U.S. Told: Bail Out Europe

By Christopher J. Petherick

The heads of the world’s leading central banks announced in a joint statement on Sept. 15 that, in order to quell concerns about a deepening of
the global economic crisis, the privately owned and controlled U.S. Federal Reserve would have to flood the upper tier of the world’s financial system with even
more U.S. dollars by providing “unlimited U.S. dollar
liquidity” to any financial institution around the world
that asks for a handout.
Financial analysts were quick to characterize the
move as nothing more than a transparent attempt to bail
out the European Union’s struggling euro currency and
defer an imminent default on Greece’s massive debt.
The concern here is that the move will further tie the
United States to European countries like Portugal, Ireland,
Italy, Greece and Spain, which have been struggling
under debts accrued by past governments as well as onerous
economic regulations set by the European Central
Bank.
But more importantly, the latest bailout will only
serve to benefit the megabankers, just as all the other
sweetheart deals and zero-interest-rate loans that came
before it.
For instance, as the dust settles on the Federal Reserve’smuch-
ballyhooed $2 trillion “quantitative easing”
program, which was ostensibly intended to help Main
Street by providing a boost to the U.S. economy, critics
now charge that the banks that took part in the program
either pocketed the money to bolster their own books or
invested it for their own profit.
And keep in mind that this will not be the first time
that the Fed has bailed out the world’s central banks.
In August 2009, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke was put on the hot seat at a congressional hearing
after he could not remember which foreign central
banks the Fed had loaned a half trillion dollars.
“So who got the money?” asked Rep. Alan Grayson
(D-Fla.) at the time.
“I don’t know,” responded Bernanke.
“Half a trillion dollars, and you don’t know who got
the money?” countered Grayson.
To this day it remains unknown just how much the
Federal Reserve is on the hook for, since the Fed has
never been fully audited.
GeoffreyYu, the director of foreign-exchange strategy
at UBS Bank in Switzerland, told London’s Telegraph
newspaper: “This doesn’t change anything. It helps the
banks for the next couple of months, but that’s it.”



U.S. Peace Activist Files Suit Against Attackers

By Dave Gahary
The Jewish peace activist who made national
headlines for being physically assaulted while
disrupting Israeli PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
speech before a joint session of Congress
has filed a lawsuit against her unnamed attackers.
RaeAbileah, theMiddle East coordinator for Code Pink,
a peacemovement working to end U.S.-funded wars and
occupations, is being represented on a contingency basis
by high-profile attorney Lynne Bernabei of the D.C. law
firm Bernabei &Wachtel, PLLC.
TheMay 24 speech, timed to coincide
with the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual
conference—themost powerful lobby
in the nation’s capital—garnered national
attention beyond the assault for
how many standing ovations Netanyahu
received. Remarkably, every
congressman and congresswoman
rose fromtheir seat 29 times to laud aman who had publicly
humiliated President Barack Obama a short time
before. In comparison, the president received 25 standing
ovations during his 2011 State of the Union address.
About 10 minutes into Netanyahu’s speech, Abileah
rose from her seat in the last row of the House Gallery,
unfurled a banner that read, “Occupying Land is Indefensible,”
and repeatedly shouted, “Nomore occupation!
Stop Israeli war crimes! Equal rights for Palestinians!
Occupying land is indefensible!”
During a 45-minute exclusive interview with AMERICAN
FREE PRESS on Sept. 8, Ms. Abileah described her
initial reactions.
“I was actually pretty surprised to walk in and see
most people in the gallery wearing AIPAC badges from
their conference, visual evidence of the stranglehold that
AIPAC has on our Congress,” she said. “I was really appalled
to see how much support [Netanyahu] was getting.”
Asked to recount the assault, Ms. Abileah’s memory
was fresh, having just recently reconstructed the event
for her legal team:
“A man grabbed my arm, tried to
rip the banner out of my hand, sent me
whirling and I fell to the ground,” she
said. “He also attempted to gag me,
and I felt people pushing me from all
around.”
She continued: “I couldn’t actually
get up on my own accord to walk out
of the room, so the police dragged me
out by my arms, and I immediately
asked formedical attention. I was taken to a hospital and
had a lot of tests and X-rays done, and in the middle of
one of the tests police came in and read me myMiranda
rights and said I was under arrest and handcuffed me to
the hospital bed. Fromthat point on, I had two police officers
watching my every move.”
The complaint mentions four unnamed people and
asks for $1 million in compensatory and punitive damages
for assault, battery and false imprisonment.
“My legal team submitted a subpoena for the identities
of the people who assaulted me, and the U.S. Capitol
Police have a month to comply with that,” explained
Abileah.
“I also hope there will be criminal charges that hold
these people accountable once we know their identities,”
she said. “Tome, this kind of violent response to non-violent
protesters, to peaceful demonstrators, is a microcosm
of what goes on almost every day in the West
Bank.”



Perry’s Trail of Corruption

By Ralph Forbes
Picture theMarlboroMan riding out of the west,
healthy, rugged and free . . . until you recall two
of the iconic Marlboro men, Wayne McLaren
and David McLean, died of lung cancer. Ironically,
McLaren testified in favor of anti-smoking legislation,
but the phonyMadisonAvenue icon lives on. But
the deadliestMarlboroMan phony ad is the one that portrays
politician Rick Perry as a cowboy. The ads are
clearly rustling the Reagan brand andmarketing it as his
own. Neighbors in his hometown of Paint Creek and
Haskell County clearly think Perry is riding to power on
a rustled horse with a false brand.
Big city Texans agree. Perry has
enjoyed lavish perks and travel, paid
for by crony capitalists who have
funded Perry’s jetting around the
world, stays in luxury hotels and resorts,
vacations in exclusive Colorado
ski towns, expensive sporting events
and concerts, at least nine hunting
trips, entertainment—even paying the
cable bill at the 4,600-square-footmansion with a heated
pool that the taxpayers are paying for—$8,500 a month.
As The Houston Chronicle said, Perry’s “a long way from
the cotton farm.”
Perry’s acceptance of such perks feeds a corrupt payto-
play political culture in Texas. His campaign paid
$426,000 last year to settle an opponent’s lawsuit alleging
it accepted illegal contributions from a top donor.
According to an article by Kenneth P.Vogel in theWashington
daily Politico, insurance company owner Phil
Adams has contributed nearly $290,000 to Perry’s gubernatorial
campaigns.
Terrabon Inc., a company in which Adams invested,
got $2.75 million from the Texas Emerging Technology
Fund, a state economic development program overseen
by Perry.
Perry’s trips to Israel are examples of his “extravagant
lifestyle funded by secretive corporate contributions”
which resulted in favors in return. The trip had been organized
and partly funded by Irwin Katsof, an international
energy financier and Israel backer, who also
helped fund a 2007 Perry trip to Israel.
Doug Pitcock, a major Perry campaign contributor,
who runs a road building firm that does millions of dollars
in business with the state, revealed
that he had loaned his plane to the
governor to fly to Israel and wanted to
donate the cost of the flight—
$180,000—to TexasOne (a privately
funded “public/private partnership designed
for economic development in
Texas”) as an in-kind tax-deductible
contribution.
Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier
said the 2007 trip spurred the formation of theTexas-
Israel Chamber of Commerce and “served as a catalyst
to the governor’s support of Texas’s divestment from
companies that do business with Iran.”
When Perry announced his run for the presidency in
South Carolina, he began his speech: “I’mthe product of
a place called Paint Creek—doesn’t have a zip code.” (Its
zip code is 79521.) He invoked images of his rural
school, growing cotton and wheat, hismother sewing his
clothes when he went off to college, his Boy Scout troop
(No. 48) . . . “It’s a great place to grow up. . . .Wonderful
people out there.”
Meanwhile, back on the farm, “I never saw him on a
tractor in his life,” said one of Perry’s old neighbors, who
requested anonymity. “And I never did see him on a
horse.”
It’s no crime not to be a farmer—but it does show lack
of character to pretend you are one.
Wallar Overton, 72, Perry’s old Boy Scout troop
leader, the one who awarded himhis Eagle Scout badge,
said he likely won’t be voting for him.
When Perry’s birthplace was devastated by a flood in
2004, Perry turned his back on Haskell, according to
Haskell’s county judge, David C. Davis.
Don Ballard, the superintendent of the county’s school
system, concurred with Davis. “It was pretty bad,” he
said. “We lost a bunch of homes around the lake. . . .We
had a lot of homes damaged,” but Perry didn’t send “any
kind of aid.”

Truth About the Trans-Canada Pipeline

By VIctor Thorn
Even the high-profile arrest of film star Daryl
Hannah in front of the White House on Aug.
30 didn’t adequately cast a light on a potentially
disastrous eminent domain and environmental
problems soon to face those living in America’s prime
farming country. Specifically, if constructed, the proposed
Keystone XL pipeline will stretch from Alberta
through the upper Midwest to Oklahoma,
whereupon phase II will then
extend—like an oil-coursing jugular—
through America’s heartland to
the Texas gulf.
Although Ms. Hannah protested
U.S. dependence on oil and touted the
need for cleaner energy investments,
her aims—albeit noble—were somewhat
misdirected and naïve. She correctly
pointed out during anAug. 31 television interview
that the Trans-Canada pipeline has already suffered 12
spills in a mere 12 months and that it will pierce America’s
largest freshwater aquifer, which 20 million people
depend on. However, Ms. Hannah and other activists
failed to identify the truemotives behind this sinister undertaking.
In a Sept. 2 article for IPS News entitled “U.S.Awash
in Oil and Lies,” Stephen Leahy wrote, “The only reason
U.S. citizens may be forced to endure a risky, Canadianowned
oil pipeline called Keystone XL is so oil companies
with billion-dollar profits can get the dirty oil from
Canada’s tar sands down to the Gulf ofMexico to export
to Europe, LatinAmerica orAsia.”
In other words, oil companies have not only domestic
aims for this thick, tarry substance known as bitumen,
without doubt considered the world’s dirtiest oil, they
also plan on shipping it to energygreedy
nations such as China. Tragically,
with what we now know about
the BP oil spill, a proposed venture
that could contaminate our nation’s
most precious water aquifer with toxic
sludgemust be considered with the utmost
care.
Even more disturbingly, Barack
Obama, once characterized as the
“green president,” may well be envisioning the use of
taxpayer money to construct this pipeline as part of his
infrastructure jobs program.
On July 26, Rep. LeeTerry (R-Neb.) introduced H.R.
1938 that would expedite a White House review of the
Keystone XL pipeline in order for officials to arrive at a
decision by Nov. 1.
In response, grassroots environmentalists are placing
increased pressure squarely on Obama’s doorstep. Onetime
supporters such as Danielle Droitsch of the Natural
Resources Defense Council framed the matter in succinct
terms. If Obama gives the nod to this pipeline,Ms.
Droitsch’s devotees feel it will leave a “dirty legacy” on
his entire presidency.