Obama Lied: Taliban Did Not Refuse to Hand Over Bin Laden

Obama slipped past a real doozy Tuesday night when he said the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden. It just ain't so. They tried three times to open negotiations for this, but Bush refused each time. He wanted to bomb people so bad it hurt.

UK Guardian:

A senior Taliban minister has offered a last-minute deal to hand over Osama bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, senior sources in Pakistan told the Guardian last night...

For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan's military leadership said.

The Taliban have offered to hand over Bin Laden before but only if sufficient evidence was presented. Bin Laden is wanted both for the September 11 attacks and for masterminding the bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998 in which 224 people were killed. He is also suspected of involvement in other terrorist attacks, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last year.

But until now the Taliban regime has consistently said it has not seen any convincing evidence to implicate the Saudi dissident in any crime.

"Now they have agreed to hand him over to a third country without the evidence being presented in advance," the source close to the military said."

Combined with so unhesitatingly waving the Al Qaeda boogey-man to make his case, in a fashion Bush would have been proud of, (Al Qaeda isn't in Afghanistan) it all makes me mighty suspicious. The Taliban wasn't declared an enemy until after 9/11, even as we had evidence that bin Laden was behind the bombing of the USS Cole. That's because Bush's buddies were still hoping to get the contract for the oil pipeline, which the Taliban government was refusing to give them. These are just facts, I'm not even trying to make an argument here. But someone has to call them on these things.

The history is at the classic essay by Richard Behan which went viral on the internet soon after it was published (re-printed at Afterdowningstreet.org ):

From its first days in office in January of 2001 the Administration of George W. Bush meant to launch military attacks against both Afghanistan and Iraq. The reasons had nothing to do with terrorism.

This is beyond dispute. The mainstream press has either ignored the story or missed it completely, but the Administration's congenital belligerence is fully documented elsewhere.

Attacking a sovereign nation unprovoked, however, directly violates the charter of the United Nations. It is an international crime. The Bush Administration would need credible justification to proceed with its plans.

The terrorist violence of September 11, 2001 provided a spectacular opportunity. In the cacophony of outrage and confusion, the Administration could conceal its intentions, disguise the true nature of its premeditated wars, and launch them. The opportunity was exploited in a heartbeat.

Within hours of the attacks, President Bush declared the U.S. "...would take the fight directly to the terrorists," and "...he announced to the world the United States would make no distinction between the terrorists and the states that harbor them." [1] Thus the "War on Terror" was born.

The "War on Terror" is patently fraudulent, but the essence of successful propaganda is repetition, and the Bush Administration has repeated its mantra endlessly:

The War on Terror was launched in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It is intended to enhance our national security at home, and to spread democracy in the Middle East.

This is the struggle of our lifetime; we are defending our way of life from an enemy intent on destroying our freedoms. We must fight the enemy in the Middle East, or we will fight him in our cities.

The Administration's campaign of propaganda has been a notable success. The characterization of today's war as a "fight against terrorists and states that support them" is generally accepted, rarely scrutinized, and virtually unchallenged, even by opponents of the war.

The fraudulence of the "War on Terror," however, is clearly revealed in the pattern of subsequent facts:

1. In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of apprehending the terrorist: Osama bin Laden remains at large.

2. In Iraq, when the U.S. invaded, there were no terrorists at all.

3. Both states have been supplied with puppet governments, and both are dotted with permanent U.S. military bases in strategic proximity to their hydrocarbon assets.

4. The U.S. embassy nearing completion in Baghdad is comprised of 21 multistory buildings on 104 acres of land. It will house 5,500 diplomats, staff, and families. It is ten times larger than any other U.S. embassy in the world, but we have yet to be told why.

5. A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate shows the war in Iraq has exacerbated, not diminished, the threat of terrorism since 9/11.[2] If the "War on Terror" is not a deception, it is a disastrously counterproductive failure.

6. Today two American and two British oil companies are poised to claim immense profits from 81% of Iraq's undeveloped crude oil reserves.[3] They cannot proceed, however, until the Iraqi Parliament enacts a statute known as the "hydrocarbon law."

7. The features of postwar oil policy so heavily favoring the oil companies were crafted by the Bush Administration State Department in 2002, a year before the invasion.[4]

8. Drafting of the law itself was begun during Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, with the invited participation of the oil companies.[5] The law was written in English and translated into Arabic only when it was due for Iraqi approval.

9. President Bush made passage of the hydrocarbon law a mandatory "benchmark" when he announced the troop surge in January of 2007...

FULL ESSAY Richard Behan (re-printed at Afterdowningstreet.org)

9-11 Was an Inside Job Perpetrated by Elements of the U.S. Government

"In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." George Orwell Featured Videos Ron Paul: Obama Is Preparing for Perpetual War Obama's Position on Iraq Troop Surge CIA Veteran Doubts the bin Laden Story Challenging Bush-Bama on 9/11 Featured Articles Taibbi: Obama’s sellout to Wall Street creates ‘permanent bailout’ If passed as it is, the financial reform bill winding its way through Congress will create a “permanent bailout mechanism,” and will give complete control over future bailouts to the White House, says columnist Matt Taibbi. In a video preview of an upcoming Rolling Stone article, Taibbi explained how the Obama administration started selling out to Wall Street interests almost as soon as the 2008 election was over. Obama Orders 30-35,000 More Troops for Afghanistan, Surge to Begin by Christmas After months of debate, President Barack Obama will spell out a costly Afghanistan war expansion to a skeptical public Tuesday night, coupling an infusion of as many as 35,000 more troops with a vow that there will be no endless U.S. commitment. His first orders have already been made: at least one group of Marines who will be in place by Christmas. John Farmer's "The Ground Truth": A Deeply Flawed Book By: David Ray Griffin Although John Farmer's "The Ground Truth" has attracted a lot of favorable attention, it is a deeply flawed book, containing misleading claims and providing an extremely one-sided account of 9/11. Much of the attention received by the book has been prompted by misleading claims made by Farmer and his publisher. The book's dust-jacket calls it the "definitive account" of 9/11, but it actually deals almost entirely with only one question about that day: why the airliners were not intercepted. The Israeli Occupation of America: How Israel Gained Control of American Foreign Policy and Public Opinion As all know, in 1961 John Kennedy became the 35th President of the United States, a presidency cut short as a result of his assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Robert Kennedy, the president’s younger brother was Attorney General of the United States and therefore the head of the Department of Justice. What is little-known is that the Kennedy’s realized early on that indeed the country was in trouble and that something needed to be done about it. The trouble in this case was the influence slithering its way into American political life from a far-away state only about 12 years old known as Israel. The History of the House of Rothschild You will find that approximately 90% of people in the world today who call themselves Jews are actually Khazars, or as they like to be known, Ashkenazi Jews. These people knowingly lie to the world with their claims that the land of Israel is theirs by birthright, when in actual fact their real homeland is over 800 miles away in Georgia. History of Rothschilds and Central Banks 1913: The Rothschilds set up the Anti Defamation League (ADL) in the United States designed to brand as, “antiSemitic,” anyone who questions or challenges the Global Elite. Strangely enough, the same year that they do this they also set up their last and current central bank in America, the Federal Reserve
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Taibbi: Obama’s sellout to Wall Street creates ‘permanent bailout’

Taibbi: Obama’s sellout to Wall Street creates ‘permanent bailout’

David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Friday, Dec 4th, 2009

If passed as it is, the financial reform bill winding its way through Congress will create a “permanent bailout mechanism,” and will give complete control over future bailouts to the White House, says columnist Matt Taibbi.

In a video preview of an upcoming Rolling Stone article, Taibbi explained how the Obama administration started selling out to Wall Street interests almost as soon as the 2008 election was over.

“The really big thing that’s in these bills that’s really, really scary is that it kind of outlines a permanent bailout mechanism,” Taibbi said. “If it survives in the way that it was originally conceived, it’s basically going to formalize an arrangement whereby the government is expected to bail out the top 20 to 25 largest financial companies. … It will be entirely up to the White House to determine whether or not these companies are in trouble in the future, so there won’t be any congressional role in deciding when and when not to give a bailout.”

Taibbi’s words echoed the concerns of some in Congress that, far from ensuring that America’s financial system will be healthy, the financial reform being proposed will make Wall Street more dependent on taxpayers than it is already.

US House Rep. Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, said in October that the financial reform plan would create a “permanent bailout authority.” And Paul Volcker, the Jimmy Carter-appointed former head of the Federal Reserve who is widely credited with successfully fighting off inflation in the 1980s, said the Obama administration’s proposed financial reform would maintain the “too-big-to-fail” mentality and could lead to further bailouts.

Taibbi: Obama’s sellout to Wall Street creates ‘permanent bailout’ 121109banner2

Taibbi also said that President Barack Obama gave key economic positions away to Wall Street insiders instead of keeping on progressive voices from his presidential campaign.

During the campaign, Obama was primarily advised by people like Austan Goolsbee from University of Chicago and Karen Kornbluh who is a well known progressive economist. Obama gets elected, the very day he gets elected those people are basically off the team and he brings in a whole bunch of people from Wall Street.

Primarily he brings in his former college buddy Michael Froman who is a Harvard classmate of Obama’s. Froman was a high-ranking Citigroup executive. He puts Froman in charge on November 5th of running the economic transition team. He was in charge of hiring people for the White House to run economic policy.

Froman also brought in Jamie Rubin to be his number two. Rubin is the son of Bob Rubin who is a big Citigroup executive as well.


Rubin probably more than any other person — single person — was responsible for the financial crisis by deregulating the economy in the White House. He also had a major role in helping to destroy one of the world’s biggest companies. You know, Citigroup. He has like one of the worst track records you can possible find in the country and yet he was the guy who was basically the architect of the entire Obama policy. Obama put him in charge of everything. The crew that’s running the policy in the White House is basically all tied to Bob Rubin.

A couple of weeks after he hires these Citigroup people to run all those hires, they announced the Citigroup bailout which is a massive $300 billion giveaway to Citigroup…

Watch all of Matt Taibbi’s comments below. His full story is expected in the January edition of Rolling Stone.

Pay cut for two million Britons causes collapse in tax revenue

Almost two million Britons have accepted pay cuts or reduced hours to stave off unemployment, causing government income tax receipts to collapse by almost one fifth.

The Government is now facing the biggest peacetime deficit in history, and ministers will next week confirm they are likely to borrow close to £180 billion this year – the equivalent of the entire NHS and education budgets combined.

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, will say in his pre-Budget report that the deficit is higher than expected because income tax receipts have been directly hit by the fall in wages.

Between April and October, the amount the Treasury received in income tax fell by 16 per cent – more than £17 billion – compared with the same period in 2008.

The Treasury calculates that 1.7 million people who might have been made redundant in the recession have been saved from the dole queue by taking a pay cut or shorter hours.

"This wage restraint is the reason why, in bald terms, there has been lower unemployment," one Treasury official said. "But the price we have paid is we have had less money coming in and therefore higher borrowing."

Officials have calculated that in the past year a third of all pay settlements between workers and their companies, affecting up to 10 million employees, were for pay freezes or below-inflation increases of a mere 1 per cent.

This proportion has never been so high: in the years preceding the recession, only one in 50 pay settlements was in that range.

Independent research has shown that, on top of this, around seven per cent of businesses were this year preparing to cut their workers' pay.

In addition to reduced full-time salary agreements, a number of major companies such as BT and KPMG have offered their workers sabbaticals in return for pay cuts.

Mr Darling will cite the shift to "more flexible working" next week as he declares that the Government's policies have helped prevent unemployment – currently 2.5 million or 7.8 per cent of the workforce – from reaching the peaks it did in previous recessions. However, the Treasury still expects unemployment to continue to increase next year.

Yesterday the steelmaker Corus announced that it was to axe 1,700 jobs as it cuts production at its Teesside plant.

John Philpott, of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, one of Britain's leading employment economists, said: "This is a shared pain recession, with the impact of the downturn spread throughout the workforce rather than falling solely on the jobless.

“Although the number of pay freezes will be moderate, it will be a continuing phenomenon right into next year, and perhaps beyond.”

The Chancellor will use Wednesday’s pre-Budget report to give warning that although the economy is expected to start growing again before the end of the year, Britain will this year record its biggest slide in economic output since comparable records began. He will forecast a fall in gross domestic product of 4.75 per cent, and only weak growth of 1.25 per cent next year.

He will risk causing instability in the markets by announcing that, far from drawing up more ambitious plans to cut the deficit as the Treasury had suggested in previous months, he will borrow more this year than originally expected.

But he will take just as long to start paying it back as was laid out earlier this year in the Budget. In a set-piece which is likely to kick off six months of campaigning ahead of next year’s general election, the Chancellor will focus on the extent to which the Government’s policies have prevented a Great Depression in Britain.

He will emphasise that Conservative plans to cut the deficit more dramatically would risk sending the country into a longer-lasting recession.

A spokesman for the Conservatives said the Government’s lack of a credible plan to deal with the deficit “will mean higher taxes and higher interest rates, undermining the recovery”.

The PBR is likely to opt for political positioning over good government,” the spokesman added.

AmTrust, Five Other U.S. Lenders Shut as 2009 Toll Reaches 130

Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- AmTrust Bank, a Cleveland-based lender with $12 billion in assets, joined five other U.S. banks in being seized by regulators as companies buckle under the weight of commercial real estate losses.

Closely held AmTrust collapsed alongside three banks in Georgia and one each in Virginia and Illinois, according to statements issued yesterday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which was named receiver. The failures will cost the FDIC’s deposit fund $2.38 billion, the agency said.

“The commercial real estate market is the big problem,” said James Barth, a former chief economist at the Office of Thrift Supervision. Office vacancy rates climbed to 13.3 percent nationally in the second quarter from 12.3 percent in the prior period, according to a CB Richard Ellis index.

With the closings, 130 U.S. lenders have collapsed this year. Banks are failing at the fastest pace in 17 years even as the U.S. economy shows signs of pulling out of the recession. The unemployment rate fell to 10 percent from 10.2 percent in October, according to figures from the Labor Department. The number of failed banks reached 179 in 1992.

“The unemployment rate is quite high, so unless there is a turnaround in sales you will see commercial real estate continue to suffer,” Barth said.

The following table lists the banks seized yesterday. Asset and deposit figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

Failed Bank Buyer Assets Deposits

AmTrust Bank N.Y. Comm. Bank 12,000 8,000 Cleveland Westbury, N.Y.

Buckhead Comm. Bank State Bank & Trust 874 838 Atlanta Macon, Ga.

Greater Atlantic Bank Sonabank 203 179 Reston, Va. McLean, Va.

Benchmark Bank MB Financial Bank 170 181 Aurora, Ill. Chicago

First Security NB State Bank & Trust 128 123 Norcross, Ga. Macon, Ga.

Tattnall Bank HeritageBank 49.6 47.3 Reidsville, Ga. Albany, Ga.

A deeper look behind the jobless numbers

WASHINGTON - Within the vast pool of 15.4 million unemployed workers, a split is emerging: The number of long-term jobless — those out of work six months or longer — is growing, while the number of short-term unemployed is declining.

The trend highlights a considerable challenge for the economy and policymakers: finding a way for the millions of Americans laid off last fall and early this year to get back to work.

The data, buried in Friday's unemployment report, are stark: The number of Americans out of work for 27 weeks or more reached 5.9 million last month, the most on records dating from 1948. That's 18 percent more than just three months ago, when the total was just below 5 million.

The tally of those out of work for 14 weeks or less, however, has dropped to 6.3 million from 7.1 million in August, a decline of about 11 percent.

Looking at it another way, the long-term jobless now make up 38.3 percent of the unemployed population, not that far from the 41.1 percent accounted for by those out of work for 14 weeks or less. (The rest are in the 15-to-26 weeks bracket.)

That's a sharp change from August, when the short-term unemployed made up nearly half the total, while the longer-term jobless were only a third.

In some ways, the dichotomy is good news, in that it reflects a slowdown in layoffs. The Labor Department said Friday that employers cut a net total of 11,000 jobs in November, down from 111,000 the previous month. The unemployment rate dropped to 10 percent from 10.2 percent in October, the first decline since July.

That gives analysts hope the economy could begin generating jobs in the next few months, after shedding 7.2 million in the past two years.

Still, "new hiring may not be picking up all that much," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. "So what you're seeing is less people thrown into unemployment."

And without more jobs, the long-term unemployment problem is likely to linger. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has expressed concern that people caught in long spells of unemployment could see their skills atrophy.

"It really is the most difficult challenge facing us," he said in testimony to a Senate panel Thursday.

Here, by the numbers, are some more details you can find deep in the employment report.

Less than zero, but getting closer

• 11,000: The net total of jobs lost in November
• 111,000: Jobs lost in October
• 139,000: Jobs lost in September
• 691,000: Average monthly loss in first three months of this year
• 7.2 million: Total decline in U.S. payrolls since recession began in December 2007

Unemployment still high

• 10 percent: November's unemployment rate, in double digits for only the second time in 26 years
• 10.2 percent: October's jobless rate, the highest since April 1983
• 10.8 percent: Unemployment rate in December 1982, the highest since World War II

Where the jobs are

• 52,400: The number of temporary jobs added in November, the biggest increase in five years
• 11,100: Jobs added in education
• 21,000: Jobs added in hospitals, nursing and other health care sectors
• 1,000: Jobs added in computer services
• 5,600: Jobs added in management and technical consulting
• 7,500: Jobs added in department stores

Underemployed

• 9.2 million: Number of part-time workers who would have preferred full-time work last month
• 2.3 million: People without jobs who want to work but have stopped looking
• 17.2 percent: "Underemployment" rate in November if you include the above two categories
• 17.5 percent: Underemployment rate in October, the highest in records dating to 1994

The 'he-cession'

• 10.5 percent: Unemployment rate for adult men
• 7.9 percent: Unemployment rate for adult women

November unemployment rate by group

• 11.4 percent: Female heads of households
• 7.3 percent: Asians
• 9.3 percent: Whites
• 12.7 percent: Hispanics
• 15.6 percent: Blacks
• 26.7 percent: Teenagers

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