Robert Fantina: John Kerry Proposes Investments in Palestine,

while funding Israeli Apartheid Main Obstacle to Commerce. As US Secretary of State, John Kerry attempts to put his particular spin on resolving the generations old crisis of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, he has traveled to the World Economic Forum. There he waved the possibility of $4 billion investments in the Palestinian economy, from a worldwide conglomerate of investors, over a period of three years. Of course, he hasn't specified who these investors would be. It was reported that Kerry did not identify specific companies with plans to set up shop in the West Bank, or how he hoped to remove obstacles to Palestinian commerce. The US government in 2013, will give Israel over $3.15 billion, an increase over the billions it gave Israel last year. Yet the US doesn't ever seem to have any problem determining where that money comes from: the US taxpayer has for decades been funding the apartheid state of Israel. Regarding removing obstacles to Palestinian commerce, perhaps we could take a look at what some of those obstacles are. Israel has established countless checkpoints all over the West Bank. Customers wanting to get stores that may be a few blocks from their home, may have to travel miles to get to them, because IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces soldiers arbitrarily close checkpoints, whenever the mood so strikes them. Or, they might leave a checkpoint open, but prevent people from passing through by asking countless questions, demanding assorted identification, or simply telling them they have to wait until the soldiers are good and ready to speak to them. That could be today, or possibly, tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. And if a potential customer decides to try a different route, through a different checkpoint, there is no guarantee the response there will be any different. Merchants attempting to get to their own stores face the same checkpoints and challenges. Farmers need to plant seeds, irrigate crops, care for them and eventually harvest them. This becomes difficult, when they require permits from Israel to plant and harvest on their own land. A Palestinian farmer may request a permit to plant during planting season, but be granted the permit only long after planting season has passed. If he or she is fortunate enough to be given permission to plant at the appropriate time of the year, he or she must simply hope that permission to harvest will be granted when appropriate. It is not unusual for Israel to grant permission to a Palestinian farmer to harvest their crops long after they have spoiled in the field. If a farmer is sufficiently lucky to be permitted to plant and harvest on his or her own land at an appropriate time, the challenges do not end. Once the crops are harvested, and loaded onto vehicles, to be taken to market, the checkpoints challenge is then faced. Often, farmers are delayed so long by IDF soldiers at checkpoints that their produce spoils before they are allowed to pass through.

Washington's Blog: The real Reason Housing Prices Have Skyrocketed.

How another Housing Bubble was Blown, and why. Housing Prices: Up Or Down? Recovery, Or Artificial Housing Bubble Which is About to Pop? We showed that mortgage applications are down, and it is really institutional investors, driving the housing boom. Part 2 explains why. Housing prices have boomed because: (1) Lenders are artificially keeping vacant houses off the market and (2), The Obama administration has thrown all sorts of artificial incentives at institutional investors to pump up prices. Artificially Suppressed Housing Inventory: Naked Capitalism reported last August: To trends are apparent. One is that banks are delaying foreclosures, or not foreclosing at all, despite long term delinquencies. The other is that private equity firms flush with cash, thanks to Tim Geithners religious devotion to trickle down economics, and the resulting cascade of corporate welfare, have been bidding up and holding foreclosed houses off the marked. These two factors have artificially limited supply and, combined with cheap mortgages rates, driven up prices. While we can debate whether these strategies represent the best public policy, these policies are obviously not long term sustainable. Lenders argue the drop in foreclosures is caused by delays in the court system. However, Judge Jennifer D. Bailey, lead foreclosure judge in Miami-Dade County, epicenter of the foreclosure crisis, solidly rebuts that argument. Here in Miami Dade Countys Eleventh Circuit, there has been no delay in foreclosure case hearings for nearly two years, Judge Bailey said in an August 19, 2012 interview with the Miami Herald, If you want to see a judge to hear your trial or summary judgment, you get a prompt court date. This coincides with my own observations in foreclosure court, when judges rail at bank lawyers for repeatedly delaying their cases, even when borrowers are in now way contesting their foreclosures. Holding back inventory means that the houses that are put on offer, sell faster and at higher prices. That creates an incentive to delay foreclosures or not to foreclose at all, even when a home is delinquent. Indeed, in the real world, 12.6 million houses are vacant, 1.5 million more homes are than underwater. In other words, without artificial scarcity created by banks, there would be more available houses than there are underwater homeowners having problems paying their mortgage. There would in a word be a glut. Government is Secretly Helping Financial Companies to Snap Up Housing. There are realistic ways to help the economy. For example: Force the big banks to write down bad debt, Crack down on fraud, Break up the giant banks, Force Wall Street to reduce leverage. Stop encouraging business to send jobs and dollars abroad.

Rand Clifford, Nikola Tesla: Calling All Freethinkers!

Humanity's horizons glowed from the brilliance of Nikola Tesla. But to our horrible misfortune, the glow was much too bright for the Power Status Quo (PSQ). Money means power, and Tesla cost tycoons a lot of money, by slaying with alternating current (AC), the dead end direct current (DC) power distribution system of Thomas Edison, financed by JP Morgan. More than forty of Tesla's patents from 1888 cover the entire system of polyphase AC that, virtually unchanged, powers civilization to this day, a monumental lifetime achievement for any man. But poly-phase AC didn't lead directly to the PSQ's campaign of erasing Radiant Electricity. The ultimate forbidden technology, Aether and Radiant was a primary focus of Tesla's last forty years on Earth. By tapping the Aether, by touching the wheel-work of nature, Tesla illuminated visions of humanity freed from domination by the likes of Rothschild, Morgan, Rockefeller, the entire global tyranny machine powered largely by fossil energy, private central banking, war. One man found an antidote for pathocracy, humanity's premier poison. His name was Nikola Tesla, that remains one of the few things about the man that has not been altered by the PSQ. The name survives, but little else about Tesla has not been violated. His crime, or sin was competition tycoons couldn't control. Tesla always knew he would triumph. In his own words, regarding tycoons such as J.P. Morgan: I am unwilling to accord to some small minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. My project was retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time, but the same laws will prevail in the end, and make it a triumphal success. Tesla's triumphal success has the power to unwind tyranny. All we need is for enough humans to awaken from the PSQ's spell. Tesla obviously thought awakening was possible, even while insisting that, No free energy device will ever be allowed to reach the market. Tesla knew that mass awakening was the wildcard. If we let him down, we let humanity down. Tycoons throw enormous wealth at protecting people from reality, by keeping them asleep. But waking up is free, the only ticket to freedom of development of the human potential. Freedom, a gorgeous concept increasingly hollowed out by the PSQ. Try to imagine what humanity might achieve without being kicked in the face by the psychopathic elite.       

Gordon Duff: Israel's secret Doomsday Nuke base revealed by US!

An Israeli Patriot anti-missile system and an Arrow anti missile system are seen at an Israeli military base, May 12, 2011. From Sheera Frenkel at McClatchy News, the Obama administration had promised to build Israel a state of the art facility to house a new ballistic missile defense system, the Arrow 3. As with all Defense Department projects, detailed specifications were made public, so that contractors could bid on the $25 million project. The specifications included more than 1,000 pages of details on the facility, ranging from the heating and cooling systems to the thickness of the walls. A location and details of a top secret Israeli base which could be used to launch nuclear attacks on China or North America was published last week. Immediate moves were made to "spin" the story away. The base, intended to house Intercontinental ballistic missiles, (ICBMs) built in cooperation with India is also to include, not just a doomsday "Fuehrer bunker" for Netanyahu and the Zionist elites, but storage for nuclear, biological and chemical warheads as well. According to intelligence sources in Pakistan, India is supplying Israel with missiles capable of carrying 10 MIRV, Multiple Independent targetable Re-entry Vehicle warheads, each with a range of up to 11,000 miles. A single missile from a Bunker? We don't need no stinking bunkers. Arrow 3 system, courtesy of the Jerusalem Post. This US financed complex could knock out all major population centers on America's eastern seaboard. The thermonuclear warheads and guidance systems for these advanced weapons were made possible through espionage activities tied ti AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. Newspapers claim the underground base, one of a series being built across Israel, is part of an air defense system. This is, of course, utterly absurd. Air defenses are meant to protect, not to be the primary target. Scamming America to death! An Israeli program to use American funds, earmarked for missiles defense on a nuclear command bunker and ICBM silos was accidentally exposed by the Department of Defense last week. America needs more "accidents" of this kind. Detailed plans on the massive underground facility at Tel Shahar, intended to be Israel's answer to NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain fortress in Colorado, were made public when the US published over 1000 pages of documents, including key information on location, design and vulnerabilities to attack. 

Joan Walsh: Susan Rice is Promoted National Security Advisor,

and there is nothing Republican obstructionists can do about it. When ABC News published doctored emails about the development of Benghazi talking points, and the White House countered by releasing the originals, which told a very different story, the two versions agreed on at least one fact: UN Ambassador Susan Rice had nothing to do with the controversial description of the Benghazi attack that she shared in her five fateful Sunday show appearances last September 17. I thought at the time that Rice deserved an apology from Republicans who savaged her, once the truth about the talking points came out, but of course one never came. Senator Lindsey Graham countered by saying she deserved to be subpoenaed instead. Now she's gotten the next best thing: a promotion to National Security Advisor, once Tom Donilon leaves the job in July. The position needs no confirmation by the Senate, so Rice's GOP critics have nothing to say about her new role. Well, nothing to say that makes a difference, anyway. That didn't stop them from talking. Sen. John McCain was slightly conciliatory Tweeting that while obviously I disagreed w/POTUS appointment of Susan Rice as National Security Adviser, I'll make every effort to work with her on important issues. On the other hand, Senator Rand Paul insisted it undermined Obama's Moral Authority to promote basically the person who is guilty of misleading us over the Benghazi tragedy. By lying about Rice's role, she played no part in the behind the scenes controversy between the CIA and the State Department over how much, and what to say about the attacks, Paul undermines his own moral authority. But lately that's no impediment to influence within his party. It's possible that Paul isn't smart enough to understand the details of what the Benghazi emails revealed, but that's not a problem in his party either. Coming within 24 hours of the president's announcing that he's nominating three people to fill three long vacant US Court of Appeals Washington DC Circuit seats it's inevitable that Rice's promotion is being described as representing a new in your face approach to his opponents, in the words of James Carville on MSNBC. The timing may just be coincidence: it's long been assumed that Rice would succeed Donilon, and the outgoing security adviser always always planned to leave early in the second term. On the other hand, the fact that Obama didn't hesitate to announce his appointment of Rice on the day after he defied Republican obstructionists with his three judicial nominees is a good sign.

Chossudovsky: Who will be Attending the Bilderberg Meeting?

What will be discussed behind closed doors? Each year, the Bilderberg venue brings together members of the financial and corporate elite, politicians, hand picked scholars, journalists and scientists. It is An Anglo-Western European North American Venue, with participants from 21 Western countries, (i.e Western Europe, US and Canada). With the exception of British born Polish Minister of Finance, Jacek Rostowski, there are no participants from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, with the exception of Turkey. There are 14 women out of 140 participants. The official website of the Bilderberg describes the venue as a forum for informal, off the record discussion about megatrends and the major issues facing the world. Semi secrecy prevails: While crucial negotiations are undertaken, leading to far reaching decisions, Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers in attendance are participating in their personal capacity. They are required not to report to Cabinet or to the Legislature. This year's 61st meeting is scheduled to be held
at the Grove Hotel near Watford, Hertfordshire, UK, June 6-9, 2013. Various dimensions of the New World Order, including the global economic crisis, the wars in the Middle East, biotechnology, cyber warfare and Homeland security will be discussed behind closed doors. Thanks to the private nature of the conference, the participants are not bound by the conventions of office. or by pre-agreed positions
As such, they can take time to listen, reflect and gather insights. There is no detailed agenda, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued. The Venue will regroup some 140 participants, including George Osborne, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Henry Kissinger, Timothy Geithner, former Secretary of the Treasury, Gen, David Petraeous, former head of the CIA, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, Richard N. Perle, prominent adviser to the Bush Junior administration, Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Eric Schmidt of Google, two former presidents of the World Bank, Lames D. Wolfensohn and Robert B. Zoellick, among others. Prominent members of the Anglo American financial establishment include David Wright, Vice Chairman of Barklays, J. Michael Evans, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Douglas J. Flint, Group Chairman of HSBC, Kenneth M. Jacobs, Chairman and CEO of Lazard, Peter D. Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs International, Edmund Clark, President and CEO of Canada's TD Bank Group, The Swiss banking establishment which overseas billions of dollars in undeclared numbered bank accounts, is represented by Dr. Thomas Jakob Ulrich Jordan, the recently appointed Chairman of the Governing Board of the Schweizerishen Nationalbank (Swiss National Bank).      

Eric Draitser: Zimbabwe, The Revolution Continues!

The coming elections in Zimbabwe are no mere referendum on the leadership of the coalition government. Instead, the decision before Zimbabweans is a clear one: continue on the revolutionary path of Mugabe and ZANU-PF or follow Prime Minister Morgan Tsangirais MDC-T and their pro US, neoliberal economic agenda. While much of Africa has been turned into a chaotic, war ravaged continent, stuck in the destructive cycles of violence, terrorism, and dependence on imperial powers, Zimbabwe has managed to maintain the fierce independence on imperial powers, Zimbabwe has managed to maintain the fierce independence and commitment to revolution espoused by President Mugabe, stretching all the way back to the post colonial liberation struggle. However, in order to fully understand the sustained campaign of destabilization and subversion by the Western imperialist ruling class, one must first examine the policies of Mugabe and ZANU-PF, that have earned them the ire of Washington and London. Mugabes Crimes: Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party emerged from the post independence conflict as the dominant political party in Zimbabwe, promising to finally address the most pressing issues facing black Zimbabweans who, despite making up the vast majority of the population, continued to be mostly landless, while the white, landowning class maintained their grip on the most arable land. This gross disparity in land ownership, a vestige of the colonial system, became one of the primary needs that the new leadership intended to address. However, the terms of the negotiated settlement of the war of liberation in 1979, known as the Lancaster House Agreement, essentially allowed the white farmers to retain their land, if they chose to do so under the willing buyer, willing seller principle. The system continued until 2000, when President Mugabe shifted the policy to a fast track land program, that sought to unseat white privilege, and restore ethnic balance to land ownership. It was precisely this policy shift, that earned Mugabe the ire of the imperial powers, particularly the British, which then sought to punish Mugabe and the people of Zimbabwe, by instituting crippling sanctions that destroyed the Zimbabwean economy. However, this only strengthened the resolve of ZANU-PF, teaching them a number of important lessons. As Francis Chitsike of Midlands State University in Zimbabwe points out: What the Zimbabwean government learned from its own experience, is that in an agriculturally based economy, no development program will succeed if people are not given access to land.