What Should Be Done in Palestine

Israel Shamir’s Talk at the Ankara Conference…

Dear Turkish friends and fellow guests from abroad,

I am glad to speak again to you, the people of our great neighbour and former sovereign Turkey. Your latest developments inspire optimism. You are doing fine! Turkey is growing stronger and more independent; your leaders’ obsession with joining the European Union has been exorcised. You have restored the power of the parliament, bridled military excesses, streamlined your economy and improved relations with Syria and Iran. Turkey is no longer an American colony. You stopped joint air force exercises with Israel and the US. You expressed your clear anger over the horrors of Gaza. Now you pay more attention to the area where you live; you play an important role already and are destined to play an even greater role. So much depends on you! We feel it every day in Palestine.

I will not waste your time describing the horrors of Zionist rule in Palestine. You already know them, you’ve seen them on TV – dreadful pictures of burned schools and napalmed children, of the Gaza blockade, of check points, of night arrests. It is now exactly one year since the Jewish onslaught on Gaza, last year’s Christmas war which Israel began while the world was holidaying. Your president, Mr Gul, said a few days ago to our president, Mr Peres, that he will not visit Israel while the siege of Gaza continues, and that was a very good decision. Indeed, it is urgent to lift the Gaza siege, because no building materials are being allowed to enter Gaza for the repair of homes. Instead, the Israeli siege is being tightened with active help of Egypt. However beyond Gaza problem we must look for a bigger picture.

We are being told that the Gaza problem is that of Hamas intransigence, that it is Gaza’s own fault. If only Gaza wouldn’t embrace radical Islam, Israel would accommodate Gaza’s needs. Let us have a look outside of Gaza, at the West Bank’s jewel, el Bireh, the twin city of Ramallah, the seat of Israel-approved ruler Mahmud Abbas. This is a most prosperous city of wonderful villas with a lot of greenery and purring Mercedes cars, and a beautiful view. El Bireh decided to build a football stadium; they asked for money and they received funds from France, Germany and the World Football Association, FIFA. The football stadium was built within the city of el Bireh’s limits. Immediately, the Israeli court ruled: the stadium must be destroyed, because it is within the eyesight of a Jew.

Do you understand this? Mahmud Abbas is the most compliant Palestinian leader now or ever; he is doing everything that Israel asks. His police kindly retreat when Israeli security jeeps drive into his cities to arrest whomever they wish. He arrests every activist who speaks against Israeli excesses. He even fired the most senior Palestinian diplomat, Dr. Afif Safieh, the former ambassador to Washington, London, Vatican and Moscow because he spoke out against the Israeli war on Gaza. Every Islamist, every supporter of Islam in the West Bank is (or was) in Abbas’ jail. Abbas is an implacable enemy of radical Islam. You can’t be more conciliatory towards Israel than Mahmud Abbas. And still, he can’t even build a stadium for kids to kick ball in his own city, because the Jews will not allow it.

So, although Gaza is in a dreadful situation, the problem is not only Gaza. Islam or not Islam is not even a question we should be pondering. It makes no difference. Islamists are in Abbas’ jail, yet Abbas can’t even build a stadium. Stadium, not medreseh. Fatah member Marwan Barghuti and leftist PFLP leader Ahmed Sadat are in Israeli jails together with Hamas MPs.

The problem is the Jewish state. Not only does it besiege Gaza and destroy a football stadium in el Bireh. These are local problems, painful but local. The Jewish state focuses Jewish power all over the world into action. Without a Jewish state, this power would disperse; it would remain local, it would remain chaotic, probably it would be subdued by the forces of assimilation. Israel focuses these chaotic forces and concentrates them into action.

This action is against Islam. Not only against Islam, but Dar ul Islam (the Islamic world) is a prime target. In the US, the Jewish Neocons led their country into a crusade against Iraq and Afghanistan; now they are spearheading the push against Iran. They have formed a powerful front against President Obama and have turned him into a laughing stock after he uttered a few words of wisdom about Palestine. In Europe, if you inspect the coffers of anti-Muslim neo-Nazi groups, you’ll find that they thrive on Jewish support. In Russia, Jewish nationalists and Zionists try to rally the Russians against their Muslim brethren. Sometimes they do it under cover of the Russian Church, or of Russian nationalism. I wrote about this recently, as I had discovered that the most fervently anti-Muslim forces in Russia are organised by crypto-Zionists.

Even if a Palestinian state were to be established and recognised, it wouldn’t stop Israeli attempts to undermine its neighbours, to bomb Iran, to sow the seeds of discord from Russia to France, from Turkey to India. Israel’s too powerful intelligence services would keep meddling. Neither would it neutralise the armed forces of Israel, and you know as well as anybody that the generals do not give up their toys, their privileges or their influence easily. The Israeli military machine is so powerful that it would seek to exercise its might. Remember the Israel-Egypt peace treaty: when it was concluded, the first thing Israel did was invade Lebanon.

The bad influence of Zionism on Jews all over the world would not vanish in case of a “two states’ solution. In 1920, Winston Churchill published an article (Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920, pg 5) titled: «Zionism or Bolshevism». (http://www.library.flawlesslogic.com/ish.htm ). There he noted that many Jews tend to embrace the cause of social equality (for him it was “impossible equality”), and the best way to stop by far too dynamic and powerful Jews from promoting equality is to infect them with Zionism. His project was supported by the might of the British Empire and by money of wealthy anti-equality Jews. Zionism won. Equality was defeated. If we defeat Zionism, equality will have another chance. And a two states’ solution will not defeat Zionism.

In short, even if Mahmud Abbas’s dream of limited independence were to be realised, it wouldn’t be good enough for the region, and it wouldn’t be good enough for the world: Israel in its form of Jewish-supremacist state can’t become a peaceful neighbour.

Supremacism leads to wars. Only a democratic state, the successor of Israel and the PNA, would be able to live in peace. Compare it to South Africa: as long as it was a white-supremacist state, it was the source of warfare and trouble all over Africa. After its supremacism was exorcized, it became peaceful. In the same vein, independent Palestine would be just another Bantustan of the type rightly rejected by South Africans.

But I do not think that even this very limited cause of limited independence for Palestine is likely to be achieved. We have been told – for sixteen years! – that there is a peace process that will lead to a “two states solution”. This is a fairy tale. If the Jews will not allow even the most loyal and obedient of el Bireh’s kids to play football, do you think they will allow them to have an independent state? Why would they?

The Jews write frequently of how they envisage Palestinian independence. (I refer here to the most enlightened left-wing Jewish politicians!) They speak of a Palestine broken into a few enclaves surrounded by a wall and barbed wire, its airspace and all of its borders controlled by Israel; its water to remain under Jewish control. And this is the best they can dream of.

If you want to have Two States, it can happen only if the Jews plead for it like they did in 1947. They did so then, and they will do so again only if they feel that the alternative, a single democratic state for all inhabitants of Palestine, is on the table. This is what they are afraid of: full democracy, full equality in the whole of the land. So even for practical reasons, we should call, not for independence of some partitioned bits and pieces, but for the whole lot: Let Palestine be united, let all of its inhabitants have equal rights, and afterwards they can discuss two states for ever and ever. The first thing is equality, the rest can wait.

Speaking frankly, this mythic Two State Solution can’t even be envisaged. Jews and Palestinians live all over Palestine, and they can’t be physically separated without a huge turmoil that would remind us of 1921 in Turkey and Greece, with Turks leaving Salonika and Greeks leaving Smyrna. This is not something one would like to see happen.

The West gave Nansen his Nobel Peace prize for the transfer of Greeks and Turks. In my view, this was a terrible calamity, never to be repeated. Partitions are awful; it is like sawing a living man into two parts. Nor is it necessary. Greeks and Turks could live together as they did for four hundred years; separation did nothing good for them. Separation of Israelis and Palestinians would be equally evil.

Now, Zionists often remind Turks of your so-called “Kurd problem”. This comparison is wrong, because every Kurd in Turkey has Turkish citizenship and has all the rights every Turkish citizen has; while Palestinians usually have no citizenship of the state of Israel and enjoy no rights. But in one sense this comparison is right: it is impossible to separate Kurds from Turkey, because people of Kurdish descent live everywhere from Diyarbakir to Istanbul. Likewise, it is impossible to separate Palestinians from the immigrant populations which are called “Jews”.

Indeed, the whole story of Palestine is a story of immigrants taking over a country. Such things happen: immigrants from Britain took over North America and Australia. This is a sad thing, but it happened. Now it is not realistic to hope that they will sail back to England – they won’t. It is wrong to try and create an “independent state” for the native Americans – such independent states are called “reservations”. The right answer is equality for native and immigrant alike. Some Jews would complain that they want a state of their own. We shall answer them: you have built on sand, and a house built on sand can’t stand forever. If you want a state of your own without anybody else, find yourself a lonely uninhabited island. Palestine was, and is, populated; the best you can wish is to be equal citizens in Palestine with everybody else.

I spoke about this solution in the year 2001, when our country was torn by intifada al Aksa. It was right then, and it is right now. At that time I said: there is no other solution but a one-state solution. People, and even good people, activists, friends of Palestine said: no, we are very close to the two states’ solution. I did not believe it then, I do not believe it now. There is only one good way out, and that is the way of equality and democracy, of deconstructing the Jewish state by forcing it to give full rights to all Palestinians under its rule.

So this is the goal we should strive for: full equality and integration of Palestine and Israel, South African style. Nothing less.

This does not mean that there is nothing to be done until that moment. Turkey can do a lot even now, even today, beyond expressions of solidarity. The Jewish state is a horrible example of injustice gone unpunished. For instance, an Israeli officer Captain R murdered a 13-year old girl, Iman al Hams. He shot her within eyesight of his soldiers and said that even a three-year-old Palestinian should be killed if she comes close to Jewish positions. The Jewish court absolved Captain R of all guilt; the Israeli Army promoted him to major and another court awarded him damages for the mere discussion of his crime. Last week, yet another Jewish judge gave another huge compensation to the same murderer.

Turkey, as the former ruler of Palestine, could fill in the void of justice by bringing this Captain R to trial. Sooner or later he will leave the sanctuary of the Jewish state and travel somewhere for a holiday. A Turkish warrant for his arrest should await him wherever he goes. And not only him, but the Jewish ‘judges’ who covered up his crime and became accessories after the murder should be tried too. This is not a job for amateurs, but for a state with all its tools. If present Turkish law does not allow for this, let the law be updated by taking a leaf from the Israeli book. According to Israeli law, if a Turk does wrong to a Jew in Turkey, he may be snatched, arrested, tried and punished in Israel. Turkey should introduce a symmetrical law, covering offences against Palestinians who otherwise are not protected by law.

Turkey could also take the initiative to stop the still looming Israeli-American aggression against Iran. If they do take Iran, Turkey will be encircled and cut off. The fate of Palestine also depends on the fate of Tehran.

My New Year’s wish to you: be yourself, be Turks, and live in harmony and friendship with your neighbours, with Russia, Iran, Syria, Greece and with all the successor states of the Ottoman Empire. You are needed for the world and for Palestine.

Anchor Babies: Born In The USA

The Abuse of the Fourteenth Amendment—PART I

U.S. House member Nathan Deal introduced a new bill H.R. 1868 to stop 400,000 babies birthed annually by unlawful migrants to gain instant citizenship. Known as “Jackpot Babies or Anchor Babies”, these children cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars annually in medical as well as educational costs K-12. This three part series will give American citizens a mouthful of ashes as to what it costs them and what those anchor babies do to their medical, educational and prison systems.

Helping me with this series, Registered Nurse Stephany Gabbard, long term hospital employee saw this phenomenon up close and personal.

“My commute to work exceeds fifty miles but it gives me time to reflect,” Gabbard said. “It is 1987 and I am an obstetrical nurse working in the crowded San Fernando Valley of California. Tonight I drive to my job in “Labor and Delivery,” knowing the scenario before I arrive. Eight other nurses will battle through the night in this very busy obstetrical unit. Our patients are 99 percent pregnant illegal alien women who have broken United States immigration law to birth an American citizen child.

“This will be their families’ entry ticket into the United States. For them, no pesky visa applications and no waiting in line for several years like so many millions that enter this country through the front door. Pregnant Third World women have discovered that the only thing they have to do is cross the U.S.–Mexico border. The Fourteenth Amendment is their ticket.

“It is now seventeen years later and things have worsened. The babies I helped deliver are older teenagers. When they turn 21, they will be eligible to bring their family members from Mexico, Central America and South America, i.e., chain migration on an ever-accelerating spinning wheel. Whole industries have now developed around abusing the Fourteenth Amendment. Pregnant Korean tourists come to the U.S. on travel visas to have their “anchor” babies. Coyotes dealing in human traffic are paid $1,500.00 to $25,000.00 per person to shuttle pregnant illegal aliens across our southern border. Our politicians and elites wink at this blatant law breaking and do nothing. The colonization of our country continues with the cooperation of our government. That means your senator and representative aid this illegal baby invasion. None dare call it treason. Most Americans mistakenly trust their politicians to do the right thing. Congressional members from every state betray that trust daily.”

The Fourteenth Amendment: It’s a simple document, a constitutional amendment drafted after the Civil War to assure that newly emancipated black slaves would never be denied citizenship by the States. The drafters had no idea that years later it would be used to make a mockery of our immigration laws. Alan Wall, an American journalist living in Mexico states, “An illegal alien can cross the border, have a baby five
minutes later, and that baby is automatically declared a citizen of the USA automatically.”

The illegal aliens don’t have to go through any legal doors. They are exempt from that. They are, in fact, rewarded for disobeying U.S. laws by having their children granted automatic citizenship. In addition, the happy family is entitled to welfare benefits. And, illegal alien parents who have children born in the U.S. are seldom deported. That’s why their children are called “anchor babies” – they anchor their families securely in the USA.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Most European countries have done away with birthright citizenship because they experienced the same abuses we are seeing. The Irish Supreme Court recently ruled that immigrant parents could be deported even if they have an Irish child. “It was becoming common for ‘single pregnant woman’ to come to Ireland from countries outside the 15-nation EU, most frequently from Nigeria, to claim political asylum,” states Shawn Pogatchnik, AP writer. Ireland saw a wave of immigration abuse and promptly put a stop to it. Recently, the Irish voted to end birthright citizenship. Britain and Australia both changed their citizenship laws in the 1980’s for the same reasons. If you are born in Switzerland you will not automatically become a Swiss citizen. Why should Americans allow our country to be invaded by people who do not honor allegiance to our laws?

Allegiance is the key word. Senator Jacob Howard, co-author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, stated in 1866, “Every Person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”

The Fourteenth Amendment states,”(A) Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

However a proviso limits foreigners who have babies in America. It couldn’t be clearer, children of foreigners, aliens or diplomats, who are subject to the jurisdiction of their home country, are ineligible for citizenship. At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified we didn’t have immigration laws. One hundred and thirty eight years later we are paying for the misinterpretation of it.

Congress has the power to step in and correct this wrong, but don’t hold your breath. There have been several bills dealing with this issue and most have died in committee. Except for a few brave individuals like former House member Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Rep. Goode of Virginia, there isn’t enough chutzpah on Capitol Hill to fill a thimble. Where are the Thomas Jefferson’s and Ben Franklin’s when we need them?

An important case, Hamdi vs Rumsfeld was recently heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Yaser Hamdi was captured during the Afghanistan war fighting for the Taliban. It was later learned that he had been born in Louisiana to Saudi nationals when his father was employed as a chemical engineer on a work visa. The family subsequently moved back to Saudi Arabia where Hamdi was raised.

Hamdi sued the U.S. government for holding him in a Navy stockade for two years. He demanded full rights of U.S. citizenship since by accident he happened to be born here. The U.S. government wanted Hamdi charged as a non-combatant and denied due process. The U.S. government didn’t raise this issue because he wanted to end birthright citizenship but other groups saw the possibility to finally challenge this fatal flaw in our immigration law that is wrecking havoc on our country.

One such group, Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement, submitted a ‘friend of the court’ or Amicus brief. They asked the Supreme Court to address the issue of whether Hamdi should be considered an American citizen at all, since at the time of his birth his parents were foreign nationals with no fealty to this nation.

The decision came down several years ago and just like the rest of the elite establishment in this country the U.S. Supreme Court ignored the issue of birthright citizenship except for a brief statement by Justices Scalia and Stevens stating Hamdi was a “presumed American citizen.” I

So we live to fight another day. In the meantime the invasion/colonization of our country marches on.

In Part II: The costs of anchor babies will have you reaching for Pepto Bismol, Excedrin, Advil, Motrin, Paxil and Valium. And, you’ll still be sick to your stomach!

References:

Anchor Babies by Allan Wall, Frontpagemag.com, April 26, 2001

Closing the Loopholes to Easy US Citizenship, Robin Blumner, Tribune
Media Services, 9/13/02

Ireland Can Deport Immigrant Parents by Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer , January 23, 2003

The Center for American Unity

Has the U.S. Played a Role in Fomenting Unrest During Iran’s Election?

Following the announcement of victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his main opponent Mir Hossein Mousavi in Iran’s presidential election on June 12, the country erupted in turmoil as supporters of Mousavi flocked to the streets to protest what they claimed was a fraudulent election, while state security and militia forces cracked down on dissenters, sometimes violently. Iran claimed that the unrest was being fueled by foreign interference, a charge reported but generally dismissed in Western media accounts. But there is ample reason to believe that the U.S. likely had a hand in fomenting the chaos that has since plagued the country many commentators have compared to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah.

The role of the U.S. in overthrowing the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and installing the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is by now well known. In his speech in Cairo last month, President Barack Obama even referenced the CIA-backed coup, acknowledging that “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.”[1]

The U.S. lost their principle ally in the Middle East, however, when the Shah was in turn overthrown as a result of the Islamic revolution that swept the country in 1979, resulting in the clerical regime that continues to this day under Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who took over the title from the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

During the Reagan administration, the U.S. illegally sold arms to the Iranian regime even while supporting Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s devastating war against the Islamic Republic. And while neoconservatives in Washington had their eye on Iran as a target for regime change throughout the Clinton years, it wasn’t until George W. Bush came to be president that a strategy for bringing this about began in earnest. Whether the policy of regime change implemented under Bush has been quashed or continued by the administration of President Barack Obama remains to be seen, but what is incontrovertible is that the U.S. has a long and sordid history of interference in Iranian affairs.

The National Endowment for Democracy

One mechanism by which the U.S. interferes in the internal political affairs of other nations is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental agency with funding from both Congress and private individuals whose purpose is to support foreign organizations sympathetic to U.S. foreign policy goals.

NED’s website states that its creation in the early 1980s was “premised on the idea that American assistance on behalf of democracy efforts abroad would be good both for the U.S. and for those struggling around the world for freedom and self-government.”[2]

The idea behind NED was to create an organization to do overtly what the CIA had long been doing clandestinely, and the organization has developed its own history of foreign interference. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” acknowledged Allen Weinstein, one of NED’s founders.[3]

In Nicaragua, for instance, the CIA provoked opposition activities in the hopes that it would prompt an “overreaction” from the Sandinista government. The NED was there, also, providing money to opposition groups while the CIA armed contra terrorists (using money from the sale of arms to Iran, incidentally).[4]

In the Bulgarian elections of 1990, NED spent over $1.5 million in an effort to defeat the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP). When the effort failed and the BSP won, NED backed opposition groups that sowed chaos in the streets for months until the president and prime minister finally resigned. [5]

The NED was in Albania supporting the opposition to the communist government that was elected in 1991. Once again, turmoil in the streets led to the collapse of the government, forcing a new election in which the U.S.-backed Democratic Party won.[6]

Between 1990 and 1992, NED financed the Cuban-American National Foundation, an anti-Castro group out of Miami that in turn funded Luis Posada Carriles, a terrorist harbored by the U.S. who was responsible for the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 73 people.[7]

NED was present in Mongolia helping to unite opposition parties under the National Democratic Union to defeat the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party that had won elections in 1992. With backing from NED, the NDU won in 1996 and U.S. media lauded the economic “shock-therapy” that the new pro-West government would implement. Under the new government, the National Security Agency (NSA) also set up shop with listening posts to spy on China. [8]

During the Clinton administration, NED was in Haiti working with the opposition to ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.[9]

And NED was in Venezuela financing the opposition to President Hugo Chavez, including groups involved in the attempted coup in 2002 that nearly succeeded in his overthrow.[10]

NED is also active in Iran, granting hundreds of thousands of dollars to Iranian groups. From 2005 to 2007, NED gave $345,000 to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF).[11] The group claims “no political affiliation” on its website, but is named for the founder of the National Movement of the Iranian Resistance (NAMIR), an opposition group to the clerical regime founded in 1980. According to the group’s website, Boroumand was murdered by agents of the Iranian government in Paris, France, in 1991.[12] The website is registered to the Boroumand Foundation, listed at Suite 357, 3220 N ST., NW, Washington, D.C.[13]

Another recipient of NED grants is the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which received $25,000 in 2002, $64,000 in 2005, and $107,000 in 2006. The 2002 grant was to carry out a “media training workshop” to train participants representing various civic groups in public relations. The 2005 money was given in part to “strengthen the capacity of civic organizations in Iran”, including by advising Iranian groups on “foreign donor relations.” The 2006 grant was similarly designed to “foster cooperation between Iranian NGOs and the international civil society community and to strengthen the institutional capacity of NGOs in Iran.”[14]

The group’s president is Dr. Trita Parsi, whose parents fled political repression in Iran when he was four. He studied for his Doctoral thesis at the Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies under Professor Francis Fukuyama.[15]

Fukuyama wrote in 2007 that “Ahmadinejad may be the new Hitler”, but that the use of military force against Iran “looks very unappealing”, and that airstrikes “would not result in regime change”, which was “the only long-term means of stopping” Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.[16] The NIAC similarly opposes the use of military force against Iran, and instead “supports the idea of resolving the problems between the US and Iran through dialogue in order to avoid war.”[17]

Following the Iranian election and subsequent violence, NIAC issued a statement saying that “The only plausible way to end the violence is for new elections to be held with independent monitors ensuring its fairness.”[18]

Last November, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad-Javad Zarif charged the U.S. with attempting to orchestrate a “velvet revolution” in Iran. One of the means by which this was being carried out, he said, was by means of workshops. “American officials have been inviting Iranian figures to so-called scientific seminars over the past few years”, he said. “However, when the Iranians attend these sessions, they realize they have gathered to discuss measures to topple the Iranian government”.[19]

The Office of Iranian Affairs

In February, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested emergency funding from Congress to the amount of $75 million, on top of a previously allocated $10 million, “to mount the biggest ever propaganda campaign against the Tehran government”, in the words of The Guardian. The money “would be used to broadcast US radio and television programmes into Iran, help pay for Iranians to study in America and support pro-democracy groups inside the country.” The propaganda effort would include “extending the government-run Voice of America’s Farsi service from a few hours a day to round-the-clock coverage.” In announcing the request, Rice said the U.S. “will work to support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy in their country.”[20]

The Christian Science Monitor reported candidly on the “implicit goal” of the requested funds as being “regime change from within”, and similarly noted that “The money will go toward boosting broadcasts in Farsi to Iran, support for opposition groups, and student exchanges.”

A former specialist on the Middle East from the National Security Council, Raymond Tanter suggested the U.S. could work with an Iranian opposition group, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK). “If we are serious about working with groups from within,” he said, “it will have to be with the MEK, because there’s no other opposition force the regime cares about.”

Mehdi Marand, a spokesman for the Council for Democratic Change in Iran, similarly said that some in the Congress were ready to remove the MEK from the terrorist list. “If the US really wants to help the democratic forces inside Iran,” he said, “the only way is to remove restrictions from the opposition.”[21]

The problem is that the MEK is on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. Based in Iraq, the group came under the sway of the U.S. after the 2003 invasion that overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein.

According to former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who was among a few lone voices pointing out prior to the invasion of Iraq that there was no credible evidence the country still possessed weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. was already working with the MEK. Well prior, in 2005, Ritter wrote that the Bush administration had authorized a number of covert operations inside Iran. “The most visible of these”, he wrote, “is the CIA-backed actions recently undertaken by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group, once run by Saddam Hussein’s dreaded intelligence services, but now working exclusively for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.” The MEK’s CIA-backed operations within Iran included “terror bombings”, Ritter charged.[22]

A State Department cable unclassified in March, 2006 and entitled “Recruiting the Next Generation of Iran Experts” began by asserting that “Effectively addressing the Iran challenge ranks as one of the highest foreign policy priorities for our Government over the next decade.” The document outlines a plan developed under then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “promote freedom and demoncracy [sic] in Iran.”

To this end, the State Department created the Office of Iranian Affairs (OIA) under the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which would “reach out to the Iranian people” and bring more Iran experts into the Foreign Service and more Persian-speaking officers into the OIA, the Intelligence and Research Bureau (INR), and other branches of the State Department. Part of the “outreach” effort would be based in Dubai, a “natural location” for a regional office due to its “proximity to Iran and access to an Iranian diaspora”.[23]

The Dubai office would be modeled on the listening station in the Latvian capital of Riga, according to the document, which was where the U.S. had a listening station to gather information on the Soviet Union during the 1920s (George Kennan was at one time stationed there). The Iranian media has referred to the station as the “regime-change office.” A State Department official based in Dubai said the office’s purpose “is to get a sense of what’s going on in Iran. It is not some recruiting office and is not organizing the next revolution in Iran.”[24]

But the State Department cable also stated that among responsibilities of the Deputy Director of the Dubai station would be to seek “ways to use USG programs and funding to support Iranian political and civic organizations” and “to alert Washington on [the] need to issue statements on behalf of Iranian dissidents.”

The OIA would also create an International Relations Officer Generalist (IROG) position in Istanbul to advance “U.S. policy objectives with the Iranian [expatriate] community” in Turkey and Israel. A similar position would be created for the same purpose in Frankfurt, London, and Baku.[25]

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times critical of the Bush administration’s designs on Iran, Charles A. Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Ray Takeyh, also a senior fellow at the CFR, observed that the objective was “not just to contain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions but also to topple the Iranian government.” Their main criticism with the new “strategy for regime change” is that it was likely to “backfire and only strengthen Tehran’s hard-liners” by giving them cause to decry “U.S. ‘interference’” and thus lending them political leverage to implement a crackdown on dissidents.[26]

When asked whether the OIA was intended to promote regime change, a State Department senior official told CNN it was “to facilitate a change in Iranian policies and actions” before acknowledging, “Yes, one of the things we want to develop is a government that reflects the desires of the people, but that is a process for the Iranians.”[27]

Then US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton acknowledged in October 2006 that regime change was the “ultimate objective” of the U.S. sanctions policy, and adding that it “puts pressure on them internally” and “helps democratic forces” within the country and amongst the Iranian diaspora.[28]

Administration officials told the New York Times that then Vice President Dick Cheney was promoting the “drive to bring Iranian scholars and students to America, blanket the country with radio and television broadcasts and support Iranian political dissidents.” The program was to be “overseen by Elizabeth Cheney, a principal deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, who is also the vice president’s daughter.”[29]

A Washington Post article on the new office noted money would be spent on “opposition activities” and observed that “Although administration officials do not use the term ‘regime change’ in public, that in effect is the goal they outline as they aim to build resistance to the theocracy.” The Post also noted that a “setback” for the Bush administration had come when Congress cut $19 million from the funding that would mainly affect broadcast operations, thus affecting plans to increase Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts into Iran to 24-hours a day.[30]

The Financial Times reported in April, 2006 that the effort was being coordinated with the U.K. and noted that criticism of the administration’s strategy included some of the same Iranians the program was designed to bolster. “Serious Iranian opposition politicians are virtually unanimous in saying that foreign funding of activities designed to promote democracy, especially by the US or UK, would be counter-productive”, the Financial Times reported. The article also quoted Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a press adviser to President Ahmadinejad, as saying that Iranians are “alert” to the “propaganda of enemies”.[31]

In May, the Los Angeles Times reported that the OIA was headed by David Denehy, a specialist at the International Republican Institute (IRI).[32] The IRI has been a recipient of NED funds, and was active in Venezuela, including the year of the attempted coup, when the IRI received $299,999 from NED to “train” political parties (including the IRI, over $1 million in grants was given by NED to groups operating in Venezuela in 2002).[33]

NIAC president Trita Parsi explained the goal of the U.S. policy by saying, “The administration is trying to make regime change through democratization the policy, instead of making confrontation by military means the policy.”

The L.A. Times also reported that “at the Pentagon, an Iranian directorate will work with the State Department office to undercut the government in Tehran.” The new Iranian directorate, the report noted, “has been set up inside its policy shop, which previously housed the Office of Special Plans [OSP]“.[34]

The OSP was the office headed by Douglas Feith that was created to bypass the normal intelligence review process and stovepipe information bolstering the policy of regime change in Iraq, including information from Iraqi dissidents like Ahmad Chalabi, who was afforded little credibility outside Feith’s office.

In an article for Rolling Stone, author James Bamford revealed how a member of Feith’s cabal at the OSP, Michael Ledeen, set up a meeting with Iranian dissidents to further the goal of regime change in Iran. Ledeen had served as the Reagan administration’s intermediary with Israel during the illegal arms deal that became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

At the meeting in Rome, Ledeen, along with Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, met with an Iranian named Manucher Ghorbanifer in a safehouse provided by Nicolò Pollari, the director of Italy’s Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI). Pollari had just months before been responsible for providing to that Bush administration what would later be revealed to have been fabricated documents purporting to show that Saddam Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium from Africa. The men discussed the possibility of using the MEK to further their goal of regime change in Iran, according to Bamford’s sources who were familiar with the meeting.

Additionally, Larry Franklin, who worked under Feith in the OSP, later met with two other men “who were also looking for ways to push the U.S. into a war with Iran.” The two men were Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). With the FBI watching, Franklin illegally passed classified information on a National Security Presidential Directive dealing with U.S. policy on Iran to AIPAC with the goal of having the influential Israeli lobby exert pressure on the White House to adopt the draft directive.

In the July 24 article, Bamford wrote, “Over the past six months, the administration has adopted almost all of the hard-line stance advocated by the war cabal in the Pentagon…. To back up the tough talk, the State Department is spending $66 million to promote political changes inside Iran-funding the same kind of dissident groups that helped drive the U.S. to war in Iraq.”

Writing in the New York Times Magazine in June, 2007, Negar Azimi wrote about how the Iranian newspaper Kayhan “editorializes almost daily about an elaborate network conspiring to topple the regime. Called ‘khaneh ankaboot,’ or ‘the spider nest,’ the network is reportedly bankrolled by the $75 million and includes everyone from George Soros to George W. Bush to Francis Fukuyama to dissident Iranians of all shades.”

Azimi added, “If the spider’s nest had a headquarters, it might well be the Office of Iranian Affairs, which sits on the second floor of the State Department” and “was charged with outlining, in close consultation with Denehy, how to spend the democracy fund.”

$36.1 million of the funds was to go to VOA Persian and Radio Farda. VOA has often featured Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah, who now lives in Maryland. On April 1, 2007, VOA featured the head of the Balochi terrorist group Jundallah, Abdel Malek Rigi, who was “introduced as the leader of an armed national resistance group.”

Mehdi Khalaji, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who previously had worked for three years at Radio Farda, told Azimi that the VOA’s new administrators “do not seem to be able to distinguish between journalism and propaganda…. If you host the head of Jundallah and call him a freedom fighter or present a Voice of America run by monarchists, Iranians are going to stop listening.”[35]

U.S. Covert Operations in Iran

In April, 2006, investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh wrote in the New Yorker magazine that “The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack.”

A source with ties to the Pentagon told Hersh that American units were operating in Iran and “working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Balochis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast.” The principle goal was to “‘encourage ethnic tensions’ and undermine the regime.”[36]

Asia Times Online reported shortly thereafter that a “former Iranian ambassador and Islamic Republic insider” had provided details “about US covert operations inside Iran aimed at destabilizing the country and toppling the regime – or preparing for an American attack.” According to the source, “The Iranian government knows and is aware of such infiltration.”

Richard Sale, intelligence correspondent for United Press International, corroborated the charges made by Hersh, saying that “The Iranian accusations are true,” but that “it is being done on such a small scale – a series of pinpricks – it would seem to have no strategic value at all.”

The Asia Times Online article continued, noting recent unrest in Iranian ethnic minority communities, including amongst Kurdish, Arab, and Balochi populations. In one incident “in late January, a previously unknown Sunni Muslim group called Jundallah (Soldier of Allah) captured nine Iranian soldiers in the remote badlands of Sistan-Balochistan province that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan.”[37]

In July, Seymour Hersh repeated in an interview with NPR that the U.S. was supporting anti-regime terrorist groups including the MEK, Jundallah, and the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK). “The strategic thinking behind this covert operation is to provoke enough trouble and chaos so that the Iranian government makes the mistake of taking aggressive action which will give the impression of a country in acute turmoil”, Hersh said, in order to give the White House a casus belli.[38]

In a July 29 article, Scott Ritter wrote that “American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities that result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed…. The CIA today provides material support to the actions of the MEK inside Iran. The recent spate of explosions in Iran … appears to be linked to an MEK operation….”[39]

Hersh wrote another article in the New Yorker in November noting that the Pentagon was increasingly conducting covert operations that had traditionally been the CIA’s domain and giving further details about its activities in Iran. “In the past six months, Israel and the United States have been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan”, which has conducted raids into Iran. He repeated that the “Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Balochi tribesman, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in northern and southeastern Iran.”[40]

On Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh joined Scott Ritter in a conversation about the topic of Ritter’s book, Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change, which claimed the U.S. was conducting operations in Iran using the MEK. Ritter said the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was building a station in Azerbaijan to work with Iran’s Azeri population and was also working closely with the MEK.[41]

On February 27, 2007, the London Telegraph reported, “America is secretly funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear program.

“In a move that reflects Washington’s growing concern with the failure of diplomatic initiatives, CIA officials are understood to be helping opposition militias among the numerous ethnic minority groups clustered in Iran’s border regions.

“The operations are controversial because they involve dealing with movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances against the Iranian regime.

“In the past year there has been a wave of unrest in ethnic minority border areas of Iran, with bombing and assassination campaigns against soldiers and government officials.

“Such incidents have been carried out by the Kurds in the west, the Azeris in the north-west, the Ahwazi Arabs in the south-west, and the Balochis in the south-east.”

A former high-ranking CIA official told the Telegraph that the CIA’s funding for opposition and separatist groups was “no great secret”.

Fred Burton, a former US State Department counter-terrorism agent and author of Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent (published in 2008), also told the Telegraph that “The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran’s ethnic minorities to destabilize the Iranian regime.”

And John Pike of the Global Security think tank in Washington said, “The activities of the ethnic groups have hotted up [sic] over the last two years and it would be a scandal if that was not at least in part the result of CIA activity.” Pike also said that “A faction in the Defense Department wants to unleash” the MEK. “They could never overthrow the current Iranian regime but they might cause a lot of damage.”[42]

Journalist and later author of The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis (published in October 2007) Reese Erlich told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! in March 2007 that the U.S. was using Kurdish groups against Iran. “In the case of one group,” he disclosed, “the P.K.K. or the Kurdistan Workers Party and they are, along with Israel, sponsoring them to carry out guerilla raids inside Iran, and it’s part of a much wider plan by the United States to foment discontent and actual terrorist activities by ethnic Iranians in various parts of Iran. And when I was in northern Iraq, I was able to determine that that kind of activity is going on from Iraqi soil under the Kurdish controlled areas of Iraq, into Iran.”

Erlich also explained how the PJAK was formed as a breakaway group from the PKK and added that “they’re playing a very similar game with the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, another Iranian Group, and with groups in Balochistan, which is near the Pakistan Iranian border where some revolutionary guard bus was blown up.” He added that Israel was also “backing various Kurdish groups.”[43]

Further corroboration was given in April, according to the ABC News blog “The Blotter”, which reported that according to U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources, the Balochi group Jundullah, operating out of the Balochistan province in Pakistan, was carrying out deadly operations inside Iran under the guidance and encouragement of the U.S. Funding for Jundullah was not provided directly, but instead, “Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abdel Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.”

Referencing the attack on the bus Erlich spoke of in his interview with Amy Goodman, ABC News noted that Jundullah had taken credit for a number of terrorist attacks and kidnappings, including “an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.”[44]

Again in May, ABC News reported that “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert ‘black’ operation to destabilize the Iranian government,” according to current and former intelligence officials. The presidential finding “reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.”

Retired CIA senior official Bruce Riedel said he couldn’t “confirm or deny whether such a program exists”, but added that “it would be consistent with an overall American approach trying to find ways to put pressure on the regime”.

Vali Nasr, adjunct senior fellow for Mideast studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told ABC News, “I think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within Iran”.[45]

The same day as the ABC News report, the Telegraph also reported that “President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert ‘black’ operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed.” The official document endorsed “CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.” The plan would also include sabotaging Iran’s economy “by manipulating the country’s currency and international financial transactions.”[46]

In July, 2008, former Pakistan Army Chief General Mirza Aslam Baig went public with the charge that the U.S. was backing Jundullah operations based out of Balochistan province.[47]

Jundullah claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of the Amir al-Mohini mosque in the city of Zahedan on May 14, 2009, and said the target had Revolutionary Guards holding a meeting inside. Iran accused the U.S. of being behind the bombing.[48]

Jalal Sayyah, an official at the governor’s office in Sistan-Baluchestan province, told state radio, “The terrorists, who were equipped by America in one of our neighboring countries, carried out this criminal act in their efforts to create religious conflict and fear and to influence the presidential election”.[49] Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsooli similarly said, “Enemies try to influence the election by terror, just as they did in Zahedan yesterday…. The terror agents are neither Sunni nor Shiite but American and Israeli seeking a Sunni-Shiite divide.” Opposition candidate to President Ahmadinejad Mir-Hossein Mousavi also blamed “foreign forces” for the bombing.[50]

The U.S. naturally denied the charge. “We condemn this terrorist attack in the strongest possible terms,” said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. “We do not sponsor any form of terrorism in Iran.”[51] White House spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying, “The United States strongly condemns the recent terrorist attacks in Iran…. The American people send their deepest condolences to the victims and their families. No cause justifies terrorism, and the United States condemns it in any form, in any country, against any people.”[52]

The next day, gunmen attacked President Ahmadinejad’s campaign headquarters in Zahedan, and three men were arrested as they tried to escape.[53] The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that three people, including a child, had been wounded in the attack. According to Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-financed channel in Dubai, Jundullah had claimed responsibility for the attack.[54]

On June 9, 2009, just days before the presidential election, the Iranian state news agency Press TV reported that the brother of Jundullah leader Abdel Malik Rigi, Abdulhamid Rigi, had confirmed in an interview that the U.S. had met with the group since 2005 and helped to arm them. He himself had also met with the Americans in Islamabad, Pakistan, he said, according to the report.[55]

A ‘Velvet Revolution’

Two months before the election, Iran announced that its Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) had uncovered a plot to overthrow the regime and accused the Netherlands of conspiring with the U.S. and U.K. to provide financial support to opposition groups and websites for “anti-government activities” to bring about a “soft overthrow” of the government.[56]

Following the disputed election that resulted in an overwhelming win for the incumbent candidate President Ahmadinejad, rallies erupted in the streets of Tehran, with protesters charging that the election had been fraudulent and calling for an annulment of the announced result. Protests in some cases turned into riots resulting in property destruction and acts of arson. State security forces responded violently to some protests, and the state-backed Basij militia was blamed for storming Tehran University and killing 13.[57] The Basij was also blamed for other atrocities, including the murder of a young woman identified as Neda Agha Soltan. Neda was captured on a grisly video that has gone viral on the internet showing her lying in the street bleeding to death after apparently having been shot.[58]

Amid the chaos and charges of foreign interference in the elections, Iran cracked down further on dissent, blocking websites and issuing a ban on foreign reporters. During the confusion, the social-networking internet site Twitter reportedly became an important means for protesters to organize and keep each other updated. A Twitter user posts brief updates (“tweets”) via a web browser or cell phone text messaging. Other users may subscribe to that user’s tweets to receive instant updates. Thus, despite efforts to block other internet sites, Iran could not put a stop to Twitter activity without blocking all SMS communications.

But the “Twitter Revolution”, as some Western media have dubbed it, may not be all it appears. Blogs in the U.S. exploded with unconfirmed reports based on anonymously submitted tweets, many ostensibly coming from inside Iran. But as the Washington Post observed, “It is hard to say how much twittering is actually going on inside Iran.”[59]

While much of what was being Twittered has since been confirmed, there has been no shortage of dubious information going around. The New York Times observed that “just as Twitter has helped get out first-hand reports from Tehran, it has also spread inaccurate information, perhaps even disinformation.” Among the false information spread via Twitter and repeated by bloggers were: “That three millon protested in Tehran last weekend (more like a few hundred thousand); that the opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi was under house arrest (he was being watched); that the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid last Saturday (not so).”[60]

The popularity of the latter claim was in no small part due to a post by Andrew Sullivan in his popular blog “The Daily Dish” at The Atlantic. Sullivan reported, “Yes, the president of Iran’s own election monitoring commission has declared the result invalid and called for a do-over. That is huge news: when a regime’s own electoral monitors beak [sic] ranks, what chance does the regime have of persuading anyone in the world or Iran that it has democratic legitimacy?”[61]

Sullivan linked to a Farsi language website as his source, Peykeiran.com,[62] but Sullivan admittedly cannot read Farsi, so he was clearly merely relaying information he saw elsewhere, perhaps on Twitter, without attribution. Sullivan’s relayed claim, whatever its true origin, was promptly repeated in blogs across the net following his posting it at The Daily Dish.

But when shown the post and the linked-to page in Farsi, Kourosh Ziabari, an Iranian journalist and correspondent for Foreign Policy Journal, replied, “Actually, Andrew Sullivan has made a mistake, as far as I see. The one who asserted that the election results were invalid was Ali-Akbar Mohtashami, the Administrator for the Committee of Votes Preservation at the national campaign of Mir-Hossein Mousavi.”[63] This is hardly the same “huge news” Sullivan claimed it to be.

The New York Times also observed that “Not only is it hard to be sure that what appears on Twitter is accurate, but some Twitterers may even be trying to trick you.” An example cited is that of fabricated posts purporting to be from ABC News reporter Jim Sciutto.[64]

In that case, Sciutto said, the Iranian government attempted “to turn technology against the protesters. Officials have started a number of fake opposition pages on Twitter, which are tweeting propaganda and misleading information.”[65]

Sciutto offered no evidence that it was actually the Iranian government that was responsible for Twittering in his name, but then, of course, it is easy to accept that the Iranian government is using Twitter to spread misinformation simply as a matter of faith. And yet, despite the great amount of false or unsubstantiated claims made by apparent supporters of the opposition, there’s reluctance on the part of the mainstream media and bloggers to attribute to it the word “propaganda”, much less to suggest that there might have been a coordinated effort by anti-regime groups or foreign intelligence services to spread misinformation or foment unrest.

Evgeny Morozov, a blogger for Foreign Policy and a fellow at the Open Society Institute, questioned the “Twitter revolution” in an op-ed for the Boston Globe. He pointed out that “social media could do wonders when it comes to making many people aware of government’s abuse or the venue of a rally”, but “organizing protests is quite different from publicizing them; the former requires absolute secrecy, that latter one strives for the opposite.”

“However tempting it might be to attribute the Iranian protests to the power of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media,” Morozov added, “we should be extremely careful in our conclusions, especially given that the evidence we are working with is extremely sparse.”[66]

Morozov also told the Washington Post that it “is not at all certain” that Twitter “has helped to organize protests”, but “in terms of involving the huge Iranian diaspora and everyone else with a grudge against Ahmadinejad, it has been very successful.”

During a live discussion with readers, he observed that many posters had listed their location as Tehran in “solidarity” and that the Iranian diaspora was highly active in using social media. He also pointed out that it isn’t known whether a person with an Iranian sounding name posting content Farsi about events in Tehran was actually “in Tehran or, say, Los Angeles”.[67]

When Twitter Inc scheduled maintenance for the website, the U.S. asked the company to postpone the work so the service would not be interrupted as it was being used to rally people into the streets to protest the election. “One of the areas where people are able to get out the word is through Twitter,” a senior State Department official told reporters. “They announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to.”[68]

Iran shortly thereafter summoned the Swiss ambassador, who also represents U.S. interests in the country since the U.S. severed diplomatic relations after the 1979 revolution, to complain about American interference in Iranian affairs.[69]

One might be tempted to argue that the strategy for regime change implemented under the Bush administration that including funding for propaganda, support for Iranian dissident groups, and backing for anti-regime militants and terrorists has changed under the new administration of President Barack Obama. There is no evidence, many have pointed out, of U.S. meddling in the Iranian election.

But then, neither is there any clear indication that Obama ever revoked the policy strategy implemented under Bush. The most likely scenario is that Obama has put the military option favored by some in the Bush administration on the back burner in favor of other means to carry out a change of regime in Iran.

Whatever the case may be, given the record of U.S. interference in the state affairs of Iran and clear policy of regime change, it certainly seems possible, even likely, that the U.S. had a significant role to play in helping to bring about the recent turmoil in an effort to undermine the government of the Islamic Republic.

---

Certain name variants in this report have been changed within quoted text for consistency. British spellings have also been changed to American English.

An earlier version of this report said that Al-Arabiya was a “state owned” channel. It is a Saudi-financed channel operating out of Dubai and the text has been changed to reflect this.

[1] Remarks by President Barack Obama in Cairo, Egypt, White House, June 4, 2009

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/

[2] David Lowe, “Idea To Reality: A Brief History of the National Endowment for Democracy”, National Endowment for Democracy, Accessed June 22, 2009

http://www.ned.org/about/nedhistory.html

[3] William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2000), p. 180

[4] Susan F. Rasky, “C.I.A. Tied to Nicaragua Provocations”, New York Times, September 21, 1988

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/21/world/cia-tied-to-nicaragua-provocations.html

William Blum, Rogue State, p. 175

[5] William Blum, Rogue State, p. 157

[6] Ibid., p. 157-8

[7] Ibid., p. 183

[8] Ibid., p. 177

[9] Ibid., p. 182

[10] William Blum, “US coup against Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, 2002″ (Excerpted from Freeing the World to death: Essays on the American Empire), KillingHope.org, accessed June 22, 2009

http://killinghope.org/essays6/venez.htm

Eva Golinger, “The Proof is in the Documents: The CIA Was Involved in the Coup Against Venezuelan President Chavez”, VenezuelaiFOIA.info, accessed June 22, 2009

http://venezuelafoia.info/evaenglish.html

[11] Information on grants for years 2005-2007 available on the National Endowment for Democracy website, accessed June 22, 2009

http://www.ned.org

[12] Information from the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation website, accessed June 22, 2009

http://www.iranrights.org/

[13] WHOIS domain lookup, accessed June 22, 2009

http://www.whois.net

[14] National Endowment for Democracy website, accessed June 22, 2009

http://www.ned.org/grants/06programs/grants-mena06.html#iran

[15] Information from the National Iranian American Council website, accessed June 22, 2009

http://www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=826&Itemid=28

[16] “The neocons have learned nothing from five years of catastrophe”, The Guardian, January 31, 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jan/31/comment.usa

[17] National Endowment for Democracy website, accessed June 22, 2009

[18] “NIAC Calls for New Election in Iran”, National Iranian American Council Press Release, June 20, 2009

http://www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1452&Itemid=2

[19] “US plotting Velvet Revolution in Iran?”, Press TV, November 18, 2008

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=75784&sectionid=351020101

[20] Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger, “Bush plans huge propaganda campaign in Iran”, The Guardian, February 16, 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/feb/16/usnews.iran

[21] Howard LaFranchi, “A bid to foment democracy in Iran”, Christian Science Monitor, February 17, 2006

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0217/p03s03-usfp.html

[22] Scott Ritter, “The US War with Iran has Already Begun”, Al Jazeera, June 20, 2005

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0620-31.htm

[23] “Recruiting the Next Generation of Iran Experts: New Opportunities in Washington, Dubai and Europe”, Unclassified State Department Cable, released March, 2006

http://images1.americanprogress.org/il80web20037/ThinkProgress/2006/0293_001.pdf

“New ‘Office of Iranian Affairs’ Outlined in State Department Cable”, Think Progress, March 1, 2006

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/01/iran-doc/

[24] Lionel Beehner and Greg Bruno, “Intelligence on Iran Still Lacking”, Council on Foreign Relations, December 4, 2007

http://www.cfr.org/publication/12721/

[25] “Recruiting the Next Generation of Iran Experts”

[26] Charles A. Kupchan and Ray Takeyh, “The wrong way to fix Iran”, Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2006

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/26/opinion/oe-kupchan26

[27] Elise Labott, “U.S. to sharpen focus on Iran”, CNN, March 2, 2006

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/02/us.iran/

[28] Guy Dinmore and Daniel Dombey, “Bolton: sanctions ‘help regime change’”, Financial Times, October 24, 2006

http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto102420061730242214&page=2

[29] Steven R. Weisman, “Cheney Warns of ‘Consequences’ for Iran on Nuclear Issue”, New York Times, March 8, 2006

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E0D61531F93BA35750C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

[30] Peter Baker and Glenn Kessler, “U.S. Campaign Is Aimed at Iran’s Leaders”, Washington Post, March 13, 2006; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/12/AR2006031201016.html

[31] Guy Dinmore, “US and UK develop democracy strategy for Iran”, Financial Times, April 21, 2006

http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto042120061741075322&page=1

[32] Laura Rozen, “U.S. Moves to Weaken Iran”, Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2006

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/19/world/fg-usiran19

[33] Grant information obtained from the National Endowment for Democracy website, accessed June 23, 2009

http://www.ned.org/grants/02programs/grants-lac.html

[34] Laura Rozen, “U.S. Moves to Weaken Iran”, Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2006

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/19/world/fg-usiran19

[35] Negar Azimi, “Hard Realities of Soft Power”, New York Times Magazine, June 24, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/magazine/24ngo-t.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

[36] Seymour M. Hersh, “The Iran Plans”, New Yorker, April 17, 2006

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417fa_fact

[37] “Tehran insider tells of US black ops”, Asia Times Online, April 25, 2006

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD25Ak02.html

[38] “Seymour Hersh On Covert Operations in Iran”, NPR, June 30, 2006

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92025860

[39] Scott Ritter, “Acts of War”, Truthdig, July 19, 2008

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080729_acts_of_war/

[40] Seymour M. Hersh, “The Next Act”, New Yorker, November 27, 2006

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/11/27/061127fa_fact

[41] “Target Iran: Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh on White House Plans for Regime Change”, Democracy Now!, December 21, 2006

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/12/21/target_iran_former_un_weapons_inspector

[42] William Lowther and Colin Freeman, “US funds terror groups to sow chaos in Iran”, Telegraph, February 25, 2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1543798/US-funds-terror-groups-to-sow-chaos-in-Iran.html

[43] “Report: U.S. Sponsoring Kurdish Guerilla Attacks Inside Iran”, Democracy Now!, March 27, 2007

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/3/27/report_u_s_sponsoring_kurdish_guerilla

[44] “ABC News Exclusive: The Secret War Against Iran”, ABC News ‘The Blotter’, April 3, 2007

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html

[45] “Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran”, ABC News ‘The Blotter’, May 22, 2007

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/bush_authorizes.html

[46] Tim Shipman, “Bush sanctions ‘black ops’ against Iran”, The Telegraph, May 27, 2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1552784/Bush-sanctions-black-ops-against-Iran.html

[47] “Former Pakistan Army Chief General Retired Mirza Aslam Baig says Iran and Pakistan under siege of western conspiracies”, Pakistan Daily, July 8, 2008

http://www.daily.pk/politics/politicalnews/5406-former-pakistan-army-chief-general-retired-mirza-aslam-baig-says-iran-and-pakistan-under-siege-of-western-conspiracies.html

“‘US backs Jundullah to destabilize Iran’”, Press TV, July 9, 2008

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=63054&sectionid=351020101

[48] ‘Gunmen attack’ south Iran election office”, BBC News, May 29, 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8074640.stm

[49] “Iran official blames U.S. in deadly mosque bombing”, Reuters, May 29, 2009

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE54R5O320090529?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

[50] “Gunmen attack Ahmadinejad election office”, Agence France-Presse, May 29, 2009

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Gunmen_attack_Ahmadinejad_election__05292009.html

[51] “‘Gunmen attack’ south Iran election office”, BBC News, May 29, 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8074640.stm

[52] “US condemns ‘terrorist attacks’ in Iran”, Agence France-Presse, May 30, 2009

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jj8UWc4-2zQ2Ix1VBz_0RwB7iVGQ

[53] “‘Gunmen attack’ south Iran election office”

[54] “Gunmen attack Ahmadinejad election office”

[55] “Rigi’s brother exposes US ties with Jundullah”, Press TV, June 9, 2009

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=97484&sectionid=351020101

[56] “Iran ‘uncovers cyber plot to topple gov’t'”, Press TV, April 11, 2009

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=91129&sectionid=351020101

[57] Johns Lyons, “Students slaughtered in Tehran university attack”, The Australian, June 19, 2009

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25658596-601,00.html

[58] Michael Weissenstein and Anna Johnson, “Amateur video turns woman into icon of Iran unrest”, Associated Press, June 23, 2009

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jeJnPi6AOx5JpqWi2Wwv3AaesBPAD9902QK00

[59] Mike Musgrove, “Twitter Is a Player In Iran’s Drama”, Washington Post, June 17, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603391.html

[60] Noam Cohen, “Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned”, New York Times, June 20, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/weekinreview/21cohenweb.html

[61] Andrew Sullivan, “Follow-Up On Earlier Posts”, The Atlantic ‘The Daily Dish’, June 13, 2009

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/followup-on-earlier-posts.html

[62] Peykeiran.com webpage, accessed June 23, 2009

http://www.peykeiran.com/Content.aspx?ID=2104

[63] E-mail correspondence with Kourosh Ziabari

[64] Noam Cohen

[65] “ABC’s Jim Sciutto’s Twitter Account ‘Hijacked’ By Pro Iranian Government Messengers”, ABC News ‘The World Newser’, June 18, 2009

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/06/abcs-jim-sciuttos-twitter-account-hijacked-by-pro-iranian-messengers.html

[66] Evgeny Morozov, “The repercussions of a ‘Twitter revolution’”, Boston Globe, June 20, 2009

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/06/20/the_repercussions_of_a_twitter_revolution/

[67] Evgeny Morozov, “Iran Elections: A Twitter Revolution?”, Washington Post, June 17, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/06/17/DI2009061702232.html

[68] Mike Musgrove

[69] Ali Akbar Dareini, “Iran accuses the US of meddling in election crisis”, Associated Press, June 17, 2009

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090617/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_election

How The New ‘US Hate Laws’ Will Change Our Lives

REVEREND TED PIKE, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL PRAYER NETWORK, is the publisher of the world-renowned Web Site, Truth Tellers.

Reverend Pike, who is often featured on the Rense Radio Program, has played a key role in defeating federal hate crimes legislation in the past. This time it may be quite different…

Brother Nathanael: On April 29, 2009, the US House of Representatives passed the Federal Hate Crimes Bill, HR 1913. The Bill was approved despite compelling testimony by House Republicans who were constrained by a Democrat-imposed “closed rule” on debate and amendments which limited the debate to only one hour and twenty minutes.

Only the day before, apparently in co-ordination with House Democrats, Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy introduced his Senate version of the Federal Hate Crimes Bill, S 909. If the Hate Crimes Bill is enacted into law, what are the implications for freedom of speech in America?

Reverend Ted Pike: The current Hate Crimes Bill builds upon the Hate Crimes Law of 1968, inspired by Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legislation. This law criminalizes those who incite a crime committed against a targeted group. However, the law could not be enforced due to State & Local law enforcement prerogatives which created many barriers against federal intrusion.

BUT, the pending Hate Crimes Bill will remove all barriers against federal intrusion of State & Local law enforcement rights. Thus, the Federal government can go after anyone they want to for both “hate” and “felonies” – despite State & Local protection. A Federal police state with absolute power will thus be created. Herein lies the attack on our freedoms, especially, freedom of speech.

Incidentally, the number chosen for the pending Hate Crimes Bill is “HR 1913.” Any number may be chosen, but why “1913?” I don’t think it’s an accident that this number was chosen by the Zionists. For in “1913,” three threats to our freedom occurred: The establishment of the Anti Defamation League (ADL), The Federal Income Tax, and the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. Now the greatest of all threats is about to occur using this ominous date, “1913.” View Entire Story Here, Here & Here.

This current Hate Crimes Bill will eventually enforce the ADL-definition that “hate equals bias” against newly-formed federally protected groups: Homosexuals, Jews, and Muslims. These groups will receive special federal protection in violation of both the 1st & 14th amendments. Thus, if the pending US Hate Crimes Bill becomes law, freedom of speech will be effectively annihilated in America once and for all.

Br Nathanael: Why an “ADL-definition” of what constitutes hate? What does the Anti Defamation League have to do with the pending US Hate Crimes Laws?

Rev. Ted Pike: The Anti Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith, as it was formerly called, is behind it all, that’s why. This super powerful Jewish religious, educational, fraternal, and charitable organization, that is, the B’nai B’rith, has persuaded 55 nations (in which it has 2100 lodges and 200,000 Jewish members) to unite under the authority of a central Hate Crimes command center. It is called the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The establishment of this international Hate Crimes organization by the B’nai B’rith is but the apex of their hate crimes agenda. Such descends to the community level via the civil rights arm of the B’nai B’rith, the Anti Defamation League. Through their No Place For Hate & A World Of Difference programs in cities and communities throughout America, the ADL intensively organizes city governments, schools, modernist & Zionist-oriented churches, civic organizations, and citizen groups to combat “hate and homophobia” (Bible-Believing Christians) in their communities. The ADL has already infiltrated our public schools with their propaganda with various training and “educational” programs.

Indeed, a national and global hate crimes Gestapo is being created right before our very eyes, if we can only open them to see it. A “thought police” bureaucracy, led by the ADL, will soon harass and indict Christians and the politically incorrect here in America, as they now do in Canada.

Br Nathanael: Can you tell us more about the B’nai B’rith and their role in the pending US Hate Crimes legislation?

Rev. Ted Pike: Americans must understand that the ADL’s parent group, the B’nai B’rith, has established many “tolerance-oriented” lobby groups throughout the world in connection with various political & governmental spheres.

Organizations such as, B’nai B’rith Center for Human Rights and Public Policy, B’nai B’rith Office of United Nations Affairs, and B’nai B’rith Inter-American Convention Against Racism and Xenophobia, have maneuvered themselves into influential governmental realms. The B’nai B’rith boasts of having established the Canadian hate laws bureaucracy in 1971. Of course, money and politics plays a big part in the operations of powerful lobby groups, like the B’nai B’rith lobby.

Br Nathanael: How did the ADL begin its campaign of promoting Hate Crime Laws?

Rev. Ted Pike: The ADL began its promotion of Hate Crime Laws worldwide in 1988 following the infamous Hofstra Conference through which the ADL formed their model “Anti-Hate” legislation proposals with the deception that their proposals only targeted “violent physical hate crimes.” This is exactly what the ADL told lawmakers in Canada, Britain, and Sweden.

Yet, soon after the ADL’s Hate Bill was passed in those countries, it broadened to outlaw “verbal violence” against protected groups. Thus, laws to end “violent hate crimes” soon criminalized free speech.

Br Nathanael: What then is defined as “verbal violence?” And who defines what is “hate” in a person’s verbal articulations?

Rev. Ted Pike: Again, we must point to the Anti Defamation League as the culprit in defining that which constitutes “verbal violence” & “hate.” The ADL, which presently administers the US government’s Hate Crimes Enforcement Program, says that “hate equals bias” against federally protected groups.

Now, what document is most biased against homosexuality? The Holy Bible. Christians thus become potential “hate criminals.” And it is Christians in particular who are the ultimate target of ADL’s twisted and self-serving definitions of hate crimes.

Soon to follow homosexuals, will be another federally protected group, the Jews. Any person critical of the conduct of Jews, (even as the New Testament justly censors the conduct of unbelieving Jews), will be criminalized as perpetrators of “hate speech.” Of course, this is what the ADL is really after, forbidding Christians and all Gentiles to articulate valid criticism against Jewish supremacists.

Br Nathanael: What about the Internet? Will the US Hate Crime Laws prohibit freedom of speech on the Internet?

Rev. Ted Pike: Indeed it will. Today, the ADL/B’nai B’rith Hate Law bureaucracies are proliferating throughout the world, ending free speech and free talk radio.

This has happened already in Canada, England, France, Germany, and Australia with the establishment of ADL’s/B’nai B’rith’s, Department of Global Anti-Semitism in the US State Department, and a 55-nation Hate Crimes bureaucracy centered in Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as I mentioned earlier.

The threat to free speech on the Internet posed by these groups with their promotion of Hate Laws is an increasingly urgent subject for discussion on talk radio, especially for shows with Internet access.

Br Nathanael: Who will be targeted on the Internet by the Anti Defamation League?

Rev. Ted Pike: Internet talk radio hosts or Internet publicists who criticize homosexuality, Israel, or matters Jewish, will be targeted as “haters” according to the ADL’s International Network Against Cyberhate (INACH).

The purpose of this ADL entity is to implement legal, political, and technological means to end the free speech of such “haters” on the Internet. Quite recently, on March of 2009, INACH shut down a Catholic Website in the UK for being critical of “extremist Jews.”

Curiously, while the ADL/B’nai B’rith/INACH has no problem with the exercise of free speech by homosexuals and pornographers on the Internet, it has a huge problem with those who criticize all matters Jewish.

Br Nathanael: Are we headed for a Zionist-inspired police state?

Rev. Ted Pike: We certainly are. The pending US Hate Crimes Law creates a bias-motivation justice system for America, just like Canada’s. Suspicion of bias motivation behind a crime will justify federal invasion of local law enforcement as I discussed earlier. Such unity of federal and local jurisdiction is the definition of a police state.

And the powerful Jewish group, the ADL, with its Hate Crimes Training has already infiltrated hundreds of local police forces throughout the United States.

Br Nathanael: Is there a chance that the pending US Hate Crimes Bill, HR 1913, can still be defeated?

Rev. Ted Pike: Yes, there is still a chance, if we all do our part. You see, unlike the House, there is a very small margin of Democrats & Republicans in the Senate. If public outrage is overwhelming enough this coming week, then there is a chance that several Democrats will come over and vote with the Republicans against the Hate Crimes Bill. This is what occurred two years ago due to the protests of concerned Americans.

During the recent mark-up in the House Judiciary, Republicans boldly discredited the Hate Crimes Bill as a “pedophile-protecting” Bill. This is documented in my recent video, Stop The Pedophile-Protecting Hate Bill.

Everyone should now protest to members of the Senate by calling Toll Free, 1-877-851-6437 or 202-225-3121, and say, “Please Don’t Vote For The Pedophile-Protecting Hate Bill, S-909!” I am calling everyone to demand hearings in the Senate Judiciary. This will slow down the passage and encourage Senate Republicans.

The Democrats had hoped to push through the Senate Hate Bill, S-909, as rapidly to passage as the House Bill was. But if a ground swell of protest continues this coming week, there is a very real chance that the Hate Bill can be defeated either by a filibuster or a majority vote against it. So, please call and protest NOW!

http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=398

Looting the Russian Economy

This is a story about the money laundering game involving Russian gangsters, corrupt officials, impoverished South Pacific islands and some of the world’s most reputable banks. See how $200-500 billion was looted from the Russian economy, through virtual offshore banks.

ABC Australia – Looting the Russian Economy

Chorus call for New World Order

The August Review

In economic and financial desperation, leaders around the globe are openly calling for the creation of a “New World Order,” including prominent “old guard” members of the Trilateral Commission. Is the baby about to be born?

The return of the Trilateral undead

It’s not accidental that so many of the original members of the Trilateral Commission, all of whom are now well into their 80’s, have returned to dance in the limelight once again.

TC Members like Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Volker and Brent Scowcroft, for instance.

On January 5, 2009, Henry Kissinger was interviewed by CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. His voice still raspy and spoken with a thick accent, he responded to a question about President-elect Obama’s first actions as President:

“he can give new impetus to American foreign policy … I think that his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period, when really a ‘new world order’ can be created. It’s a great opportunity. It isn’t such a crisis.”

While the rest of the country slips into depression and financial collapse, to Kissinger “it isn’t such a crisis.”

And, of course it isn’t — for him.

Kissinger has been patiently waiting since at least 1973 for his New World Order egg to hatch.

And remember, in July 1971, Kissinger was the very first diplomat (under Nixon) to visit Communist China in order to open up trade relations with that brutal dictatorship. Oh, and that was an absolutely top-secret trip.

The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 to create a “New International Economic Order.” George H.W. Bush, also a Trilateral, later spoke of inaugurating a “New World Order.” Hence, in Trilateral literature, the two terms have been synonymous ever since. (see The Trilateral Commission: Usurping Sovereignty)

Kissinger earlier praised Obama’s picks for economic recovery, and why not?

Obama picked Trilateral Commission wonder boy Timothy Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury. The rest of the team are protégés of Robert Rubin, also a Trilateral and former Treasury Secretary under Clinton.

Obama’s top foreign policy advisor has been Zbigniew Brzezinski, the co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller.

In 1974, Brzezinski stated,

“We need to change the international system for a global system in which new, active and creative forces recently developed – should be integrated. This system needs to include Japan. Brazil, the oil producing countries, and even the USSR, to the extent which the Soviet Union is willing to participate in a global system… the reality of our times is that a modern society such as the U.S. needs a central coordinating and renovating organ which cannot be made up of six hundred people..”

For the uninitiated, “six hundred people” refers to Congress: Replace it with a Socialist/Communist central coordinating organ.

The call in Europe

Sarkozy (France), Merkel (Germany) and Blair (Great Britain) are all calling for a New World Order.

On January 7, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that “In the 21st century, there it is no longer a single nation who can say what we should do or what we should think.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the world “cannot continue as it is.”

Both Tony Blair and the current British PM Gordon Brown have repeatedly called for a New World Order for many years, but their cries are intensified.

Interestingly, when President-elect Obama delivered a speech in 2008 to hundreds of thousands in Germany, he stated,

Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen — a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.”

The media hailed Obama for his vision of America and the New World Order.

Sampling of the global press

Indeed, the chorus for a New World Order is being heard around the world.

• Africa: Time for a new world order
• Australia: We need a new world health order
• Canada: A new world order rising?
• China: Hu urges revamp of finance system
• India: Plotting India’s route in the new world order
• Japan: New financial order will emerge from crisis
• Malaysia: Groups to call for new world order
• Quatar: Islam to emerge as the new world order

A crisis made to order?

Dr. Robert A. Pastor, the principal visionary of the North American Union, stated in 2007,

“What I’m saying is that a crisis is an event which can force democratic governments to make difficult decisions like those that will be required to create a North American Community,” he said. “It’s not that I want another 9/11 crisis, but having a crisis would force decisions that otherwise might not get made.”

So, now we have the mother of all crises and on a global scale at that: Financial, political, religious (remember Islam?).

And socialistic solutions are being railroaded through on a daily basis.

If the New World Order baby is about to be delivered, wouldn’t you expect the fathers (Kissinger, Brzezinski, Scowcroft, Volker, Rockefeller, et al) to show up and pace the floor?

Everybody figures that these guys are just crusty and harmless old men, but I will guarantee that when the baby is finally born the screaming will begin.

America’s other Glorious War

The Pentagon pushes hard for a large increase in troops for Afghanistan. Barack Obama has been calling for the same since well before the November election. Listen to the drumbeats telling us that the security of the United States and the Free World necessitates increased action in this place called Afghanistan. As urgent as Iraq 2003, it is. Why? What is there about this backward, reactionary, woman-hating, failed state that warrants hundreds of deaths of American and NATO soldiers? That justifies tens of thousands of Afghan deaths since the first US bombing attacks in October 2001?

In early December, reports the Washington Post, “standing at Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States is making a ’sustained commitment’ to that country, one that will last ’some protracted period of time’.” The story goes on to discuss $300 million in construction projects at this one base to house additional American forces, erecting guard stations and towers and perimeter fencing around the barracks area, putting in vehicle inspection areas, administration offices, cold-storage warehouse, a new power plant, electrical and water distribution systems, communications lines, housing for 1,500 personnel who sustain the systems, maintenance shops, warehouses[1] … America’s wealth bleeds out endlessly.

Back in April Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, when asked how long it would take to create “lasting stability” in Afghanistan, replied: “In some way, shape or form … I think it’s a generation.”[2] “Stability”, it should be noted, is a code word used regularly by the United States since at least the 1950s to mean that the regime in power is willing and able to behave the way Washington would like it to behave. It is remarkable, and scary, to read the US military writing about how it goes around the world bringing “stability” to (often ungrateful) people. This past October the Army published a manual called “Stability Operations”.[3] It discusses numerous American interventions all over the world since the 1890s, one example after another of bringing “stability” to benighted peoples. One can picture the young American service members reading it, or having it fed to them in lectures, full of pride to be a member of such an altruistic fighting force.

For those members of the US military in Afghanistan the most enlightening lesson they could receive is that their government’s plans for that land of sadness have little or nothing to do with the welfare of the Afghan people. In the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, the country had a government that was relatively progressive, with full rights for women; even a Pentagon report of the time testified to the actuality of women’s rights in the country.[4] And what happened to that government? The United States was instrumental in overthrowing it. It was replaced by the Taliban.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, US oil companies have been vying with Russia, Iran and other energy interests for the massive, untapped oil and natural gas reserves in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. The building and protection of oil and gas pipelines in Afghanistan, to continue farther to Pakistan, India, and elsewhere, has been a key objective of US policy since before the 2001 American invasion and occupation of the country, although the subsequent turmoil there has presented serious obstacles to such plans. A planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline has strong support from Washington because, amongst other reasons, the US is eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran.[5] But security for such projects remains daunting, and that’s where the US and NATO forces come in to play.

In the late 1990s, the American oil company, Unocal, met with Taliban officials in Texas to discuss the pipelines.[6] Zalmay Khalilzad, later chosen to be the US ambassador to Afghanistan, worked for Unocal[7]; Hamid Karzai, later chosen by Washington to be the Afghan president, also reportedly worked for Unocal, although the company denies this. Unocal’s talks with the Taliban, conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society, continued as late as 2000 or 2001.

As for NATO, it has no reason to be fighting in Afghanistan. Indeed, NATO has no legitimate reason for existence at all. Their biggest fear is that “failure” in Afghanistan would make this thought more present in the world’s mind. If NATO hadn’t begun to intervene outside of Europe it would have highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission. “Out of area or out of business” it was said.

In June, the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives published a report saying Taliban and insurgent activity against the US-NATO presence in Kandahar province puts the feasibility of the pipeline project in doubt. The report says southern regions in Afghanistan, including Kandahar, would have to be cleared of insurgent activity and land mines in two years to meet construction and investment schedules.

“Nobody is going to start putting pipe in the ground unless they are satisfied that there is some reasonable insurance that the workers for the pipeline are going to be safe,” said Howard Brown, the Canadian representative for the Asian Development Bank, the major funding agency for the pipeline.[8]

If Americans were asked what they think their country is doing in Afghanistan, their answers would likely be one variation or another of “fighting terrorism”, with some kind of connection to 9-11. But what does that mean? Of the tens of thousands of Afghans killed by American/NATO bombs over the course of seven years, how many can it be said had any kind of linkage to any kind of anti-American terrorist act, other than in Afghanistan itself during this period? Not one, as far as we know. The so-called “terrorist training camps” in Afghanistan were set up largely by the Taliban to provide fighters for their civil conflict with the Northern Alliance (minimally less religious fanatics and misogynists than the Taliban, but represented in the present Afghan government). As everyone knows, none of the alleged 9-11 hijackers was an Afghan; 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia; and most of the planning for the attacks appears to have been carried out in Germany and the United States. So, of course, bomb Afghanistan. And keep bombing Afghanistan. And bomb Pakistan. Especially wedding parties (at least six so far).

Israel and Palestine, again, forever

Nothing changes. Including what I have to say on the matter. To prove my point, I’m repeating part of what I wrote in this report in July 2006 …

There are times when I think this tired old world has gone on a few years too long. What’s happening in the Middle East is so depressing. Most discussions of the everlasting Israel-Palestine conflict are variations on the child’s eternal defense for misbehavior — “He started it!” Within two minutes of discussing/arguing the latest manifestation of the conflict the participants are back to 1967, then 1948, then biblical times. Instead of getting entangled in who started the current mess, I’d prefer to express what I see as two essential underlying facts of life which remain from one conflict to the next:

1) Israel’s existence is not at stake and hasn’t been so for decades, if it ever was, regardless of the many de rigueur militant statements by Middle East leaders over the years. If Israel would learn to deal with its neighbors in a non-expansionist, non-military, humane, and respectful manner, engage in full prisoner exchanges, and sincerely strive for a viable two-state (if not one-state) solution, even those who are opposed to the idea of a state based on a particular religion could accept the state of Israel, and the question of its right to exist would scarcely arise in people’s minds. But as it is, Israel still uses the issue as a justification for its behavior, as Jews all over the world use the Holocaust and conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

2) In a conflict between a thousand-pound gorilla and a mouse, it’s the gorilla who has to make concessions in order for the two sides to progress to the next level. What can the Palestinians offer in the way of concession? Israel would reply to that question: “No violent attacks of any kind.” But that would leave the status quo ante bellum — a life of unmitigated misery for the occupied, captive Palestinian people, confined to the world’s largest open air concentration camp.

It is a wanton act of collective punishment that is depriving the Palestinians of food, electricity, water, money, access to the outside world … and sleep. Israel has been sending jets flying over Gaza at night triggering sonic booms, traumatizing children. “I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza,” declared Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert[9], words suitable for Israel’s tombstone.

Israel has created its worst enemies — they helped create Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah in Palestine, and their occupation of Lebanon created Hezbollah. The current terrible bombings can be expected to keep the process going. Since its very beginning, Israel has been almost continually engaged in fighting wars and taking other people’s lands. Did not any better way ever occur to the idealistic Zionist pioneers?

The question that may never go away: Who really is Barack Obama?

In his autobiography, “Dreams From My Fathers”, Barack Obama writes of taking a job at some point after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as “a consulting house to multinational corporations” in New York City, and his functions as a “research assistant” and “financial writer”.

The odd part of Obama’s story is that he doesn’t mention the name of his employer. However, a New York Times story of 2007 identifies the company as Business International Corporation.[10] Equally odd is that the Times did not remind its readers that the newspaper itself had disclosed in 1977 that Business International had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960.[11]

The British journal, Lobster Magazine — which, despite its incongruous name, is a venerable international publication on intelligence matters — has reported that Business International was active in the 1980s promoting the candidacy of Washington-favored candidates in Australia and Fiji.[12] In 1987, the CIA overthrew the Fiji government after but one month in office because of its policy of maintaining the island as a nuclear-free zone, meaning that American nuclear-powered or nuclear-weapons-carrying ships could not make port calls.[13] After the Fiji coup, the candidate supported by Business International, who was much more amenable to Washington’s nuclear desires, was reinstated to power — R.S.K. Mara was Prime Minister or President of Fiji from 1970 to 2000, except for the one-month break in 1987.

In his book, not only doesn’t Obama mention his employer’s name; he fails to say when he worked there, or why he left the job. There may well be no significance to these omissions, but inasmuch as Business International has a long association with the world of intelligence, covert actions, and attempts to penetrate the radical left — including Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)[14] — it’s valid to wonder if the inscrutable Mr. Obama is concealing something about his own association with this world.

On socialist Cuba’s 50th anniversary, January 1, 2009: Notes on the beginning of its unforgivable revolution.

The existence of a revolutionary socialist government with growing ties to the Soviet Union only 90 miles away, insisted the United States government, was a situation which no self-respecting superpower should tolerate, and in 1961 it undertook an invasion of Cuba.

But less than 50 miles from the Soviet Union sat Pakistan, a close ally of the United States, a member since 1955 of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created anti-communist alliance. On the very border of the Soviet Union was Iran, an even closer ally of the United States, with its relentless electronic listening posts, aerial surveillance, and infiltration into Russian territory by American agents. And alongside Iran, also bordering the Soviet Union, was Turkey, a member of the Russians’ mortal enemy, NATO, since 1951.

In 1962 during the “Cuban Missile Crisis”, Washington, seemingly in a state of near-panic, informed the world that the Russians were installing “offensive” missiles in Cuba. The US promptly instituted a “quarantine” of the island — a powerful show of naval and marine forces in the Caribbean would stop and search all vessels heading towards Cuba; any found to contain military cargo would be forced to turn back.

The United States, however, had missiles and bomber bases already in place in Turkey and other missiles in Western Europe pointed toward the Soviet Union. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev later wrote:

“The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you; we’d be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine. … After all, the United States had no moral or legal quarrel with us. We hadn’t given the Cubans anything more than the Americans were giving to their allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the Americans. Our conduct in the international arena was governed by the same rules and limits as the Americans.”[15]

Lest anyone misunderstand, as Khrushchev apparently did, the rules under which Washington was operating, Time magazine was quick to explain. “On the part of the Communists,” the magazine declared, “this equating [referring to Khrushchev's offer to mutually remove missiles and bombers from Cuba and Turkey] had obvious tactical motives. On the part of neutralists and pacifists [who welcomed Khrushchev's offer] it betrayed intellectual and moral confusion.” The confusion lay, it seems, in not seeing clearly who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, for “The purpose of the U.S. bases [in Turkey] was not to blackmail Russia but to strengthen the defense system of NATO, which had been created as a safeguard against Russian aggression. As a member of NATO, Turkey welcomed the bases as a contribution to her own defense.” Cuba, which had been invaded only the year before, could have, it seems, no such concern. Time continued its sermon, which undoubtedly spoke for most Americans:

“Beyond these differences between the two cases, there is an enormous moral difference between U.S. and Russian objectives … To equate U.S. and Russian bases is in effect to equate U.S. and Russian purposes … The U.S. bases, such as those in Turkey, have helped keep the peace since World War II, while the Russian bases in Cuba threatened to upset the peace. The Russian bases were intended to further conquest and domination, while U.S. bases were erected to preserve freedom. The difference should have been obvious to all.”[16]

Equally obvious was the right of the United States to maintain a military base on Cuban soil — Guantanamo Naval Base by name, a vestige of colonialism staring down the throats of the Cuban people, which the US, to this day, refuses to vacate despite the vehement protest of the Castro government.

In the American lexicon, in addition to good and bad bases and missiles, there are good and bad revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were good. The Cuban Revolution is bad. It must be bad because so many people have left Cuba as a result of it.

But at least 100,000 people left the British colonies in America during and after the American Revolution. These Tories could not abide by the political and social changes, both actual and feared, particularly that change which attends all revolutions worthy of the name — Those looked down upon as inferiors no longer know their place. (Or as the US Secretary of State put it after the Russian Revolution: The Bolsheviks sought “to make the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth.”[17])

The Tories fled to Nova Scotia and Britain carrying tales of the godless, dissolute, barbaric American revolutionaries. Those who remained and refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new state governments were denied virtually all civil liberties. Many were jailed, murdered, or forced into exile. After the American Civil War, thousands more fled to South America and other points, again disturbed by the social upheaval. How much more is such an exodus to be expected following the Cuban Revolution? — a true social revolution, giving rise to changes much more profound than anything in the American experience. How many more would have left the United States if 90 miles away lay the world’s wealthiest nation welcoming their residence and promising all manner of benefits and rewards?

NOTES
[1] Washington Post, December 25, 2008
[2] Reuters, April 29, 2008
[3] http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/Repository/FM307/FM3-07.pdf
[4] U.S. Department of the Army, “Afghanistan, A Country Study” (1986), pp.121, 128, 130, 134, 136, 223, 232-3
[5] Globe & Mail (Toronto), June 19, 2008
[6] BBC News, December 4, 1997, “Taleban [sic] in Texas for talks on gas pipeline”
[7] Washington Post, November 23, 2001
[8] United Press International, July 17, 2008
[9] Associated Press, July 3, 2006
[10] New York Times, October 30, 2007
[11] New York Times, December 27, 1977, p.40
[12] Lobster Magazine, Hull, UK, #14, November 1987
[13] William Blum, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”, pp.199-200
[14] Carl Oglesby, “Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Antiwar Movement” (2008), passim
[15] “Khrushchev Remembers” (1971) pp.494, 496.
[16] Time magazine, November 2, 1962
[17] Cited by William Appleman Williams, “American Intervention in Russia: 1917-20″, in David Horowitz, ed., “Containment and Revolution” (1967). Written in a letter to President Woodrow Wilson by Secretary of State Robert Lansing, uncle of John Foster and Allen Dulles.

William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www .killinghope.org

William Blum is a guest columnist for Underground Dissident