What Should Be Done in Palestine

December 31, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Israel Shamir

Israel Shamir’s Talk at the Ankara Conference…

PalestineDear 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.


A native of Novosibirsk, Siberia, a grandson of a professor of mathematics and a descendant of a Rabbi from Tiberias, Palestine, he studied at the prestigious School of the Academy of Sciences, and read Math and Law at Novosibirsk University. In 1969, he moved to Israel, served as paratrooper in the army and fought in the 1973 war.

After his military service he resumed his study of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but abandoned the legal profession in pursuit of a career as a journalist and writer. He got his first taste of journalism with Israel Radio, and later went freelance. His varied assignments included covering Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the last stages of the war in South East Asia.

In 1975, Shamir joined the BBC and moved to London. In 1977-79 he wrote for the Israeli daily Maariv and other papers from Japan. While in Tokyo, he wrote Travels with My Son, his first book, and translated a number of Japanese classics.

Email at: info@israelshamir.net

Israel Shamir is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

The American-Israeli War on Gaza

December 27, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Jeremy R. Hammond

GazaOne year ago today, Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead”, a murderous full-scale military assault on the small, densely populated, and defenseless Gaza Strip. The operation resulted in the massacre of over 1,300 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians, including hundreds of children.

This includes only those killed directly by military attacks. The actual casualty figure from Israel’s policies towards Gaza, including the number of deaths attributable to its ongoing siege of the territory, is unknown.

The official pretext for the operation given by Israel and parroted unquestioningly in the Western media is that Israel had to respond with force as an act of self-defense against to an onslaught of rocket attacks against southern Israel from Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza.

Even if this were true, nations acting in self-defense against armed attacks must respect international law designed to protect civilians in time of war. Israel flagrantly violated the Geneva Conventions and other relevant treaties governing the use of force during the course of its operation, committing numerous war crimes.

But the stated pretext itself does not stand up to scrutiny. Six months prior to the assault on Gaza, Israel and Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire. Under the terms of the truce agreement, Hamas would end its rocket attacks against Israel and Israel would similarly cease attacks against Palestinians in Gaza and lift its siege on the territory.

Hamas, for its part, lived up to its obligations under the truce. It fired no rockets into Israel and actively pressured other groups to similarly refrain from launching attacks.

Israel, on the other hand, never lived up to its obligations under the truce. From the beginning, Israel declared a “security zone” on Gaza’s side of the border and Israeli soldiers repeatedly violated the truce by firing at Palestinians, guilty of merely trying to access their own land.

Israel also never eased its siege of Gaza. Israel controlled (and continues to control) the borders of Gaza, its airspace, and its coast, and implementing a near total blockade, including preventing by force the delivery of humanitarian goods into the territory.

Rather than easing the siege, Israel continued to let in only minimal amounts of humanitarian supplies (a practice that also continues today), just enough to prevent a total humanitarian catastrophe, thus keeping the population of Gaza in a state of despair and on the verge of human limits, with untold consequences on the health and mental well-being of the Palestinians.

The complete breakdown of the truce agreement came on November 4, when Israel launched airstrikes and a ground incursion into Gaza, killing four Palestinians. This violation of the cease-fire resulted in its effective undoing.

Israel’s official reason for the attack was its claim that militants were digging a tunnel under the border. The more credible explanation, however, was that Israel wanted to provoke Hamas into launching rockets and thus to claim a pretext for the full-scale military assault that Israel had, at that time, by its own account, already been planning.

Indeed, from the beginning of the truce, it appeared Israel’s intent was to provoke a violent response in order claim a pretext for its military assault. While Hamas scrupulously observed the cease-fire, Israel took deliberate actions to undermine it. Besides those already noted, Israel also stepped up operations against Palestinians in the West Bank, such as the assassination of members of Islamic Jihad shortly after the announcement of the truce.

Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza responded to that incident by firing rockets into Israel, but Hamas criticized the attacks and pressured Islamic Jihad to cease, including with the threat of arrests, and the tenuous truce continued to hold, for a time.

A greater and more provocative action was necessary in order to completely undermine the truce, and Israel’s November 4 attack proved to be that action. From that day forward, the so-called “cease-fire” consisted of tit-for-tat attacks on a daily basis, with Israel launching repeated attacks on Gaza and Hamas and other militant groups launching rockets into Israel.

Israel had achieved the pretext it was looking for in order to gain the political cover necessary to wage its assault on the civilian population of Gaza.

And make no mistake; Operation Cast Lead was a war on a civilian population, an extremely murderous act of collective punishment.

The death toll itself stands as an undeniable testament to that, but the manner in which Israel waged its operation also leaves no doubt as to its true objective.

As already noted, Israel claims its operation was designed to end rocket attacks. In truth, it was Israel that deliberately violated and undermined the truce.

Israel also claims its operation was aimed at militants. As evidence of its respect for international law and extraordinary efforts to prevent the loss of innocent life, Israel notes the fact that it dropped thousands of leaflets on Gaza prior to its operations warning civilians to flee the oncoming assault.

But the fact is this is not evidence of Israel’s respect for innocent life, but rather strong evidence that its killing of civilians was deliberate and intended. For starters, civilians, told to flee, had nowhere to go. No place in Gaza was safe from Israel’s attacks. Furthermore, in some cases civilians were told to go to city centers, and, after many had done so, those same locations were then purposefully bombed by Israel.

Israel’s claimed respect for innocent life is also belied by its means of indiscriminate warfare. Israel heavily bombarded civilian population centers. It deliberately and systematically targeted civilian locations with protected status under international law, including schools and hospitals.

Israel also used indiscriminate weaponry, including white phosphorus munitions. The use of white phosphorus is permitted under international law for illuminating the battlefield or creating smokescreens. However, its use as an incendiary weapon (it is also a chemical weapon, in that its incendiary effect is the result of a chemical reaction) is a violation of international law and a war crime, particularly when used indiscriminately against populated areas and civilian locations such as schools, as it was in Gaza.

Moreover, Israel, demonstrated extreme contempt for and defiance to the United Nations and the international community by deliberately targeting U.N. sites within Gaza. It targeted U.N. clinics, schools, and other compounds.

Israel attacked humanitarian convoys attempting to deliver much needed supplies to the desperate people of Gaza, and in other cases prevented medical teams, including from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from reaching victims of its assault, also a war crime.

Israel also deliberately targeted a U.N. warehouse where humanitarian supplies were being stored, attacking the site with white phosphorus munitions, resulting in the warehouse and goods inside catching fire and nearly burning to the ground.

All of these actions by Israel, all well documented and incontrovertible, constitute grave war crimes under the Geneva Conventions and other relevant treaties of international law.

The U.S. Role

Israel’s contempt for innocent life, for the international community, and for international law is perhaps matched only by the U.S. willingness to support Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.

Simply stated, without U.S. support, none of this could go on.

The U.S. supports Israel financially. Aid to Israel is on the order of $3 billion a year. This money is given, unlike aid to other countries, with no strings attached, and with little to no oversight about how it is to be used.

Even if it is not used directly to finance Israeli policies and activities in violation of international law, such as its ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories, construction of settlements in the West Bank, construction of a its “separation barrier” within the West Bank, destruction of Palestinian homes and other property, killing of Palestinian civilians, etc., U.S. financial support allows Israel to free up other funding for these illegal activities. It effectively rewards Israel for criminal actions.

The U.S. supports Israel militarily. And military equipment provided by the U.S. is used by Israel for actions constituting war crimes under international law. The massacre in Gaza was carried out with the help of U.S.-provided Apache helicopter gunships, U.S.-provided F-16 fighter bombers, and U.S.-provided munitions, including white phosphorus and cluster munitions.

This military support to Israel is not only a violation of international law and relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on member states not to provide material support for Israeli crimes, but it is also a violation of U.S. law. Besides international treaties such as the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions constituting “the supreme Law of the Land” under the U.S. Constitution, U.S. law forbids the exporting of military equipment to countries that routinely violate international law and commit offenses against human rights. Yet U.S. military support for Israel continues unabated.

The U.S. supports Israel diplomatically. The principle means by which the U.S. does so is through the use of its veto power in the U.N. Security Council. While Israel was using U.S. military hardware to murder innocent Palestinians, the U.S. was actively trying to stall a cease-fire resolution to give Israel more time to carry out its assault. A watered-down version of the resolution was finally found acceptable to the U.S., which reportedly was ready to vote in favor, but after receiving a call from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, while not going so far as to cast a veto, instead abstained rather than casting a vote for a resolution rightfully critical of Israel.

The Role of the U.S. Media

The U.S. mainstream corporate media also play a significant role in the Israeli-Arab conflict, and reporting on Operation Cast Lead provides a useful case study into the nature of its role. To describe U.S. media accounts of Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza as “biased” would be a sore understatement.

Take the reporting of the New York Times, America’s “newspaper of record” reporting “all the news that’s fit to print”. Arguably the most widely read and important newspaper in the world, what the Times reports is regularly picked up by other major media, with the newspaper effectively serving as a trend-setter for the news Americans consume. Its impact on the perceptions Americans have of conflicts such as Israel’s war on the civilian population of Gaza is enormous.

The New York Times’ reporting on Israel’s assault was reminiscent of its reporting on Iraq with respect to that nation’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, prior to the initiation of the U.S. war of aggression against that country based on such lies and deceptions as then reported matter-of-factly by the Times.

Propaganda devices employed by the Times in this case, as in the case of Iraq, included the use of euphemisms and the selective reporting of facts.

For instance, although the Times did report initially on Israel’s November 4 violation of the truce, it exercised selective amnesia in its subsequent reporting and described only the “breakdown” of the cease-fire and thus failing to inform readers of the single identifiable causal factor for that “breakdown”.

Moreover, the Times accepted without scrutiny and parroted the official line from Israeli officials that its operation was launched in response to rocket attacks and the violation by Hamas of the truce, thus implicitly and falsely attributing the failure of the cease-fire to its violation by Hamas.

The Times repeatedly and consistently downplayed the true nature of Israel’s assault on Gaza. In one notable example, the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner wrote in an article that Palestinians had “claimed” that Israel was using white phosphorus munitions, employing this propaganda device to intentionally cast doubt in the mind of the reader as to the veracity of the so-called “claim”.

The truth is that Bronner knew perfectly well this was not a “claim”, but a known fact. He could just as well have written at that time that human rights organizations had criticized Israel for its known use of white phosphorus, rather than attributing it as mere a Palestinian “claim”.

By this time, although reporters were banned from entering Gaza, there was no question that Israel was doing so, including proof in photographs showing the unmistakable smoke trails and incendiary projectiles of white phosphorus being used over residential neighborhoods.

Remarkably, the same day Bronner’s article appeared, another article also appeared, written by his Palestinian colleague Taghreed El-Khodary, the Times’ only correspondent actually reporting from inside of Gaza, who reported on finding white phosphorus casings with markings showing that they were U.S.-made.

In El-Khodary’s reports from Gaza, one could find a more reliable account of what was actually happening on the ground, but even her articles were heavily edited and/or rewritten by the Times’ editorial staff, and it was the dishonest and propagandistic reporting of Bronner and his Jerusalem-based British-Israeli colleague Isabel Kershner that generally typified the nature of the Times’ reporting on the massacre.

Countless other examples abound, but it’s beyond the scope of this article and would be superfluous to continue to list them.

The Role of the American People

In short, Americans reading about the violence in U.S. newspapers or watching it on TV received a heavily distorted account of what was going down.

But this is no excuse for ignorance. The facts are known and available to every American with access to the internet. One may turn to the healthy alternative media in the U.S. One may turn to international media sources, including Israeli sources like the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, or Ynet (Yedioth Ahronoth online). One may turn to human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, or the Israeli group B’tselem.

One may also turn to the report of the U.N. Human Rights Council inquiry into the violence, headed up by the respected international jurist Richard Goldstone, who himself happens to be Jewish (a fact worthy of mention due to Israeli and U.S. charges that the report is biased; in another example of U.S. diplomatic support for Israeli crimes, the U.S. has actively sought to block implementation of its recommendations or any Security Council follow-up actions).

Goldstone himself has concluded that Israel’s actions were targeted at the civilian population of Gaza as an act of collective punishment, and his conclusion is well supported by his final report and the evidence it presents.

The facts are beyond dispute. The conclusions are obvious and incontrovertible. It is well past time that the American people wake up to the realities on the ground in the Palestinian territories. Many Americans already demonstrate the modicum of moral integrity required to speak out against their government’s support for Israeli crimes, but it is not enough.

Without massive public opposition to the U.S. policy of supporting Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, the crimes will continue. Israel will continue to act with impunity and continue to violate international law under U.S. cover.

The fact of the matter is that the American people have more power in their hands than any other body to bring about an end to the violence and to create the conditions for a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East.

Americans themselves may not realize this truth, but the international community well recognizes it. And the world is watching, and waiting.

Will the American people continue to turn their heads away and wash their collective hands of the affair, deceiving themselves into believing they have no responsibility for what goes on “over there” and that they have no influence to change things, anyway?

Or will the American people cast away ignorance and apathy and demonstrate intellectual honesty, moral integrity, compassion, and strength of will by standing up and acting to pressure their government to change its policies?

The answer to these questions remains to be seen. Only time will tell. In the meantime, the Palestinian people continue pay the price for the willingness of Americans to allow their government to pursue criminal policies contrary to their own interests and antithetical to the very principles of justice and humanity every American would like to think their country stands for.


Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com), a website providing news, analysis, and opinion commentary from outside the standard framework offered by government officials and the mainstream corporate media. His articles have also been featured in numerous other online publications. He can be reached at: Jeremy@foreignpolicyjournal.com

Jeremy R. Hammond is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

Bomb, Bomb Iran: Lessons From Iraq Unlearned

December 27, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Featured, Jeremy R. Hammond

Bomb IranIn a New York Times op-ed this week that advocates bombing Iran, the author, Alan J. Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin, begins by suggesting that President Barack Obama should “sigh in relief that Iran has rejected his nuclear deal”.

In fact, Iran has said it is still open to discussion with the U.S. about its nuclear program, but that if meaningful dialogue is to continue, the threats of sanctions and military aggression must first cease.

The U.S., however, continues to threaten yet further sanctions, while also insisting that the threat of force must remain “on the table” — a threat of aggression that itself violates the U.N. Charter, which forbids member nations from threatening the use of force as a tool for leverage in international relations.

Kuperman’s reason for why Obama should be happy is that the deal, under which Iran would export uranium to Russia, which would enrich it to 20 percent (not the 90 percent required for weapons-grade uranium) and return it as fuel rods for use in Tehran’s research reactor, “was ill conceived from the start” since Iran would “thus be rewarded with much-coveted reactor fuel despite violating international law.”

His reference is to U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran halt its uranium enrichment activities. The problem with these resolutions, as Iran is not hesitant to point out, is that they themselves directly violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), which clearly states that parties to the treaty have an “inalienable” right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and that the international community may take no action prejudicial towards that right.

The U.N. resolutions, needless to say, prejudice that “inalienable” right, particularly given the fact that there is no credible evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program – as both the U.S. intelligence community and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have pointed out.

In other words, under U.S. influence, the Security Council in this case has acted as a rogue body itself in violation of relevant treaties constituting international law and the very Charter under which it ostensibly operates.

Iran, on the other hand, remains in compliance with the terms of the NPT and is meeting its obligations in allowing the IAEA to monitor and inspect its nuclear program, despite much talk to the contrary.

Take the most recent example, the charge that Iran’s uranium enrichment facility near Qom, still under construction, was a violation of its obligation to declare any such facility prior to the beginning of construction. We’re told that Iran agreed to an updated version of its safeguards agreement with the IAEA containing a clause specifying that obligation.

What we’re not told is that at that time, Iran had agreed to implement the terms of the Additional Protocol and revised safeguards agreement on a strictly voluntary basis. The voluntary nature of Iran’s implementation of these measures was explicitly, and in writing (see the so-called Paris Agreement), recognized by the IAEA. Iran was under no legal obligation to do so and had done so simply as a “confidence-building measure”.

In return, Iran got nothing but further threats of sanctions and bombing. So it ended its voluntary observance of measures above and beyond that which was legally required of it.

The fact is that Iran has never ratified the revised safeguards agreement, as would be required for the revisions to be legally binding upon Iran. Under the safeguards agreement Iran has formally and legally obligated itself to, it need only declare such facilities six months prior to the introduction of nuclear material (i.e., introduction of uranium into enrichment centrifuges), which is exactly what Iran did in declaring the site several months ago.

In response to meeting its obligations under its safeguards agreement, the West responded by declaring that the “secret” site (an adjective irreconcilable with the fact Iran voluntarily declared it to the IAEA, but obligatorily used in the media anyways) was evidence of Iran’s intentions to manufacture nuclear weapons.

Summarily dismissed was Iran’s quite credible explanation for the site it voluntarily disclosed, which was that it was attempting to diversify its uranium enrichment capabilities under the threat of certain countries to bomb their nuclear facilities.

The demonization and punishment of Iran for its compliance with its obligations under international law is not entirely unlike the charges against Iraq that it was in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding it disarm because it had not disarmed, when in fact it had disarmed, and when in fact there was no credible evidence that it still possessed stockpiles or was still in production of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The IAEA, for its part, has continuously and consistently reported that it has verified Iran has diverted no nuclear materials towards a weapons program. Former Director General of the IAEA Mohammed ElBaradei, whose term ended just last month, has repeatedly said that there is no evidence Iran has a nuclear weapons program. His successor, Yukiya Amano, has made the same observation.

Then, of course, there is the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from the U.S. intelligence community that stated Iran today has no nuclear weapons program, which according to Newsweek, is an assessment analysts still stand by. The NIE did claim that Iran once had such a program in the past, but that it ended it in 2003. The IAEA, on the other hand, recently issued a statement saying there is no evidence Iran ever had a weapons program.

Kuperman continues by suggesting that the goal of the international community should be to “compel” Iran “to halt its enrichment program”, which, he claims, the proposal to send its uranium abroad would not have done. It’s worth noting the fact that this is an explicit rejection of the NPT.

He adds, “In addition, the vast surplus of higher-enriched fuel Iran was to get under the deal would have permitted some to be diverted to its bomb program”, claiming that taking uranium from the fuel rods for further enrichment to weapons-grade “is a straightforward engineering task requiring at most a few weeks.”

The truth of the latter assertion aside, which is contrary to most reports on the subject and contrary to the whole supposed point of the deal, what’s notable here is the assumption that Iran has a “bomb program”, despite, as was the case with Iraq, the total lack of credible evidence to support the claim.

It’s enough in the mainstream corporate media simply to take Iran’s “bomb program” as a matter of faith. Evidence is simply not required, and it’s considered perfectly acceptable by the editors of the New York Times and other mainstream sources to print assumptions expressed as statements of fact.

Again, for those who don’t suffer from selective amnesia and aren’t prone to intentional ignorance, the kind of reporting we saw from the Times, et al, prior to the invasion of Iraq might perhaps serve as a lesson about the nature of the role U.S. corporate media play in “manufacturing consent” from the American public for U.S. foreign policies.

Kuperman next begs the question, “if the deal would have aided Iran’s bomb program, why did the United States propose it, and Iran reject it?” Oblivious to the fallacies underlying the question, his own answer is that “The main explanation on both sides is domestic politics.”

Obama simply wanted to “blunt Republican criticism that his multilateral approach was failing” and was seeking a short-term gain.

Iran, for its part, “rejected” the deal that, by Kuperman’s own account, would have helped it towards the presumed goal of achieving the bomb because “such a headlong sprint” towards that goal “is the one step most likely to provoke an international military response that could cripple the bomb program before it reaches fruition.”

In other words, while Israel regularly threatens that it won’t wait much longer for the U.S. to come to some agreement with Iran before it launches an attack against Iran’s nuclear sites that Iran’s possession of the bomb would surely deter, Iran is willing pass up an offer that would constitute “a headlong sprint” towards such a deterrent because doing so could actually jeopardize the possibility of it obtaining the bomb, since if Iran accepted the deal ostensibly designed to prevent it from being able to enrich uranium to weapons-grade, Israel would be even more likely to bomb their nuclear sites even sooner than if it Iran just rejects the proposal.

Truly, Kuperman has a dizzying intellect.

“In sum,” writes Kuperman, “the proposal would not have averted proliferation in the short run, because that risk always was low, but instead would have fostered it in the long run – a classic example of domestic politics undermining national security.”

In sum, Iran is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.

Thus, the bombing of Iran is a foreseeable and unavoidable consequence of the present U.S. policy towards Iran. This consequence, admittedly, might very well be disastrous, but the obvious solution – to alter U.S. policy – is simply inconceivable. A change of policy is off the table. The resort to violence is not.

It’s worth noting that Kuperman acknowledges that the “risk” of Iran obtaining the bomb anytime soon (assuming it actually is seeking it) “always was low”. This is an interesting admission given the tendency of Western media to portray Iran as being practically right on the verge of being able to manufacture a nuclear weapon.

Returning to Iran’s “rejection of the deal”, Kuperman suggests the so-called “rejection” was “likewise propelled by domestic politics – including last June’s fraudulent elections and longstanding fears of Western manipulation.”

The “fears of Western manipulation” is a valid enough observation, the fears warranted enough. But again, as with the presumption of an Iranian bomb program, it’s enough in U.S. mainstream media to assert the claim of “fraudulent elections” as fact, despite the spurious nature of the evidence for fraud and many strong indications that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad legitimately won, including polls conducted by Western organizations both prior to the vote and since showing strong support for his presidency.

Like the “rejection” of the deal, Kuperman goes on to repeat what has become another unquestioned part of the official narrative. Suggesting that President Ahmadinejad “initially embraced the deal because he realized it aided Iran’s bomb program”, he adds, “But his domestic political opponents, whom he has tried to label as foreign agents, turned the tables by accusing him of surrendering Iran’s patrimony to the West.”

The possibility that Iran has not accepted the deal because it consists of an implicit rejection of their right to enrich uranium for themselves is, like the thought of changing U.S. policy, simply inconceivable.

The claim that Ahmadinejad “initially embraced the deal”, only to “renege”, has become standard. But the claim, though widely reported, cannot stand up to scrutiny based on the actual facts that have been reported about the talks. Every indication is that Ahmadinejad himself was open to the proposal, which he continues to be, on the condition that the West cease its threatening and aggressive posture towards Iran, and that the Iranian negotiators during the talks agreed with the proposal on principle, in anticipation of further talks, without formally accepting the deal – something, Iran has pointed out, the negotiators were given no authority to do.

This is part of a larger narrative in Western media in which the Iranian leadership is fractured and the regime in a state of crisis due to the enormity of the opposition to Ahmadinejad’s rule (part of the “fraudulent elections” narrative). While there are elements of truth to this story line, it’s chiefly a product of wishful thinking and the willingness of commentators to succumb to their own propaganda.

Take, for example, reporting on the massive gathering of people honoring the influential Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri upon his death just last week. The opposition, we were told, of whom Montazeri was a leader, effectively took over the rally and was able to turn it into a massive anti-regime protest. Evidence for this was given in the form of amateur videos apparently from cell phones posted to opposition websites showing close-up shots of protesters shouting anti-regime slogans and holding up anti-regime banners.

Wider video shots of the actual funeral march, however, showed only an enormous crowd solemnly and respectfully marching along with the casket, holding up only photos of the cleric, not anti-regime banners. (The London Times, a leading outlet for anti-Iran propaganda, acknowledges that, with no journalists in the country due to restrictions on foreign media operations, much of its reporting comes from anti-regime elements, but insists that its sources are trustworthy, essentially a “just trust us” assertion that depends upon the questionable trustworthiness of the Times itself as a source for news on Iran.)

“Under such domestic pressure, Mr. Ahmadinejad reneged”, claims Kuperman, and then “threatened to enrich uranium domestically to the 20 percent level.” Notice how remarks from Iranian leaders that Iran would do what it has an “inalienable” right to do as a party to the NPT is characterized by the verb “threatened”.

The underlying and familiar assumption is that the rules are set by Washington, not by treaties comprising the body of international law. A dubious enough assumption, but unquestionable in the mainstream.

Iran’s “rejection” of the proposal shows that it “cannot make even temporary concessions on its bomb program”, and therefore, “Since peaceful carrots and sticks cannot work,” – (more the stick than the carrot) – “and an invasion would be foolhardy, the United States faces a stark choice: military air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities or acquiescence to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.”

There are numerous and obvious other options: to assume that evidence should be required of an Iranian nuclear program rather than establishing confrontational and aggressive policies based on the assumption that this is so; to cease from violating international law with threats of military aggression; to cease from deliberately isolating and provoking Iran and instead meaningfully engaging the country in a dialogue that actually recognizes Iran’s rights under the NPT; to live up to the additional obligation under the NPT for the U.S. and other nuclear-armed countries to provide member nations with nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, etc.

But it is simply inconceivable that mainstream sources like the Times would actually find “fit to print” such elementary alternatives.

Without reading further, the conclusion Kuperman would like his readers to draw (and here the headline, “There’s Only One Way to Stop Iran”, is relevant) is clear: obviously, we cannot acquiesce to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons; therefore the only logical choice is to bomb Iran.

To underscore the unacceptability of Iran obtaining the bomb, Kuperman employs a theme that should not be unfamiliar to Americans: “If Iran acquired a nuclear arsenal,” he writes, “the risks would simply be too great that it could become a neighborhood bully or provide terrorists with the ultimate weapon”.

He draws just short of saying that if we don’t bomb Iran, the consequences could come “in the form of a mushroom cloud”, the familiar official refrain prior to the invasion of Iraq – which had no nuclear program at all, much less a weaponized one (Kuperman states further in the article that this fact “eluded American intelligence until after the 2003 invasion”. U.S. intelligence analysts, we are apparently supposed to believe, never bothered themselves to read IAEA reports noting that the agency had completely dismantled Iraq’s nuclear program by the mid-90s).

And so we must bomb Iran. Now, “admittedly, aerial bombing might not work.” It could “backfire” by “undermining Iran’s political opposition, accelerating the bomb program or provoking retaliation against American forces and allies in the region.”

All three are credible consequences widely predicted among analysts. Iran may not have a nuclear weapons program now, but if it is bombed, the likelihood that it would withdraw from the NPT, move its nuclear weapons program underground, and begin work towards obtaining a nuclear deterrent to further such attacks would be increased in no inconsiderable measure.

Again, Iraq provides a useful lesson. It was a direct consequence of Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981, according to the U.S.’s own intelligence assessments, that prompted Saddam Hussein to begin pursuing his nuclear program clandestinely and also to begin his pursuit to obtain nuclear weapons.

Kuperman actually mentions the Israeli attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor to support his assertion that bombing Iran – the very thing he advocates – might actually result in Iran “accelerating” efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon, but he obscures the obvious lesson to be had from it by suggesting an opposite and much more dubious conclusion: that the bombing slowed down, rather than accelerated, Saddam’s efforts to obtain the bomb.

In other words, bombing Iran might predictably and admittedly result in the very thing the bombing would ostensibly be aimed at preventing. The obvious corollary is that the bombing would not really be carried out in order to prevent that end.

Again, further lessons from Iraq are instructive. Consider that the war ostensibly fought to make the world safer from WMD and to fight terrorism resulted in the single most probable situation, had Iraq actually had WMD, under which Saddam Hussein would have provided them to terrorists. Again, that was the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community prior to the invasion.

Fortunately, Iraq didn’t have WMD and so this never occurred. But among the direct consequences of the war that did occur was a considerable increase in the threat of terrorism, again according to the U.S.’s own intelligence assessments. Whereas prior to the invasion, terrorist attacks within Iraq were virtually unknown, since the war began, the Iraq people continue to be plagued by terrorism as a direct consequence of the war.

The war, analysts have observed, served as a virtual billboard for terrorist organizations to recruit individuals willing to commit acts of violence in response to U.S. foreign policy – just as U.S. support for Israeli crimes against the Palestinians was a principle causal factor for the 9/11 attacks, if we are to believe the stated grievances of the originally accused mastermind of those attacks himself.

Again, the corollary is obvious: the official reasons for committing such acts of aggression against foreign nations, if we presume leading policymakers are sane and rational, cannot possibly be the actual rationale for them. That is perfectly elementary, albeit a virtual heresy to actually point out in respectable circles.

The war against Iraq had nothing to do with WMD or terrorism. Equally elementary is the observation that U.S. policy towards Iran has nothing to do with preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons.

A further example is NATO’s bombing campaign in 1999 against Yugoslavia, which was ostensibly carried out to end atrocities on the ground, but which instead resulted in a sharp escalation of the violence – a consequence of the bombing predicted by the NATO leadership.

Kuperman also happens to mention that campaign, but, again, as with his mention of Osirak, arrives at other conclusions. Here, ignoring perhaps the most obvious lessons from his own argument and examples, his conclusion is that “Iran’s atomic sites might need to be bombed more than once to persuade Tehran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

Bombing once won’t work, so Iran must be bombed repeatedly. This logic is akin to arguing that since poking a snake with a stick once might cause it to strike, it must be poked continually in order to prevent it from being able to do so.

Similarly, Kuperman draws other lessons from Iraq. “If nothing else,” he writes, “the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that the United States military can oust regimes in weeks if it wants to.”

Indeed. But if we set aside intentional ignorance, other relevant lessons just might perhaps be drawn. Kuperman, rather like the Wizard of Oz telling Dorothy and friends to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, goes to extraordinary efforts to deflect attention away from these, though.

Casting aside some of the most obvious lessons from Iraq, Kuperman, having acknowledged the, shall we say, “drawbacks” of his proposed solution, concludes simply that air strikes “are worth a try.”

One might note the rather cavalier attitude towards the use of violence against civilian targets for political ends (the very definition of “terrorism”), an incitement to violence that might raise questions about the nature of American intellectual culture, and the moral values (or lack thereof) of the intelligentsia, if we bother to ponder on the subject.

Kuperman, needless to say, doesn’t. Instead, he has just one “final question”: “who should launch the air strikes?”

The obvious answer is Israel, which “has shown an eagerness” to bomb Iran, the option “some hawks in Washington favor” in order “to avoid fueling anti-Americanism in the Islamic world” – a rationale of astounding ignorance; the Islamic world surely would recognize that were Israel to bomb Iran, it would be with a “green light” from Washington, a wink and a nod. But never mind that.

Kuperman continues, however, with “three compelling reasons that the United States itself should carry out the bombings”, the obvious fueling of anti-Americanism and other predicted and potentially disastrous consequences aside. The U.S. has better equipment to do the job, could more credibly threaten “to expand the bombing campaign” (that is, to repeatedly bomb the country), and it would be an opportunity to send “a strong warning” to other countries.

This latter rationale for the U.S. bombing of Iran provides a more credible explanation for what the actual purpose of such a bombing would be.

Kuperman, in line with the official rationale for keeping the military “option” “on the table” – an explicit rejection of principle that force should be used only as a last resort, as well as a direct violation of international law – suggests the “strong warning” would be for “other would-be proliferators”.

Proliferation being obviously of little to no consideration to U.S. policymakers – an elementary observation drawn even from the arguments provided here – “proliferators” clearly isn’t the right word here. “Nations seeking to act independently from and in opposition to Washington” might be more accurate.

“The sooner the United States takes action” – that is, the sooner it bombs Iran – “the better”, concludes Kuperman.

At stake is U.S. “credibility”, in the Mafioso sense of the word. Washington simply can’t have a country defying its orders. That’s the bottom line. That’s the underlying foundation of the policy of the Obama administration, carried over from the policy of his predecessor.

But, of course, just as the war in Iraq couldn’t be sold to the American public on the basis of its actual rationale, expanding U.S. global hegemony, neither can the true reasons for Washington’s policies towards Iran be mentioned. It just wouldn’t do.

Better, as with Iraq, to construct nonsensical arguments dependent upon an extraordinary level of intentional ignorance and consisting at the most fundamental level of claims for which there is little, if any, evidence to support.

Whether the American public has learned the more obvious and crucial lessons from Iraq and has the moral integrity to act on them remains to be seen. But what is for certain is that without massive public pressure on Washington to alter its Iran policy, the U.S. will maintain a course the consequences of which might very well prove, as with Iraq, to be disastrous.


Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com), a website providing news, analysis, and opinion commentary from outside the standard framework offered by government officials and the mainstream corporate media. His articles have also been featured in numerous other online publications. He can be reached at: Jeremy@foreignpolicyjournal.com

Jeremy R. Hammond is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

America Needs Pakistan’s Help — Again (Part 2)

December 27, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Jeff Gates

America Israel PakistanBe not deceived by Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name or by the fact that he spent several childhood years in Indonesia. His political career is a product of a Westside Chicago Ashkenazi network with roots that trace directly back to organized crime of the 1920s.

Top fundraiser Penny Pritzker traces her family lineage to grandfather Abe and great-grandfather Nicholas who served as lawyers for organized crime. She declined a nomination as Secretary of Commerce in the Obama Cabinet, a post typically offered top fundraisers. Her confirmation hearings could have proved a political embarrassment by reminding us of the suspect origins of “our” latest president.

Clinton White House counsel Abner Mikva aptly described this high-profile product of the Chicago Outfit as “the first Jewish president.” Plus his Vice President, only a heartbeat from the reins of power, is the reliably obsequious Joe “I am a Zionist” Biden.

For his Secretary of State, Obama appointed a presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, whose political career traces to the same source. After serving as First Lady in the presidency of Arkansas native Bill Clinton, she fled to New York to run for the U.S. Senate knowing she could not win an election—any election—in Arkansas where she is widely reviled.

By staking out extreme pro-Israeli positions, she joined New York Senator Charles Schumer as, in practical effect, the second Jewish Senator from a key electoral state long dominated by this trans-generational criminal syndicate.

The chiefs of staff for Barack and Michele Obama are both Ashkenazim from Chicago, long a center of foreign espionage. That fact was recently reconfirmed by Federal Bureau of Investigation translator Sibel Edmonds when, from FBI wiretaps, she documented the close working relationship between the Israel Lobby and U.S. officials with power over policy making in the Middle East, including Richard Perle, Wolfowitz understudy Douglas Feith and key members of Congress.

Earlier this month, a Chicago man whose father was a Pakistani diplomat was charged with involvement in planning “India’s 911.” In practical effect, the murder of 166 people in Mumbai, India’s financial center, accelerated the destabilization of Pakistan by drawing troops out of the western provinces for redeployment along the eastern border with India. See: What is Israel’s Role in the Destabilization of Pakistan?

Why Outside Help Is Required

The same syndicate working to destabilize Pakistan is also destabilizing the U.S.—from the inside. That’s why ordinary Americans need the assistance of Pakistanis and others outside the U.S. to restore some semblance of representative government.

The confidence with which this game theory aggression progressed in plain sight could be seen in the behavior of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key Zionist insider. Four days after 9-11 while in a principals’ meeting at Camp David, a presidential retreat outside Washington, he proposed that the U.S. invade Iraq. At that time, the intelligence did not point to Iraqi involvement and Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding in a remote region of Afghanistan.

On that same day, San Diego FBI Special Agent Stephen Butler interrogated Iraqi Munther Ghazal at his home near San Diego to determine if he was funding Mel Rockefeller with whom Ghazal traveled to Baghdad in early 1997. After meeting for several days with Nidhal al-Hamdani, a top nuclear physicist with oversight of Iraq’s mothballed nuclear weapons program, Rockefeller returned to the U.S. with a practical proposal for removing Saddam Hussein without this war and without triggering a violent and destabilizing insurgency.
Dr Hamadan talking to Saddam Hussain

When regional specialists at the U.S. Department of State declined to meet with him, he traveled to Ottawa in April 1997 where he met with Middle East specialists in the Canadian government to ensure a written record would confirm there was an alternative to war in Iraq—six years before the invasion. Instead of debriefing him, FBI agents sought to discredit him.

Though FBI agents interviewed Munther Ghazal numerous times, they have yet to meet with Mel Rockefeller. Four packages sent to the Phoenix divisional office of the FBI documenting ongoing treason and criminal stalking were returned, marked “refused.”

FBI Special Agent Butler cashed checks and paid rent for the two San Diego-based hijackers who piloted planes into the World Trade Center towers. The same Iman who counseled Major Nidal Hasan (with FBI knowledge) before he was transferred to Fort Hood—where he went on a shooting spree—alsoFax counseled the San Diego-based hijackers—likewise with FBI knowledge.

As of December 18, 2009, no one from either federal law enforcement or national security had debriefed Mel Rockefeller—eight years after 9-11. Had he been engaged in good faith in early 1997 after his return from Baghdad or in early 2001 after his return from Jakarta, the facts suggest that 9-11 might well have been prevented. Good faith engagement after 9-11 could have prevented the invasion of Iraq. Instead, extraordinary steps were taken to discredit him.

When President George H.W. Bush declined to invade Baghdad to remove Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War, Pentagon Under Secretary for Policy Paul Wolfowitz imposed a No-Fly Zone in northern Iraq. By the time that the invasion of March 2003 began, the Israeli Mossad had more than 100 agents deployed for a decade in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Intelligence reports of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda were also traced to Mosul—reports that proved false. Mosul again emerged in November 2004 as a center of the insurgency that destabilized Iraq. That reaction precluded the speedy exit of coalition forces promised in Congressional testimony by senior war-planner Wolfowitz.
In the lead-up to the invasion, Wolfowitz assured policy-makers of a swift and welcome regime-change whose $50 billion cost would be recovered from the proceeds of Iraqi oil. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has since projected the total cost will exceed $3,000 billion, all of it borrowed. That total, 60 times the original estimate, includes $700 billion in interest paid on war-related debt.

See: A Closer Look at Israel’s Role in Terrorism

Ft. Hood: “Death By Political Correctness”?

Fort Hood Tragedy: The Real Story of the Terrorist “Mad Doctor Hasan”

Next in the series: Game Theory Warfare


Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution.

Visit his website at: www.criminalstate.com.

Jeff Gates is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

‘Religious’ Zionism As A New Political Force

December 22, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Brother Nathanael Kapner

‘Religious’ ZionismPRIOR TO THE FOUNDING OF THE JEWISH STATE OF ISRAEL IN 1948, and since the destruction of Jerusalem in the 2nd century, the Jews never had their own territorially-defined state like the peoples of Europe.

Throughout the centuries, Jewry’s religious community, as shaped by Talmudic Judaism, took on the role of a state by ensuring the preservation, propagation, and future of Jewry as a race. With respect to the peoples of Christendom, ensuring their preservation as a people of faith was primarily the function of the state in conjunction with the Church.

The rabbis, as the leaders of Judaism’s religious community, underscored a distinct difference between Jews and Gentiles with whom they lived in their various host nations.

This rabbinic-defined difference had as its underpinning a religious reaction: rejection of Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Whom the Gentiles had embraced. Upon this reaction, the rabbis built their case with the Talmud’s denigration of “non-Jews” as being “sub-human,” as “cattle.”

Since the founding of the Church in 33 AD and the subsequent dispersion of the Jews from Palestine, Judaism moved from being a positive belief system to being a reactionary religion in which the struggle for survival and hatred for non-Jews became its essential import.

Throughout the diaspora, which continues today despite the founding of the state of Israel, the rabbis taught that to embrace Christ and Christianity — “to assimilate” — “to go over to the other side” — meant the destruction of the Jewish people. After the coming of Christ, Judaism became based on the self-preservation of Jews as a race – ‘a superior race’ – with an emphasis against assimilation.

By creating a complex system of customs and rituals and malevolent attitudes towards Gentiles, the rabbis sought to preserve the Jewish people from assimilation. Judaism, formed by this Talmudic tautology, became essentially a religion of Jewish survival rather than a religion of belief.

The current state of Israel has as its primary political force, radical ‘religious’ Zionism, the settlers’ movement, whose ideology underlines the preservation of the Jewish people through an expansionist thrust into the occupied territories and beyond. This thrust has been named by them, “The Whole Land Of Israel Movement.”

Both the Likud Party and its agents in America, the powerful Jewish Lobby, are dedicated to the expansionist quest of the Israeli settlers. All politicians in America bow before this powerful political force, including the Zionist puppet, Barack Hussein Obama.

THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS ZIONISM

THE RELIGIOUS APPROACH TO ZIONISM became enshrined in synagogue prayers, expressing a yearning to return to the land of Israel from which Jewry had been exiled. These prayers are recited in synagogues wherever Jewry resides up to the present day.

Religious Zionism was specifically formulated by the Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel, Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook, arrogantly calling the state of Israel in 1920, “the foundation of God’s presence in the world.”

Kook viewed the establishment of the state of Israel as “God’s manifest hand” in the world bringing about the “redemption of the Jewish people” as a “light to the nations.” A fervent messianist, Kook believed that the emerging Jewish state would set the stage for the “coming of the messiah.” (He will be the Anti-Christ.)

In promoting the Talmudic view of the Jews as a superior people, Kook taught his followers that “the difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”

And in an effort to reconcile secular Zionists with observant Jews, Kook stated that the secularists were doing God’s work in rebuilding the land. He exhorted religious Zionists to appreciate the role secularists played in redeeming the land and to help them realize that their outlook was not devoid of God.

Rabbi Kook’s son and successor, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, carried his father’s idea even further in advocating that Israel’s military decisions be made on the basis of an impending “messianic age.” Known for bringing the teachings of his father into the language of action, the political ideology of the latter Kook stressed the expansion of the Jews throughout the “whole land of Israel,” including the territories conquered in the Six Day War.

“The State of Israel is divine,” taught Kook. “Not only must there be no retreat from a single kilometer of the Land of Israel, God forbid, but on the contrary, we shall conquer and liberate more and more.”

It is this ideology, created by the latter Rabbi Kook and premised on the idea of a messianic advent, which spurred what today has become the main obstacle to peace, the settlement movement of the occupied territories.

RELIGIOUS ZIONIST SETTLERS & NETANYAHU’S BIG LIE

RELIGIOUS ZIONISTS TOOK THE LEAD in settling Jerusalem and the West Bank immediately after the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six Day War.

East Jerusalem had a religious significance for these Talmudic Jews who viewed the “return” of the Temple Mount to Jewish sovereignty as a “sign” that the “messiah” was “at the door.”

The ultra-religious Land of Israel Movement, founded by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, emerged in 1967, which declared that devotion to the conquered lands and their settlement was equal in importance to ritual observance. Soon, the National Religious Party of Israel, joined forces with the settler movement, which became known as the Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful) movement.

The rabbis of Gush Emunim spoke of the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, as a “miracle” initiating the “messianic process.” They renamed the “Six Day War,” the “War of Redemption” – so as to define the conquered lands as “holy” and never to be relinquished.

Settlements began to flourish in the occupied territories through the zealous efforts of Gush Emunim. Soon, religious Zionism became Israel’s most powerful political force.

The National Religious Party added to their platform in 1993, a ruling “forbidding Jews to evacuate any settlement” and declared that Israeli soldiers should “disobey” any such evacuation orders. The Likud Party, the present regime under Netanyahu, recognized the Gush Emunim as an official settlement movement and promised huge funding for its settlement activities.

American Jewry then began to add special prayers for Israel in their support for the settlers and their movement. Referring to Israel in their prayers as, “Reishit Shmichat Geulateinu” (”Beginning of our Redemption”), in synagogues and religious gatherings, American Jews sought to underline the settlers’ view that the Jewish state had just as much religious value as it did culturally and politically.

OBAMA BOWS TO ISRAELI SETTLERS

“JERUSALEM IS ISRAEL’S CAPITAL – NOT A SETTLEMENT,” Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, lectured President Obama during their talks last summer.

Although Netanyahu called for a settlement “freeze” on November 25, 2009, it was designed only to “appease” the Zionist puppet Obama, who expressed “dismay” in early November regarding the on-going settlements in the occupied territories. Earlier in the year, Obama demanded a cessation of all settlements – a demand which Israel defied. Did Obama back down? Ha ha. Of course the Zionist puppet Obama backed down.

Netanyahu failed to tell Obama that his recent “freeze” applied only to new settlements on the West Bank, (for a 10 month period – while 3,000 homes under construction would be completed), and that settlements in East Jerusalem, such as the Gilo Project, would continue.

On December 3, 2009, Netanyahu met with “outraged” settlers, assuring them that the “freeze” was a “one-time only order” and that once the 10 month suspension had expired, the settlers could resume building. Calling the settlers, “our brothers,” Netanyahu defiantly asserted that even though Abbas should declare, “Peace now” — “we will begin building as we did before.”

Most American Jews find their identity linked with the state of Israel. Religious Zionism as a new political force has brought Jewish identity into a ’sacred’ realm. The ‘messiah,’ whom the religious Zionists await, will bring that identity to its tragic fruition.

This ‘messiah’ will be Jewry’s leader. He will be their god. He will be the Anti-Christ who will place his final “mark” on their arrogant, wicked, and most assuredly, doomed plight…

http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=470


Brother Nathanael Kapner is a “Street Evangelist” who grew up as a Jew and is now an Orthodox Christian.

You can visit his website at Real Zionist News. He can be reached at: bronathanael@yahoo.com

Brother Nathanael Kapner is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

America Needs Pakistan’s Help — Again

December 20, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Jeff Gates

(First Installment in a 5 Part Series)

America Israel PakistanOrdinary Americans need the assistance of Islamabad now more than at any time in the past six decades. That aid lies not in combating “Islamo fascism” but in countering the influence inside the U.S. of Israeli war-planners known for their expertise at provoking extremism.

To grasp what must be done requires a review of three related developments. First is a policy-making legacy from the era of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Second is a little known account of an Israeli attempt to corrupt policy-making in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population. Third is confirmation that, by its steady growth in influence over the past six decades, Israel is now shaping U.S. policy to advance a Judeo-fascist agenda.

The Bhutto Legacy

Soon after Richard Nixon was elected president in November 1968, Dr. Glenn Olds traveled to Dubrovnik to meet with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The popular Bhutto knew China’s Chou En-Lai with whom he had studied in Moscow. Dr. Olds traveled on Nixon’s behalf to ask that Bhutto intercede with China.screenhunter_45_dec._18_11.42

As a young foreign minister for President Ayub Khan, Bhutto forged stronger Pakistani ties with China after the Sino-Indian war of 1962. That relationship led to a large number of Sino-Pakistan industrial and military projects.

When he signed the Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement of March 1963, the father of Benazir Bhutto (then age 10) emerged as one of the most visible Pakistanis on the world stage. By the 1968 meeting in Yugoslavia, the politically ambitious Bhutto had been arrested and released by Ayub, sparking political unrest that led to Ayub’s resignation and Bhutto’s ascendancy to the presidency in December 1971 and prime minister in 1973.

The Dubrovnik meeting marked America’s first step in the normalization of relations with China. Bhutto’s assistance also helped hasten the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam. Following the Nixon inaugural in January 1969, Dr. Olds was appointed U.N. Ambassador after he helped recruit more than 1,000 people for Nixon, including Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

As Executive Dean of the 64-campus State University of New York for Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Dr. Olds crafted a memo for the governor urging that he campaign for the presidency in 1968 on a platform promising to end the Vietnam War and normalize relations with China. One key challenge: making contact with Mao Tse-Tung who had never left China. Thus Dr. Olds’ strategy proposed Bhutto as the intermediary to Mao through Chou En-Lai.

sinopakb_640

When Nelson Rockefeller opted not to run in 1968 (at least initially), he urged that Dr. Olds share the strategy with others. When Pepsi Chairman Don Kendall brought the memo to Nixon’s attention, the candidate agreed to include the strategy in his campaign and, should he win, asked that Dr. Olds help form an administration. Henry Kissinger received the Nobel peace prize in 1973 for advancing policies that began with that memo for Nelson Rockefeller.

Dr. Olds conveyed to me this account in 2003. Since 1994, he had served as the senior adviser to James M. (“Mel”) Rockefeller. An adviser to four presidents (two of each party) and four of the five third-generation Rockefeller brothers, Dr. Olds died in March 2006 after describing his dismay at “the depth of the treason” uncovered by Mel Rockefeller. That treason remains ongoing-a key reason Americans need the assistance of Pakistan.

Guilt By Association marks the first release in the Criminal State series of books. This series documents a deeply imbedded criminality coordinated through the same trans-generational network of Jewish Zionists granted nation-state recognition in 1948 by Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist president.

As these facts become transparent and the perpetrators apparent, Pakistan-as an ally of the U.S.-must play a leadership role in the Muslim community by insisting that the U.S. withdraw its recognition of this extremist enclave as a legitimate nation-state.

Absent that withdrawal, Americans will continue to be endangered by those who believe that U.S. behavior reflects the policies of our government rather than the policies of Zionist extremists imbedded inside our government. See:

The Indonesian Connection

Dr. Olds knew about Mel Rockefeller’s meetings in Jakarta in mid-March 2001 with Arie Kumaat, Director of Indonesian Intelligence. The defense minister of India had just been toppled by a bribe involving an Israeli defense firm. Malaysian intelligence had just discovered a similar attempt by Tel Aviv to discredit its defense chief-likewise six months prior to 9-11.

Arie Kumaat

Kumaat had uncovered a multi-billion dollar Israeli bribe to the Indonesian parliament to push the U.S. out of the region in favor of China. Kumaat balked at reporting his findings to the U.S. embassy for fear that he was also reporting to Israel. From 1986-1989, the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia was Zionist war-planner Paul Wolfowitz.

Not until the mass murder of 9-11 did Dr. Olds fully grasp how Mel Rockefeller’s lengthy experience could prove the common Judeo-fascist source of much of the world’s violence. After that murderous provocation, Kumaat agreed to arrange a meeting for Mel Rockefeller with former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, a respected religious leader for 80 million moderate Muslim men. A follow-on meeting was anticipated with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir who has long opposed the geopolitical manipulations of Jewish extremists.

That Islam-focused strategy for blocking the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was stymied when, in January 2002, Kumaat died of a heart attack-the plausible reason given for his death though an autopsy by his wife detected the drug used to induce a heart attack. An interview of his son, Henrie, confirmed the details.

.Henrie & Glenn

We now know that 911-related intelligence was “fixed” around a preset agenda for Greater Israel long sought by Israelis and pro-Israelis with the help of Iraqi liar Ahmad Chalabi, an asset developed over decades by Zionist war-planners Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.

Pakistan must realize that the same mental and emotional manipulation deployed to induce a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is now being used to provoke an invasion of Iran. By destabilizing Pakistan and portraying its western provinces as a haven for Al Qaeda, Zionists will make it appear that Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal is insecure. That perception heightens the plausibility of an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran, citing a nuclear risk. See:

That perceived insecurity also strengthens the rationale for an Israeli operation-flying the U.S. flag-to take over the government of Pakistan. What could soon happen to Islamabad directly is what happened to the U.S. over decades indirectly. See:

The Depth of the Duplicity

Pakistan must quickly realize-and candidly acknowledge-that the Obama presidency is even more thoroughly staffed by Zionists than the Bush administration and even the notoriously pro-Israeli Clinton presidency.

In 2003, Dr. Olds shared an insight about Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who claimed an epiphany in 1997 that she was Jewish-after she became our top diplomat. In 1951, while serving as chaplain at the University of Denver, Dr. Olds was dispatched as the university emissary to welcome to Denver the wife and daughter of Soviet Bloc defector Josef Korbel, a former Czech diplomat and then professor of international studies.

Dr. Olds described how the future Mrs. Albright-then a pigtailed teenager with braces-stepped onto the train platform carrying the family menorah. He knew the family well. He dismissed her “epiphany” decades later as “simply not believable.”

Josef Korbel emerged as the mentor to Condoleezza Rice when she entered the University of Denver at an impressionable age 15 and he guided her into Russian studies. In September 2000, Albright named the State Department building after Harry Truman, the president best known abroad for overruling his Secretary of State George C. Marshall in 1948 when the former WWII general strenuously objected to our recognition of an extremist enclave as a legitimate state.

Next in the series: Zionist Dominance in the Obama Presidency


Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution.

Visit his website at: www.criminalstate.com.

Jeff Gates is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

‘Anti-Semitism up, Islamophobia down” a New Academic Research Says

December 13, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Gilad Atzmon

IsraelOne-quarter of Europeans believe that “Jews have too much influence“

31% agree that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind.”

45.7% of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.”

About 37.4% agree with the following statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon

According to new research conducted by Bielefeld University hatred towards Muslims decreased over the past year while hatred of Jews is growing. Israelis must be concerned. The sudden drop in European Islamophobia doesn’t fit into the Zionist global plan in which Muslims are cornered and ostracised as reactionaries while Israel is dropping bombs in the name of democracy and liberalism. According to the leading Israeli paper Ynet, “the level of resentment against most minorities declined – sexism considerably, Islamophobia slightly. There were only two exceptions: homophobia and anti-Semitism.”(1)

Interestingly enough Ynet reports that “the percentage of people who believe ‘that there are too many Muslims’ in their country is especially high in those countries that actually have a low percentage of Muslims living in them.” One possible explanation may that within European countries benefiting from a large Muslim population, the fear of Islam is actually dissipating. This is not at all surprising given the fact that both Islamic and Christian cultures share very similar universal values and ethical precepts. Unlike Jewish ideology that maintains a certain level of tribal, cultural and social segregation and supremacy, Muslim communities seem to collectively merge into the working classes through the work place, education and economy.

Jewish Power

According to the research very many Europeans are concerned with Jewish domination and power. “One-quarter of Europeans (24.5%) believe that “Jews have too much influence“, and nearly one-third (31%) agree that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind.” Bearing in mind the embarrassing fact that 50% of MPs in Britain’s shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel we can safely assume that, unlike our politicians, the voters out there are largely waking up to the danger of Zionist infiltration.

Ynet also has some ‘good news’ to report. “61.9% say that Jews “enrich our culture”, especially in the Netherlands, Britain and Germany.” The fact that Jews and ex Jews (in particular) enrich European life is indeed hard to ignore, yet setting aside Lord Cashpoint Levy and Uri ‘Spoon Bending’ Geller, it seems as if, amongst those Jews who contribute to European cultural life, not many openly identify with Israel and its crimes.

As much as Israel uses every possible means to drag us all into an endless war against Islam, the Europeans are coming to terms with the devastating reality of Zionist murderous brutality. Some 45.7% of the Europeans either “somewhat or strongly” agree that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” In case someone fails to understand the meaning of it all, I will say it plainly: almost half of the Europeans accept that Israel employs genocidal tactics. They basically agree that Israelis are the Nazis of our time. According to Ynet, about 37.4% agree with the following statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”

Zionism was there to create a civilized loveable Jew. Not only has it failed, thanks to Israel and Zionism, the resentment towards Jews seem to be greater than ever. The meaning of it all is rather obvious. Israel and its supporting lobbies failed to internalise the real universal meaning of the Holocaust: ‘love thy neighbour’. Instead of ethnic cleansing, starving and dropping white phosphorous, Israel should have learned to live amongst others.

If Europe is as democratic as it claims to be, this clear, escalating animosity towards Israel, Zionism and their relentless lobbies will mature eventually into a political shift.

(1) A clarification is needed here: ‘anti-Semitism’ is a misleading notion. When people refer to ‘anti Semitism’ what they really mean is ‘anti Jewish feelings’. The notion of ‘anti-Semitism’ is there to give a false impression that Jews are a racial group. The truth of the matter is obvious, Jews are neither a race nor have they established a racial continuum. In fact no one resents Jews for their racial belonging or ethnicity. Anti Jewish feelings is in most cases a political and ethical reaction to Jewish tribal politics, Zionism, Israel, Israeli lobbying, global Zionist affairs, Jewish ideology, Jewish supremacy, Israeli war crimes and so on.

Europe: Anti-Semitism up, Islamophobia down by Sarah Stricker
Ynetnews 6.12.09

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3815828,00.html

Study on ‘group-focused enmity’ conducted by researchers from University of Bielefeld in Germany finds hatred of Muslims decreased over past year, while hatred of Jews and homosexuals growing. Poland defined as most racist country

Right-wing parties are growing stronger in Europe, and Swiss citizens have even voted in favor of a ban on mosque minarets, yet the fear or hatred of Islam in the continent has dropped over the past year, according to a study conducted in Germany and published Sunday. However, hatred of Jews and homosexuals is on the rise.

For the last eight years, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at the University of Bielefeld has been running an annual study called “German Conditions” to learn about “group focused enmity“ such as xenophobia, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and prejudices against unemployed, disabled, homeless or homosexual people in Germany.

Due to the financial crisis and the fears of the future, poverty and unemployment that are being stoked by that, the researchers expected a rise this year.

But compared to last year’s results (as well as those of 2002), the level of resentment against most minorities declined – sexism and racism even considerably, Islamophobia slightly. There were only two exceptions: Homophobia and anti-Semitism.

Hatred of both groups is on the rise as they are considered to be found also among people of a high status.

Beate Küpper, one of the study’s main researchers, believes that the financial crisis may in fact be a possible explanation for that. Küpper said that although in comparison to other European countries Germany was on average, it was staggering that in the light of German history, 48% still agreed with anti-Semitic statements.

For the first time, the study also compared xenophobia among European countries like Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Poland, and Hungary. According to their findings, the level of prejudices against minorities in Europe is alarming.

About 50.4% of the population agreed that “there are too many immigrants” in their country, 54.4% believe that “the Islam is a religion of intolerance.” Interestingly enough, the percentage of people who believe “that there are too many Muslims” in their country is especially high in those countries that actually have a low percentage of Muslims living in them.

Nearly one-third (31.3%) of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that “there is a natural hierarchy between black and white people”. A majority of 60.2% stick to traditional gender roles, demanding that “women should take their role as wives and mothers more seriously.” Some 42.6% deny equal value of gay men and lesbian women and judge homosexuality as “immoral”.

Hiding behind criticism of Israel

Anti-Semitism is also still widely spread in Europe. The team of scientists from the universities of Amsterdam, Bielefeld, Budapest, Grenoble, Lisbon, Marburg, Oxford, Padua, Paris, and Warsaw found that 41.2% of Europeans believe that “Jews try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era”. The highest degree of affirmation was in Poland – 72%, and the lowest in the Netherlands – 5.6%.

One-quarter of Europeans (24.5%) believe that “Jews have too much influence“, and nearly one-third (31%) agree that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind. On the other hand, 61.9% say that Jews “enrich our culture”, especially in the Netherlands, Britain and Germany.

They study also measured the degree of anti-Semitism hidden behind a specific criticism of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians that uses anti-Semitic terms such as “war of persecution” and a generalization to “all Jews”.

Some 45.7% of the Europeans (apart for France, where this facet of anti-Semitism was not measured) somewhat or strongly agree that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” About 37.4% agree with the following statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”

Overall, the level of anti-Semitic attitudes varies quite a lot across Europe with comparably lower levels of anti-Semitic attitudes in Britain and the Netherlands and significantly higher levels in Portugal, and especially Poland and Hungary.


Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel in 1963 and had his musical training at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (Composition and Jazz). As a multi-instrumentalist he plays Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Baritone Saxes, Clarinet and Flutes. His album Exile was the BBC jazz album of the year in 2003. He has been described by John Lewis on the Guardian as the “hardest-gigging man in British jazz”. His albums, of which he has recorded nine to date, often explore political themes and the music of the Middle East.
Until 1994 he was a producer-arranger for various Israeli Dance & Rock Projects, performing in Europe and the USA playing ethnic music as well as R&R and Jazz.

Coming to the UK in 1994, Atzmon recovered an interest in playing the music of the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe that had been in the back of his mind for years. In 2000 he founded the Orient House Ensemble in London and started re-defining his own roots in the light of his emerging political awareness. Since then the Orient House Ensemble has toured all over the world. The Ensemble includes Eddie Hick on Drums, Yaron Stavi on Bass and Frank Harrison on piano & electronics.

Also, being a prolific writer, Atzmon’s essays are widely published. His novels ‘Guide to the perplexed’ and ‘My One And Only Love’ have been translated into 24 languages.

Gilad Atzmon is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

Visit his web site at http://www.gilad.co.uk

America’s Terrorist Ally

December 12, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Jeff Gates

A Closer Look at Israel’s Role in Terrorism…

lebanon“It’s very good….Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)”.

Response of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when asked on September 11, 2001 what the attacks meant for U.S.-Israeli relations

Game theory war-planners rely on mathematical models to anticipate and shape outcomes with staged provocations. For the agent provocateur, the reactions to a provocation—as well as the reactions to those reactions—thereby become predictable within an acceptable range of probabilities.

With ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan poised to expand to Iran and Pakistan, it is time to take a closer look at how conflicts are catalyzed—by way of deception.

When Israeli game theorist Robert J. Aumann received the 2005 Nobel Prize in economic science, he conceded from Jerusalem, “the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel” has turned “Israel into the leading authority in this field.” A professor at the Center for the Study of Rationality at Hebrew University, Aumann’s Nobel lecture, titled “War and Peace,” expounded on the rationality of war.

With a well-modeled provocation, a target’s anticipated reaction can even become a weapon in the aggressor’s arsenal. In response to the provocation of 9-11, how difficult was it to foresee that the U.S. would deploy its military to avenge that attack? With U.S. intelligence “fixed” by well-placed insiders around a predetermined goal, how difficult was it to anticipate that the reaction to 9-11 could be redirected to wage war in Iraq?

The emotional component of a provocation plays a key role in game theory warfare. With the nationally televised mass murder of 3,000 people, a state of shock, grief and outrage made it easier for Americans to believe that a known Evil Doer in Iraq was responsible—regardless of the facts.

For false beliefs to displace real facts requires mental preconditioning so that a targeted population can be persuaded to put their faith in fictions. That conditioning enhances the probability of a successful deception. Those who deceived the U.S. to invade Iraq in March 2003 began a decade beforehand to lay the “mental threads” and make the requisite mental associations to advance that agenda.

Notable among those threads was the 1993 publication in Foreign Affairs of a theme-setting article by Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington. By the time his analysis appeared in book-length form in 1996 as The Clash of Civilizations, more than 100 think tanks were prepared to promote it. The result created a widely touted narrative—a thematic storyline—supporting a “clash consensus” five years before 9-11 provided a plausible rationale for war.

Also published in 1996 under the guidance of Richard Perle was A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (i.e., Israel). A member since 1987 of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, this self-professed Zionist became its chairman in 2001.

As an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Perle’s Pentagon advisory post provided a powerful insider position to shape the national security mindset around the removal of Saddam Hussein, a key theme of A Clean Break—released five years before 9-11. That same year Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress at the invitation of Newt Gingrich, the Christian Zionist Speaker of the House.

Murders, books, articles, think tanks and well-placed insiders are common components in a “probabilistic” model deployed by war-planning game theorists. Lawmakers are also a customary ingredient. They provide credibility and a facade of legitimacy—a critical element when inducing a nation to war with phony intelligence fixed around a preset agenda.

That role was eagerly filled by Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, a Jewish Zionist from Connecticut, and Jon Kyl, a Christian Zionist from Arizona, when they co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. By promoting Israel’s 1996 agenda for Securing the Realm, their legislation laid yet another mental thread in the public mindset by calling for the ouster of Saddam Hussein—three years before 9-11.

The legislation also appropriated $97 million to promote their agenda. Distracted by mid-term Congressional elections and impeachment proceedings catalyzed by a well-timed presidential affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton signed that Zionist agenda into law in October 1998—4-1/2 years before a U.S.-led invasion removed the Iraqi leader.

After 9-11, McCain and Lieberman became inseparable travel companions and irrepressible advocates for the invasion of Iraq. Striking a presidential pose aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in January 2002, McCain—a son and grandson of admirals—laid another mental thread when he waved an admiral’s cap and proclaimed, alongside Lieberman, “On to Baghdad.”

By Way of Deception

The confidence with which this game theory strategy progressed in plain sight could be seen in the behavior of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, another Zionist insider. Four days after 9-11 while in a principals’ meeting at Camp David, he proposed that the U.S. invade Iraq. At that time, the intelligence did not point to Iraqi involvement and Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding in a remote region of Afghanistan.

On that same day, San Diego FBI Special Agent Stephen Butler interrogated Iraqi Munther Ghazal at his home near San Diego to determine if he was funding Mel Rockefeller, an American with whom Ghazal traveled to Baghdad in early 1997. After meeting for several days with a top nuclear physicist with oversight of Iraq’s mothballed nuclear weapons program, Rockefeller returned to the U.S. with a practical proposal for removing Saddam Hussein without this war and without triggering an insurgency.

When regional specialists at the U.S. Department of State would not meet with him, he traveled to Ottawa in April 1997 where he met with Middle East specialists in the Canadian government to ensure a written record was made to confirm there was an alternative to war in Iraq—six years before the invasion. Instead of debriefing him, FBI agents sought to discredit him. Though FBI agents interviewed Ghazal many times, they have yet to meet with Mel Rockefeller.

Agent Butler cashed checks and paid rent for the two San Diego-based hijackers who piloted planes into the World Trade Center towers. The same Iman counseling Major Nidal Hasan (with FBI knowledge) before he was transferred to Fort Hood also counseled the San Diego-based hijackers—with FBI knowledge. As of December 1, 2009, no one from the FBI or national security had debriefed Mel Rockefeller—eight years after 9-11.

See: Ft. Hood: “Death By Political Correctness”?

and Ft. Hood Tragedy: The Real Story of the Terrorist “Mad Doctor Hasan”

When President George H.W. Bush declined to invade Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War, Pentagon Under Secretary for Policy Paul Wolfowitz imposed a No-Fly Zone in northern Iraq. By the invasion of March 2003, the Israeli Mossad had agents deployed for a decade in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Intelligence reports of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda were also traced to Mosul—reports that proved false. Mosul again emerged in November 2004 as a center of the insurgency that destabilized Iraq. That reaction precluded the speedy exit of coalition forces promised in Congressional testimony by senior war-planner Wolfowitz in the lead-up to the invasion.

An Inside Job?

The common pro-Israeli source of the phony intelligence that induced war in Iraq has yet to be acknowledged even though intelligence experts agree that deception on such a scale required a decade to plan, staff, pre-stage, orchestrate and—until now—cover up. The leaders of the 9-11 Commission conceded they were thwarted by Commission members adamantly opposed to hearing testimony on the hijackers’ motivation for 9-11: the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

The fictions reported as facts by mainstream media included Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi meetings with Al Qaeda in Prague, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories and Iraqi purchases of “yellowcake” uranium from Niger. Only the last claim was conceded as bogus prior to the invasion.

Only after the war began were the balance of the claims disclosed as false, flawed or outright fabricated. An attempt to punish former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Joe Wilson for his exposure of the phony yellowcake account led to a federal conviction of vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby, another well-placed Zionist insider.

The multi-decade consistency of agent-provocateur fact patterns suggests that this game theory-modeled warfare includes the Israeli provocation that catalyzed the Second Intifada. An intifada is an uprising or, literally, a “shaking off” of an oppressor. The Second Intifada dates from September 2000 when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led an armed march to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—one year before 9-11.

After a year of calm during which Palestinians believed that Israel was sincere about peace, suicide bombings recommenced. As Sharon conceded, his march was meant to demonstrate Israeli control over a site considered holy by Muslims worldwide. In response to this second failed attempt at “shaking off” Israeli domination, Sharon and Netanyahu observed that only when Americans “feel our pain” would they understand the plight of the victimized Israelis.

These Likud Party leaders commented that the requisite empathy (“feel our pain”) would require a weighted body count of 4,500 to 5,000 Americans lost to terrorism—the initial estimate of those who died in the twin towers of the World Trade Center—one year later.

In other words, only with pain could we identify with the Israelis. Does that mean that only with a mass murder could we be induced to respond with our military to advance their agenda? Was the U.S. response mathematically modeled at the Center for the Study of Rationality? Seven months after 9-11, Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech in a U.S. Senate office building where he was introduced by Senators Jon Kyl and Joe Liebermn

American Valkyrie?

When successful, game theory warfare strengthens the agent provocateur while leaving the target discredited and depleted by the anticipated reaction. By game theory standards, 9-11 was a strategic success because the U.S.—by its response—was widely criticized for waging war on false pretenses. Only in hindsight did a deceived public realize that Iraq had nothing to do with that mass murder. However, that invasion had everything to do with “securing the realm.”

Our response (predictably) triggered a deadly insurgency with devastating consequences for Iraqis, the U.S. and a “coalition of the willing” led to war by a successfully duped U.S. From a game theory perspective, that insurgency was a predictable reaction in a nation populated by three long-feuding sects: Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. A violent invasion led by a nation closely allied with Jewish nationalists only further fueled the flames of violence and extremism—another foreseeable outcome.

Until the U.S.-led invasion, peace was maintained by an unsavory dictator and former U.S. ally who was rebranded an Evil Doer in the lead-up to war. As the cost in blood and treasure from our “liberation” of Iraq expanded, the U.S. became overextended militarily, financially and diplomatically.

The sectarian violence unleashed in Iraq is precisely what Messrs. Rockefeller and Ghazal were cautioned against in early 1997 should Saddam Hussein be removed suddenly and violently. The 1.3 million Iraqi deaths from war-related causes exceeds the worst of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities. As any competent game theory war-planner knew, the strategic winner in this war was certain to be Tehran as the U.S. neutralized its key foe—and is now urged by Israel to wage war on Iran.

As the U.S.—the primary target of this deception—emerged in the foreground, the agent provocateur faded into the background. But only after catalyzing dynamics that steadily drained the U.S. of credibility, resources and resolve. This “probabilistic” Israeli victory also ensured widespread cynicism, insecurity, distrust and disillusionment along with a steadily declining capacity to defend our real interests.

Meanwhile the American public came under a system of oversight and surveillance packaged and sold as “homeland security.” This ominously titled operation includes rhetorical echoes of a WWII-era “fatherland” featuring a domestic security force completely alien to U.S. traditions. It is not yet clear whether this new agency was established to protect Americans. Or whether it is meant to shield from Americans those responsible for deceiving us to wage their wars.

In January 2003, Secret Service Agent Richard Sierze interrogated Mel Rockefeller at his home in Fresno, California after he sent an email to Florida Governor Jeb Bush. The email said, in effect, that if the governor’s brother (President George Bush) did not interview him on a public record prior to invading Iraq, he would do his best to ensure that lawful means were deployed to see the president executed for treason by a firing squad.

When questioned by Sierze, Rockefeller offered to have the agent speak with Dr. Glenn Olds, an adviser to four presidents, his senior adviser since 1994 and a former U.N. Ambassador who assisted him in entering Iraq through Jordon at a time when Americans were prohibited from traveling there. Sierze declined.

He also repeated his intent to see the president executed for treason and insisted that he be charged and taken before a federal magistrate to present evidence that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that an alternative to war had been available since early 1997. Agent Sierze declined his demand to be arraigned in a U.S. Federal District Court—seven weeks before the invasion.

Agent Sierze should be interviewed to see if, in retrospect, he agrees that—had this advice been followed—the war in Iraq may well have been prevented. To date, no one with line responsibility has interviewed Mel Rockefeller on a public record. Why? The answer to that question would reveal those responsible for this ongoing deception.

The victims of these serial deceptions, including the families of those murdered in November at Fort Hood, may have a wrongful death cause of action against those with line responsibility who aided these operations by failing to engage the Rockefeller record in a timely fashion.

Foreseeable Futures

By manipulating the shared mindset, skilled game theory war-planners can wage wars on multiple fronts with minimal resources. One proven strategy: Pose as an ally of a well-armed nation predisposed to deploy its military in response to a mass murder.

In this case, the result destabilized Iraq while creating (predictable) crises that could be exploited to greater strategic advantage by expanding the conflict to Iran, another Israeli goal announced in A Clean Break—seven years before the invasion of Iraq.

Today’s mathematically model-able outcomes undermined U.S. national security by discrediting our leadership, degrading our financial condition and disabling our political will. In game theory terms, this devastation was perfectly predictable—within an acceptable range of probabilities.

Pakistan is primed to emerge as the next battleground for game theory war-planners. When India, an ally of Israel, became the nation honored by the Obama administration’s first state dinner, that occasion gave reason for concern due to the dynamics already at work in the background.

See “What Is Israel’s Role in the Destabilization of Pakistan?”

In the asymmetry that typifies modern warfare, those who are few in number have no alternative when pursuing an expansionist agenda but to wage their wars by way of deception. To maintain its perceived status as a perennial victim, Israeli aggression must proceed non-transparently. Its only option is to operate with duplicitous means, including leveraging the power of its insider influence to advance an agenda from the shadows.

Thus the strategic necessity that this extremist enclave befriend the U.S.—with the intent to betray that friendship to advance its geopolitical goals. Thus the strategic need to create a relationship of trust with a post-WWII super power—in order to defraud us. How else could Colonial Zionists wage their wars except with our military? How else could Jewish nationalists induce our aggression absent the widely shared belief that Israel is not an aggressor but a victim?

Winning Wars from the Inside Out

Game theory war-planners manipulate the shared mental environment by shaping the perceptions and impressions that become consensus opinions. With a combination of well-timed crises, fixed intelligence and a complicit media, policy-makers can be induced to support a predetermined agenda—not because lawmakers are Evil Doers but because the public mindset has been pre-conditioned to respond to manipulated thoughts, emotions and beliefs.

Without the mass murder of 9-11, would America’s credibility be in tatters and its creditworthiness in jeopardy? By steadily displacing facts with false beliefs, those duplicitous few-within-the-few amplify the impact of their deceit. By their steady focus on the mental environment, game theory war-planners can defeat an opponent with vastly superior resources.

Today’s intelligence wars are waged in plain sight and under the cover of shared beliefs. By manipulating consensus opinion, psy-ops wars can be won from the inside out by inducing a targeted populace to freely choose the very forces that imperil their freedom.

Thus in the Information Age the disproportionate power wielded by those with outsized influence in media, popular culture, think tanks, academia and politics—domains where Zionist influence is pervasive not only in the U.S. but also in other nations induced to war on false pretenses.

Germany offers a case study in manipulation of the public mindset in plain sight and under the banner of a free press. In 2003, Zionist media mogul Haim Saban acquired the second largest media conglomerate in Germany. Why? As Saban investment banker Steve Rattner explained his client’s motivation: “Because Germany is important to Israel.” Or, as Saban concedes: “I have only one issue and that issue is Israel.”

By 2005, Saban had succeeded in electing Angela Merkel as German Chancellor. She quickly became the European Union’s most reliable and forceful advocate for Israel. By November 2009, she was prepared to sponsor in Berlin an unprecedented joint session of the German and Israeli governments. Following his political success in Germany, Saban acquired in 2007 a controlling interest in Univision, a Latino-focused network serving the fastest-growing voting bloc in the U.S.

Media manipulation serves as an essential force-multiplier to wage intelligence wars from the periphery or, as with Haim Saban, in plain sight. At the operational core of such psy-ops are game theory war-planners skilled at personality profiling and masterful at anticipating responses to staged provocations and then incorporating those responses into their arsenal.

In the case of Iraq, our (mathematically) foreseeable response to 9-11 led, in practical effect, to Israel’s deployment of our military to invade Iraq. For aggressors adept at psy-ops warfare, facts are only an inconvenience to be overcome when waging war by way of deception. Thus the key role played by consensus-shapers featured in mainstream media outlets who focus not on informing the public but on mental conditioning.

For targeted populations dependent on facts and informed consent to protect their freedom and preserve the rule of law, such treachery poses the greatest possible threat. Yet even now many Americans believe that Israel is not an aggressor but a victim and even an ally despite facts confirming a multi-decade pattern of expansionist nationalism and geopolitical deception.

Adhering to an Enemy

The U.S. is far less secure than before 9-11. Tel Aviv clearly intends to continue its serial provocations as evidenced by its ongoing expansion of settlements and its continuing blockade of Gaza. Israel has shown no willingness to negotiate in good faith. With few exceptions, Barack Obama has named as senior advisers either Zionists are those known to be strongly pro-Israeli.

The greatest threat to world peace is not Islam. The most fundamental threat that underlies all others is our “special relationship” with a skilled agent provocateur. Without U.S. support for an enclave of nuclear-armed religious extremists, the common source of this threat could long ago have been identified and steps taken to ensure its containment.

In the same way that lengthy pre-staging was required to induce the U.S. to invade Iraq, a similar strategy is now underway to persuade the U.S. to invade Iran or support an attack by Israel. Pakistan is also now on the agenda of those marketing The Clash narrative with its vision of a perpetual war against “militant Islam.” Similar mental conditioning is again at work, including the high profile branding of the requisite Evil Doer: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad.

From its outset, the Zionist enterprise sought supremacy in the Middle East. To date, its alliance with the U.S. has enabled the deployment of American military might in pursuit of goals set by Jewish nationalists more than a half-century before a Christian Zionist U.S. president was induced to extend nation-state recognition. Harry Truman made that fateful decision despite his fears that Israel would become what Zionist lobbyists assured him it would not become—and what it immediately became: a racist and theocratic state.

Only one nation had the means, motive, opportunity and stable nation state intelligence required to take the U.S. to war in the Middle East while making it appear that Islam—not Israel—is the problem. When a long-deceived American public—especially the U.S. military—grasps the common source of this devastating duplicity, the response will shift the geopolitical landscape. The facts suggest that “sympathy for Israel” is not among the probable reactions.

If Barack Obama continues to cater to these extremists, this Nobel peace laureate can rightly be blamed when the next attack features the usual orgy of evidence pointing to a pre-staged Evil Doer. Should another mass murder occur, that incident may well be traceable to the U.S.-Israeli relationship and to the failure of our policy-makers to protect America—and world peace—from this enemy within.


Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution.

Visit his website at: www.criminalstate.com.

Jeff Gates is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

Yeswecanistan

December 9, 2009 by admin  
Filed under William Blum

ObamaAll the crying from the left about how Obama “the peace candidate” has now become “a war president” … Whatever are they talking about? Here’s what I wrote in this report in August 2008, during the election campaign:

We find Obama threatening, several times, to attack Iran if they don’t do what the United States wants them to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once to attack Pakistan if their anti-terrorist policies are not tough enough or if there would be a regime change in the nuclear-armed country not to his liking; calling for a large increase in US troops and tougher policies for Afghanistan; wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as if it were the 51st state.

Why should anyone be surprised at Obama’s foreign policy in the White House? He has not even banned torture, contrary to what his supporters would fervently have us believe. If further evidence were needed, we have the November 28 report in the Washington Post: “Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.” This is but the latest example of the continuance of torture under the new administration.

But the shortcomings of Barack Obama and the naiveté of his fans is not the important issue. The important issue is the continuation and escalation of the American war in Afghanistan, based on the myth that the individuals we label “Taliban” are indistinguishable from those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, whom we usually label “al Qaeda”. “I am convinced,” the president said in his speech at the United States Military Academy (West Point) on December 1, “that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.”

Obama used one form or another of the word “extremist” eleven times in his half-hour talk. Young, impressionable minds must be carefully taught; a future generation of military leaders who will command America’s never-ending wars must have no doubts that the bad guys are “extremists”, that “extremists” are by definition bad guys, that “extremists” are beyond the pale and do not act from human, rational motivation like we do, that we — quintessential non-extremists, peace-loving moderates — are the good guys, forced into one war after another against our will. Sending robotic death machines flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan to drop powerful bombs on the top of wedding parties, funerals, and homes is of course not extremist behavior for human beings.

And the bad guys attacked the US “from here”, Afghanistan. That’s why the United States is “there”, Afghanistan. But in fact the 9-11 attack was planned in Germany, Spain and the United States as much as in Afghanistan. It could have been planned in a single small room in Panama City, Taiwan, or Bucharest. What is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? And the attack was carried out entirely in the United States. But Barack Obama has to maintain the fiction that Afghanistan was, and is, vital and indispensable to any attack on the United States, past or future. That gives him the right to occupy the country and kill the citizens as he sees fit. Robert Baer, former CIA officer with long involvement in that part of the world has noted: “The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. They simply want us gone because we’re foreigners, and they’re rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters.” 1

The pretenses extend further. US leaders have fed the public a certain image of the insurgents (all labeled together under the name “Taliban”) and of the conflict to cover the true imperialistic motivation behind the war. The predominant image at the headlines/TV news level and beyond is that of the Taliban as an implacable and monolithic “enemy” which must be militarily defeated at all costs for America’s security, with a negotiated settlement or compromise not being an option. However, consider the following which have been reported at various times during the past two years about the actual behavior of the United States and its allies in Afghanistan vis-à-vis the Taliban, which can raise questions about Obama’s latest escalation: 2

The US military in Afghanistan has long been considering paying Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul, as the United States has done with Iraqi insurgents.

President Obama has floated the idea of negotiating with moderate elements of the Taliban. 3

US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, said last month that the United States would support any role Saudi Arabia chose to pursue in trying to engage Taliban officials. 4

Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban in various ways.

A top European Union official and a United Nations staff member were ordered by the Kabul government to leave the country after allegations that they had met Taliban insurgents without the administration’s knowledge. And two senior diplomats for the United Nations were expelled from the country, accused by the Afghan government of unauthorized dealings with insurgents. However, the Afghanistan government itself has had a series of secret talks with “moderate Taliban” since 2003 and President Hamid Karzai has called for peace talks with Taliban leader Mohammed Omar.

Organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross as well as the United Nations have become increasingly open about their contacts with the Taliban leadership and other insurgent groups.

Gestures of openness are common practice among some of Washington’s allies in Afghanistan, notably the Dutch, who make negotiating with the Taliban an explicit part of their military policy.

The German government is officially against negotiations, but some members of the governing coalition have suggested Berlin host talks with the Taliban.

MI-6, Britain’s external security service, has held secret talks with the Taliban up to half a dozen times. At the local level, the British cut a deal, appointing a former Taliban leader as a district chief in Helmand province in exchange for security guarantees.

Senior British officers involved with the Afghan mission have confirmed that direct contact with the Taliban has led to insurgents changing sides as well as rivals in the Taliban movement providing intelligence which has led to leaders being killed or captured.

British authorities hold that there are distinct differences between different “tiers” of the Taliban and that it is essential to try to separate the doctrinaire extremists from others who are fighting for money or because they resent the presence of foreign forces in their country.

British contacts with the Taliban have occurred despite British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly ruling out such talks; on one occasion he told the House of Commons: “We will not enter into any negotiations with these people.”

For months there have been repeated reports of “good Taliban” forces being airlifted by Western helicopters from one part of Afghanistan to another to protect them from Afghan or Pakistani military forces. At an October 11 news conference in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai himself claimed that “some unidentified helicopters dropped armed men in the northern provinces at night.” 5

On November 2, IslamOnline.net (Qatar) reported: “The emboldened Taliban movement in Afghanistan turned down an American offer of power-sharing in exchange for accepting the presence of foreign troops, Afghan government sources confirmed. ‘US negotiators had offered the Taliban leadership through Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil (former Taliban foreign minister) that if they accept the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan, they would be given the governorship of six provinces in the south and northeast … America wants eight army and air force bases in different parts of Afghanistan in order to tackle the possible regrouping of [the] Al-Qaeda network,’ a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official told IslamOnline.net.” 6

There has been no confirmation of this from American officials, but the New York Times on October 28 listed six provinces that were being considered to receive priority protection from the US military, five which are amongst the eight mentioned in the IslamOnline report as being planned for US military bases, although no mention is made in the Times of the above-mentioned offer. The next day, Asia Times reported: “The United States has withdrawn its troops from its four key bases in Nuristan [or Nooristan], on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban-led insurgency to orchestrate its regional battles.” Nuristan, where earlier in the month eight US soldiers were killed and three Apache helicopters hit by hostile fire, is one of the six provinces offered to the Taliban as reported in the IslamOnline.net story.

The part about al-Qaeda is ambiguous and questionable, not only because the term has long been loosely used as a catch-all for any group or individual in opposition to US foreign policy in this part of the world, but also because the president’s own national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, stated in early October: “I don’t foresee the return of the Taliban. Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling. The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.” 7

Shortly after Jones’s remarks, we could read in the Wall Street Journal: “Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al-Qaida is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. … For Arab youths who are al-Qaida’s primary recruits, ‘it’s not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,’ said a senior U.S. official in South Asia.” 8

From all of the above is it not reasonable to conclude that the United States is willing and able to live with the Taliban, as repulsive as their social philosophy is? Perhaps even a Taliban state which would go across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has been talked about in some quarters. What then is Washington fighting for? What moves the president of the United States to sacrifice so much American blood and treasure? In past years, US leaders have spoken of bringing democracy to Afghanistan, liberating Afghan women, or modernizing a backward country. President Obama made no mention of any of these previous supposed vital goals in his December 1 speech. He spoke only of the attacks of September 11, al Qaeda, the Taliban, terrorists, extremists, and such, symbols guaranteed to fire up an American audience. Yet, the president himself declared at one point: “Al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same numbers as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border.” Ah yes, the terrorist danger … always, everywhere, forever, particularly when it seems the weakest.

How many of the West Point cadets, how many Americans, give thought to the fact that Afghanistan is surrounded by the immense oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions? Or that Afghanistan is ideally situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of Europe and south Asia, lines that can deliberately bypass non-allies of the empire, Iran and Russia? If only the Taliban will not attack the lines. “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south …”, said Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs in 2007. 9

Afghanistan would also serve as the home of American military bases, the better to watch and pressure next-door Iran and the rest of Eurasia. And NATO … struggling to find a raison d’être since the end of the Cold War. If the alliance is forced to pull out of Afghanistan without clear accomplishments after eight years will its future be even more in doubt?

So, for the present at least, the American War on Terror in Afghanistan continues and regularly and routinely creates new anti-American terrorists, as it has done in Iraq. This is not in dispute even at the Pentagon or the CIA. God Bless America.

Although the “surge” failed as policy, it succeeded as propaganda.

They don’t always use the word “surge”, but that’s what they mean. Our admirable leaders and our mainstream media that love to interview them would like us to believe that escalation of the war in Afghanistan is in effect a “surge”, like the one in Iraq which, they believe, has proven so successful. But the reality of the surge in Iraq was nothing like its promotional campaign. To the extent that there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq (now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation), we must keep in mind the following summary of how and why it “succeeded”:

  • Thanks to America’s lovely little war, there are many millions Iraqis either dead, wounded, crippled, homebound or otherwise physically limited, internally displaced, in foreign exile, or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons. Many others have been so traumatized that they are concerned simply for their own survival. Thus, a huge number of potential victims and killers has been markedly reduced.
  • Extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place: Sunnis and Shiites are now living much more than before in their own special enclaves, with entire neighborhoods surrounded by high concrete walls and strict security checkpoints; violence of the sectarian type has accordingly gone down.
  • In the face of numerous “improvised explosive devices” on the roads, US soldiers venture out a lot less, so the violence against them has been sharply down. It should be kept in mind that insurgent attacks on American forces following the invasion of 2003 is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place.
  • For a long period, the US military was paying insurgents (or “former insurgents”) to not attack occupation forces.
  • The powerful Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr declared a unilateral cease-fire for his militia, including attacks against US troops, that was in effect for an extended period; this was totally unconnected to the surge.

We should never forget that Iraqi society has been destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their legal system, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their security, their friends, their families, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But they do have their surge.

The War against Everything and Everyone, Endlessly

Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 and wounded some 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in November reportedly regards the US War on Terror as a war aimed at Muslims. He told colleagues that “the US was battling not against security threats in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Islam itself.” 10 Hasan had long been in close contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric and al Qaeda sympathizer now living in Yemen, who also called the US War on Terror a “war against Muslims”. Many, probably most, Muslims all over the world hold a similar view about American foreign policy.

I believe they’re mistaken. For many years, going back to at least the Korean war, it’s been fairly common for accusations to be made by activists opposed to US policies, in the United States and abroad, as well as by Muslims, that the United States chooses as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that in 1999 one of the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns ever — 78 days in a row — was carried out against the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia: white, European, Christians. Indeed, we were told that the bombing was to rescue the people of Kosovo, who are largely Muslim. Earlier, the United States had come to the aid of the Muslims of Bosnia in their struggle against the Serbs. The United States is in fact an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become an American bombing target appear to be: (a) It poses a sufficient obstacle — real, imagined, or, as with Serbia, ideological — to the desires of the empire; (b) It is virtually defenseless against aerial attack.

Notes

  1. Video on Information Clearinghouse
  2. For the news items which follow if not otherwise sourced, see:
    • The Independent (London), December 14, 2007
    • Daily Telegraph (UK) December 26, 2007
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto) May 1, 2008
    • BBC News, October 28, 2009
  3. New York Times, March 11, 2009
  4. Kuwait News Agency, November 24, 2009
  5. Pakistan Observer (Islamabad daily), October 19, 2009; The Jamestown Foundation (conservative Washington, DC think tank), “Karzai claims mystery helicopters ferrying Taliban to north Afghanistan”, November 6, 2009; Institute for War and Peace Reporting (London), “Helicopter rumour refuses to die”, October 26, 2009
  6. IslamOnline,US Offers Taliban 6 Provinces for 8 Bases“, November 2, 2009
  7. Washington Times, October 5, 2009, from a CNN interview
  8. Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2009
  9. Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, September 20, 2007.
  10. Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2009


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

Email to bblum6@aol.com

William Blum is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

The Rise Of The US Surveillance State

November 26, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Brother Nathanael Kapner, Featured

Surveillance StateCENTRALIZING POWER INTO THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH is yet another ploy of the powerful Zionist-Jewish network in America to consolidate their influence-peddling into a single power bloc.

The Jew-bought President Obama in his approach to National Security Agency surveillance, CIA renditions, drone assassinations, and military detention, has embraced the expanded executive powers championed by his predecessor, George W Bush and his Zionist-Jew enablers.

We should not be surprised then, when, in the midst of our fabricated “crisis society,” advanced surveillance methods developed in our recent wars migrate from Baghdad, Kandahar, and Tel Aviv to our own neighborhoods – ALL by Executive order with Congressional (a record number of Jews are now in Congress) approval.

US wars abroad have been living laboratories for the undermining of a free society at home, a process which has brought covert Counter-intelligence penetration to the homeland.

Wartime Geospatial intelligence mapping, unmanned reconnaissance & spy drones, portable wireless data transfer by satellite to a central biometric data base, microchip-tracking, facial/body imaging & movement profiling, electronic eavesdropping, iris scans, advanced camera technology, and disinformation tactics translate into an invasive internal security apparatus that is now being utilized in the War on Terror’s latest target, American citizens.

And Zionist Jews, both on Capitol Hill, the White House, US government agencies, and the myriads of Jewish organizations & lobbies, are plotting the destruction of our once free society and the throttling of the dissenting voice of White Gentile Americans through their beloved Jew-created agency, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with its security technology imported from US wars abroad.

Homeland Security/NSA now has a wiretapping program in place, code-named STELLAR WIND, interfaced with Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN); the Pentagon’s Counter-Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA)/Threat & Local Observation Notice (TALON); and FEMA database of American citizens, code-named MAIN CORE. All began operating in concert in 2002 to monitor anti-war groups such as the Quakers, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Greenpeace, and alternative-news journalists. Wayne Madsen Report Here.

THE JEWS BEHIND HOMELAND SECURITY SPYING

US HOMELAND SECURITY LAUNCHED its most frightening spy maneuver in the discharge of Predator-B drones to patrol the North Dakota-Manitoba border that Congressional leaders, (the same ones who disavowed the recent Goldstone Report on Israeli war crimes), called America’s “weakest link.”

US border official, Michael Kostelnik, when describing “future drone operations” during the launching ceremonies, said that in these “dangerous times it’s more important than ever for both countries to know who and what is crossing the border.”

But who launches a $10 million drone to watch out for cows crossing the America-Canada border? The Jew-inspired US Homeland Security spy-on-you apparatus that’s who. See Future Drone Operations Here.

In conjunction with the US Justice Department in 2002, Homeland Security, led by the Talmudic Jew, Michael Chertoff, launched Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) which planned for millions of postal employees, American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees and others to aid the government by spying on their fellow Americans.

Such citizen surveillance sparked strong protests, forcing Homeland Security and Talmudic Jew Senator Joseph Lieberman, who chaired the powerful Senate Government Operations Committee at the time & who opposed the patriotic protesters, to bury the program.

Lieberman, through Zionist TOTAL CONTROL of our Jew-bought Congress, who is currently Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, (how did a Talmudic Jew whose loyalties are to his own tribe NOT Americans become Chairman?), and Zionist Jew, Carl Levin, who is an Associate member of DHS and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, (how did a Zionist Jew whose loyalties are to his own tribe NOT Americans become Chairman?), are now vigorously pushing the Patriot Act Extension Act. The current Act with all of its intrusions on our liberties expires the end of 2009.

The key sponsor of the Bill, is, of course, a Zionist Jew — Senator Dianne Feinstein — a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. (How did a Zionist Jew whose loyalties are to her own tribe NOT Americans become Chairman?)

The Bill allows for greater freedom of “government roving wiretaps to monitor suspects who may switch cell phone numbers” and to track “lone wolves” who “act on behalf of foreign powers.” (Jews like Lieberman, Levin, and Feinstein, are the “wolves” who act “on behalf of a foreign power” known as the State of Israel.) And, of course, Obama, pathological liar that he is, who promised to abolish the Patriot Act, supports the Jew-inspired Bill.

CYBER SECURITY & FREEDOM-HATING JEWS

IN A BID TO SEIZE CONTROL OF THE INTERNET, the freedom-hating Jew, Congressional Representative Jane Harman introduced with full support of Abraham Foxman of the Anti Defamation League, a Zionist “thought crime” legislation known as the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.

The ACT proposed a national commission (made up of Jews of course) to “combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists.” The Bill passed the House by an overwhelming 404 to 6 vote before stalling, and then dying, in a Senate slightly more mindful of civil liberties.

Harman’s legislation focused on “cyber security,” that is, Zionist control of the Internet, our last bastion of free speech, stating in the Bill in typical Zionist lying fashion:

“The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the US by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to American citizens.” View Harman’s Bill Here.

SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN announced his plans on October 30, 2009 for a “cyber security czar” to operate out of the White House in co-ordination with Homeland Security which Lieberman chairs. Lieberman’s agenda will give Zionists control of the Internet by manipulating with their billions of Jewish dollars only “one” White House “czar,” rather than numerous department heads. The following captures the essence of Lieberman’s plans:

“We need to establish a Cyber Security Coordinator within the Executive Office of the President. This position would have the authority to monitor civilian networks. Currently, Homeland Security has this responsibility by Executive Order but it lacks the direct cooperation from the White House to succeed.” View Entire Story Here.

Lieberman is acting in concert with the pending Cybersecurity Bill S. 773 which will give Obama “emergency powers” to control the Internet. The Bill grants Obama the authority to shut down all online traffic by taking control of private networks in the event of a “Cyber-Emergency.” The problem is, a “Cyber-Emergency” is not defined.

Zionist Jews fear the Internet. Why? Because it is the only venue that exposes their lies, their agendas, and their quest for world domination. They MUST be stopped!

http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=463


Brother Nathanael Kapner is a “Street Evangelist” who grew up as a Jew and is now an Orthodox Christian.

You can visit his website at Real Zionist News. He can be reached at: bronathanael@yahoo.com

Brother Nathanael Kapner is a regular columnist for Underground Dissident

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