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The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Stop Him Before He Gets More Experience
By FRANK RICHPublished: February 11, 2007
If time in the United States Senate is what counts for presidential seasoning, maybe Barack Obama’s two years’ worth is already too much.
As the official Barack Obama rollout reaches its planned climax on “60 Minutes” tonight, we’ll learn if he has the star power to upstage Anna Nicole Smith. But at least one rap against him can promptly be laid to rest: his lack of experience. If time in the United States Senate is what counts for presidential seasoning, maybe his two years’ worth is already too much. Better he get out now, before there’s another embarrassing nonvote on a nonbinding measure about what will soon be a four-year-old war.
History is going to look back and laugh at last week’s farce, with the Virginia Republican John Warner voting to kill a debate on his own anti-surge resolution and the West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd seizing the occasion for an hourlong soliloquy on coal mining. As the Senate pleasured itself with parliamentary one-upmanship, the rate of American casualties in Iraq reached a new high.
The day after the resolution debacle, I spoke with Senator Obama about the war and about his candidacy. Since we talked by phone, I can’t swear he was clean, but he was definitely articulate. He doesn’t yet sound as completely scripted as his opponents — though some talking-point-itis is creeping in — and he isn’t remotely defensive as he shrugs off the race contretemps du jour prompted by his White House run. Not that he’s all sweetness and light. “If the criterion is how long you’ve been in Washington, then we should just go ahead and assign Joe Biden or Chris Dodd the nomination,” he said. “What people are looking for is judgment.”
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Transcript of Obama campaign speech
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Editor's note:
I question Senator Obama's judgement.
He calls for missile strikes on Iran's nuclear power facilities. Tens of thousands of people work in these facilities. Tens of thousands of other civilians live nearby.
Senator Obama is Dick Cheney in black skin. He talks nice, but is as power mad, vicious and cruel, as McCain, Guiliani, Clinton, and Edwards. You would almost think the U.S. presidential 2008 election is fixed.
I have more than enough evidence to support these claims. Drop me a line here if you are interested. No comment registration is required. Simply select the anonymous box.
Obama would consider missile strikes on Iran | Chicago Tribune
http://tinyurl.com/7hle7
Gates prepares for a large-scale war with Iran, North Korea, China and Russia
http://tinyurl.com/342clu
Best,
Marc
CCNWON
psst psst
Off topic...maybe not
3 articles for your consideration
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Shell Games
With no federal oversight, the states are helping to shelter crooks, money launderers and, possibly, terrorists.
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The shell problem was spectacularly demonstrated in the Bank of New York (nyse: BK - news - people ) case. Peter Berlin, a Russian immigrant, with the help of his wife, Lucy Edwards, a Russian national as well, and a bank vice president, opened up accounts in 1996 at the bank for two private shells, Benex International and BECS International. According to allegations in a criminal case, they laundered $7 billion over the next three and a half years. The money came from Russian businessmen seeking to duck customs duties and hide profits from tax authorities. Convicted of money laundering, Berlin and Edwards were given five-year suspended sentences and six months' house arrest; they were ordered to pay fines of $20,000 apiece and pay the IRS $685,000.
Bank records helped finger Garri Grigorian, a 44-year-old native Russian.
http://members.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0212/096.html
Russian Jewish Organized Crime
"The Italian mafia has a singular link between Italy and America. The Russian Mafiya is more international. The Russians seem crazier than do the Italians. While the mafia uses violence to punish enemies, the Mafiya will kill the enemy, his wife, his children. They kill as a warning and for the sheer joy of tyrannical violence. Because the Russian mob is mostly Jewish, it is a political hot potato, especially in the New York area. In general, state and federal law enforcement agencies were loath to go after Russian mobsters, instead devoting their energies to bagging Italian wise guys, a traditional route to promotion." (Robert I. Friedman. Red Mafiya. How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America, 2000)
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"On August 8, 2005, Garri Grigorian, a 43-year-old Russian living in Sandy, Utah, was sentenced to 51 months imprisonment and ordered to pay $17.42 million in restitution to the Russian government for his role in laundering over $130 million on behalf of Moscow-based Intellect Bank and its customers through bank accounts located in Sandy, Utah." (From a Department of Justice report on shell corporations, November 14, 2006)
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Despite the variations from the Sicilian model, the Mafiya has the characteristics of many other criminal societies. There is the use of intimidation as an instrument of social mobility and entrepreneurial profit, and the imposition of the no-squealing rule in those communities where the mafia holds sway. Also the co-involvement of important segments of the political class and socio-economic institutions in illegal activity (e.g., influence peddling, bribing, and money recycling), and the ability to significantly impact the legitimate economy through the infusion of vast sums of ill-gotten gains.
http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_372.html
Red Mafiya
How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America
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Considering what Friedman knows and the Mafiya's use of murder as cure-all -- no quaint code protects cops or journalists -- the mere existence of this book qualifies as foolhardy heroism. Thirteen reporters have been whacked in the past decade. Friedman opens "Red Mafiya" by describing the threats he's received, from a nasty valentine ("I will … make you suck my Russian DICK!") to a $100,000 contract on his life. But he's been risking his neck in this fashion for the past decade, because many of these chapters first appeared as magazine articles. He's been knocking on doors in Brighton Beach, N.Y., visiting gangsters in prison and generally making a pest of himself, as he admits. The result is an indispensable introduction to the new face of organized crime. Anyone tempted to emulate Friedman, however, should ponder the protection the FBI offered after informing him of the contract -- nothing. They suggested he "lie low." And a DEA agent chimed in with some advice: Buy a gun. A .357, specifically, because it doesn't jam that often.
http://archive.salon.com/books/review/2000/05/18/friedman/index.html
World War II, The Surrender of the Italian Army
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The Allied effort. To counter the Nazis' hold on northern Italy, the Allies undertook a number of operations to support the military forces. The latter consisted of the 15th Army Group, commanded by Britain's General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander, which included General Bernard Montgomery's British 8th Army, General George S. Patton's U.S. 7th Army, and Lieutenant General Mark C. Clark's 5th U.S. Army. Patton and Montgomery led Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily in June 1943, while Clark and Montgomery made the first assault on the Italian peninsula three months later.
Assisting this military effort were psychological warfare units of the U.S. 5th Army and the British 8th Army. Klaus Mann, a German American with the 5th Army, designed leaflets intended for the German soldiers. At the same time, OSS was heavily involved behind the scenes. Leading OSS operations was Max Corvo, a Sicilian American who, as a young army private in 1942, had taken a three-day pass to Washington, D.C., and presented a plan for the subversion in Sicily. He soon received a transfer to OSS, and from 1943 to early 1945, Corvo, still in his midtwenties, ran OSS Italian operations.
At the same time, the Office of Naval Intelligence undertook its own efforts, including one of the most famous (or infamous) aspects of the covert war in Italy: the release of Mafia chieftain "Lucky" Luciano from a Stateside prison to conduct advance work in Sicily. This effectively shut out Corvo who, knowing the Mafia well from his childhood, refused to work with gangsters. Corvo would later be replaced by James Jesus Angleton, destined to become a major figure in the postwar Central Intelligence Agency. Angleton, a hardline anti-Communist even then, wished to avoid dealing with the Left—a difficult task in a country that had the largest Communist Party of any non-Communist country in Europe. Instead, Angleton ended up working with Masons, syndicalists (non-Communist leftists associated with anarchism), and disaffected Fascists.
http://www.answers.com/topic/world-war-ii-the-surrender-of-the-italian-army
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