Brookings Institute and as a Co-Chair of the ` U.S. National Interests and the Western Hemisphere’ project for the American Assembly.Director of AOL Time Warner
Director of American International Group
Director of Lucent Technologies (since 1996)
Director of
TCW GroupVice-Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (where she co-chaired the ` Independent Task Force on America's Response to Terrorism’)Member of the Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission
Member of the Bilderberg Group (attendee of the 2002 meeting)Chairman of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations
Director of the Institute for International Economics
Founding member and trustee of the Forum for International Policy. Trustee & Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of CSIS
Member of the Inter-American Dialogue
Trustee of the Asia Society
Life Trustee of the Urban Institute
Trustee of International Commercial Diplomacy Project Advisory Council of the Korea Society
Advisory Board of Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba
Frank J. Hoenemeyer
Mr. Hoenemeyer has served as Vice Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Prudential Insurance Company of America. He oversaw the company’s investments during a period in which it assembled the world’s largest real estate and securities investment portfolio and became a leader in real estate, leveraged buyout and venture capital investments. Mr. Hoenemeyer earned a BS in Economics from Xavier University in Cincinnati and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1947 he joined Prudential as a securities analyst where he rose to become Executive Vice President, Chief Investment Officer and a member of the Executive Office, then a Director and Vice Chairman of the Board.
Mr. Hoenemeyer serves on the Boards of American International Group and Cincinnati, Inc. He is also
director (and ex-Chairman) of the Turrell Fund.
He is also a
trustee emeritis of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Richard C. Holbrooke
Richard C. Holbrooke is a
Vice Chairman of Perseus. He most recently served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1999 until 2001 and was a member of President Clinton’s cabinet.
Ambassador Holbrooke began his career as a Foreign Service Officer immediately after graduating from Brown University in 1962. He was sent to Vietnam and in the following six years served in a variety of posts related to Vietnam -- first in the Mekong Delta as a provincial representative for the Agency for International Development (AID), and then as staff assistant to Ambassadors Maxwell Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge. In 1966 he was re- assigned to the White House on President Johnson's staff, working on Vietnam. In 1967-69, he wrote one volume of The Pentagon Papers, served as a special assistant to Under Secretaries of State Nicholas deB. Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson, and simultaneously served as a member of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam, headed successively by Averell Harriman and Henry Cabot Lodge.
Following these assignments, Ambassador Holbrooke spent a year as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. In 1970 he was assigned as
Peace Corps Director in Morocco. In 1972, he left the Foreign Service to become Managing Editor of the quarterly magazine Foreign Policy, a position he held until 1976. During 1974-75, he also served as a consultant to the President's Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, and was a contributing editor to Newsweek International. In 1976 he coordinated national security affairs for the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign. In 1977, President Carter appointed him Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, a post he held until 1981. (He is the only person ever to hold the position of Assistant Secretary of two different regional bureaus in the State Department.) During his tenure in the East Asia Bureau, among other events, the United States established full diplomatic relations with China.
In 1981, he became vice president of Public Strategies, a Washington-based consulting firm founded by him and James A. Johnson. He became a Managing Director at Lehman Brothers, a New York investment bank, in 1985. He also served as a member of the Carnegie Commission on America and a Changing World (chaired by Ambassador Winston Lord), and was chairman and principal author of the November 1992 bipartisan "Memorandum to the President-Elect" of the Commission on Government and Renewal, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation and the Institute for International Economics.
He was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1993-1994 before being appointed by President Clinton as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs in 1994. During that time, he was also chief negotiator for the historic 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia.
He served as vice chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston, a New York based investment bank, from 1996-1999. During the same period he served on a pro-bono basis as the Special Presidential Envoy for Cyprus, and a Special Envoy in Bosnia and Kosovo, where he negotiated the October 1998 agreement, and, after it was violated, delivered the final ultimatum to Belgrade on March 23, 1999, prior to the NATO bombing campaign.
He has received twelve honorary degrees from U.S. and international universities and numerous awards (separate list attached). He is the author of To End a War, (published 1998, and selected as one of the eleven best books of the year by The New York Times) and co-author of Counsel to the President, (1991) the best-selling memoirs of Clark Clifford, as well as numerous articles on foreign policy. He was chairman of Refugees International from 1996 to 1999 and was twice a member of the board of the International Rescue Committee. He was the Founding Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, a center for U.S.-German cultural exchange. He headed the National Advisory Council of the Harriman Institute. He was a director of the Citizens Committee for New York City, and twice has been a director of the Council on Foreign Relations. Other boards he has served on include the American China Society and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Ambassador Holbrooke was born on April 24, 1941 in New York. He has two sons. He is married to the author, Kati Marton.
In 1999 he was investigated by the
Office of Inspector General for failure to disclose Financial Disclosure Information
He is also:
Director of
AIGDirector of Human Genome Sciences
Director of the Council on Foreign RelationsBoard of Advisors to Foreign Affairs Magazine (the magazine of the CFR)Member of the Trilateral CommissionChairman of the American Academy in Berlin
Director of The American Council on Germany
Director of the National Endowment for Democracy
Member of the World Economic Forum
Advisory Council of the Tanenbaum Center
President/CEO of the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS
Director of Refugees International Director of Telluride Foundation
Director of the Citizens Committee for NYC
He also spoke recently to the `McGraw-Hill Companies Homeland Security Summit’ along with other luminaries such as Brent Scowcroft and Paul Bremer III.
Edward E. Matthews
Senior Vice-Chairman, Investments & Financial Services, American International Group
He is also a
director of Transatlantic Holdings, Starr, SICO and ILFC
He also serves on the
International Capital Markets Advisory Committee to the directors of the NYSE.
He is also a
trustee emeritus of Princeton University.
Martin J. Sullivan
Executive Vice President, Foreign General Insurance, American International Group, Inc
He joined the company in the Finance Department of AIG’s non- life company in the UK, AIU in 1971. In 1974, he joined the Property Department and held a succession of underwriting and management assignments in the U.K. and Ireland. In 1983, Mr. Sullivan was appointed Property Manager for the U.K. and later Regional Property Manager for the U.K./Ireland.
In 1988, he was named Manager of AIU’s London office and Regional Marketing Manager for the U.K./ Ireland. Mr. Sullivan was appointed Assistant Managing Director of AIG Europe (U.K.) Ltd. in 1989 and Chief Operating Officer in 1991. In 1993 he was named President of AIU’s U.K./Ireland Division and Managing Director of AIG Europe (U.K.) Ltd.
He was elected Senior Vice President, Foreign General Insurance in 1996 and Executive Vice President, Foreign General in 1998. In 1996 he was appointed Chief Operating Officer of AIU in New York and named President of AIU in 1997. He was elected to the Board of AIG and assumed his current responsibilities in May 2002.
Mr. Sullivan is an Associate Member of the
Chartered Insurance Institute, a Fellow of the Institute of Supervisory Management, a Member of the British Institute of Management, a Director of the International Insurance Society and a director of the Geneva Association. He is also Deputy Chairman of British American Business Inc. He also serves as a director of Starr and SICO
Thomas R. Tizzio
Senior Vice Chairman, General Insurance, American International Group
Mr. Tizzio has served as a director of
Transatlantic Holdings since 1990. He has also served as a director of TRC since 1979 and of Putnam since 1990. He serves as Senior Vice Chairman - General Insurance and Director of AIG and a Director of Starr and SICO.
Edmund S. W. Tse
Senior Vice Chairman, Life Insurance, American International Group
Mr. Tse was elected Senior Vice Chairman, Life Insurance in 2001 after serving as Vice Chairman, Life Insurance since 1997, overseeing AIG's worldwide Life operations. Mr. Tse is also Chairman of American International Assurance Company, Ltd.(AIA), AIG's flagship Southeast Asian life insurance company. Mr. Tse began his AIG career in 1961, when he joined AIA in Hong Kong. In 1970, he joined Nan Shan Life Insurance Company, Ltd., an AIG subsidiary in Taiwan, where he became President and Managing Director in 1975. He returned to Hong Kong in 1983 as President and Chief Executive Officer of AIA. Mr. Tse was named AIG Executive Vice President in 1991 and elected to the AIG Board of Directors in 1996. Earlier in his career Mr. Tse served as Chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Insurers and was a member of the Hong Kong Government's Insurance Advisory Council. He also serves as a director of AIG’s subsiduaries
Philamlife, Starr and SICO.
Jay S. Wintrob
Jay S. Wintrob is president and chief executive officer of AIG SunAmerica a member of American International Group, Inc. (AIG). Wintrob has served on the board of directors of AIG SunAmerica since 1997 and AIG since 1999. Wintrob joined AIG SunAmerica in 1987 as assistant to the chairman and later that year was elected a corporate vice president. He has served as senior vice president (appointed 1989), executive vice president (1991), vice chairman (1995), and chief operating officer (1998) prior to assuming his current position. From 1994 through 2000, Wintrob was president of AIG SunAmerica Investments, Inc., overseeing the company's invested asset portfolio. Prior to joining the company, Wintrob was with the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles, specializing in mergers and acquisitions and securities law.
He received his juris doctor degree in 1982 from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and currently serves as a
trustee. Wintrob is a 1979 summa cum laude graduate of the University of California, Berkeley
He is also a
director of United Way of Los Angeles and as a director of AIG subsiduaries Starr and SICO
Frank G. Wisner
Vice Chairman, American International Group
Frank G. Wisner was sworn in as
U.S. Ambassador to India on July 5, 1994 and presented his credentials in New Delhi on August 2, 1994, succeeding Thomas R. Pickering. Mr. Wisner holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest grade in the Senior Foreign Service. Before New Delhi, his most recent assignment was as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, from January 1993 to June 1994. Prior to that, he served as Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs from July 1992 until January 1993.
Mr. Wisner served as
U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines from August 1991 until June 1992; served as Ambassador to Egypt from August 1986 until June 1991; and served as Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs from April 1982 to April 1986. He served as Ambassador to Zambia from August 1979 to April 1982.
Frank G. Wisner joined the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer in December 1961, and after Western Arabic Language training in Morocco, was assigned to Algiers. In 1964, he was detailed to the Agency for International Development in Vietnam. He remained in Vietnam until 1968, serving in succession as Staff Aide to the Deputy Chief of Mission, Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Civil Operation, and Senior Advisor to the Vietnamese province of Tuyen Duc.
Returning to Washington in December 1968, Mr. Wisner was Officer in Charge of Tunisian Affairs in the State Department, where he remained until July 1971, when he was named chief of the EconomicCommercial Section at the American Embassy in Tunis. He then serviced as chief of the Political Section in Dhaka from July 1973 until March 1974. From March 1974 until April 1975, Mr. Wisner was Director of Plans and Management in the Bureau of Public Affairs in Washington. He then joined the President's Interagency Task Force on Indochina. He was Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Joseph Sisco, from August 1975 until July 1976. Mr. Wisner was named Director of the Office of Southern African Affairs in July 1976, then Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of State in April 1977.
Frank Wisner was born in New York in 1938. He graduated from Princeton University with a B.A. degree in 1961. He is married to the former Christine de Ganay. They have four children.
He is also:
Director of EOG Resources (formerly Enron Oil & Gas Company)Director of Ethan Allen Interiors IncVice-Chairman of the Business Council for International Understanding
Director of the US-Saudi Arabian Business Council
Founding Chairman & presently Vice Chairman of the US Bangladesh Business Council
Director of the American-Iranian Council
Director (& past Chairman) of the US – India Business Council
Member of the Council on Foreign RelationsTrustee of International House
Member of the Bilderberg Group (attendee of 1994 meeting)Member of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy
Trustee of the American University in Cairo
Member of the International Advisory Board of the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania
Wisner & Enron: “The US ambassador in New Delhi, Frank G. Wisner, put enormous pressure on India to stop Enron being thrown out of the country. He, too, got a seat on Enron's board when he retired.” (
source)
“The state forces accused of abuses provided security to the Dabhol Power Corporation (DPC), a joint venture of Enron, the Bechtel Corp. and General Electric, overseen by Enron.
The U.S. State Department issued the DPC a human rights clean bill of health. Charged with the assessment was U.S. Ambassador Frank Wisner, who had also helped Enron get a contract to manage a power plant in Subic Bay in the Philippines in 1993. Shortly after leaving his post in India in 1997, Wisner took up an appointment to the board of directors of Enron Oil and Gas, a subsidiary of Enron.
Thanks in part to Wisner's positive rights review, Washington extended some $300 million in loan guarantees to Enron for its investment in Dabhol -- even though the World Bank had refused to finance the project, calling it unviable.” (
source ) (see also)
Wisner’s father & the CIA:
“Mr. Wisner's unique and courageous endeavors established the doctrine for the use of covert action in support of US national security objectives. He served as the Assistant Director of the Office of Policy Coordination, the Deputy Director for Plans (Operations), an overseas assignment as Chief of Station, and as Special Assistant to the DCI. His depth of knowledge in planning and directing clandestine operations contributed greatly to some of the most intricate and challenging undertakings in the early history of the Agency.”
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/press_release/archives/1997/trailblazers.htm
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19960101fareviewessay4181/david-fromkin/daring-amateurism-the-cia-s-social-history.htm http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/coldwarspies.htm , http://www.thenation.com/issue/000612/0612rogin.shtml , http://members.aol.com/bblum6/indo1.htm , http://www.corpwatchindia.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=763
Frank G. Zarb
Frank Zarb is a
Managing Director and Senior Advisor at Hellman & Friedman. Mr. Zarb’s primary area of focus is the financial services industry.
Mr. Zarb is currently Chairman of NIFA (Nassau County Interim Finance Authority) and a Director at American International Group and a
director of Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
Prior to joining the firm in 2002, Mr. Zarb was Chairman of NASD, Inc. and the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Mr. Zarb became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Nasdaq® and its parent organization, the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. (NASD®) in February 1997. He served as Nasdaq CEO until February 2001 and Chairman until September 2001. He served as NASD CEO until October 2000 and Chairman until September 2001. The NASD is the securities industry's largest self-regulatory organization and is the parent of the American Stock Exchange, NASD Regulation, Inc., and NASD Dispute Resolution, Inc.
From June 1994 through January 1997, Mr. Zarb was Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Alexander & Alexander Services, Inc., a global organization of professional advisors providing risk management, insurance brokerage, and human resource management consulting services from offices in more than 80 countries.
Prior to this appointment, Mr. Zarb was a Vice Chairman and Group Chief Executive of The Travelers, Inc. and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Smith Barney, a Travelers subsidiary, which he joined in 1988. He was named Group Chief Executive on June 24, 1993. Mr. Zarb was elected a Vice Chairman of The Travelers, Inc. on September 25, 1991.
During his tenure at Smith Barney, Mr. Zarb oversaw growth in the firm's diversity and its clientele. Most importantly, he directed a series of record performances by the firm-from a pre-tax loss of $100 million in 1988 to a run rate of more than $200 million of after-tax profits in 1993. His responsibilities at The Travelers included direct management of Primerica Financial Services, American Capital Management Research, RCM Capital Management, and corporate administration and legal functions.
Before joining Smith Barney, Mr. Zarb was a senior partner of Lazard Freres & Co. From 1978 to 1988, he was responsible for a broad range of investment banking activities, including international and domestic corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions.
From 1974 through 1977, Mr. Zarb was the senior official for all United States government energy-related activities, serving as Executive Director of the Cabinet-level Energy Resources Council,
Administrator of the Federal Energy Administration, and Assistant to the President for Energy Affairs (the "Energy Czar"). He led the nation's energy response to the first major oil embargo. Prior to those appointments, he had been Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1973 to 1974 and served as Assistant Secretary of Labor between 1971 and 1972. He has served in various assignments with the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations.
Before entering public service, Mr. Zarb acquired considerable experience in the securities industries where he began his career with Goodbody and Co. in 1962. He later served in various capacities for predecessor firms to Shearson Lehman Bros., as Executive Vice President of Marketing, Operations and Investment Banking, as well as Chairman of the Executive Committee.
In addition, Mr. Zarb has served as a member of the Board of Credit Suisse First Boston. He is a former Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange Nominating Committee. He served as Chairman of the Long Island Power Authority, the State agency responsible for overseeing the restructuring of the electric power system of Long Island.
In 1999, the Governor of New York named Mr. Zarb Chairman of the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority, a body assembled to lead a state effort to turn around Nassau County's financial crisis.
Mr. Zarb is a member of the Board of Trustees of the
Gerald R. Ford Foundation. He is a former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, Hofstra University, where he still serves as a Board member. Hofstra named its business school after Mr. Zarb.
Previously, Mr. Zarb was a member of the Mayor's Commission on Homelessness in New York City and led the Privatization Task Force of the New York City Partnership. He also served as Chairman of the Council for the U.S. and Italy.
Mr. Zarb, who earned his B.S. and M.B.A. degrees in business from Hofstra University, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree by the University and the school's Outstanding Scholar Award. The Georgetown University McDonough School of Business conferred an Honorary Doctorate on him in 2000.
He is also a
member of the Council on Foreign Relations.A plan awaiting final approval by the president would set a goal of about 400,000 troops and national police officers, more than twice the forces’ current size.
The officials said Obama was expected to approve a version of the plan in coming days as part of a broader Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. But even members of Obama’s national security team appeared taken aback by the cost projections of the program, which range from $10 billion to $20 billion over the next six or seven years.
"Green New Deal" proposed as latest elitist scam to exploit financial crisis, create building blocks for world government
Here it is folks. Time to write your congress critters.
The EJP’s article continued by quoting Charlotte Knobloch, President of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, who called for Williamson’s incarceration:
“By refusing to retract his malicious lies in which he called into question the genocide of six million Jews, Williamson has again made it clear that he is a convinced anti-Semite.
Charlotte Knobloch
This is a rude, malicious and barbaric insult to all Holocaust victims and their descendants. Germany should now act within the framework of a European arrest warrant on Williamson.” View Entire Story Here.
Articles May Be Reproduced Only With Authorship of Br Nathanael Kapner
& Link To
Real Jew News (SM)======================
Citigroup Plans Big Bonuses Despite Rules Against Them -- TIME
Friday, Mar. 20, 2009
Citigroup Plans Big Bonuses Despite Rules Against Them
By Stephen Gandel
AIG isn't the only bailed-out financial firm paying big bucks to managers who helped steer their company to near collapse. Citigroup has pledged millions of dollars in bonuses to senior executives for the next few years, despite lawmakers efforts to eliminate such payments.
It's not clear whether the bonuses, which Citigroup says are for 2008 but won't start paying out until 2010, will be allowed. Under compensation rules passed by Congress in mid-February, cash bonuses are barred for top executives at bailed-out banks. (See pictures of the global financial crisis.)
But Citi finalized its bonus program shortly before the new rules were introduced. That might make the payments permissible, though they could be made almost worthless by new tax rules just passed by the House of Representatives and headed for consideration in the Senate. Even so, Citigroup's move in January to set in place bonus payments for years to come raises questions about whether it was trying to evade compensation rules it knew were coming.
"If an executive legitimately earns a bonus, then paying it out over a number of years makes a lot of sense,' says Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate at the Corporate Library, which examines issues of corporate governance. "But I find it hard to believe that any top executive at a bailed-out bank would have had the performance in 2008 to generate a multimillion-dollar bonus." (Read "Is Citibank Really Out of the Woods?")
Under Citi's proposed compensation plan, three of the company's top five executives would be paid a total of nearly $12.5 million in cash bonuses over the next five years. One of the executives, James Forese, is a co-head of Citi's Institutional Client Group, which lost $20 billion in 2008. Forese is rewarded $5 million under the plan. At least 15 other Citi executives are in line for multimillion-dollar payouts. Citi declined to say how much in total it has promised under the plan.
According to a proxy statement Citi filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company finalized its bonus plan on Jan. 14. Twelve days later an amendment barring such payments was inserted by the House of Representatives into the $787 billion fiscal stimulus bill, which went into effect on Feb. 17.
A Citigroup spokesman denied that the company did anything wrong, noting the pay packages in question were set a month before the bonus ban became law. "Overall executive compensation [at Citigroup] substantially decreased from 2007 to 2008," the spokesman said. "CEO Vikram Pandit and CFO Gary Crittenden declined any bonus for last year as well. As always, we will comply with the new restrictions on compensation ... in addition to continued adherence to the substantial changes we already have made to our compensation structure.'
The revelations about Citi's bonus plan come at a time when anger over executive pay, particularly in the troubled financial sector, is boiling over. On Thursday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would impose a 90% income tax on all compensation over $250,000 earned by employees at banks that have received more than $5 billion in bailout funds. The Senate is working on its own bill to raise taxes on highly compensated bankers. President Barack Obama indicated he would sign legislation that curtails bonuses.
See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.
See the top 10 financial collapses of 2008.
"In the end, this is a symptom of a larger problem, a bubble-and-bust economy that valued reckless speculation over responsibility and hard work," Obama said in a statement released by the White House. "That is what we must ultimately repair to build a lasting and widespread prosperity."
Citi has also been criticized this week for an estimated $10 million renovation of its executive offices, and reports that the firm was considering boosting salaries for its top executives.
The bonuses for top executives at Citi are particularly surprising because the company is typically seen as the most in danger of failing among the nation's largest banks. Citi has received more government assistance than any other bank: $45 billion in cash infusions and over $300 billion in loan guarantees since late October. By comparison, none of Bank of America's top five executives will receive a cash bonus for 2008.
"There is no question [Citigroup] is violating the spirit of executive-compensation rules,' says Heather Slavkin, who studies executive-pay issues for the AFL-CIO. "Hopefully by the time Citi tries to pay these out we will have gotten over this idea about the sacredness of contracts, and these bonuses won't be allowed either.'
Citi has long deferred the payment of stock options that are granted at the end of the year. Cash bonuses, though, have always been paid at the time they were granted, typically in January for prior-year performance. But this year Citi decided to defer bonus payments for the first time. Instead of paying a lump sum in early 2009 for 2008 performance, payouts would be spread over four years, with the first payouts in January 2010.
For example, Forese, the Institutional Client Group executive, received a salary of $225,000 and was awarded a cash bonus of $5,265,000 for 2008. But he won't get any of his millions yet. Instead, he has a promise from Citi that he will get a check for $1.3 million in January 2010 and three checks for the same amount over the following three years.
On the surface, the plan looks like a good public relations move. At a time when people are angry about bonuses, Citi can say it isn't currently handing out bonuses to its top executives for work they did in 2008. What's more, the Citi bonuses include a provision that allows the bank to "claw back" the money if it is found that an executive made false statements to the company.
The rub is that a provision was inserted into the stimulus package that says the rules do not apply to any bonuses contained in employment contracts signed before Feb. 11. (It is this provision that AIG has cited in defending its controversial bonuses to top executives.) Citi finalized its plan for paying 2008 bonuses in January. But it's unclear whether Citi's deferred-payout plan would be considered a valid employment contract under the rules set out in the stimulus package. The law leaves that up to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to decide.
Compensation experts say that as the government increases its efforts to curtail executive pay, companies will come up with more and more creative ways to keep their employees happy. "Citi may have bent the rules a bit,' says top compensation consultant Alan Johnson. "But if these firms don't come up with some way to pay their people, they are going to be out of business.'
Click to Print Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1886778,00.html
Bob Moriarty
Mar 19, 2009
The US government lit the fuse to the $683 trillion dollar derivative's debt bomb on Wednesday March 18, 2009 with the announcement the Fed would purchase $300 billion dollars worth of US Treasury used toilet paper and an additional $750 billion dollars worth of mortgage backed used toilet paper. In total the commitment to counterfeit over a trillion dollars leaves only $682 trillion dollars worth of derivatives to sort out.
Economics is all about price discovery. No one knows what the real value is of the $683 trillion dollars in derivatives. No one knows who owns what. No one knows who owes what. If left to its own devices, the market would lower prices until all assets had a value to someone. The government in its infinite wisdom has just short-circuited this discovery mechanism.
This is the end of the dollar. Everyone with any sense on earth will be unloading both their treasuries and mortgage-backed crap on the Fed. The Fed has just pissed $1 trillion of counterfeit money into a $683 trillion dollar cesspit. It can't possibly fix the problem. When the world realizes the impact of the Fed monetizing all debt, there will be a total default. And then what happens?
The Mother of All Depressions.
The ability to publicly fund its debt has been what has kept the US government spending. Once that ability is dead, so is the government.
The meeting of the G20 in London on April 2, 2009 will be the most important financial meeting in history. If the delegates do not adopt a new gold standard of honest money, the dollar will totally default within a few months. The fuse has been lit. There is nothing the government can do beyond what they have already done. Nothing has worked. Nothing can work.
Bob Moriarty
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http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n06/mear01_.html
London Review of Books, 26 March 2009
The Lobby Falters
John Mearsheimer
Many people in Washington were surprised when the Obama administration tapped Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, the body that oversees the production of National Intelligence Estimates: Freeman had a distinguished 30-year career as a diplomat and Defense Department official, but he has publicly criticised Israeli policy and Americas special relationship with Israel, saying, for example, in a speech in 2005, that as long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected. Words like these are rarely spoken in public in Washington , and anyone who does use them is almost certain not to get a high-level government position. But Admiral Dennis Blair, the new director of national intelligence, greatly admires Freeman: just the sort of person, he thought, to revitalise the intelligence community, which had been very politicised in the Bush years.
Predictably alarmed, the Israel lobby launched a smear campaign against Freeman, hoping that he would either quit or be fired by Obama. The opening salvo came in a blog posting by Steven Rosen, a former official of Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, now under indictment for passing secrets to Israel . Freemans views of the Middle East , he said, are what you would expect in the Saudi Foreign Ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship. Prominent pro-Israel journalists such as Jonathan Chait and Martin Peretz of the New Republic , and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, quickly joined the fray and Freeman was hammered in publications that consistently defend Israel , such as the National Review, the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard.
The real heat, however, came from Congress, where Aipac (which describes itself as America s Pro-Israel Lobby) wields enormous power. All the Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee came out against Freeman, as did key Senate Democrats such as Joseph Lieberman and Charles Schumer. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, Schumer said, and I am glad they did the right thing. It was the same story in the House, where the charge was led by Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Steve Israel, who pushed Blair to initiate a formal investigation of Freemans finances. In the end, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, declared the Freeman appointment beyond the pale. Freeman might have survived this onslaught had the White House stood by him. But Barack Obamas pandering to the Israel lobby during the campaign and his silence during the Gaza War show that this is one opponent he is not willing to challenge. True to form, he remained silent and Freeman had little choice but to withdraw.
The lobby has since gone to great lengths to deny its role in Freemans resignation. The Aipac spokesman Josh Block said his organisation took no position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it. The Washington Post, whose editorial page is run by Fred Hiatt, a man staunchly committed to the special relationship, ran an editorial which claimed that blaming the lobby for Freemans resignation was something dreamed up by Mr Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists.
In fact, there is abundant evidence that Aipac and other hardline supporters of Israel were deeply involved in the campaign. Block admitted that he had spoken to reporters and bloggers about Freeman and provided them with information, always on the understanding that his comments would not be attributed to him or to Aipac. Jonathan Chait, who denied that Israel was at the root of the controversy before Freeman was toppled, wrote afterwards: Of course I recognise that the Israel lobby is powerful and was a key element in the pushback against Freeman, and that it is not always a force for good. Daniel Pipes, who runs the Middle East Forum, where Steven Rosen now works, quickly sent out an email newsletter boasting about Rosens role in bringing Freeman down.
On 12 March, the day the Washington Post ran its editorial railing against anyone who suggested that the Israel lobby had helped topple Freeman, the paper also published a front-page story describing the central role that the lobby had played in the affair. There was also a comment piece by the veteran journalist David Broder, which opened with the words: The Obama administration has just suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the lobbyists the president vowed to keep in their place.
Freemans critics maintain that his views on Israel were not his only problem. He is said to have especially close maybe even improper ties to Saudi Arabia , where he previously served as American ambassador. The charge hasnt stuck, however, because there is no evidence for it. Israel s supporters also said that he had made insensitive remarks about what happened to the Chinese protesters at Tiananmen Square , but that charge, which his defenders contest, only came up because Freemans pro-Israel critics were looking for any argument they could muster to damage his reputation.
Why does the lobby care so much about one appointment to an important, but not top leadership position? Heres one reason: Freeman would have been responsible for the production of National Intelligence Estimates. Israel and its American supporters were outraged when the National Intelligence Council concluded in November 2007 that Iran was not building nuclear weapons, and they have worked assiduously to undermine that report ever since. The lobby wants to make sure that the next estimate of Iran s nuclear capabilities reaches the opposite conclusion, and that would have been much less likely to happen with Freeman in charge. Better to have someone vetted by Aipac running the show.
An even more important reason for the lobby to drive Freeman out of his job is the weakness of the case for America s present policy towards Israel , which makes it imperative to silence or marginalise anyone who criticises the special relationship. If Freeman hadnt been punished, others would see that one could talk critically about Israel and still have a successful career in Washington . And once you get an open and free-wheeling discussion about Israel , the special relationship will be in serious trouble.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Freeman affair was that the mainstream media paid it little attention the New York Times, for example, did not run a single story dealing with Freeman until the day after he stepped down while a fierce battle over the appointment took place in the blogosphere. Freemans opponents used the internet to their advantage; that is where Rosen launched the campaign. But something happened there that would never have happened in the mainstream media: the lobby faced real opposition. Indeed, a vigorous, well-informed and highly regarded array of bloggers defended Freeman at every turn and would probably have carried the day had Congress not tipped the scales against them. In short, the internet enabled a serious debate in the United States about an issue involving Israel . The lobby has never had much trouble keeping the New York Times and the Washington Post in line, but it has few ways to silence critics on the internet.
When pro-Israel forces clashed with a major political figure in the past, that person usually backed off. Jimmy Carter, who was smeared by the lobby after he published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, was the first prominent American to stand his ground and fight back. The lobby has been unable to silence him, and it is not for lack of trying. Freeman is following in Carters footsteps, but with sharper elbows. After stepping down, he issued a blistering denunciation of unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country whose aim is to prevent any view other than its own from being aired. There is, he continued, 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.
Freemans remarkable statement has shot all around the world and been read by countless individuals. This isnt good for the lobby, which would have preferred to kill Freemans appointment without leaving any fingerprints. But Freeman will continue to speak out about Israel and the lobby, and maybe some of his natural allies inside the Beltway will eventually join him. Slowly but steadily, space is being opened up in the United States to talk honestly about Israel .
John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago .
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Chas Freeman forced by Israel Lobbies to withdraw from NIC
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War On Terror Within: The End of Jewish History
In the weeks that have just passed we had been witness to an Israeli genocidal campaign against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza. We had been witnessing one of the strongest armies in the world squashing women, elderly people and children. We saw blizzards of unconventional weapons bursting over schools, hospitals and refugee camps. We had seen and heard about war crimes committed before, but this time, the Israeli transgression was categorically different. It was supported by the total absolute majority of the Israeli Jewish population. The IDF military campaign in Gaza enjoyed the support of 94% of the Israeli population. 94% of the Israelis apparently approved of the air raids against civilians. The Israeli people saw the carnage on their TV screens, they heard the voices, they saw hospitals and refugee camps in flames and yet, they weren’t really moved by it all. They didn’t do much to stop their “democratically elected” ruthless leaders. Instead, some of them grabbed a seat and settled on the hills overlooking the Gaza Strip to watch their army turning Gaza into modern Hebraic coliseum of blood. Even now when the campaign seems to be over and the scale of the carnage in Gaza has been revealed, the Israelis fail to show any signs of remorse. As if this is not enough, all throughout the war, Jews around the world rallied in support of their “Jews-only state”. Such a popular support of outright war crimes is unheard of. Terrorist states do kill, yet they are slightly shy about it all. Stalin’s USSR did it in some remote Gulags, Nazi Germany executed its victims in deep forests and behind barbed wire. In the Jewish state, the Israelis slaughter defenceless women, children and the old in broad daylight, using unconventional weapons targeting schools, hospitals and refugee camps.
This level of group barbarism cries for an explanation. The task ahead can be easily defined as the quest for a realisation of Israeli collective brutality. How is it that a society has managed to lose its grip of any sense of compassion and mercy?
The Terror Within
More than anything else, the Israelis and their supportive Jewish communities are terrorised by the brutality they find in themselves. The more ruthless the Israelis are, the more frightened they become. The logic is simple. The more suffering one inflicts on the other, the more anxious one becomes of the possible potential deadly capacity around. In broad terms, the Israeli projects on the Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Iranian the aggression which he finds in himself. Considering the fact that Israeli brutality is now proved to be with no limit and with no comparison, their anxiety is as at least as great.
Seemingly, the Israelis are fearful of themselves being the henchmen. They are engaged in a deadly battle with the terror within. But the Israeli is not alone. The Diaspora Jew who rallies in support support of a state that pours white phosphorous on civilians is caught in the exact same devastating trap. Being an enthusiastic backer of an overwhelming crime, he is horrified by the thought that the cruelty he happens to find in himself may manifest itself in others. The Diaspora Jew who supports Israel is devastated by the imaginary possibility that a brutal intent, similar to his own, may one day turn against him. This very concern is what the fear of anti-Semitism is all about. It is basically the projection of the collective Zio-centric tribal ruthlessness onto others.
There is no Israeli - Palestinian Conflict
What we see here is a clear formation of a vicious cycle in which the Israeli and his supporters are becoming an insular fireball of vengeance that is fuelled by some explosive internal aggression. The meaning of it all is pretty revealing. Since Palestinians cannot militarily confront Israeli aggression and destructive capacity, we are entitled to argue that there is no Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All there is, is Israeli psychosis in which the Israeli is being shattered with anxiety by the reflection of his own ruthlessness. Being regarded as the Nazis of our time, the Israeli is thus doomed to seeing a Nazi in everyone. Similarly, there is no rise in anti-Semitism either. The Diaspora Zionist Jew is simply devastated by the possibility that someone out there is as ethically corrupted and merciless as he himself proved to be. In short, Israeli politics and Zionist lobbying should be seen as no less than a lethal Zio-centric collective paranoia on the verge of total psychosis.
Is there a way to redeem the Zionist of his bloody expedition? Is there a way to change the course of history, to save the Israelis and their supporters from total depravity? Probably the best way to pose this question is to ask whether there is a way to save the Israeli and the Zionist from themselves. As one may gather, I am not exactly interested in saving Israelis or Zionists, however, I do grasp that redeeming Zionists of their transgression may bring a prospect of peace to Palestine, Iraq and probably the rest of us. For those who fail to see it, Israel is just the tip of the iceberg. At the end of the day, America, Britain and the West are now subject to some similar forms of "politics of fear" that are the direct outcome of Neocon deadly interventionist ideology and practices.
The Shrink from Nazareth
Many years ago, so we are told, there was an Israelite who lived amongst his brethren in the land of Canaan. Like the contemporary Israelis, he was surrounded by hate, vengeance and fear. At a certain stage he had decided to intervene and to bring a change about, he realised that there was no other way to fight ruthlessness than to search for grace. “Turn your other cheek” was his simple suggestion. Identifying the Israelite’s psychosis as “a war against terror within”, Jesus grasped that the only way to counter violence is to look in the mirror while searching for Goodness within.
It is rather apparent that Jesus’ lesson paved the way to the formation of western universal ethics. Modern political ideologies drew their lesson from the Christian prospect. Marx’s normative search for equality can be seen as a secular rewriting of Jesus’ notion of brotherhood. And yet, not a single political ideology has managed to integrate the deepest notion of Jesus’ grace. To seek peace is primarily to search for one within. While Israelis and their Neocon twins would aim at achieving peace by means of deterrence, true peace is achieved by the search for harmony within. As a Lacanian scholar may suggest, to love your neighbour is actually to love yourself loving your neighbour. The case of the Israeli is the complete opposite. As they manage to prove time after time, they are really loving themselves hating their neighbours or in short, they simply love themselves hating in general. They hate almost everything: the neighbour, the Arab, Chavez, the German, Islam, the Goy, Pork, the Pope, the Palestinian, the Church, Jesus, Hamas, calamari and Iran. You name it, they hate it. One may have to admit that hating so much must be a very consuming project unless it gives pleasure. And indeed the Israeli “pleasure principle” could be articulated as follows: it continuously drives the Israeli to seek pleasure in hate while inflicting pain upon others.
It must be mentioned at this point that the ˜War Against Terror within” is not exactly a Jewish invention. Everyone, whether it is nations, peoples or individuals, are a potential subject to it. The consequences of American nuclear murderous slaughter in Hiroshima and Nagasaki made the American people into a terrorised collective. This collective anxiety is known as the “cold war”. America is yet to redeem itself of the fear that there maybe someone out there as merciless as America proved to be. To a certain extent, operation Shock and Awe had a very similar effect on Britain and America. It led to the creation of horrified masses easily manipulated by highly motivated elite. This exact type of politics is called “politics of fear”.
And yet, within the western discourse a correction mechanism is in place. Unlike the Jewish state that is getting radicalised by its own self feeding paranoia, in the West, evil is somehow confronted and contained eventually. The murderer is denounced and hope for peace is somehow reinstated till further notice. Not that I hold my breath for President Obama bringing any change, one thing is rather clear, Obama was voted in to bring a change. Obama is a symbol of our genuine attempt to curtail evil. In the Jewish state, not only it doesn’t happen, it can never happen. The difference between Israel and the West is rather obvious. In the West, Christian heritage is providing us with a possibility of a wish grounded on belief in universal goodness. Though, we are under the constant danger of exposure to evil, we tend to believe that goodness will eventually prevail. On the other hand, in Hebraic tribal discourse, Goodness is the property of the chosen. The Israelis do not see goodness or kindness in their neighbors, they see them as savage and as a life-threatening entity. For the Israelis, kindness is their very own property, accidentally they are also innocent and victims. Within the western universal discourse, goodness doesn’t belong to one people or a single nation, it belongs to all and to none at the same time. Within the western universal heritage, Goodness is found in each of us. It doesn’t belong to a political party or an ideology. The elevating notion of grace and a Good God is there in each of us, it is always very close to home.
What Kind Of Father Is That?
“Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you –“ a land with large, fine cities you did not build, houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – and you eat your fill.” (Deuteronomy: 6: 10 -11).
"When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations…then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.” Deuteronomy 7:1-2
At this point we may try to attempt and to grasp the root cause behind the severe lack of compassion within the Israeli discourse and its supportive lobbies. I believe that an elaboration on the troubled relationships between the Jews and their different Gods may throw some light on the topic. It is rather obvious that the ever growing list of Jewish “Gods”, “Idols” and “Father-figures” is slightly problematic at least as far as ethics and kindness are concerned. The very relationship between “the son” and the “non-ethical father” must be explored. The philosopher Ariella Atzmon (who happens to be my mother) defines the complexity of the false beginning as the “Fagin Syndrome”. Charles Dickens’ Fagin is a “kidsman”, an adult who recruits children and trains them as pickpockets and thieves, exchanging food and shelter for goods the children steal. Though the kids must be grateful towards their master, they must also despise him for turning them into thieves and pickpockets. The kids realise that Fagin’s goods are all stolen and his kindness is far from being genuinely honest or pure. Sooner or later the kids will turn against their master Fagin in an attempt to liberate themselves of the immoral catch.
From a father-son perspective, the Biblical Jewish God Jehovah is no different from what we might see in the Fagin syndrome. The father of Israel leads his chosen people through the desert to the promised land so they can rob and plunder its indigenous habitants. This is not exactly what one may expect of an ethical father or a “kind God”. Consequently, as much as the sons of Israel love Jehovah, they must also be slightly suspicious of him for turning them into robbers and murderers. They might even be apprehensive regarding his kindness. Thus, it shouldn’t take us by a surprise that throughout Jewish history more than just a few Jews had turned against their heavenly father.
However, bearing in mind the common secularist perception that Gods are actually invented by people, one may wonder, what leads to the invention of such an “unethical God”? What makes people follow the rules of such a God? It would be also interesting to find out what kind of alternative Gods Jews happened to pick or invent once Jehovah has been shunned.
Since emancipation, more than just a few Jews had been disassociating themselves from the traditional tribal setting and rabbinical Judaism. Many intermingled with their surrounding realities, dropped their chosen entitlement and turned into ordinary human beings. Many other Jews insisted upon dropping God yet maintaining their racially orientated tribal affiliation. They decided to base their tribal belonging on ethnic, racial, political, cultural and ideological grounds rather than the Judaic precept. Though they noticeably dropped Jehovah they insisted upon adopting a secularist view that was soon shaped into a monolithic religious-like precept. All throughout the 20th century, the two religious-like political ideologies that had been found to be most appealing by the Jewish masses were Marxism and Zionism.
Marxism can be easily portrayed as a secular universal ethical ideology. However, within the process of transformation into a Jewish tribal precept, Marxism has managed to lose any traces of humanism or universalism. As we know, early Zionist ideology and practice was largely dominated by Jewish leftists who regarded themselves as true followers of Marx. They genuinely believed that celebrating their Jewish national revival at the expense of Palestinians was a legitimate socialist endeavour.
Interestingly enough, their opponents, the anti-Zionist Bund of the East European Jewish Labour, didn’t really believe in the institutional robbery of the Palestinians, instead, they believed that taking from rich European is a great universal mitzvah on the path towards social justice.
The following are a few lines from The Bund’s anthem
We swear our stalwart hate persists,
Of those who rob and kill the poor:
The Tsar, the masters, capitalists.
Our vengeance will be swift and sure.
So swear together to live or die!
Without engaging in questions having to do with ethics or political affiliation, it is rather obvious that the Jewish Marxist anthem is overwhelmingly saturated with “hate” and “vengeance”. As much as Jews were enthusiastic about Marx, Marxism, Bolshevism and equality, the end of the story is known. Jews en masse dropped Marx a long time ago. They somehow left the revolution to some enlightened Goyim such as Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. Leaders who truly internalised in the real meaning of universal equality and ethics.
Though in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, Marxism found many followers amongst European Jews, following the Holocaust, Zionism has gradually become the voice of world Jewry. Like Fagin, the Zionist Gods and Idols: Herzl, Ben Gurion, Nordau, Weizmann, promised their followers a new unethical beginning. Robbing the Palestinians was their path towards a long overdue historical justice. Zionism transformed the Old Testament from a spiritual text into a land registry. But again as in the case of Jehovah, the Zio God transformed the Jew into a thief, it promised him someone else’s property. This in itself may explain the Israeli resentment towards Zionism and Zionist ideology. Israelis prefer to see themselves as the natural dwellers of the land rather than pioneers in a non-ethical Jewish Diaspora colonial project. The Israeli Jew furnishes his political stand by means of severe ethical escapism. This may explain the fact that as much as the Israelis love their wars, they really hate to fight them. They are not willing to die for a big abstract remote ideology such as the “Jewish nation” or “Zionism”. They overwhelmingly prefer to drop white phosphorous and cluster bombs from afar.
However, along the relatively short history of modern Jewish nationalism the Zio God made friends with some other Gods and kosher idols. Back in 1917 Lord Balfour promised the Jews that they would erect their national home in Palestine. Needless to say, as in the case of Jehovah, Lord Balfour made the Jews into plunderers and robbers, he came up with an outright non-ethical promise. He promised the Jews someone else’s land. This was basically a false beginning. Evidently, it didn’t take long before the Jews turned against the British Empire. In 1947 the UN made exactly the same foolish mistake, it gave birth to the “Jews-only State” again at the expense of the Palestinians. It legitimised the robbery of Palestine in the name of the nations. Like in the case of shunned Jehovah, it didn’t take long before the Jews turned against the UN. “It doesn’t matter what the Goyim say, all that matters is what the Jews do”, said Israeli PM David Ben Gurion. Recently Israelis had managed to even shun their best subservient friends in the White House. On the eve of the last American presidential election Israeli Generals had been filmed denouncing President Bush for “damaging Israeli interests for being overwhelmingly supportive” (Ret. Brig General Shlomo Brom). The Israeli Generals basically blamed Bush for not stopping Israel from destroying its neighbours. The moral is rather clear, the Zionists and the Israelis will inevitably turn against their Gods, Idols, fathers and others who try to help them. This is the real meaning of the Fagin syndrome within the Israeli political context. They will always have to turn against their fathers.
I believe that the most interesting Jewish belief system of them all is the Holocaust Religion, which the Israeli Philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz rightly defined as the “new Jewish religion”. The most interesting aspect of the Holocaust religion is its God-figure, namely “the Jew”. The Jewish follower of that newly formed dogmatic precept believes in “the Jew”, the one who redeemed oneself. The one who “survived” the “ultimate genocidal” event. The followers believe in “the Jew”, the “innocent” victim sufferer who returned to his “promised land” and now celebrates his successful revival narrative. To a certain extent, within the Holocaust religious discourse, the Jew believes in “the Jew”, expressed as his/her powers and his/her eternal qualities. Within the newly formed religious framework, Mecca is Tel Aviv and the Holy Shrine is the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. The newly formed religion has many shrines (Museums) scattered around the world and it has many priests who spread the message around and punish its opposing elements. From a Jewish perspective, the Holocaust religion is a fully transparent expression of self love. It is where past and future merge into a meaningful present, it is when history is translated into praxis. Whether consciously or unconsciously, every person who identifies politically and ideologically (rather than religiously) as a Jew is, practically speaking, succumbing to the Holocaust religion and a follower of its father-figure “the Jew”. And yet, one may wonder, what about Kindness, is there any goodness in this newly formed ‘father-figure’? Is there any grace in this narrative of innocent victimhood that is celebrated daily at the expense of the Palestinian people?
If there is an end to history, the Holocaust religion embodies the very end of Jewish history. In the light of the Holocaust religion the “Father” and the “Son” unite at last. At least in the case of Israel and Zionism they bond into an amalgam of genocidal ideology and reality. In the light of the Holocaust religion and its epic survival ethos the Jewish State considers itself legitimated in dropping white phosphorus on women and children who they have caged in an inescapable open-air prison. Sadly enough, the crimes committed by the Jewish State are done on behalf of the Jewish people and in the name of their troubled history of persecution. The Holocaust religion brings to life what seems to be the ultimate possible form of insular brutal incarnation.
Historically Jews have shunned many Gods, they dropped Jehovah, they dumped Marx, some have never followed Zionism. But in the light of the Holocaust religion, while bearing in mind the scenes from Gaza, Jenin and Lebanon, the Jew may have to continue in the tradition and drop “the Jew”. He will have to accept that his newly formed father-figure was formed in his own shape. More concerning is the devastating fact that the new father is proved to be a call to kill. Seemingly, the new father is the ultimate evil God of them all.
I wonder how many Jews will be courageous enough to shun their esoteric newly formed father-figure. Will they be courageous enough to join the rest of humanity adopting a universal ethical discourse? Whether the Jew drops “The Jew”, only time will tell. Just to remove any doubt, I did drop my “Jew” a long time ago and I am doing fine.
MP Galloway is banned from CanadaBritish media reported the decision was due to his views on Afghanistan and the presence of Canadian troops there.
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Guardian UK
George Galloway banned from Canada
Friday 20 March 2009 15.05 GMT
Anti-war MP George Galloway has been banned from Canada, it emerged today.
A Canadian spokesman confirmed that the Respect MP had been deemed inadmissible on national security grounds and would not be allowed into the country.
Galloway today branded the ban "idiotic" and vowed to fight the ruling with "all means" at his disposal. He is due to give a speech in Toronto on 30 March.
Earlier today the Sun said border security officials had declared Galloway, 54, "inadmissible" because of his views on Afghanistan and the presence of Canadian troops there and would be turned away if he attempted to enter the country.
A spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada said the decision had been taken by border security officials "based on a number of factors" in accordance with section 34(1) of the country's immigration act.
The act states:
"A permanent resident or a foreign national is inadmissible on security grounds for:
(a) engaging in an act of espionage or an act of subversion against a democratic government, institution or process as they are understood in Canada;
(b) engaging in or instigating the subversion by force of any government;
(c) engaging in terrorism;
(d) being a danger to the security of Canada;
(e) engaging in acts of violence that would or might endanger the lives or safety of persons in Canada; or
(f) being a member of an organisation that there are reasonable grounds to believe engages, has engaged or will engage in acts referred to in paragraph (a), (b) or (c)."
Galloway, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, is consulting the organisers of his north American speaking tour and exploring whether legal action can be taken to overturn the ban.
Jason Kenney, Canada's immigration minister, has the right to exempt people from the act if it is felt that their presence would not be "detrimental to the national interest".
But a spokesman said Kenney would "decline to exercise that discretion" in Galloway's case.
Alykhan Velshi, Kenney's spokesman, said that the act was designed to protect Canadians from people who fund, support or engage in terrorism.
"We're going to uphold the law, not give special treatment to this infamous street-corner Cromwell who actually brags about giving 'financial support' to Hamas, a terrorist organisation banned in Canada," he said. "I'm sure Galloway has a large Rolodex of friends in regimes elsewhere in the world willing to roll out the red carpet for him. Canada, however, won't be one of them."
Responding to the news, Galloway issued a statement headed: "This idiotic ban shames Canada."
The MP said: "This decision, gazetted in Rupert Murdoch's Sun, is a very sad day for the Canada we have known and loved – a bastion of the freedoms that supporters of the occupation of Afghanistan claim to be defending.
"This has further vindicated the anti-war movement's contention that unjust wars abroad will end up consuming the very liberties that make us who we are.
"This may be a rather desperate election ploy by a conservative government reaching the end of line, or by a minister who has not cottoned on to the fact that the George Bush era is over.
"All right-thinking Canadians, whether they agree with me over the wisdom of sending troops to Afghanistan or not, will oppose this outrageous decision.
"On a personal note – for a Scotsman to be barred from Canada is like being told to stay away from the family home.
"This is not something I'm prepared to accept."
Galloway is due to speak at a public forum entitled Resisting War from Gaza to Kandahar, hosted by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War later this month.
He is also due to speak at a second public forum in Mississauga, west of Toronto, on 31 March.
His proposed visit prompted the Jewish Defence League of Canada to write an open letter to the country's government urging it to do "everything possible to keep this hater away".
In 2006, Galloway was refused entry to Egypt on the grounds of national security after he travelled to the country to give evidence at a "mock trial" of Tony Blair and George Bush.
He was held overnight in a police cell before the authorities changed their minds and allowed him into the country.
Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd
3339 West 41 Avenue
Vancouver, B.C. V6N3E5 CANADA
=============================================
1. LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT IF THERE IS VIOLENCE,
EVERYONE ELSE WILL SIT DOWN.
2. THE VIOLENT PEOPLE CAN THEN EITHER STOP THEIR VIOLENCE,
OR RISK BEING ARRESTED AND TAKEN AWAY.
3. EVERYONE ELSE CAN THEN CONTINUE WITH A PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATION.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."
Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.
"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."
Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."
Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Wilkerson's specific allegations but noted that the military has consistently said that dealing with foreign fighters from a wide variety of countries in a wartime setting was a complex process. The military has insisted that those held at Guantanamo were enemy combatants and posed a threat to the United States.
In his posting for The Washington Note blog, Wilkerson wrote that "U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released."
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney fought efforts to address the situation, Wilkerson said, because "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership."
Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."
Some 800 men have been held at Guantanamo since the prison opened in January 2002, and 240 remain. Wilkerson said two dozen are terrorists, including confessed Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September 2006.
"We need to put those people in a high-security prison like the one in Colorado, forget them and throw away the key," Wilkerson said. "We can't try them because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail."
But the rest of the detainees need to be released, he said.
Wilkerson, who flew combat missions as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and left the government in January 2005, said he did not speak out while in government because some of the information was classified. He said he feels compelled to do so now because Cheney has claimed in recent press interviews that President Barack Obama is making the U.S. less safe by reversing Bush administration policies toward terror suspects, including ordering Guantanamo closed.
The administration is now evaluating what to do with the prisoners who remain at the U.S. military base in Cuba.
"I'm very concerned about the kinds of things Cheney is saying to make it seem Obama is a danger to this republic," Wilkerson said. "To have a former vice president fearmongering like this is really, really dangerous."
Big Brother legislation could mean prosecution, fines up to $1 million
Some small farms and organic food growers could be placed under direct supervision of the federal government under new legislation making its way through Congress.
House Resolution 875, or the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, was introduced by Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., in February. DeLauro's husband, Stanley Greenburg, works for Monsanto – the world's leading producer of herbicides and genetically engineered seed.
DeLauro's act has 39 co-sponsors and was referred to the House Agriculture Committee on Feb. 4. It calls for the creation of a Food Safety Administration to allow the government to regulate food production at all levels – and even mandates property seizure, fines of up to $1 million per offense and criminal prosecution for producers, manufacturers and distributors who fail to comply with regulations.
Michael Olson, host of the Food Chain radio show and author of "Metro Farm," told WND the government should focus on regulating food production in countries such as China and Mexico rather than burdening small and organic farmers in the U.S. with overreaching regulations.
"We need somebody to watch over us when we're eating food that comes from thousands and thousands of miles away. We need some help there," he said. "But when food comes from our neighbors or from farmers who we know, we don't need all of those rules. If your neighbor sells you something that is bad and you get sick, you are going to get your hands on that farmer, and that will be the end of it. It regulates itself."
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The legislation would establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services "to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes."
Federal regulators will be tasked with ensuring that food producers, processors and distributors – both large and small – prevent and minimize food safety hazards such as food-borne illnesses and contaminants such as bacteria, chemicals, natural toxins or manufactured toxicants, viruses, parasites, prions, physical hazards or other human pathogens. (Much more in article link)
Pelosi: Enforcing American immigration law is un-American
posted at 7:45 pm on March 18, 2009 by Allahpundit
Spectacular Hispandering (as Kaus calls it) from Madam Speaker, coinciding with The One’s decision to toss yet another hot-button issue that he doesn’t have to deal with right now onto his already crowded plate. Describing positions she disagrees with as un-American or unpatriotic is an endearing little habit of Pelosi’s and comes this time with a twist: Not only are immigration raids unpatriotic, apparently, but illegal aliens are among the greatest patriots of all.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently told a group of both legal and illegal immigrants and their families that enforcement of existing immigration laws, as currently practiced, is “un-American.”…
“You are special people. You’re here on a Saturday night to take responsibility for our country’s future. That makes you very, very patriotic.”
“I was embarrassed by what she said,” said Rick Oltman, with Californians for Population Stabilization, an anti-illegal immigrant group. “Exhorting illegal aliens for taking responsibility for our country’s future…. In fact, sitting there in the audience…. I really resented that comment.”
This also coincides with a new poll from Rasmussen showing 68% support for punishing businesses that hire illegals, up slightly from a few years ago despite the headwinds from Hopenchange. No matter. Like The One says, “I won.” And like the boss says, “The question is not whether, but when.”