Video- Sibel Edmonds Interview: RT

I was scheduled for an interview on the latest developments on the Turkish-Syria topic, however, they had a last minute change and suddenly I was facing questions regarding the latest exposé on Bahrain-Washington Times. If you look carefully you’ll see my eye-balls turning rapidly (mine are too tightly connected to the wheels spinning inside my head) …Anyhow, I needed at least an extra five minutes to explain the real macro points on this topic (Yap, I’m one of those who cannot sum up things in short bullet points. Why do you think I always prefer interviews of a minimum of 30-minutes?), but life (TV interviews) doesn’t work that way. That, and feeling uncomfortable using my intended (and well-deserved) words: Whores-Pimps-Johns… Well, here is the RT clip:

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“The Marriage from Hell: Jane Harman & the Woodrow Wilson Center�

Last year investigative journalist David Boyajian wrote two exposés on Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center, revealing how the center has been violating its Congressional mandate and been up to its neck in tainted corporate cash. You can read Boyajian’s exposés here and here. Many agreed with Boyajian’s damning assessment, including a prominent journalist who called the WWC “a global joke.� I too wrote a follow up article on WWC with a special focus on its ‘oily’ President, Mr. Lee Hamilton. By oily, I mean ‘glisteningly greasy.’ I am sure you recognize his name from his highly publicized position and face as one of the 9/11 Commissioners, but his possibly pay-off position with WWC was not the lone factor for his glistening status in my report. Here are a few excerpts from my piece to illustrate what I mean:

Fortunately one independent reporter researched and reported on one such case, call it ‘chased the egg,’ on one of the 9/11 Commissioners, a Former Representative, Mr. Lee Hamilton, which I happened to come across yesterday. It was truly interesting to see how many ‘honorary’ positions Mr. Hamilton has been given, handed, by our government alone, just check out a few here:

-Co-chair of the Department of Energy Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future with Brent Scowcroft

-Serves on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board & the FBI Director’s Advisory Board,

-Serves on the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force

- Serves on the CIA External Advisory Board

The White House, the CIA, and the FBI must have been extremely well-served by Hamilton’s performance as the commissioner to grant him this many prestigious quasi positions. No? For me, the most interesting aspect which was covered by CounterCurrents.Org had to do with Hamilton’s position with and current salary from the Woodrow Wilson Center, and his questionable corporate ties, particularly with BAE Systems, the main sponsor of his forthcoming gala dinner…

You can read my entire article ‘9/11 Commissioner’s Turkey Baste: Chicken or the Egg?’ here. Now back to the focus of this post.

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American voters disagree on many issues but nearly all agree that government’s performance has been abysmal.

Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States has fallen back to 11%, the lowest level since December 2008 and just four percentage points above the all-time low recorded in October 2008…The all-time low of 7% came in an Oct. 10-12, 2008, poll, conducted shortly after stock values plummeted following Congress’ passage of the TARP legislation in response to the September 2008 financial crisis. (Gallup.com, August 18, 2011)

The data show that public confidence fell most sharply when the President and Congress rejected majority public opinion on economic issues, namely bank bailouts and federal debt reduction. Those were not the only disappointments, by any means. On a variety of issues, from healthcare reform to credit card legislation, government officials have given lip service to the wishes of their constituents.

Political commentators and candidates for political office regularly attack government officials as inept.  President Bush was labeled incompetent. President Obama is criticized as a poor negotiator.  Democrats, in general, are described as weak while Republicans are viewed as cold-hearted. Unsurprisingly, that is how voters perceive the parties, also.

Few of these politicians were really incompetent. Many failed to produce the results voters said they wanted.  But, that may be because the politicians were serving a different constituency: a wealthy corporate elite.  With a coterie of lobbyists constantly tugging on their strings, political puppets are bound to appear clumsy. They know how to get what they want, though. Most freshman members of Congress are millionaires, after all.
The only downside for political puppets is the possibility of voter backlash at election time. Economically, however, politicians are well-insulated from public displeasure. Whether they are booted from office or decide to retire, they can look forward to cushy jobs with corporations, corporate lobbies, and corporate-funded think tanks.

Elected officials have another incentive to be responsive to corporate lobbying:  their stock portfolios. For example, eight members of Congress hold $50,000 or more in Apple stock, reports OpenSecrets.org (August 25, 2011), and one of the eight (Nancy Pelosi) reportedly has Apple stock worth $1 million or more. Observers have noticed that Congressional investments out-perform the stock market and even out-perform investments held by corporate insiders.

Some outraged citizens have called for mass demonstrations.  But, demonstrations against government policies tend to fail when the policies are profitable for corporations, observes psychologist Bruce Levine. In his book, Get Up, Stand Up, Levine writes: Read more È

I’ve been meaning to write about this for weeks, and just got around doing it. Maybe the subconscious procrastination was due to the conscious sanitization of this news by venues like this. Maybe it was the dread of having to tackle one of the quasi media phony darlings like this guy. Or maybe it was the repressed exhaustion-frustration I went through a couple of years back with this. Okay, allow me to start with the fairly recent development reported ‘incompletely and badly’ by the New York Times:

Representative Jean Schmidt, Republican of Ohio, has been ordered by the House Ethics Committee to repay a Turkish-American group $500,000 for legal services it improperly paid for to help her pursue a defamation lawsuit and other legal proceedings against a Democratic opponent in the 2008 election.

As you can see, very consciously the Times avoids naming ‘that Democratic opponent.’ Because naming him, David Krikorian, would require some fact citing and more context-background on the case; the case they together with the rest of the mainstream media went out of their way to black out. And doing ‘that’ would God forbid bring up the long-blacked-out state secrets privilege in my case. And ‘that’ my dear friends, is something that has been forbidden to these stenographers in the media circus.

So let’s continue the no-coverage coverage of a very significant case involving Congresswoman Jean Schmidt and the twisted and rechanneled Turkish Foreign Lobby dollars:

The action by the House committee, disclosed Friday, did not come with a formal punishment, because ethics investigators concluded that Ms. Schmidt had been misled by her own lawyers from the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund about who was paying the legal bills.

Ms. Schmidt was ordered to amend her annual personal financial disclosure reports to acknowledge the gift from the Turkish Coalition of America, which actually paid the bills, and then reimburse the lawyers.

 The report above casually, and very quickly, glosses over one of the implicated, that is, directly implicated, parties in this case: Schmidt’s lawyer- the lawyer who supposedly, and intentionally, misled his client, and did so with a dollar amount not in the thousands, but actually half a million dollars. Ordinarily this slip by a government garbage disposal facility like the Times would not raise big flags. However, this lawyer is no ordinary lawyer. The lawyer in question here happens to be a famous, very public, high-profile and very deviously and shrewdly marketed man. The lawyer in this case is none other than deceivingly perceived Bruce Fein.  A man who has gotten very wealthy thanks to the foreign lobby, in this case the Turkish lobby in need of a man who knows the maze that gets the cheese to the congressional mice:

In 2007, Ayasli transferred $30 million in stock to fund a new endeavor, the nonprofit Turkish Coalition of America. The organization is headquartered in a Washington suite that has also been listed as the address for the Turkish Coalition USA PAC, the lobbying firm of Lydia Borland (who has represented the Turkish government), and the law firm of Bruce Fein and Associates (Fein comprises half of the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund).

…

In addition to the advocacy done through the ATC (which also funds trips to Turkey for congressional staff), a handful of its members–Citigroup, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Chevron, Textron, United Technologies, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, which spent a combined $80 million lobbying Washington last year lobbied Congress directly on the genocide resolution and other issues important to Turkey; the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group, helped coordinate the effort.

…

Oh wait, Bruce Fein is married to Mattie Fein, the Republican candidate who ran against Jane Harman in 2010. Had she won, how would one go about calculating and deducting her campaign-donation  ‘gifts’ from her husbands million-dollar foreign lobby gifts? Isn’t it interesting? And as far as Turkey’s former partner lobby, the Israeli Lobby, this is where Bruce & his voluptuous wife stand when given the Zionism litmus test:

7. Would you support Israel taking military action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons? Under what circumstances?

The United States should support whatever Israel believes is justified by national security worries over Iran.

I know Mr. Fein has many pro-liberties fans out there who are mistaking him for ‘real;’ some consider him a real constitutionalist who stands for liberties and against secrecy. That’s very similar to those who fell for Obama the constitutionalist. Remember, Obama the author of a very constitutional book? Recall the beautiful words spoken and sold as pro liberties, pro change, anti secrecy and beyond? Well, you have a similar situation with Mr. Fein: he talks a good talk, and writes well. As for who Mr. Fein is: you are looking at a man long succumbed to foreign lobby and military industrial complex lobby dollars. You are looking at a man far more loyal to Israel and its lobby than to our nation. You actually have a man who believes any war would be justified for the sake of Israel. And in the latest Schmidt case you are looking at a man who helped funnel half a million dollar foreign ‘Bakshish’ to his congresswoman friend, and even indicted by the lame Congressional Ethics Committee as an attorney who intentionally misled his client. Read more È

 BFP Nightly Quote

The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference”- Bess Myerson 

International Newsworthy

US Drone Strike Kills 18 in Pakistan

The Mullahs’ Mouthpiece in the US (Iranian Opposition Terrorist Group-MEK)

Syrian-Saudi Ties Spiral Downward

Bahrain Hires DC PR Firm to Repair Post-Crackdown Image

Despite Amnesty Offer Fighting Continues in Somalia 

UN Warns of Growing Al Qaeda Threat in Yemen (as US lobbys for more war!)

Repression & Resistance in Kashmir

Mossad’s Miracle Weapon: Stuxnet

Uzbekistan: Government Sites Hacked

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Money makes the world go ‘round. Whose money spins your planet?  In recent decades, Saudi Arabia emerged as a skillful puppeteer, pulling the strings of its expanding influence. Dare to see the big picture, out of the context of pseudo-political loyalties, free of the intoxicating opiate of the mainstream media. Look behind the mask of false pretenses to see the awful truth: riches seeking ever more money, celebrity looking for more notoriety, propaganda masquerading as the truth and the deprivation of liberties posturing as the savior in the “war on terror�.

To uncover who is truly in control, all you have to do is follow the money.  

Since the mid-eighties, British and American politicians have been operating under suspicion of being compromised by al-Yamamah, the $80 billion Anglo-Saudi black operations slush fund. It is the product of the 20-year oil-for-arms barter deal, wherein BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace), Britain’s largest defense contractor, reportedly paid bribes to sell combat fighter planes, helicopters, tanks and ammunitions to Saudi Arabia. In return for the arms, the Saudi’s agreed to supply hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day to the British. It was the largest arms deal in UK history that was arranged in a way that circumvented any potential objections by the U.S. Congress.

BAE (the world’s second largest defense company) was said to have paid millions into accounts controlled by Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a highly influential former ambassador to Washington, DC. Prince Bandar’s close ties to the Bush family prompted the nickname “Bandar Bushâ€�. Bandar’s children reportedly attended school with Cheney’s grandchildren. The power Bandar wielded was extraordinary. For decades he was a close friend to five U.S. Presidents and numerous CIA directors, as well as heads of state and monarchs of other countries. In the Bush years, Bandar became virtually part of the administration, able to enter the White House unannounced. Ever a master manipulator, Bandar skillfully controlled the mainstream media, with the Washington Post being his paper of choice when it came to royal leaks.

Bandar had his hand in some of the biggest scandals in modern history. During the Reagan presidency, Bandar secured the purchase of AWACs surveillance aircraft, despite opposition from AIPAC (after the U.S. rejected an arms order, Bandar covertly arranged the delivery of intermediate-range nuclear-warhead-capable missiles from China). He was exposed for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, having arranged $32 million in Saudi financing for the Nicaraguan Contras. Bandar’s wife was reportedly sending money to one of the 9/11 hijackers. President George W. Bush told Prince Bandar about the invasion of Iraq before he told Secretary of State Colin Powell about it (incidentally, another one of Prince Bandar’s close connections). Read more È

Newsworthy

US War Planes Attack Southern Iraq

Yemen Conflict: Generating More Child Soldiers

Carrots for India, Sticks for Pakistan

The Role of UN Security Council in Unleashing an Illegal War against Libya

Dubai Murder-Accused Had Kiwi Link?

A Brief List of Israeli Mossad’s Most Audacious Plots 

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