United States News Digest

Brown Lies Before Joint Session of Congress

March 4 (EIRNS)-President Obama's snub of visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown served as a perfect backdrop to Brown's frantic lies in his address today to a joint session of Congress.

Brown delivered a perverse fantasy, in which America's historical resistance to British imperial crimes, became instead a record of unified Anglo-American purpose. He defined America's task now as preserving the British-led international banking swindle, in opposition to any attempt to rescue the world from that collapsed system.

The British spokesman said, "The very creation of America was a bold affirmation of faith in the future...." We had previously thought that the British had played a negative role in the American Revolution.

Brown explained that the world "looked to Washington, D.C. as 'a shining city upon a hill,'" and that "our friendship [was] formed and forged over two tumultuous centuries...." By that chronology, the friendship got off to a roaring start about when British forces burned Washington to the ground (1815), and got even friendlier with British aid to the slaveowners' Confederate war to smash the U.S.

He said he "grew up in the 1960s as America, led by President Kennedy, looked to the heavens and saw ... a new frontier...." Unfortunately, the British-Wall Street axis murdered Kennedy for having such an outlook. No doubt to remind us of the danger such a point of view can put a President in, today's London Times carries, right beside a transcript of Brown's speech, an archive photo of President Kennedy being shot to death in Dallas.

Brown announced that the British Queen has awarded an honorary knighthood to the stricken Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), because "Northern Ireland is today at peace." Well, it is truly a puzzler to remember, which occupier was it, that brought centuries of cruelty and chaos to Ireland, requiring U.S. intervention to bring "peace"?

Brown said, "We grieve with you" when "a young American soldier is killed in conflict ... in the plains of Afghanistan and the streets of Iraq." This is good to know, after Blair's WMD intelligence buoyed up Bush for Baghdad, and now that British forces directly superintend the global heroin trade's center in Afghanistan's Helmand province.

Brown declared his "support to ensure there is no hiding place for terrorists, no safe haven for terrorism." That will come as thrilling news for U.S. and other intelligence services coping with "Londonistan"—the undisturbed English headquarters for most of the world's terror groups, groups financed by British-laundered dope profits.

The Prime Minister lectured America on how to deal with the "economic hurricane" that "has swept the world." As the City of London's quadrillion dollar offshore banking pyramid dissolves, Brown said, "You are restructuring your banks. So are we. But how much safer would everybody's savings be if the whole world finally came together to outlaw shadow banking systems and offshore tax havens?"

This attitude is especially refreshing, correcting the impression Brown gave earlier in his visit, when he was reportedly desperate to head off U.S. moves against offshore criminals.

He assured the Congress that if his program is followed, we will see "trade once again the engine of prosperity, [and] the wealth of nations restored." How the heart sings!—to hear again from the British source, the truths of free trade, of trade itself (rather than production) as the source of wealth, and the grand homage to the East India Company's Adam Smith, whose 1776 book Wealth of Nations warned the American rebels they could never escape destiny's assignment to be mere plantation suppliers of raw materials to the foreign empire.

He closed with praise for Franklin Roosevelt, which was very reassuring in light of the attacks against FDR now pouring out of London into the world's media, reviving Winston Churchill's central role in burying FDR's policies after World War II.

With this, Brown called for renewal of the "special relationship" that has blazed so brightly over the years.

DOJ Police-State Memos Fuel Drive for Commission of Inquiry

March 4 (EIRNS)—The release of nine previously secret Bush Justice Department memos has given renewed impetus to the push in both the Senate and House Judiciary Committees for an independent Commission of Inquiry ("Truth Commission") to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration policies of torture and abuse of prisoners, and other fascist police-state practices.

Nine post-9/11 legal opinions from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel were released on March 2: the memos justified sweeping powers for the Executive, including using the U.S. military inside the United States for surveillance, and to attack apartments and office buildings, allowing the President to suspend the First and Fourth Amendments, and Habeas Corpus, and to unilaterally abrogate treaties. They also declared that Congress has no right to pass any legislation regulating detentions, interrogations, and renditions of prisoners in wartime.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that the content of the memos underscores the need for a commission with the power to subpoena documents and compel testimony.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, held a pre-scheduled hearing today on his proposal for a non-partisan commission of inquiry. The lead-off witness was former Amb. Thomas Pickering, who served for 45 years in various military and diplomatic posts. Pickering said a commission on the handling of detainees "is vital to our country's future, to its security, its standing in the world," and stressed that it is "not enough to say that America is discontinuing the policies and practices of the recent past," but that we must take stock of what was done, to ensure that it never happens again.

A number of the panelists properly opposed any prosecution of CIA officers who were relying on DOJ and DOD legal opinions, and Leahy said his primary concern is those who issued the directives that were carried out by lower-level personnel.

Move for 'Kefauver' Organized Crime Hearings on Financial Crash

March 4 (EIRNS)—Senators Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced legislation March 3 to bring about investigative hearings into how the financial catastrophe was caused, and by whom. Moving to create a new "Senate Select Committee" with subpoena power, a chief investigator to hold hearings, and investigative staff, the Senators said the American people "need answers and need them fast.... They deserve to know why they are on the hook for trillions of dollars bailing out banks and Wall Street."

"Organized crime" is a theme of McCain's and Dorgan's call for the hearings; they conducted the investigation into Jack Abramoff's influence-peddling crimes, catalyzed Abramoff's conviction and imprisonment, and helped reform Congress "without DeLay."

So rather than "new Pecora hearings"—which have been called for by Lyndon LaRouche and state elected officials and others influenced by LaRouche's call—McCain and Dorgan cited the historical model of "new Kefauver hearings." Sen. Estes Kefauver headed a Senate Select Committee that held hearings on organized crime in 1950-51, which gripped the country.

Congressional sources say the same Senate committee staff which designed the Dorgan/McCain legislation, also drafted the Levin/Obama legislation to shut down offshore tax-evasion centers, now being demanded by President Obama.

'Oy-Vey Chorus' Goes Berserk vs. Pickering Appointment

March 3 (EIRNS)—Israel's self-described "Amen Chorus" in the United States, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the neoconservative think-tanks, is waging a propaganda assault against President Obama, for appointing former ambassador Chas Freeman as head of the National Intelligence Council. The formal announcement of Freeman's appointment was made last week, but ever since the news of the pending appointment leaked out, the Zionist Lobby/neocon apparatus has been on an all-out blitz to stop the nomination. They have resorted to the kind of over-the-top slander campaign, previously reserved for Lyndon LaRouche.

Freeman, who retired from government at the end of the Clinton Administration to take over the Middle East Policy Council, has been an outspoken critic of the neocons, the Israeli right wing, and the "diplomacy-free" foreign policy of the Bush-Cheney era. A former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Freeman was one of the State Department's leading experts on China for decades, dating back to his role as Richard Nixon's translator during the first opening to China in the mid-1970s.

The hysteria of the neocons was, perhaps, best demonstrated by the fact that they even trotted out Steve Rosen, the still-under-indictment ex-AIPAC official accused of spying for Israel, to pen one of the first of the anti-Freeman screeds, which was posted on the website of neocon Daniel Pipes. Since then, the New Republic, the Weekly Standard, and the Heritage Foundation have been screaming over the Freeman appointment to one of the most important postings in the intelligence community. The National Intelligence Council (NIC), headquartered in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), prepares all of the National Intelligence Estimates, which are the combined assessments of the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies.