Tooth Fairies And Suicide Bombers
or
"Hi, my name is Abdula. I'll be your suicide bomber this evening ..."
by Carol A. Valentine
Curator, Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum
http://www.Public-Action.com
Copyright, May, 2002
May be reproduced for non-commercial purposes.
May 9, 2002 — People, let's use our noggins. The suicide bombers are not what they seem to be.
For many months now, I have been reading stories in the Washington Post and the Washington Times about alleged "suicide bombers". Within a short time after the attack, not only is the suicide bomber identified by name, but we have nice colored photos, almost portrait quality shots, of the dead culprits.
For example, on April 27, 2002, the Washington Post ran an article in the Style section, "Female Suicide Bombers: the New Factor in Mideast's Deadly Equation." Shown at the top of the article are four color photos of the faces of four Palestinian (?) women, face to the camera, posed for the photographer.
How thoughtful of the suicide bombers to have those photos taken. How thoughtful of the suicide bombers to leave the photos behind to be conveniently found by the Zionist-owned press. And what a public service the Zionist-owned press is doing the whole world by publishing these photos.
SUICIDE BOMBER MIRACLES
Typically, stories about suicide bombers tell us that the bomber went to a public place such as a bus stop, market, restaurant, pool hall, etc., and blew himself/herself up along with one, two, or many Israelis.
Funny, they rarely hit military targets. I wonder why?
The general story line is that the bomber had explosives attached to his/her person. The story goes on to describe the carnage in grisly detail — dismembered bodies, etc. But, remarkably, the suicide bomber himself/herself is not blown to smithereens. The bomber's body is left in sufficiently good shape to be identified immediately, and of course the Israeli authorities do just that.
But even more remarkable: The Israelis come up with these nice portraits of the culprits. And what is most remarkable of all? Everything is coordinated, bombers ID'd, photos gathered, stories written — and published all over the world by the Zionist press — within a few hours or days after the event.
SUICIDE BOMBING NOT TOO SMART
Why would a Palestinian bent on vengeance commit suicide? Far better to go to the bus stop, market, restaurant, pool hall, etc., with a shopping bag or backpack full of explosives, casually discard the package in some inconspicuous place, and leave. BOOM! Lots of Israelis die, and the bomber walks away to bomb another location next week. But no, we are asked to believe that the suicide bombers blow THEMSELVES up, too.
"Why would the bombers do that?" we ask. "Because they are fanatics, that's why," is the response.
Well, if you are a Palestinian fanatic you would surely would want to kill as many Israelis as possible. You would want to extend your life as long as possible to do that job. Committing suicide unnecessarily would be a very dumb thing to do.
WHY NO IRA SUICIDE BOMBERS?
In all the years of IRA activity in Northern Ireland and Britain, the IRA never used suicide bombers, did they? Wonder why the "Palestinians" have to?
IT'S THE QUR'AN!
THEY DO IT BECAUSE THEY'RE MUSLIMS!
There's another variation to these inane suicide bomber stories.
"The suicide bombers are not just fanatics, they are MUSLIM fanatics. Allah will reward them for their deeds. They want to go to heaven to be rewarded."
Yet I have NEVER seen one cite from the Qur'an that justifies suicide, under any conditions. Quite the reverse. I have seen cites from the Qur'an which clearly prohibit suicide.
Now doubtless there are passages in the Qur'an saying eternal bliss will be endowed upon those brave souls who lose their lives while fighting God's war. Big deal. We have chaplains in the US military who, give or take, give our soldiers the same kind of message. That's their job.
If the Israelis want us to believe that the suicide bombers are fanatic Muslims, they need to come up with Qur'anic scriptures to prove their point. They don't. They can't. The Israelis are lying. What else is new?
SUICIDE BOMBERS AND SUICIDE BOMBERS
The Palestinian suicide bombers have been compared to the Japanese Kamikazee pilots who purposely flew their bomb-laden planes into American war ships at sea during world War II.
The Japanese knew they were in danger of losing the war, and they wanted to reverse the trend. So they arrived at a strategy which would inflict maximum American damage for minimum Japanese damage. The Kamikazee strategy was very successful. For each Japanese killed, 10 Americans were killed and many ships were sunk or badly damaged. Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Kamikazee strategy was not successful enough. The US had the A-bomb.
The Kamikazee pilots' purpose was not to commit suicide. Their deaths were the necessary by product of a heroic attempt to defeat a military enemy, an enemy who threatened the life of the Emperor, their God. Of course the Kamikazee pilots thought they'd go to Heaven, too, but that seems to be a common denominator for all who fight in the Good War.
THE HAMAS JOKE
And what of the Hamas, claiming responsibility for these suicide bombings? The reports that the Hamas takes responsibility comes from the Israelis, and we know they never lie.
There is almost no chance the Hamas is a real Palestinian operation. It almost certainly is an undercover Israeli mockingbird operation.
Note of Semptember 28, 2004: For an example of false Islmaic terrorist operations, consider a recent case in France. A Jewish community center was set ablaze, and "the attackers daubed swastikas in red ink on two refrigerators and badly spelled anti-Semitic slogans such as, 'Without Jews we would be happy,' and 'The world would be pure if there no more Jews,' according to police and a rabbi at the synagogue." (According to AFP)
True to form, an Islamic terrorist group claimed credit for the fire. "The statement posted on the Internet in the name of the Jamaat Ansaw Al-Jihad al Islamiya (Group of the Holy Islamic War Supporters) said the attack was 'in response to racist acts by Jews in France against Islam and the Muslims' and 'as a simple response to the racist and savage acts by Jews in Muslim countries like Palestine.'" The governments of France and Israel condemned the act. Convincing, isn't it? ISLAMIC GROUP CLAIMS PARIS ARSON August 23, 2004 By: ICEJ News http://www.icej.org/cgi-local/view.cgi?type=headline&artid=2004/08/23/854240257 HOMELESS JEWISH MAN ARRESTED FOR PARIS ARSON ATTACK August 31, 2004 By: ICEJ News http://www.icej.org/cgi-local/view.cgi?type=headline&artid=2004/08/31/53238481 Jewish man arrested in Paris arson Craig S. Smith NYT Tuesday, August 31, 2004 http://www.iht.com/articles/536543.html
One week later, French police learned that the fire and vandalism were the work of a "homeless, mentally unstable" Jewish man who had attended the center.
OK, these things happen. And when nerves are tense, people make mistakes. But who invented the Arabic terrorist group and wrote the web page that claimed responsibility? Probably not the "homeless, mentally unstable" Jewish man.
Before me on my desk are two color photos of — can you believe — students who attend "suicide bomber" schools. The schools are run by either the Hamas, or Hamas "sympathizers."
One dramatic front page color photo appeared in the Washington Times of December 10, 2001 with this caption:
Ready to Die: At an anti-Israeli demonstration commemorating Hamas's 14th anniversary yesterday, suicide bombers with fake dynamite strapped to their chests paraded near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon.
The photo is attributed to Associated Press, and shows at least 10 people, whose faces and bodies are entirely covered by white sheeting, facing the camera.
Another dramatic front page color photo appeared in the Washington Times on March 4, 2002. The caption reads:
"Hamas activists, dressed as 'suicide bombers' with fake explosives strapped to their waists, rallied yesterday in the West Bank."
There are at least 11 white-garbed clowns in this photo, which is again attributed to Associated Press.
* Like these.
* Two
* Three
* Four
* Five
* Six
* Seven
* Eight
* Nine
* Ten
Juxtaposed beneath the photo of the suicide bomber students is a photo of four young Israelis, two of them boys dressed in black with black hats and side curls. The boys wear mournful expressions on their faces. The caption reads: "Blast site: Ultra-Orthodox Jews watched volunteers clean the Jerusalem site Sunday where a suicide bomber killed nine persons."
"Gee, how sweet and nice those young boys look. Fancy having to put up with suicide bombers ..." that's what we are supposed to think.
Israel has declared on many occasions that assassination is its official policy. How many times have we heard of Palestinian leaders summarily shot dead on the spot by Israeli hit men? That being the case, how realistic is it that the Israelis would permit these young "suicide bombers" to train openly, and march down the street openly? How likely do you think it is that Israel would permit REAL suicide bomber schools to exist?
And how do you think that Associated Press found out about the demonstrations and showed up to take photos? Next we'll be told the suicide bomber schools have public relations departments and send out press releases.
How dumb do they think we are, that we'd believe all this? Well, you can speak for yourself. But I ain't THAT dumb.
THE PUBLIC RELATIONS WAR
I believe Israel runs a suicide bomber campaign. The suicide bomber campaign serves at least four purposes.
* Sharon the Madman needs an insane foe. An insane foe makes Sharon and those behind him look good, or at least not so bad.
* In May, 2001, world public opinion was moved to sympathy for the Palestinian cause. We were enchanted at "The Return of the Knight."
http://www.ukar.org/shamir09.shtml
The heroism of this young Palestinian boy swept the world's imagination. Obviously, the Israelis were losing the PR war. Shortly thereafter, a new rash of suicide bombers broke out and continues to this day. The suicide bomber campaign was in part an attempt to reverse a growing Israeli PR disaster.
* By September 11, 2001, Muslim fanatics committing suicide had to be firmly planted in the public mind as a common-place event. That paradigm made the fantastic stories of the "suicide pilots" — those Muslims accused of crashing the United and American passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9-11 — easier to swallow.
* Depicting the Palestinians are irrational fanatics justifies their extermination. Proof?
This from the mouth of Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post. On February 5, 2002, Cohen wrote a column "Why the Turn to Suicide?"
NEW YORK — On my first visit to Israel, the government supplied me with a guide — a former army officer and combat veteran renowned for his hawkish views. We disagreed about almost everything, including the nature of the "enemy." I found his views simplistic and repulsive. Recently, though, I have begun to wonder if he wasn't right ...
Cohen then moves on to talk about suicide bombers.
It [Palestine] is now behaving as the Japanese did toward the end of World War II when, in desperation, they sent pilots crashing into U.S. ships. These kamikaze attacks were both effective and terrifying, but they were also a clear sign that Japan had gone nuts.
The kamikaze attacks were an important element in the dehumanizing of Japan. They encouraged, maybe the right word is "permitted," the use of the atomic bomb. After all, the enemy was not rational. It was barbaric. It would never surrender. It would fight to the last square inch. Better to incinerate them all.
In a similar manner, suicide bombings have transformed the image of Palestinians. Now, in the view of many, they are similar to the people my guide once so excoriated and insulted — so different, so primitive, so cruel and indifferent to human life that they celebrate the suicide of a loved one and the simultaneous murder of innocent people.
There you have it. The PR payoff of the suicide bomber campaign is to convince world public opinion that any barbaric act against the Palestinians is justified. Nuke them, burn them alive, decapitate every last man, woman, and child. Do whatever you wish.
"BUT I SAW THE FAMILY
BEING INTERVIEWED ON TV"
If I were the director of an Israeli dirty trick intelligence organization, I could think of a number of ways to pull off "suicide" bombings.
* Send an agent to a public place, have him inconspicuously drop off his package and leave. BOOM! Meanwhile, simply abduct and murder some unfortunate Palestinian and blame it on him or her.
* Create a false ID for the Israeli agent, have him establish that persona in real time, send him into a public place, have him inconspicuously drop off his package and leave. BOOM! Then disappear the agent.
* With effective Israeli control of hospitals, mental hospitals, and prisons, Israeli intelligence people have a plentiful supply of the walking wounded at their fingertips — Palestinians who are human ruins, shellshocked, brain-damaged and drugged to the gills. How easy it would be to send one of these unknowing unfortunates out on an errand. "Here, strap this money belt around your middle to make sure you don't lose the money." Tell the poor sap to meet someone in a pool hall, and detonate the "money belt." BOOM!
I'll allow you to come up with other possible scenarios. It's not hard to do.
And as for the interviews with the bereaved family members — we don't know the people being interviewed from Adam. They could have come straight from Central Casting. Or they could be genuinely bereaved family members of real victims — people who have been watching too much Tee Vee and believe the "suicide bomber" media campaign.
Expect more "suicide" bombings, but believe them less. Thank you.
[The article was revised on September 28, 2004. Notes added as indicated.]
See also:
Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS
by Carol A. Valentine, October 6, 2001
There were no "suicide" pilots on those September 11 jets. The jets were controlled by advanced robotics and remote control technology, not hijackers.
Did NORAD Send The "Suicide" Jets? Part 1: Inside Job
by Carol A. Valentine, February 12, 2002
NORAD, charged with keeping American skies safe, didn't show up on September 11, leaving the remote controlled jets to do their work. Coincidentally, NORAD is one of the world's experts on remote controlled aircraft. NORAD had the means, and provided the opportunity, for making 9-11 happen. Discussion of radar anomalies.
Did NORAD Send The "Suicide" Jets? Part 2: The Dumb Blondes
by Carol A. Valentine, February 25, 2002
NORAD claims it sent defensive jets aloft on 9-11, but America's top generals give contradictory accounts before the Senate. They act like dumb blondes — they can scarcely remember which plane hit which target. NORAD blames the FAA for the catastrophe, but the Senate doesn't bother calling the FAA. More radar anomalies.
When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing
by William M. Arkin, in a guest appearance, February 1, 1999
But what about the cell phone calls to relatives from passengers on the doomed planes? The Special Operations Command gives us the answer to that question — but it's not the same answer you heard on network news. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm
Flight Of The Bumble Planes
by Snake Plissken, as told to Carol A. Valentine, March 10, 2002
Snake Plissken tells us how remote controlled planes and radar trickery were used to pull off Operation 9-11. "Magic is the pretended performance of those things which cannot be done." By George, I think he's got it!
Pentagon RESCUE? Parts I through IV: Open, Bloody Questions . . .
by Carol A. Valentine, June 23, 2002
On 9-11, the most important mission was to extinguish the fire and rescue the victims. So why did they spray water on an aviation fuel fire? Instead of lifting the debris off the victims, why did they use a wrecking ball to collapse the ruins on top of them? Your journey begins here . . .
Pentagon RESCUE? Part V: The Seven Minute Fire
by Carol A. Valentine, August 18, 2002
After the publication of "Pentagon RESCUE? Part IV: Open, Bloody Questions," the Ministry of Truth publicized a little-known article claiming foam was used on 9-11, and that the "bulk" of the fire was extinguished in seven minutes! Then what did we all watch on TV, burning for days after?
Taliban Home Video
by Carol A. Valentine, October 15, 2001
If the US and its pals could fake such a video — and they're easy to fake, either with morphing or stand-in impersonators — why wouldn't they? And they did.
9/11 Terror: Muslims Suspend Laws of Physics!
by J. McMichael, October 23, 2001
Using jet fuel to melt steel is an amazing discovery, really. It is also amazing that until now, no one had been able to get it to work, and that proves the terrorists were not stupid people.
Press Uses Actors in War On Islam
by Carol a. Valentine, November 11, 2001
The Washington Times has faked two photos in its coverage of the War On Islam. One actor was used twice: first cast as an enemy of America, then nine days later, as a friend of America.
Tooth Fairies and Suicide Bombers
by Carol A. Valentine, May 9, 2002
Why would vengeful Palestinians blow themselves up? Why not just leave the package, walk away, and strike again next week? Funny how the Israelis identify the bombers immediately, and distribute nice color portrait shots of the culprits immediately. Funny, the IRA didn't use suicide bombers. Other funny things.
Merry Christmas, and OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!
by Carol A. Valentine, May 15, 2002
What does the establishment of a world-wide Jewish theocracy have to do with the events of 9-11? Everything. If the Jews who rule America have their way, freedom of religion will soon be a thing of the past, and rabbinical courts will rule the world.
911 Lawsuit Is A Booby Trap
by Carol A. Valentine, March 3, 2004
Mrs. Ellen Mariani, a 911 widow, has filed a RICO suit against George W. Bush et al. to discover the truth about 911. But her lawyer, Philip J. Berg, has written a complaint that protects the real culprits. It is littered with gross errors and malpractice. Berg is a suicide bus driver taking Ellen Mariani's quest for truth on a one-way trip to oblivion.
See other 9-11 articles by Carol A. Valentine at http://www.public-action.com
All original works copyright 1996-2004 Carol A. Valentine
On loan to Public Action, Inc.
PO Box 15430 Wedgwood Station, Seattle, WA 98115
http://www.public-action.com
SkyWriter@public-action.com
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Aeneas: Suicide Bombings -- A Favorite US Counter-Insurgency Tactic
This is a very important article explaining much of today’s reality. However as indicated by the title, Aeneas doesn’t explore the most critical point of the suicide bombings which is NOT to counter the insurgency, but to create an insurgency and chaos in order to justify an indefinite occupation and the destruction of the country.
Thus it’s no surprise that further down Aeneas gets it wrong when s/he argues
The US and British invasion of Iraq was NOT for the purpose of bringing "freedom and democracy" to the Iraqi people, but rather for the purpose of securing Iraq's oil resources for the US and British governments and expanding their control over the greater Middle East.
Yes, we agree that Bush and Cheney did not invade Iraq for the purpose of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq. They are doing everything to beat back democracy in the U.S. and everywhere else their power reaches. They certainly would not abide democracy in Iraq.
But as we have been arguing, the purpose of the war was not to secure Iraq’s oil resources or to expand their control over the greater Middle East. Up until 1991 the U.S. “controlled” Middle East oil and Middle East politics sufficiently for their purposes. They only started losing control in 1991 when they had to spend billions of dollars a month and then a day in bombing and finally occupying and destroying a country, including destroying its oil potential.
Interestingly, Israeli military analyst Martin van Creveld gives the game away in a just published article on a possible U.S. strike against Iran. M.vCreveld: Iran Helpless in face of possible US missile attack Creveld correctly writes that President Bush is on the same belligerent wavelength as Prime Minister Olmert: “— the same President Bush who four years ago needed no reason at all to take on Iran’s neighbor to the west and demolish it to the point where it may never rise again.”
There we have it: the elusive answer to the question: Why did the U.S. invade Iraq? The U.S. invaded the country in order to destroy it -- to the point where it may never rise again:
a. for Israel’s purposes
b. for the Bush-Cheney neocon purpose of perpetual war.
Ronald
***
Suicide Bombings - A Favourite US Counter-Insurgency Tactic
Aeneas, Signs of the Times
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m35541&hd=&size=1&l=e
[photo]
The true face of Iraqi suicide bombers. Two SAS agents dressed in full "Arab Garb" driving a car full of explosives were caught carrying out a false flag terror attack in Basra, Iraq September 20th
August 20, 2007
Since 9-11 reports of "suicide bombings" have increased exponentially in the news. We are led to believe by the experts that it is one of the favorite weapons of the insurgency against the occupation forces, since it is a cheap and simple way to create chaos. Hardly a day goes by without at least one bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan being immediately seized upon by the media as the work of Iraqi insurgents.
It is one thing for an insurgency to commit suicide bombings against the occupation forces, it is another thing entirely to use them to target and kill civilians. We have been brainwashed into believing that the insurgents in Iraq are such brutal, uncivilized, fanatical crazy extremists that they will anything to fight 'freedom' - even kill their own people.
This picture presented to us by the US government and mainstream media is so insane that Joe Quinn, in response to the massive 'suicide' bombings in Mosul that killed 350+ people last week, felt confident to say:
"The person who can present a convincing argument (i.e. logical and backed up with reliable data) that explains why any anti-American Arab or Islamic group, "terrorist" or otherwise, would kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as a response to the US occupation of Iraq, will receive a prize of 1 million USD."
Looking at this from a historical perspective, precedence for the type of bombings in Iraq that are attributed to the insurgency or "al-Qaeda" is virtually non existent. During world war II, a number of countries were occupied by the Nazis. Countries such as France, Denmark, Norway and many others all had resistance movements who used various tactics to hamper the Nazi take over. Yet, there are no records whatsoever that the resistance fighters resorted to the mass murder of their fellow country men in an effort to evict the Nazis. Sure there was factional infighting, but nothing on the massive scale that we are seeing in Iraq. And of course, how could there be? It defies all logic.
Fast forward to the Vietnam war and here too we find no evidence that the Vietcong waged a campaign to kill their own fellow citizens as part if the fight against American forces.
Of course, there are those who would suggest that Muslims are a different breed, that they, like so many other ungrateful peoples who attempted to throw-off the chains of empire, are little more than uncivilised savages and we cannot therefore hope to understand their mentality or actions. Such an ill-informed attitude however is in no way backed up by any evidence and must therefore be dismissed for the obvious racism that it is.
When the Iraqis first fought the British Empire in the 1920's, there was no "suicide bombings" by insurgents against Iraqis. On the contrary and according to good strategy, they united despite minor cultural and religious differences to confront the common British enemy.
Likewise in Afghanistan during the 10 year war with the Soviet union there were no instances of suicide bombings targeting Afghan civilians. Here too, the Afghan tribes united despite previous disagreements against the common aggressor.
Does no one find all of this even mildly odd? After 9-11, suddenly this bizarre phenomenon of an insurgency using suicide bombings against their own people rather than the invaders appears, as if to provide supporting evidence for the reality of the crazed "suicide bombing" hijackers that attacked America - or so the official story goes.
Could the answer be as simple as that what is being touted as suicide bombings are in fact the work of US/British/Israeli counterinsurgency teams? In Iraq, are we in fact dealing with the what are better know as "false flag operations"?
This certainly would explain a lot of the confusion over why Iraqi groups would kill their own people in response to a US invasion of their country. After all, the people who are dying by the hundreds every day in Iraq are the people who support the insurgency, and the US, British and Israeli forces in Iraq are fighting that insurgency, so who benefits from the daily mass murder of the supporters of the insurgency?
Past counterinsurgency tactics involved such things as ethnic cleansing ("draining the dam" as this tactic was known) and/or the destruction of crops like with agent orange in the case of Vietnam. But these methods had little success.
In recent years it seems that devious and deviant minds in the employ of the military industrial complex came up with much more insidious modern tactics.
Roger Trinquier, an immensely influential French counter-insurgency expert, suggested in his book Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961) (Available online here) three simple principles of Counter Insurgency:
1. separate the guerrilla from the population that supports him;
2. occupy the zones that the guerrillas previously operated from, making them dangerous for him and turning the people against the guerrilla movement;
3. coordinate actions over a wide area and for a long enough time that the guerrilla is denied access to the population centres that could support him.
Remote controlled bombings masquerading as "suicide bombings" that are carried out by the US, British and Israeli occupation forces fit these principles very neatly. By detonating bombs on a daily basis across Iraq and Afghanistan and via the propaganda organs touting them as being the work of Iraqi/Afghani "suicide bombers" belonging to the insurgency, the occupying military hopes to achieve several goals:
cut off the widespread support base that the insurgency have amongst the Iraqis
create tensions between religious lines, especially by ascribing the faked "suicide attacks" to either Shias or Sunnis.
In other words divide and conquer.
The sheer carnage shown on TV back in the West only supports the idea that the Iraqis/Afghans can't take care of their own country without help from the occupation forces or that they are uncivilised savages. This propaganda reinforces the US government's persistent claim that it would be dangerous to pull US troops out of Iraq and for the American military grunts on the streets of Iraq it helps them to rationalise their continued presence. Either they are trying to show a lesser class of human how to become civilised, or they are doing god's work in wiping them out.
There is ample evidence for the inquiring reader to discover that so-called suicide bombings against civilians are not the product of the insurgency. Some will say that it is the product of "al-Qaeda", which is true if you first clarify that "al-Qaeda" is simply a tool of the very same counterinsurgency, namely CIA/MI6/Mossad. Always ask yourself, "who benefits?", and in this case it is pretty obvious who doesn't benefit.
For years Israel has very effectively used 'suicide' bombings as a tool in the perpetration of its slow genocide of the Palestinian people, with the effect that, today, the world's sympathy lies with the perpetrator (Israel). As a result, all peace initiatives have been stalled and the world has provided tacit if not outright approval of Israel's covert genocidal policies.
The knowledge gained by the Israelis has certainly been passed on to the their counterparts in MI6 and the CIA as this SOTT editorial from September 2005 illustrates:
"Today in Basra, Southern Iraq, two members of the British SAS (Special Ops) were caught, 'in flagrante' as it were, dressed in full "Arab garb", driving a car full of explosives and shooting and killing two official Iraqi policemen.
This fact, finally reported by the mainstream press, goes to the very heart and proves accurate much of what we have been saying on the Signs of the Times page for several years.
The following are facts, indisputable by all but the most self-deluded:
Number 1:
The US and British invasion of Iraq was NOT for the purpose of bringing "freedom and democracy" to the Iraqi people, but rather for the purpose of securing Iraq's oil resources for the US and British governments and expanding their control over the greater Middle East.
Number 2:
Both the Bush and Blair governments deliberately fabricated evidence (lied) about the threat the Saddam posed to the west and his links to the mythical 'al-Qaeda' in order to justify their invasion.
Number 3:
Dressed as Arabs, British (and CIA and Israeli) 'special forces' have been carrying out fake "insurgent" attacks, including 'car suicide bombings' against Iraqi policemen and Iraqi civilians (both Sunni and Shia) for the past two years. Evidence would suggest that these tactics are designed to provide continued justification for a US and British military presence in Iraq and to ultimately embroil the country in a civil war that will lead to the breakup of Iraq into more manageable statelets, much to the joy of the Israeli right and their long-held desire for the establishment of biblical 'greater Israel'
Coming not long after the botched London bombings carried out by British MI5 where an eyewitness reported that the floor of one of the trains had been blown inwards (how can a bomb in a backpack or on a "suicide bomber" INSIDE the train ever produce such an effect), more than anything else today's event in Basra highlights the desperation that is driving the policy-makers in the British government.
British intelligence would do well to think twice about carrying out any more 'false flag' operations until they can achieve the 'professionalism' of the Israeli Mossad - they always make it look convincing and rarely suffer the ignominy of being caught in the act and having the faces of their erstwhile "terrorists" plastered across the pages of the mainstream media. "
As in Israel, 'suicide' bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan often occur at a time that most benefits the occupiers. A recent 'suicide' bombing in Afghanistan illustrates this aspect well:
Seventeen civilians, a dozen of them schoolboys, were killed and 30 others wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.
The timing just couldn't have been better. NATO had been under a lot of international pressure due to their random use of Aerial bombings with very large numbers of civilian casualties. This incident (as in most cases) harmed no troops, most victims were children. The desired effect of the bombing was described in the article:
The UN representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, was shocked.
"I am especially concerned by the reports I am seeing of a large number of children being among the dead from todays bomb," he said in a statement." Such utter disregard for innocent lives is staggering and those behind this must be held responsible."
You see? The enemy is uncivilised, crazy, half human in contrast to the civilised benevolent white crusaders who sacrifice so much in the fight against evil. The article concludes:
"There have been more than 70 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, as compared with about 140 in all of 2006. Most are aimed at the security forces but civilians are usually the primary victims."
It should be pointed out that these so-called suicide bombings seem to be a speciality of Western intelligence agencies and their client regimes. In recent months we have also heard a lot about suspicious suicide bombings targeting civilians in Pakistan, whose intelligence agency, ISI, has close ties to the CIA.
In Chechnya there have been 28 acts of suicide bombings from June 2000 until 2006. The difference is that these attacks were against Russian civilians and not their own people. Perhaps the defining point is that Western (US/British/Israeli) counterinsurgency teams are not involved in these attacks because they do not wish to hand the Russians a victory. Certainly suicide bombings would demonise the Chechnyan rebels and provide propaganda value to the Russians. This is not to say that Russia does not engage in its own counter-insurgency, it is just that faked suicide bombings do not appear to form a core part of their strategy.
As mentioned before, during the 10 years of Russian occupation of Afghanistan, no suicide attacks were carried out by the insurgency against the Afghan population. Why? It certainly didn't benefit the Americans to kill Afghans who were engaged in killing Russians, the key enemy of the Americans at the time. The Americans were heavily involved in recruiting and supplying the insurgency with all kinds of military hardware. Now however, the situation is different. In Afghanistan it serves the American agenda to murder as many Afghani civilians as possible under the cloak of Taliban "suicide bombings" because it provides the justification for the troops to stay there to fight this manufactured "evil". In Iraq, the goal is the same, with the added element of the Neocons' desire to destroy the real Iraqi resistance by dividing and alienating them from the ordinary people that support their fight against a brutal occupier. It seems that the American, Israel and British tactic in Iraq is that if the ordinary Iraqi people will not be intimidated into accepting occupation and rejecting the real insurgency, then they will be murdered. Plain and simple.
Despite Joe Quinn's offer of 1 million dollars then, he can rest assured that it is unlikely that he will have to go and talk to the bank anytime soon.
:: Article nr. 35541 sent on 21-aug-2007 19:38 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=35541
Link: www.signs-of-the-times.org/articles/show/138504-Suicide+Bombings+-+A+Favourite+U
S+Counter-Insurgency+Tactic
:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Uruknet .
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Left I on the News: Who's more cruel: Bush or Castro?
Blogger Left I on the News ably puts Bush’s arrogant calumny against Castro in context and cites some of the reality that Bush and his speechwriters have obfuscated or ignored. (LeftI: Castro or Bush Cruel? 9.25.07) Among other things, LeftI reminds us of the 155 people Bush executed while he was governor of Texas and his reported mockery of Carla May Tucker before her execution. Left I’s analysis raises in our minds the question of whether by calling Castro “cruel,” Bush was unconsciously talking about himself, or perhaps deliberately mocking his world wide audience – or both. Bush’s slander gives rise to the following riff.
You want cruel, I’ll give you cruel. Castro’s cruelty is not even worth mentioning if you compare it to what Cheney and I have already accomplished. And what we’ve already done is a lick of spit compared to what we have planned before we leave office. And don’t be so sure that Jan 20, 2009 will be our last day in power.
The interesting thing about Left I’s blog on Bush's cruelty that although it’s a strong denunciation of the president yet LeftI seems still to embrace the notion that Bush is to be viewed as a more or less normal political leader who is intent on the best interests --- not of the American people or the world, to be sure, – but of the elites, his base, as he famously said.
However, an analysis of Bush’s policies (as well as what has already surfaced about the secret programs of his government) suggests that it is well past time to struggle for a measure of accountability by putting into question the notion that some of his most devastating policies from Iraq to Katrina to 9/11 were the result of error and miscalculation. It can't be too early to raise some hard questions as to whether Bush and Cheney deliberately intended the effects of some or all of their most catastrophic policies in order to pursue an agenda of endless war and massive destruction and suffering.
Ronald
***
http://lefti.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Castro: a "cruel dictator"?
Left I blogger writes:
Not to be outdone by Lee Bollinger insulting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, George Bush went to the U.N. today and insulted Fidel Castro by calling him a "cruel dictator."
I won't bother to argue the "dictator" description. If you know enough about Cuba, you know that there is a large leadership team, and a democratic system by which decisions are taken. Fidel Castro does not "dictate" what happens. However, it is obvious that he is at once a very strong personality and at the same time a brilliant political and social thinker. Clearly he has, and has had, a major influence on the course of events in Cuba, and that's probably putting it mildly. So if someone wants to call him a "dictator," ok, it's not worth arguing about, although you'd have to say it's a funny criticism coming from a man who on more than one occasion has expressed a desire to be a dictator.
No, it's the "cruel" part I have to take exception to. Before getting to Fidel, we pause to remember that the accuser (Bush) was the one who was described by conservative Tucker Carlson (i.e., not one of Bush's enemies) as having "mocked" Carla Faye Tucker as he was about to put her to death. So accusations of "cruel" coming from him, a man who signed the death warrants of 155 people, are a cruel joke.
But Fidel? A man who has devoted his life (and I mean every day of his adult life, not the days in between clearing brush on his ranch and going fishing) to bettering the lives of the people of his country? A man whose leadership has given Cubans the lowest infant mortality in Latin America, the best education in Latin America, a leadership in scientific fields (2% of the population of Latin America but 11% of the scientists) such as biotechnology, "cruel"? A man whose leadership has led his country to send doctors all over the world offering both regular and emergency medical care to poor people in need, to send doctors to help after Hurricane Katrina hit the country whose leadership wishes him dead, and even to train (for free!) medical students of that country so they can return to treat poor people who otherwise might not have adequate health care? This man is "cruel"?
Again, a cruel joke. And worse, of course. Because behind it lies the deadly policy of blockade, attempted assassination and other acts of terrorism, imprisonment of those who dared to try to prevent that terrorism, and more. You want cruel? The U.S. just denied once again (for the eighth time) visas to Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, wives of two of the Cuban Five (an interview with Olga broadcast yesterday on WBAI here). One man serving life in prison in the United States, another 15 years, both completely unjustly, and the U.S. government led by George Bush has denied them the right to see their wives for more than nine years, in contravention of all international law and human decency.
"Cruel"? That's cruel.
You want cruel, I’ll give you cruel. Castro’s cruelty is not even worth mentioning if you compare it to what Cheney and I have already accomplished. And what we’ve already done is a lick of spit compared to what we have planned before we leave office. And don’t be so sure that Jan 20, 2009 will be our last day in power.
The interesting thing about Left I’s blog on Bush's cruelty that although it’s a strong denunciation of the president yet LeftI seems still to embrace the notion that Bush is to be viewed as a more or less normal political leader who is intent on the best interests --- not of the American people or the world, to be sure, – but of the elites, his base, as he famously said.
However, an analysis of Bush’s policies (as well as what has already surfaced about the secret programs of his government) suggests that it is well past time to struggle for a measure of accountability by putting into question the notion that some of his most devastating policies from Iraq to Katrina to 9/11 were the result of error and miscalculation. It can't be too early to raise some hard questions as to whether Bush and Cheney deliberately intended the effects of some or all of their most catastrophic policies in order to pursue an agenda of endless war and massive destruction and suffering.
Ronald
***
http://lefti.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Castro: a "cruel dictator"?
Left I blogger writes:
Not to be outdone by Lee Bollinger insulting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, George Bush went to the U.N. today and insulted Fidel Castro by calling him a "cruel dictator."
I won't bother to argue the "dictator" description. If you know enough about Cuba, you know that there is a large leadership team, and a democratic system by which decisions are taken. Fidel Castro does not "dictate" what happens. However, it is obvious that he is at once a very strong personality and at the same time a brilliant political and social thinker. Clearly he has, and has had, a major influence on the course of events in Cuba, and that's probably putting it mildly. So if someone wants to call him a "dictator," ok, it's not worth arguing about, although you'd have to say it's a funny criticism coming from a man who on more than one occasion has expressed a desire to be a dictator.
No, it's the "cruel" part I have to take exception to. Before getting to Fidel, we pause to remember that the accuser (Bush) was the one who was described by conservative Tucker Carlson (i.e., not one of Bush's enemies) as having "mocked" Carla Faye Tucker as he was about to put her to death. So accusations of "cruel" coming from him, a man who signed the death warrants of 155 people, are a cruel joke.
But Fidel? A man who has devoted his life (and I mean every day of his adult life, not the days in between clearing brush on his ranch and going fishing) to bettering the lives of the people of his country? A man whose leadership has given Cubans the lowest infant mortality in Latin America, the best education in Latin America, a leadership in scientific fields (2% of the population of Latin America but 11% of the scientists) such as biotechnology, "cruel"? A man whose leadership has led his country to send doctors all over the world offering both regular and emergency medical care to poor people in need, to send doctors to help after Hurricane Katrina hit the country whose leadership wishes him dead, and even to train (for free!) medical students of that country so they can return to treat poor people who otherwise might not have adequate health care? This man is "cruel"?
Again, a cruel joke. And worse, of course. Because behind it lies the deadly policy of blockade, attempted assassination and other acts of terrorism, imprisonment of those who dared to try to prevent that terrorism, and more. You want cruel? The U.S. just denied once again (for the eighth time) visas to Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, wives of two of the Cuban Five (an interview with Olga broadcast yesterday on WBAI here). One man serving life in prison in the United States, another 15 years, both completely unjustly, and the U.S. government led by George Bush has denied them the right to see their wives for more than nine years, in contravention of all international law and human decency.
"Cruel"? That's cruel.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Tony Karon: Jewish Opposition to the Lobby?
Tony Karon perceives growing dissent among American Jews, a source of potential power that might serve as a counterforce to the Israel Lobby. Karon makes for interesting reading and he provides important documentation of current events, but I think he's way too optimistic. The power of the Lobby is today greater than ever -- to the point that it's currently on steroids despite the heroic work of President Carter and Walt/Mearshimer and others.
Here are a few sentences about Hillary's position on Israel from the JTA (9.12.07) which effectively sum up the depth of the obeisance to the Lobby of the Democrat front runners -- and virtually everyone else running for president.
In her new position paper on Israel, Hillary Rodham Clinton comes not only to praise the Jewish state but to bury doubts that she would be any less vigilant in its protection than the Bush administration...
Perhaps, but Clinton faces challenges for Jewish support from two flanks: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is a Republican front-runner, has moved even further to the right of Bush, saying that now is not the time to consider Palestinian statehood. And Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, has made considerable inroads among liberal Jewish donors.Despite the stepped-up challenges from Obama and Giuliani, a recent poll of 200 rabbis from all of the major denominations named her as the presidential candidate most supportive of Israel and Jewish causes.
One might think that it is evident that the power of the Lobby has been lifted to it's current hyper intensity in large part due to the terror events of 9/11 and the false attribution of Muslim fanatics as the cause or even as unwilling patsies on the scene. It's worth emphasizing that the terror of 9/11 is the springboard and the repeated justification for the phony but powerful and disastrous "War on Terror." That's bad enough. Equally dispiriting is that even opponents of Bush's purposeful and endless war against civilization have difficulty looking at the stark evidence of controlled demolition which ought to demonstrate that Osama couldn't have done it.
(For a handy primer on some of the evidence demonstrating that it must have been an inside job see: Summary of David Ray Griffin's 10 major points in support of controlled demolition [ http://www.truthmove.org/content/demolition-wtc-7/ ]This particular link provides, among much else, a handy video of the rather obvious free fall controlled demolition of WTC Building 7.
It's also probably clear to many that the reason that so many on the left choose to believe Bush on this matter and no other is because they are comfortable with the notion of fanatical Muslim terrorists -- which is precisely the core of the strength of the Lobby.
Ronald
***
Tom Dispatch
posted 2007-09-13
Tomgram: Tony Karon on Growing Dissent among American Jews
I often think of the letters that come into the Tomdispatch email box as the university of my later life -- messages from around the world, offering commentary, criticism, encouragement, but mainly teaching me about lives (and versions of life) I would otherwise know little or nothing about. Then again, the Internet has a way of releasing inhibitions and, from time to time, the Tomdispatch email box is also a sobering reminder of the mindless hate in our world -- of every sort, but sometimes of a strikingly anti-Semitic sort, letters that are wildly angry and eager, above all, to shut down or shut up commentary or debate of any sort.
It's ironic, then, that the threat of sparking such "anti-Semitism," as well as charges of being functionally anti-Semitic, have been used for a long time in this country as a kind of club to enforce, within the Jewish community, an exceedingly narrow range of correct opinion on Israel and its behavior in the world. In recent months, such attacks from within the Jewish establishment seem to have escalated whenever any professor or critic steps even slightly out of line, and the recent controversial book, The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt has caused a little storm of consternation. Tony Karon, who runs the always provocative Rootless Cosmopolitan website, suggests that these attacks may not be what they seem, that the need to turn back every deviation from Jewish orthodoxy may actually reflect a loosening of control within the political world of American Jews, and a new opening, a Jewish glasnost. Tom
Is a Jewish Glasnost Coming to America?
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=13777
[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), which has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.]
Despite a Backlash, Many Jews Are Questioning Israel
By Tony Karon
First, a confession: It may tell me that I hate myself, but I can't help loving Masada2000, the website maintained by militant right-wing Zionist followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane. The reason I love it is its D.I.R.T. list -- that's "Dense anti-Israel Repugnant Traitors" (also published as the S.H.I.T. list of "Self-Hating and Israel-Threatening" Jews). And that's not because I get a bigger entry than -- staying in the Ks -- Henry Kissinger, Michael Kinsley, Naomi Klein, or Ted Koppel. The Kahanists are a pretty flaky lot, counting everyone from Woody Allen to present Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on their list of Jewish traitors. But the habit of branding Jewish dissidents -- those of us who reject the nationalist notion that as Jews, our fate is tied to that of Israel, or the idea that our people's historic suffering somehow exempts Israel from moral reproach for its abuses against others -- as "self-haters"is not unfamiliar to me.
In 1981, my father went, as a delegate of the B'nai B'rith Jewish service organization, to a meeting of the Cape Town chapter of the Jewish Board of Deputies, the governing body of South Africa's Jewish communal institutions. The topic of the meeting was "Anti-Semitism on Campus." My father was pretty shocked and deeply embarrassed when Exhibit A of this phenomenon turned out to be something I'd published in a student newspaper condemning an Israeli raid on Lebanon.
By then, I was an activist in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, which was consuming most of my energies. Having been an active left-Zionist in my teenage years, I had, however, retained an interest in the Middle East -- and, of course, we all knew that Israel was the South African white apartheid regime's most important ally, arming its security forces in defiance of a UN arms embargo. Even back then, the connection between the circumstances of black people under apartheid, and those of Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, seemed obvious enough to me and to many other Jews in the South African liberation movement: Both were peoples harshly ruled over by a state that denied them the rights of citizenship.
Still, this was a first. I could recite the kiddush from memory, sing old kibbutznik anthems and curse in Yiddish. I had been called a "bloody Jew" many times, but never an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew. What quickly became clear to me, though, was the purpose of that "self-hating" smear -- to marginalize Jews who dissent from Zionism, the nationalist ideology of Jewish statehood, in order to warn others off expressing similar views.
What I like about the S.H.I.T. list's approach to the job -- other than the "Dangerous Minds" theme music that plays as you read it -- is the way it embraces literally thousands of names, including many of my favorite Jews. Memo to the sages at Masada2000: If you're trying to paint dissenters as demented traitors, you really have to keep the numbers down. Instead, Masada2000's inadvertent message is: "Think critically about Israel and you'll join Woody Allen and a cast of thousands..."
A New Landscape of Jewish Dissent
The Kahanists are a fringe movement, but their self-defeating list may nonetheless be a metaphor for the coming crisis in more mainstream nationalist efforts to police Jewish identity. The Zionist establishment has had remarkable success over the past half-century in convincing others that Israel and its supporters speak for, and represent, "the Jews." The value to their cause of making Israel indistinguishable from Jews at large is that it becomes a lot easier to shield Israel from reproach. It suggests, in the most emphatic terms, that serious criticism of Israel amounts to criticism of Jews. More than a millennium of violent Christian persecution of Jews, culminating in the Holocaust, has made many in the West rightly sensitive towards any claims of anti-Semitism, a sensitivity many Zionists like to exploit to gain a carte blanche exemption from criticism for a state they claim to be the very personification of Jewishness.
So, despite Israel's ongoing dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, then-Harvard president Larry Summers evidently had no trouble saying, in 2002, that harsh criticisms of Israel are "anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent."
Robin Shepherd of the usually sensible British think-tank Chatham House has gone even further, arguing that comparing Israel with apartheid South Africa is "objective anti-Semitism." Says Shepherd: "Of course one can criticize Israel, but there is a litmus test, and that is when the critics begin using constant key references to South Africa and the Nazis, using terms such as ‘bantustans.' None of these people, of course, will admit to being racist, but this kind of anti-Semitism is a much more sophisticated form of racism, and the kind of hate-filled rhetoric and imagery are on the same moral level as racism, so gross and distorted that they are defaming an entire people, since Israel is an essentially Jewish project."
I'd agree that the Nazi analogy is specious -- not only wrong but offensive in its intent, although not "racist". But the logic of suggesting it is "racist" to compare Israel to apartheid South Africa is simply bizarre. What if Israel objectively behaves like apartheid South Africa? What then?
Actually, Mr. Shepherd, I'd be more inclined to pin the racist label on anyone who conflates the world's 13 million Jews with a country in which 8.2 million of them -- almost two thirds -- have chosen not to live.
Although you wouldn't know it -- not if you followed Jewish life simply through the activities of such major Jewish communal bodies as the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League -- the extent to which the eight million Jews of the Diaspora identify with Israel is increasingly open to question (much to the horror of the Zionist-oriented Jewish establishment). In a recent study funded by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies (an important donor to Jewish communal organizations), Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman revealed that their survey data had yielded some extraordinary findings: In order to measure the depth of attachment of American Jews to Israel, the researchers asked whether respondents would consider the destruction of the State of Israel a "personal tragedy." Less than half of those aged under 35 answered "yes" and only 54% percent of those aged 35-50 agreed (compared with 78% of those over 65). The study found that only 54% of those under 35 felt comfortable with the very idea of a Jewish state.
As groups such as the Jewish Agency in Israel (which aims to promote Jewish immigration) and the American Jewish committee expressed dismay over the findings, Cohen and Kelman had more bad news: They believed they were seeing a long-term trend that was unlikely to be reversed, as each generation of American Jews becomes even more integrated into the American mainstream than its parents and grandparents had been. The study, said Cohen, reflected "very significant shifts that have been occurring in what it means to be a Jew."
Cohen's and Kelman's startling figures alone underscore the absurdity of Shepherd's suggestion that to challenge Israel is to "defame an entire people." They also help frame the context for what I would call an emerging Jewish glasnost in which Jewish critics of Israel are increasingly willing to make themselves known. When I arrived in the United States 13 years ago, I was often surprised to find that people with whom I seemed to share a progressive, cosmopolitan worldview would suddenly morph into raging ultranationalists when the conversation turned to Israel. Back then, it would have seemed unthinkable for historian Tony Judt to advocate a binational state for Israelis and Palestinians or for Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to write that "Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now." Unthinkable, too, was the angry renunciation of Zionism by Avrum Burg, former speaker of Israel's Knesset.
And, in those days, with the internet still in its infancy, the online Jewish dissident landscape that today ranges from groups in the Zionist peace camp like Tikkun, Americans for Peace Now, and the Israel Policy Forum, among others, to anti-Zionist Jews of the left such as Not in My Name and Jewish Voices for Peace, had not yet taken shape. Indeed, there was no Haaretz online English edition in which the reality of Israel was being candidly reported and debated in terms that would still be deemed heretical in much of the U.S. media.
Thirteen years ago, there certainly was no organization around like "Birthright Unplugged," which aims to subvert the "Taglit-Birthright Program," funded by Zionist groups and the government of Israel, that provides free trips to Israel for young Jewish Americans in order to encourage them to identify with the State. (The "Unplugged" version encourages young Jews from the U.S. to take the Birthright tour and its free air travel, and then stay on for a two-week program of visits to the West Bank, to Israeli human rights organizations, and to peace groups. The goal is to see another side of Israel, the side experienced by its victims -- and by Israelis who oppose the occupation of the West Bank.)
Clearly, much has changed, and the ability of the Zionist establishment -- the America Israel Political Action Committee, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and others -- to impose nationalist boundaries on Jewish identity is being eroded. It's worth remembering in this context that anti-Zionism was originally a Jewish movement -- the majority of European Jews before World War II rejected the Zionist movement and its calls for a mass migration from Europe to build a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. The most popular Jewish political organization in Europe had been the Yiddishe Arbeiter Bund, a Jewish socialist party that was militantly anti-Zionist. Even among the rabbis of Europe, there was considerable opposition to the idea of Jews taking control of Zion before the arrival of the Messiah (and there still is, of course, from a sizable minority of the ultra-Orthodox).
Of course, the Holocaust changed all that. For hundreds of thousands of survivors, a safe haven in Palestine became a historic necessity.
But the world has changed since then, and as the research cited above suggests, the trends clearly don't favor the Zionists. I was reared on the idea that a Jewish nation-state in the Middle East was the "manifest destiny" of the Jews. I learned in the Zionist movement that Jewish life in the Diaspora was inevitably stunted and ultimately doomed. But history may have decided otherwise. The majority of us have chosen to live elsewhere, thereby voting with our feet. Indeed, according to Israeli government figures, some 750,000 Israeli Jews (15% of Israel's Jewish population) are now living abroad, further undermining the Zionist premise that the Diaspora is an innately hostile and anti-Semitic place.
The Ferocity of Nationalism, The Universality of Justice
Increasingly anxious that most of us have no intention of going to Israel to boost Jewish numbers, the Israel-based Jewish Agency -- apparently oblivious to irony of its own actions -- has complained to Germany over official policies that make life there so attractive to Jewish immigrants from former Soviet territories, thus discouraging them from going to Israel. More immediately threatening to the Zionist establishment, however, is another reality: Many Jews are beginning to make once unthinkable criticisms of Israel's behavior. If you want to bludgeon Jewish critics with the charge of "anti-Semitism" when they challenge Israel's actions, then it's hardly helpful to have other Jews standing up and expressing the same thoughts. It undermines the sense, treasured by Israel's most fervent advocates, that they represent a cast-iron consensus among American Jews in particular.
That much has been clear in the response to the publication of John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt's controversial new book The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, which challenges the wisdom and morality of the unashamed and absolute bias in U.S. foreign policy towards Israel. In an exchange on the NPR show Fresh Air, Walt was at pains to stress, as in his book, that the Israel Lobby, as he sees it, is not a Jewish lobby, but rather an association of groupings with a right-wing political agenda often at odds with majority American-Jewish opinion,
Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, argued exactly the opposite: Walt and Mearsheimer, he claimed, were effectively promoting anti-Semitism, because the Israel lobby is nothing more (or less) than the collective will of the American Jewish community. Which, of course, it isn't. In fact, in the American Jewish community you can increasingly hear open echoes of Mearsheimer and Walt's skepticism over whether the lobby's efforts are good for Israel.
But Foxman's case is undercut by something far broader -- an emerging Jewish glasnost. Of course, like any break with a long-established nationalist consensus, the burgeoning of dissent has provoked a backlash. Norman Finkelstein -- the noted Holocaust scholar and fierce critic of Zionism recently hounded out of De Paul University in a campaign of vilification based precisely on the idea that fierce criticism of Israel is the equivalent of "hate speech" -- could be forgiven for being skeptical of the idea that the grip of the ultranationalists is weakening.
So, too, could Joel Kovel. After all, he found his important book Overcoming Zionism pulled by his American publisher, the University of Michigan Press, also on the "hate speech" charge.
Jimmy Carter -- who was called a "Holocaust denier" (yes, a Holocaust denier!) for using the apartheid analogy in his book on Israel -- and Mearsheimer and Walt might have reason for skepticism as well. But I'd argue that the renewed ferocity of recent attacks on those who have strayed from the nationalist straight and narrow has been a product of panic in the Jewish establishment -- a panic born of the fact that its losing its grip. As in the former Soviet Union with the actual glasnost moment, this is a process, once started, that's only likely to be accelerated by such witch-hunting.
Last year, a very cranky academic by the name of Alvin Rosenfeld, on behalf of the oldest Jewish advocacy group in the U.S., the American Jewish Committee, got a flurry of attention by warning that liberal Jews such as playwright Tony Kushner, Tony Judt and Richard Cohen, all of whom had recently offered fundamental criticisms of Israel, were giving comfort to a "new anti-Semitism."
"They're helping to make [anti-Semitic] views about the Jewish state respectable -- for example, that it's a Nazi-like state, comparable to South African apartheid; that it engages in ethnic cleansing and genocide. These charges are not true and can have the effect of delegitimizing Israel."
In reality, though, whether or not you agree with the views of those critics, they simply can't legitimately be called anti-Semitic. Actually, I doubt any of those he cited have accused Israel of genocide or compared it in any way to the Nazi state. (Former Israeli Knesset Speaker Avram Burg, however, recently did write, in reference to Israeli militarism and hostility to Arabs, "It is sometimes difficult for me to distinguish between the primeval National-Socialism and some national cultural doctrines of the here-and-now."). But the ethnic-cleansing in which the Israelis expelled 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 and the apartheid character of Israel's present occupation of the West Bank are objective realities. Rosenfeld is suggesting that, to take an honest look at either the occupation or the events of 1948, as so many Israeli writers, journalists, and politicians have done, is to "delegitimize" Israel and promote anti-Semitism.
Just last week, Danny Rubinstein, senior correspondent covering Palestinian affairs for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was slated to speak to the British Zionist Federation – and then, at the last minute, his speech was canceled. The reason? Rubinstein had pointed out that "today Israel is an apartheid state with different status for different communities." (While many liberal Jewish Americans can't bring themselves to accept the apartheid comparison, that's not true of their Israeli counterparts who actually know what's going on in the West Bank. Former education minister Shulamit Aloni, for example, or journalist Amira Hass use the comparison. (The comparison first occurred to me on a visit to Kibbutz Yizreel in 1978, when the elders of my Zionist youth movement, Habonim, who had emigrated from South Africa to Israel, warned that the settlement policy of the then-new Likud government was designed to prevent Israel letting go of the West Bank. The population there, they told us, would never be given the right to vote in Israel, and so the result would be, as they presciently put it, "an apartheid situation.")
Use of the term "apartheid" in reference to the occupation does draw the attention of those who prefer to look away from the fact that Israel is routinely engaged in behavior democratic society has deemed morally odious and unacceptable when it has occurred in other contexts. It is precisely because that fact makes them uncomfortable, I suspect, that they react so emotionally to the A-word. Take black South Africans who suffered under apartheid on a visit to the West Bank -- a mild-mannered moderate Nobel Peace Prize winner such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, for example -- ask them about the validity of the comparison, and you know the answer you're going to get.
Moreover, it's an answer with which a growing number of Jews, who place the universal, ethical and social justice traditions of their faith above those of narrow tribalism, are willing to deal.
In an earlier commentary, perhaps presaging his break with Zionism, Burg noted in 2002:
"Yes, we Israelis have revived the Hebrew language, created a marvelous theater and a strong national currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq. But is this why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or antimissile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed. It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know."
Although I am not religious, I share Burg's view that universal justice is at the heart of the Jewish tradition. Growing up in apartheid South Africa was an object lesson in Jewish ethics. Yes, there was plenty of anti-Semitism in the colonial white society of my childhood, but the mantle of victimhood belonged to others. And if you responded to the in-no-way-exclusively-so, but very Jewish impulse to seek justice, you found yourself working side by side not only with the remarkable number of Jews who filled leadership roles in the liberation movement, but also with Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and others.
Judaism's universal ethical calling can't really be answered if we live only among ourselves -- and Israel's own experience suggests it's essentially impossible to do so without doing injustice to others. Israel is only 59 years old, a brief moment in the sweep of Jewish history, and I'd argue that Judaism's survival depends instead on its ability to offer a sustaining moral and ethical anchor in a world where the concepts of nation and nationality are in decline (but the ferocity of nationalism may not be). Israel's relevance to Judaism's survival depends first and foremost on its ability, as Burg points out, to deliver justice, not only to its citizens, but to those it has hurt.
Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME who also maintains his own website, Rootless Cosmopolitan, where he comments on everything from geopolitical conflict to Jewish identity issues. "Rootless Cosmopolitan" was Stalin's euphemistic pejorative for "Jew" during his anti-Semitic purges of the late 1940s, but Karon, who grew up in South Africa and whose family roots lie in Eastern Europe, and before that France, takes the term as a badge of honor. Karon was a teenage activist in the left-Zionist Habonim movement before finding his way into the big tent of the anti-apartheid liberation struggle, an experience that prompted him to re-imagine what it meant to be a Jew in the world.
Copyright 2007 Tony Karon
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Here are a few sentences about Hillary's position on Israel from the JTA (9.12.07) which effectively sum up the depth of the obeisance to the Lobby of the Democrat front runners -- and virtually everyone else running for president.
In her new position paper on Israel, Hillary Rodham Clinton comes not only to praise the Jewish state but to bury doubts that she would be any less vigilant in its protection than the Bush administration...
Perhaps, but Clinton faces challenges for Jewish support from two flanks: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is a Republican front-runner, has moved even further to the right of Bush, saying that now is not the time to consider Palestinian statehood. And Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, has made considerable inroads among liberal Jewish donors.Despite the stepped-up challenges from Obama and Giuliani, a recent poll of 200 rabbis from all of the major denominations named her as the presidential candidate most supportive of Israel and Jewish causes.
One might think that it is evident that the power of the Lobby has been lifted to it's current hyper intensity in large part due to the terror events of 9/11 and the false attribution of Muslim fanatics as the cause or even as unwilling patsies on the scene. It's worth emphasizing that the terror of 9/11 is the springboard and the repeated justification for the phony but powerful and disastrous "War on Terror." That's bad enough. Equally dispiriting is that even opponents of Bush's purposeful and endless war against civilization have difficulty looking at the stark evidence of controlled demolition which ought to demonstrate that Osama couldn't have done it.
(For a handy primer on some of the evidence demonstrating that it must have been an inside job see: Summary of David Ray Griffin's 10 major points in support of controlled demolition [ http://www.truthmove.org/content/demolition-wtc-7/ ]This particular link provides, among much else, a handy video of the rather obvious free fall controlled demolition of WTC Building 7.
It's also probably clear to many that the reason that so many on the left choose to believe Bush on this matter and no other is because they are comfortable with the notion of fanatical Muslim terrorists -- which is precisely the core of the strength of the Lobby.
Ronald
***
Tom Dispatch
posted 2007-09-13
Tomgram: Tony Karon on Growing Dissent among American Jews
I often think of the letters that come into the Tomdispatch email box as the university of my later life -- messages from around the world, offering commentary, criticism, encouragement, but mainly teaching me about lives (and versions of life) I would otherwise know little or nothing about. Then again, the Internet has a way of releasing inhibitions and, from time to time, the Tomdispatch email box is also a sobering reminder of the mindless hate in our world -- of every sort, but sometimes of a strikingly anti-Semitic sort, letters that are wildly angry and eager, above all, to shut down or shut up commentary or debate of any sort.
It's ironic, then, that the threat of sparking such "anti-Semitism," as well as charges of being functionally anti-Semitic, have been used for a long time in this country as a kind of club to enforce, within the Jewish community, an exceedingly narrow range of correct opinion on Israel and its behavior in the world. In recent months, such attacks from within the Jewish establishment seem to have escalated whenever any professor or critic steps even slightly out of line, and the recent controversial book, The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt has caused a little storm of consternation. Tony Karon, who runs the always provocative Rootless Cosmopolitan website, suggests that these attacks may not be what they seem, that the need to turn back every deviation from Jewish orthodoxy may actually reflect a loosening of control within the political world of American Jews, and a new opening, a Jewish glasnost. Tom
Is a Jewish Glasnost Coming to America?
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=13777
[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), which has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.]
Despite a Backlash, Many Jews Are Questioning Israel
By Tony Karon
First, a confession: It may tell me that I hate myself, but I can't help loving Masada2000, the website maintained by militant right-wing Zionist followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane. The reason I love it is its D.I.R.T. list -- that's "Dense anti-Israel Repugnant Traitors" (also published as the S.H.I.T. list of "Self-Hating and Israel-Threatening" Jews). And that's not because I get a bigger entry than -- staying in the Ks -- Henry Kissinger, Michael Kinsley, Naomi Klein, or Ted Koppel. The Kahanists are a pretty flaky lot, counting everyone from Woody Allen to present Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on their list of Jewish traitors. But the habit of branding Jewish dissidents -- those of us who reject the nationalist notion that as Jews, our fate is tied to that of Israel, or the idea that our people's historic suffering somehow exempts Israel from moral reproach for its abuses against others -- as "self-haters"is not unfamiliar to me.
In 1981, my father went, as a delegate of the B'nai B'rith Jewish service organization, to a meeting of the Cape Town chapter of the Jewish Board of Deputies, the governing body of South Africa's Jewish communal institutions. The topic of the meeting was "Anti-Semitism on Campus." My father was pretty shocked and deeply embarrassed when Exhibit A of this phenomenon turned out to be something I'd published in a student newspaper condemning an Israeli raid on Lebanon.
By then, I was an activist in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, which was consuming most of my energies. Having been an active left-Zionist in my teenage years, I had, however, retained an interest in the Middle East -- and, of course, we all knew that Israel was the South African white apartheid regime's most important ally, arming its security forces in defiance of a UN arms embargo. Even back then, the connection between the circumstances of black people under apartheid, and those of Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, seemed obvious enough to me and to many other Jews in the South African liberation movement: Both were peoples harshly ruled over by a state that denied them the rights of citizenship.
Still, this was a first. I could recite the kiddush from memory, sing old kibbutznik anthems and curse in Yiddish. I had been called a "bloody Jew" many times, but never an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew. What quickly became clear to me, though, was the purpose of that "self-hating" smear -- to marginalize Jews who dissent from Zionism, the nationalist ideology of Jewish statehood, in order to warn others off expressing similar views.
What I like about the S.H.I.T. list's approach to the job -- other than the "Dangerous Minds" theme music that plays as you read it -- is the way it embraces literally thousands of names, including many of my favorite Jews. Memo to the sages at Masada2000: If you're trying to paint dissenters as demented traitors, you really have to keep the numbers down. Instead, Masada2000's inadvertent message is: "Think critically about Israel and you'll join Woody Allen and a cast of thousands..."
A New Landscape of Jewish Dissent
The Kahanists are a fringe movement, but their self-defeating list may nonetheless be a metaphor for the coming crisis in more mainstream nationalist efforts to police Jewish identity. The Zionist establishment has had remarkable success over the past half-century in convincing others that Israel and its supporters speak for, and represent, "the Jews." The value to their cause of making Israel indistinguishable from Jews at large is that it becomes a lot easier to shield Israel from reproach. It suggests, in the most emphatic terms, that serious criticism of Israel amounts to criticism of Jews. More than a millennium of violent Christian persecution of Jews, culminating in the Holocaust, has made many in the West rightly sensitive towards any claims of anti-Semitism, a sensitivity many Zionists like to exploit to gain a carte blanche exemption from criticism for a state they claim to be the very personification of Jewishness.
So, despite Israel's ongoing dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, then-Harvard president Larry Summers evidently had no trouble saying, in 2002, that harsh criticisms of Israel are "anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent."
Robin Shepherd of the usually sensible British think-tank Chatham House has gone even further, arguing that comparing Israel with apartheid South Africa is "objective anti-Semitism." Says Shepherd: "Of course one can criticize Israel, but there is a litmus test, and that is when the critics begin using constant key references to South Africa and the Nazis, using terms such as ‘bantustans.' None of these people, of course, will admit to being racist, but this kind of anti-Semitism is a much more sophisticated form of racism, and the kind of hate-filled rhetoric and imagery are on the same moral level as racism, so gross and distorted that they are defaming an entire people, since Israel is an essentially Jewish project."
I'd agree that the Nazi analogy is specious -- not only wrong but offensive in its intent, although not "racist". But the logic of suggesting it is "racist" to compare Israel to apartheid South Africa is simply bizarre. What if Israel objectively behaves like apartheid South Africa? What then?
Actually, Mr. Shepherd, I'd be more inclined to pin the racist label on anyone who conflates the world's 13 million Jews with a country in which 8.2 million of them -- almost two thirds -- have chosen not to live.
Although you wouldn't know it -- not if you followed Jewish life simply through the activities of such major Jewish communal bodies as the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League -- the extent to which the eight million Jews of the Diaspora identify with Israel is increasingly open to question (much to the horror of the Zionist-oriented Jewish establishment). In a recent study funded by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies (an important donor to Jewish communal organizations), Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman revealed that their survey data had yielded some extraordinary findings: In order to measure the depth of attachment of American Jews to Israel, the researchers asked whether respondents would consider the destruction of the State of Israel a "personal tragedy." Less than half of those aged under 35 answered "yes" and only 54% percent of those aged 35-50 agreed (compared with 78% of those over 65). The study found that only 54% of those under 35 felt comfortable with the very idea of a Jewish state.
As groups such as the Jewish Agency in Israel (which aims to promote Jewish immigration) and the American Jewish committee expressed dismay over the findings, Cohen and Kelman had more bad news: They believed they were seeing a long-term trend that was unlikely to be reversed, as each generation of American Jews becomes even more integrated into the American mainstream than its parents and grandparents had been. The study, said Cohen, reflected "very significant shifts that have been occurring in what it means to be a Jew."
Cohen's and Kelman's startling figures alone underscore the absurdity of Shepherd's suggestion that to challenge Israel is to "defame an entire people." They also help frame the context for what I would call an emerging Jewish glasnost in which Jewish critics of Israel are increasingly willing to make themselves known. When I arrived in the United States 13 years ago, I was often surprised to find that people with whom I seemed to share a progressive, cosmopolitan worldview would suddenly morph into raging ultranationalists when the conversation turned to Israel. Back then, it would have seemed unthinkable for historian Tony Judt to advocate a binational state for Israelis and Palestinians or for Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to write that "Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now." Unthinkable, too, was the angry renunciation of Zionism by Avrum Burg, former speaker of Israel's Knesset.
And, in those days, with the internet still in its infancy, the online Jewish dissident landscape that today ranges from groups in the Zionist peace camp like Tikkun, Americans for Peace Now, and the Israel Policy Forum, among others, to anti-Zionist Jews of the left such as Not in My Name and Jewish Voices for Peace, had not yet taken shape. Indeed, there was no Haaretz online English edition in which the reality of Israel was being candidly reported and debated in terms that would still be deemed heretical in much of the U.S. media.
Thirteen years ago, there certainly was no organization around like "Birthright Unplugged," which aims to subvert the "Taglit-Birthright Program," funded by Zionist groups and the government of Israel, that provides free trips to Israel for young Jewish Americans in order to encourage them to identify with the State. (The "Unplugged" version encourages young Jews from the U.S. to take the Birthright tour and its free air travel, and then stay on for a two-week program of visits to the West Bank, to Israeli human rights organizations, and to peace groups. The goal is to see another side of Israel, the side experienced by its victims -- and by Israelis who oppose the occupation of the West Bank.)
Clearly, much has changed, and the ability of the Zionist establishment -- the America Israel Political Action Committee, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and others -- to impose nationalist boundaries on Jewish identity is being eroded. It's worth remembering in this context that anti-Zionism was originally a Jewish movement -- the majority of European Jews before World War II rejected the Zionist movement and its calls for a mass migration from Europe to build a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. The most popular Jewish political organization in Europe had been the Yiddishe Arbeiter Bund, a Jewish socialist party that was militantly anti-Zionist. Even among the rabbis of Europe, there was considerable opposition to the idea of Jews taking control of Zion before the arrival of the Messiah (and there still is, of course, from a sizable minority of the ultra-Orthodox).
Of course, the Holocaust changed all that. For hundreds of thousands of survivors, a safe haven in Palestine became a historic necessity.
But the world has changed since then, and as the research cited above suggests, the trends clearly don't favor the Zionists. I was reared on the idea that a Jewish nation-state in the Middle East was the "manifest destiny" of the Jews. I learned in the Zionist movement that Jewish life in the Diaspora was inevitably stunted and ultimately doomed. But history may have decided otherwise. The majority of us have chosen to live elsewhere, thereby voting with our feet. Indeed, according to Israeli government figures, some 750,000 Israeli Jews (15% of Israel's Jewish population) are now living abroad, further undermining the Zionist premise that the Diaspora is an innately hostile and anti-Semitic place.
The Ferocity of Nationalism, The Universality of Justice
Increasingly anxious that most of us have no intention of going to Israel to boost Jewish numbers, the Israel-based Jewish Agency -- apparently oblivious to irony of its own actions -- has complained to Germany over official policies that make life there so attractive to Jewish immigrants from former Soviet territories, thus discouraging them from going to Israel. More immediately threatening to the Zionist establishment, however, is another reality: Many Jews are beginning to make once unthinkable criticisms of Israel's behavior. If you want to bludgeon Jewish critics with the charge of "anti-Semitism" when they challenge Israel's actions, then it's hardly helpful to have other Jews standing up and expressing the same thoughts. It undermines the sense, treasured by Israel's most fervent advocates, that they represent a cast-iron consensus among American Jews in particular.
That much has been clear in the response to the publication of John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt's controversial new book The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, which challenges the wisdom and morality of the unashamed and absolute bias in U.S. foreign policy towards Israel. In an exchange on the NPR show Fresh Air, Walt was at pains to stress, as in his book, that the Israel Lobby, as he sees it, is not a Jewish lobby, but rather an association of groupings with a right-wing political agenda often at odds with majority American-Jewish opinion,
Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, argued exactly the opposite: Walt and Mearsheimer, he claimed, were effectively promoting anti-Semitism, because the Israel lobby is nothing more (or less) than the collective will of the American Jewish community. Which, of course, it isn't. In fact, in the American Jewish community you can increasingly hear open echoes of Mearsheimer and Walt's skepticism over whether the lobby's efforts are good for Israel.
But Foxman's case is undercut by something far broader -- an emerging Jewish glasnost. Of course, like any break with a long-established nationalist consensus, the burgeoning of dissent has provoked a backlash. Norman Finkelstein -- the noted Holocaust scholar and fierce critic of Zionism recently hounded out of De Paul University in a campaign of vilification based precisely on the idea that fierce criticism of Israel is the equivalent of "hate speech" -- could be forgiven for being skeptical of the idea that the grip of the ultranationalists is weakening.
So, too, could Joel Kovel. After all, he found his important book Overcoming Zionism pulled by his American publisher, the University of Michigan Press, also on the "hate speech" charge.
Jimmy Carter -- who was called a "Holocaust denier" (yes, a Holocaust denier!) for using the apartheid analogy in his book on Israel -- and Mearsheimer and Walt might have reason for skepticism as well. But I'd argue that the renewed ferocity of recent attacks on those who have strayed from the nationalist straight and narrow has been a product of panic in the Jewish establishment -- a panic born of the fact that its losing its grip. As in the former Soviet Union with the actual glasnost moment, this is a process, once started, that's only likely to be accelerated by such witch-hunting.
Last year, a very cranky academic by the name of Alvin Rosenfeld, on behalf of the oldest Jewish advocacy group in the U.S., the American Jewish Committee, got a flurry of attention by warning that liberal Jews such as playwright Tony Kushner, Tony Judt and Richard Cohen, all of whom had recently offered fundamental criticisms of Israel, were giving comfort to a "new anti-Semitism."
"They're helping to make [anti-Semitic] views about the Jewish state respectable -- for example, that it's a Nazi-like state, comparable to South African apartheid; that it engages in ethnic cleansing and genocide. These charges are not true and can have the effect of delegitimizing Israel."
In reality, though, whether or not you agree with the views of those critics, they simply can't legitimately be called anti-Semitic. Actually, I doubt any of those he cited have accused Israel of genocide or compared it in any way to the Nazi state. (Former Israeli Knesset Speaker Avram Burg, however, recently did write, in reference to Israeli militarism and hostility to Arabs, "It is sometimes difficult for me to distinguish between the primeval National-Socialism and some national cultural doctrines of the here-and-now."). But the ethnic-cleansing in which the Israelis expelled 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 and the apartheid character of Israel's present occupation of the West Bank are objective realities. Rosenfeld is suggesting that, to take an honest look at either the occupation or the events of 1948, as so many Israeli writers, journalists, and politicians have done, is to "delegitimize" Israel and promote anti-Semitism.
Just last week, Danny Rubinstein, senior correspondent covering Palestinian affairs for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was slated to speak to the British Zionist Federation – and then, at the last minute, his speech was canceled. The reason? Rubinstein had pointed out that "today Israel is an apartheid state with different status for different communities." (While many liberal Jewish Americans can't bring themselves to accept the apartheid comparison, that's not true of their Israeli counterparts who actually know what's going on in the West Bank. Former education minister Shulamit Aloni, for example, or journalist Amira Hass use the comparison. (The comparison first occurred to me on a visit to Kibbutz Yizreel in 1978, when the elders of my Zionist youth movement, Habonim, who had emigrated from South Africa to Israel, warned that the settlement policy of the then-new Likud government was designed to prevent Israel letting go of the West Bank. The population there, they told us, would never be given the right to vote in Israel, and so the result would be, as they presciently put it, "an apartheid situation.")
Use of the term "apartheid" in reference to the occupation does draw the attention of those who prefer to look away from the fact that Israel is routinely engaged in behavior democratic society has deemed morally odious and unacceptable when it has occurred in other contexts. It is precisely because that fact makes them uncomfortable, I suspect, that they react so emotionally to the A-word. Take black South Africans who suffered under apartheid on a visit to the West Bank -- a mild-mannered moderate Nobel Peace Prize winner such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, for example -- ask them about the validity of the comparison, and you know the answer you're going to get.
Moreover, it's an answer with which a growing number of Jews, who place the universal, ethical and social justice traditions of their faith above those of narrow tribalism, are willing to deal.
In an earlier commentary, perhaps presaging his break with Zionism, Burg noted in 2002:
"Yes, we Israelis have revived the Hebrew language, created a marvelous theater and a strong national currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq. But is this why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or antimissile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed. It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know."
Although I am not religious, I share Burg's view that universal justice is at the heart of the Jewish tradition. Growing up in apartheid South Africa was an object lesson in Jewish ethics. Yes, there was plenty of anti-Semitism in the colonial white society of my childhood, but the mantle of victimhood belonged to others. And if you responded to the in-no-way-exclusively-so, but very Jewish impulse to seek justice, you found yourself working side by side not only with the remarkable number of Jews who filled leadership roles in the liberation movement, but also with Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and others.
Judaism's universal ethical calling can't really be answered if we live only among ourselves -- and Israel's own experience suggests it's essentially impossible to do so without doing injustice to others. Israel is only 59 years old, a brief moment in the sweep of Jewish history, and I'd argue that Judaism's survival depends instead on its ability to offer a sustaining moral and ethical anchor in a world where the concepts of nation and nationality are in decline (but the ferocity of nationalism may not be). Israel's relevance to Judaism's survival depends first and foremost on its ability, as Burg points out, to deliver justice, not only to its citizens, but to those it has hurt.
Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME who also maintains his own website, Rootless Cosmopolitan, where he comments on everything from geopolitical conflict to Jewish identity issues. "Rootless Cosmopolitan" was Stalin's euphemistic pejorative for "Jew" during his anti-Semitic purges of the late 1940s, but Karon, who grew up in South Africa and whose family roots lie in Eastern Europe, and before that France, takes the term as a badge of honor. Karon was a teenage activist in the left-Zionist Habonim movement before finding his way into the big tent of the anti-apartheid liberation struggle, an experience that prompted him to re-imagine what it meant to be a Jew in the world.
Copyright 2007 Tony Karon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Carl Lesnor: Greenspan and Lenin on "War for Oil"
by Carl Lesnor
September 2007
Even Alan Greenspan admits it, so it must be true! This is the definitive
proof that the Iraq war was really "about " oil. What about oil? Well, according
to Greenspan, Saddam H was thinking of blockading the Straits of Hormuz, so we
had to take him out. The Straits in question just happen to be at the other
end of the Persian Gulf and Iraq didn't have much of a navy and if it did, the
Persians wouldn't have been too happy about it, and besides, the US navy and
air force wouldn't have appreciated the idea very much either, and it's not
clear just what Saddam H was trying to accomplish, but never mind, Alan knew he
was thinking dangerous thoughts and therefore had to be eliminated.
Although this explanation make absolutely no sense, it has been seized upon
like manna from heaven by all the Leninists who have always known that the war
was 'about' oil. Don't think that Leninists are restricted to the fringes of
political discourse, they are all over the mainstream as well as the
opposition. Environmentalists tell us to give up our SUVs, even our cars, so we won't be
forced to fight these unpleasant wars abroad. The Left keeps denouncing the
government for maintaining its domination of mid-east oil supplies -- in other
words for exactly what the government claims to be doing: protecting America's
"vital interests" or "vital national security interests". (The meaningless of
these phrases is a great advantage to those who enjoy throwing them around.)
It's not enough to appeal to the American people's desire to make
sacrifices in order to bring democracy and freedom to unfortunate foreigners who
haven't enjoyed them. They must be told that there's something in it for them.
That we're going to make a lot of money out of this. That the money will insure
our prosperity, and that if we don't take decisive action, we would have to
give up all those creature comforts that make the American Way of Life so
attractive. The warmongers aren't in the least embarrassed by the revelation of the
selfishness lurking beneath their fine words; they are Leninists too. It's
practically unanimous, Vladimir Illyich's statues might have been pulled down,
but his doctrine has conquered the world.
A good example of his enduring influence is to be found on today's WSWS, a
Marxist-Leninist website that is often well informed, well written, and where
their sermon is usually limited to the final paragraph.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/unsw-s21.shtml (They have an
excellent article on the firing of Dan Rather, which I would highly recommend. (
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/rath-s21.shtml ) It's because of
their site's general seriousness and high quality that it's worth analyzing what
they say about Greenspan.
At an educational meeting in Australia, Nick Breams, one of the Socialist leaders, discussing the 'underlying war-aims of the United States' referred to Greenspan's book in which the former Fed chief wrote: '“I’m saddened that it is politically
inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Expanding on this 'admission', Nick Beams,went on to say:
'The tensions and conflicts between the capitalist great powers were
developing along the lines of those that produced two world wars in the first half of
the twentieth century. Imagine for a moment a meeting such as this one, 100
years ago, in 1907. Political discussion would centre on the Moroccan
question, the Balkans question, the Bosnian question, the Eastern question... These
were various parts of the world, some of them somewhat remote, in which the
interests of the great powers and empires clashed—the interests of the British,
Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, Russia, France, and the rising power
Germany.
“The colliding interests of the capitalist Great Powers led eventually to the eruption of world war in 1914. We have now entered into a new pre-war period. That is the meaning of the Iraq war and the threats against Iran.”
And what were the interests of the Great Powers that led to the eruption of
1914? The Eastern Question? The one that Bismarck had said wasn't worth the
bones of a Pomeranian grenadier? (He was referring to Bosnia-Herzegovina) The
Moroccan question, whose trivial economic importance paled in comparison to
questions of national prestige?
Rather than analyzing how these fights about political power and prestige
could be traced back to their origins in the problems of the expanded
reproduction of capital, Beams proudly asserts that the socialist movement 'stands on
the shoulders of giants.'
The giant he has in mind is Trotsky, who, he says, 'explained that the war
arose out of a contradictory process at the very heart of the capitalist
economy. On the one hand the vast developments of technology meant that the
productive forces had now expanded on a global scale. The world, he wrote, had become
one economic workshop, the different parts of which are inseparably connected
with each other. At the same time, however, the world was divided by the
capitalist great powers each of which sought to establish its predominance over the
others, leading to a collision.'
Now Trotsky was indeed a very intelligent man, but this is simply a re-hash
of Marxism 101. It doesn't explain anything about the origin of World War I.
Neither the assassination of Francis Ferdinand by a Serb terrorist who had the
support of the Russian secret services, nor Austria's desire to put an end to
what it saw as a threat to the integrity of its multi-national empire, nor
Russia's desire to escape its domestic political crises by assuming the role of
leader of the Slavs, had anything to do with any vast development of technology.
(The only thing the vast development of technology contributed was
industrialized slaughter, thanks to artillery, machine guns, and poison gas.)
The other giant Beam quotes is the great man himself, Lenin, who 'explained
that with the eruption of war, capitalism had entered a new historical era of
imperialist wars from which there was no way out, other than the overthrow of
the profit system itself.' This dogmatic assertion naturally appeals to those
who have other reasons for wanting to overthrow the profit system -- the
desire for greater equality or the claimed advantages of rational planning, for
example -- and uncritically welcome any argument they can use against the hated
system.
Alas, this so-called scientific analysis is also a counsel of despair. Those
standing on the shoulders of giants might have illustrious forebears, but seem
bereft of followers and few prospects of attracting many. They are no doubt
sustained by a faith that the masses will one day come to see the truth of
their analysis. The problem isn't their faith in human reason; that seems
admirable; it is their allegiance to a doctrine that makes war -- and indeed all
politics -- the automatic consequence of contradictions in the mode of production.
Theirs is a politics in which politics doesn't matter. Is it any wonder that
Marxists -- even genuine ones -- have become an endangered species?
The End
September 2007
Even Alan Greenspan admits it, so it must be true! This is the definitive
proof that the Iraq war was really "about " oil. What about oil? Well, according
to Greenspan, Saddam H was thinking of blockading the Straits of Hormuz, so we
had to take him out. The Straits in question just happen to be at the other
end of the Persian Gulf and Iraq didn't have much of a navy and if it did, the
Persians wouldn't have been too happy about it, and besides, the US navy and
air force wouldn't have appreciated the idea very much either, and it's not
clear just what Saddam H was trying to accomplish, but never mind, Alan knew he
was thinking dangerous thoughts and therefore had to be eliminated.
Although this explanation make absolutely no sense, it has been seized upon
like manna from heaven by all the Leninists who have always known that the war
was 'about' oil. Don't think that Leninists are restricted to the fringes of
political discourse, they are all over the mainstream as well as the
opposition. Environmentalists tell us to give up our SUVs, even our cars, so we won't be
forced to fight these unpleasant wars abroad. The Left keeps denouncing the
government for maintaining its domination of mid-east oil supplies -- in other
words for exactly what the government claims to be doing: protecting America's
"vital interests" or "vital national security interests". (The meaningless of
these phrases is a great advantage to those who enjoy throwing them around.)
It's not enough to appeal to the American people's desire to make
sacrifices in order to bring democracy and freedom to unfortunate foreigners who
haven't enjoyed them. They must be told that there's something in it for them.
That we're going to make a lot of money out of this. That the money will insure
our prosperity, and that if we don't take decisive action, we would have to
give up all those creature comforts that make the American Way of Life so
attractive. The warmongers aren't in the least embarrassed by the revelation of the
selfishness lurking beneath their fine words; they are Leninists too. It's
practically unanimous, Vladimir Illyich's statues might have been pulled down,
but his doctrine has conquered the world.
A good example of his enduring influence is to be found on today's WSWS, a
Marxist-Leninist website that is often well informed, well written, and where
their sermon is usually limited to the final paragraph.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/unsw-s21.shtml (They have an
excellent article on the firing of Dan Rather, which I would highly recommend. (
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/rath-s21.shtml ) It's because of
their site's general seriousness and high quality that it's worth analyzing what
they say about Greenspan.
At an educational meeting in Australia, Nick Breams, one of the Socialist leaders, discussing the 'underlying war-aims of the United States' referred to Greenspan's book in which the former Fed chief wrote: '“I’m saddened that it is politically
inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Expanding on this 'admission', Nick Beams,went on to say:
'The tensions and conflicts between the capitalist great powers were
developing along the lines of those that produced two world wars in the first half of
the twentieth century. Imagine for a moment a meeting such as this one, 100
years ago, in 1907. Political discussion would centre on the Moroccan
question, the Balkans question, the Bosnian question, the Eastern question... These
were various parts of the world, some of them somewhat remote, in which the
interests of the great powers and empires clashed—the interests of the British,
Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, Russia, France, and the rising power
Germany.
“The colliding interests of the capitalist Great Powers led eventually to the eruption of world war in 1914. We have now entered into a new pre-war period. That is the meaning of the Iraq war and the threats against Iran.”
And what were the interests of the Great Powers that led to the eruption of
1914? The Eastern Question? The one that Bismarck had said wasn't worth the
bones of a Pomeranian grenadier? (He was referring to Bosnia-Herzegovina) The
Moroccan question, whose trivial economic importance paled in comparison to
questions of national prestige?
Rather than analyzing how these fights about political power and prestige
could be traced back to their origins in the problems of the expanded
reproduction of capital, Beams proudly asserts that the socialist movement 'stands on
the shoulders of giants.'
The giant he has in mind is Trotsky, who, he says, 'explained that the war
arose out of a contradictory process at the very heart of the capitalist
economy. On the one hand the vast developments of technology meant that the
productive forces had now expanded on a global scale. The world, he wrote, had become
one economic workshop, the different parts of which are inseparably connected
with each other. At the same time, however, the world was divided by the
capitalist great powers each of which sought to establish its predominance over the
others, leading to a collision.'
Now Trotsky was indeed a very intelligent man, but this is simply a re-hash
of Marxism 101. It doesn't explain anything about the origin of World War I.
Neither the assassination of Francis Ferdinand by a Serb terrorist who had the
support of the Russian secret services, nor Austria's desire to put an end to
what it saw as a threat to the integrity of its multi-national empire, nor
Russia's desire to escape its domestic political crises by assuming the role of
leader of the Slavs, had anything to do with any vast development of technology.
(The only thing the vast development of technology contributed was
industrialized slaughter, thanks to artillery, machine guns, and poison gas.)
The other giant Beam quotes is the great man himself, Lenin, who 'explained
that with the eruption of war, capitalism had entered a new historical era of
imperialist wars from which there was no way out, other than the overthrow of
the profit system itself.' This dogmatic assertion naturally appeals to those
who have other reasons for wanting to overthrow the profit system -- the
desire for greater equality or the claimed advantages of rational planning, for
example -- and uncritically welcome any argument they can use against the hated
system.
Alas, this so-called scientific analysis is also a counsel of despair. Those
standing on the shoulders of giants might have illustrious forebears, but seem
bereft of followers and few prospects of attracting many. They are no doubt
sustained by a faith that the masses will one day come to see the truth of
their analysis. The problem isn't their faith in human reason; that seems
admirable; it is their allegiance to a doctrine that makes war -- and indeed all
politics -- the automatic consequence of contradictions in the mode of production.
Theirs is a politics in which politics doesn't matter. Is it any wonder that
Marxists -- even genuine ones -- have become an endangered species?
The End
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Paul Craig Roberts: Why did Kerry stand idly by while questioner was tasered?
One theory advanced by Democracy Now (in 2005?) regarded Kerry's lightening concession of an election he had just won so that the destruction of Falluja could go forward. According to the testimony, the green light to attack Falluja was given after Kerry conceded. The extent of Kerry's treachery was astonishing. It would seem that Kerry ran for president knowing he didn't want to be president -- and his campaign reflected that.
Ronald
***
www.counterpunch.org
September 19, 2007
No Wonder He Didn't Condemn Torture During His 2004 Campaign
Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Naïve Americans who think they live in a free society should watch the video filmed by students at a John Kerry speech September 17, Constitution Day, at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
At the conclusion of Kerry's speech, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year old journalism student was selected by Senator Kerry to ask a question. Meyer held up a copy of BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast's book, Armed Madhouse, and asked if Kerry was aware that Palast's investigations determined that Kerry had actually won the election. Why, Meyer asked, had Kerry conceded the election so quickly when there were so many obvious examples of vote fraud? Why, Meyer, went on to ask, was Kerry refusing to consider Bush's impeachment when Bush was about to initiate another act of military aggression, this time against Iran?
At this point the public's protectors-the police-decided that Meyer had said too much. They grabbed Meyer and began dragging him off. Meyer said repeatedly, "I have done nothing wrong," which under our laws he had not. He threatened no one and assaulted no one.
But the police decided that Meyer, an American citizen, had no right to free speech and no constitutional protection. They threw him to the floor and tasered him right in front of Senator Kerry and the large student audience, who captured on video the unquestionable act of police brutality. Meyer was carted off and jailed on a phony charge of "disrupting a public event."
The question we should all ask is why did a United States Senator just stand there while Gestapo goons violated the constitutional rights of a student participating in a public event, brutalized him in full view of everyone, and then took him off to jail on phony charges?
Kerry's meekness not only in the face of electoral fraud, not only in the face of Bush's wars that are crimes under the Nuremberg standard, but also in the face of police goons trampling the constitutional rights of American citizens makes it completely clear that he was not fit to be president, and he is not fit to be a US senator.
Usually when police violate constitutional rights and commit acts of police brutality they do it when they believe no one is watching, not in front of a large audience. Clearly, the police have become more audacious in their abuse of rights and citizens. What explains the new fearlessness of police to violate rights and brutalize citizens without cause?
The answer is that police, most of whom have authoritarian personalities, have seen that constitutional rights are no longer protected. President Bush does not protect our constitutional rights. Neither does Vice President Cheney, nor the Attorney General, nor the US Congress. Just as Kerry allowed Meyer's rights to be tasered out of him, Congress has enabled Bush to strip people, including American citizens, of constitutional protection and incarcerate them without presenting evidence.
How long before Kerry himself or some other senator will be dragged from his podium and tasered?
The Bush Republicans with complicit Democrats have essentially brought government accountability to an end in the US. The US government has 80,000 people, including ordinary American citizens, on its "no-fly list." No one knows why they are on the list, and no one on the list can find out how to get off it. An unaccountable act by the Bush administration put them there.
Airport Security harasses and abuses people who do not fit any known definition of terrorist. Nalini Ghuman, a British-born citizen and music professor at Mills College in California was met on her return from a trip to England by armed guards at the airplane door and escorted away. A Gestapo goon squad tore up her US visa, defaced her British passport, body searched her, and told her she could leave immediately for England or be sent to a detention center.
Professor Ghuman, an Oxford University graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, says she feels like the character in Kafka's book, The Trial. "I don't know why it's happened, what I'm accused of. There's no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless." Over one year later there is still no answer.
The Bush Republicans and their Democratic toadies have, in the name of "security," made all of us powerless. While Senator John Kerry and his Democratic colleagues stand silently, the Bush administration has stolen our country from us and turned us into subjects.
*The video of Andrew's Mayer's arrest may be found at http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?filmID=601
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Ronald
***
www.counterpunch.org
September 19, 2007
No Wonder He Didn't Condemn Torture During His 2004 Campaign
Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Naïve Americans who think they live in a free society should watch the video filmed by students at a John Kerry speech September 17, Constitution Day, at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
At the conclusion of Kerry's speech, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year old journalism student was selected by Senator Kerry to ask a question. Meyer held up a copy of BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast's book, Armed Madhouse, and asked if Kerry was aware that Palast's investigations determined that Kerry had actually won the election. Why, Meyer asked, had Kerry conceded the election so quickly when there were so many obvious examples of vote fraud? Why, Meyer, went on to ask, was Kerry refusing to consider Bush's impeachment when Bush was about to initiate another act of military aggression, this time against Iran?
At this point the public's protectors-the police-decided that Meyer had said too much. They grabbed Meyer and began dragging him off. Meyer said repeatedly, "I have done nothing wrong," which under our laws he had not. He threatened no one and assaulted no one.
But the police decided that Meyer, an American citizen, had no right to free speech and no constitutional protection. They threw him to the floor and tasered him right in front of Senator Kerry and the large student audience, who captured on video the unquestionable act of police brutality. Meyer was carted off and jailed on a phony charge of "disrupting a public event."
The question we should all ask is why did a United States Senator just stand there while Gestapo goons violated the constitutional rights of a student participating in a public event, brutalized him in full view of everyone, and then took him off to jail on phony charges?
Kerry's meekness not only in the face of electoral fraud, not only in the face of Bush's wars that are crimes under the Nuremberg standard, but also in the face of police goons trampling the constitutional rights of American citizens makes it completely clear that he was not fit to be president, and he is not fit to be a US senator.
Usually when police violate constitutional rights and commit acts of police brutality they do it when they believe no one is watching, not in front of a large audience. Clearly, the police have become more audacious in their abuse of rights and citizens. What explains the new fearlessness of police to violate rights and brutalize citizens without cause?
The answer is that police, most of whom have authoritarian personalities, have seen that constitutional rights are no longer protected. President Bush does not protect our constitutional rights. Neither does Vice President Cheney, nor the Attorney General, nor the US Congress. Just as Kerry allowed Meyer's rights to be tasered out of him, Congress has enabled Bush to strip people, including American citizens, of constitutional protection and incarcerate them without presenting evidence.
How long before Kerry himself or some other senator will be dragged from his podium and tasered?
The Bush Republicans with complicit Democrats have essentially brought government accountability to an end in the US. The US government has 80,000 people, including ordinary American citizens, on its "no-fly list." No one knows why they are on the list, and no one on the list can find out how to get off it. An unaccountable act by the Bush administration put them there.
Airport Security harasses and abuses people who do not fit any known definition of terrorist. Nalini Ghuman, a British-born citizen and music professor at Mills College in California was met on her return from a trip to England by armed guards at the airplane door and escorted away. A Gestapo goon squad tore up her US visa, defaced her British passport, body searched her, and told her she could leave immediately for England or be sent to a detention center.
Professor Ghuman, an Oxford University graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, says she feels like the character in Kafka's book, The Trial. "I don't know why it's happened, what I'm accused of. There's no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless." Over one year later there is still no answer.
The Bush Republicans and their Democratic toadies have, in the name of "security," made all of us powerless. While Senator John Kerry and his Democratic colleagues stand silently, the Bush administration has stolen our country from us and turned us into subjects.
*The video of Andrew's Mayer's arrest may be found at http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?filmID=601
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
IPA: Hillary Clinton's Health Plan
It's not surprising that that Clinton is planning once again to stand in the way of reforming our broken health care system. She did so deliberately when she was in power and is doing the same again today and if she's elected. It's no secret that she supported Nixon and Goldwater. From Michael Moore's SICKO we learned how casually and clearly Nixon stood against health care for the middle and poorer classes. It's not surprising that Hillary is following her mentor and true ideological guiding star. The surprising thing is that she hasn't been exposed for who she is and what she stands for. Perhaps the electorate senses that like her husband (and unlike the others?), she's determined to win.
--Ronald
***
Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________
September 18, 2007
Clinton Health Plan
DAVID HIMMELSTEIN, M.D., david_himmelstein@hms.harvard.edu, http://www.pnhp.org
Himmelstein is associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He said today: "Hillary Clinton is
combining two failed Massachusetts plans: the [former Gov. Michael] Dukakis plan, which fell apart 20 years ago,
and the [Gov. Mitt] Romney plan, which is in the process of falling apart.
"Clinton is advocating the Marie Antoinette approach to health care: 'Let them buy their own coverage.' She is
attempting to force middle class families to buy coverage without making it affordable. Clinton wants to keep the
private insurance industry in the middle of the system." Himmelstein is co-founder of Physicians for a National
Health Program.
QUENTIN YOUNG, M.D., info@pnhp.org, http://www.pnhp.org
Young is national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program. He said: "It's always ironic to
hear Clinton talk about standing up to the insurance companies. She'd tried to work them into her plan [in the
mid-'90s], which is a large part of why it failed. The biggest insurance companies actually backed her plan for a
time while the smaller ones opposed it."
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.
--Ronald
***
Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________
September 18, 2007
Clinton Health Plan
DAVID HIMMELSTEIN, M.D., david_himmelstein@hms.harvard.edu, http://www.pnhp.org
Himmelstein is associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He said today: "Hillary Clinton is
combining two failed Massachusetts plans: the [former Gov. Michael] Dukakis plan, which fell apart 20 years ago,
and the [Gov. Mitt] Romney plan, which is in the process of falling apart.
"Clinton is advocating the Marie Antoinette approach to health care: 'Let them buy their own coverage.' She is
attempting to force middle class families to buy coverage without making it affordable. Clinton wants to keep the
private insurance industry in the middle of the system." Himmelstein is co-founder of Physicians for a National
Health Program.
QUENTIN YOUNG, M.D., info@pnhp.org, http://www.pnhp.org
Young is national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program. He said: "It's always ironic to
hear Clinton talk about standing up to the insurance companies. She'd tried to work them into her plan [in the
mid-'90s], which is a large part of why it failed. The biggest insurance companies actually backed her plan for a
time while the smaller ones opposed it."
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.
Monday, September 17, 2007
NYT (1993): The FBI Allowed (or arranged) the WTC '93 Bombing: What Was Clinton's Role?
Ralph Schoenman was recently in NYC (May 2006) for some lectures, parts of which were broadcast on local, soon to be gone, community access cable. In connection with false flag operations, Schoenman mentioned the 1993 WTC bombing and gave the documentation regarding the Times account which blew the whistle on the FBI operation.
So the truth comes out in plain sight, but it doesn't matter, since it's never repeated and certainly not part of the official story, the only story that is allowed.
In his lecture Schoenman laid out his theory that the Blind Sheik was brought in to this country against Egypt's protests to serve as a patsy in these false flag operations and was aided by the CIA while in Egypt as part of a larger operation to destabilize secular Arab governments.
This reminder from 1993 brings up again the question of Clinton's involvement in these shadow operations. This false flag operation was intended to jump start the war against the Muslim community in the CIA/FBI creation of an Islamic villain and permanent war that is their mission.
Did Clinton know in advance? After the incident, what effort if any did he make to get to the bottom of it? In all likelihood, the best that can be said is that he kept a hands off approach.
--Ronald
The FBI allowed the 1993
WTC bombing to happen
THE NEW YORK TIMES * * * * * Thursday October 28, 1993 Page A1
"Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast" By Ralph Blumenthal
Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building
a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center,
and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting
harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after
the blast. The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb
and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by
an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer,
Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said. The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings that Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as
being in a far better position than previously known to foil
the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers.
The explosion left six people dead, more than a thousand people
injured, and damages in excess of half-a-billion dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court [on charges of involvement] in that attack. Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer, was used by the Government [of the United States] to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists who are now charged in two bombing cases:
the World Trade Center attack, and a foiled plot to destroy
the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels, and other New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the second bombing case, but his work for the Government was erratic, and for months before the World Trade Center blast,
he was feuding with the F.B.I. Supervisor `Messed It Up' After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an undated transcript of a conversation from that period,Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent
about an unnamed F.B.I. supervisor who, he said, "came and messed it up."
"He requested to meet me in the hotel," Mr. Salem says of the supervisor. "He requested to make me to testify, and if he didn't push for that, we'll be going building the bomb with a phony powder, and grabbing the people who was
involved in it. But since you, we didn't do that." The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. Headquarters in Washington about the
Bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev.
Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him, "He said, I don't think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York Office to go to
Washington, D.C." Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute
Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to agree with it, saying of the `New York people': "Well, of course not, because they don't want to get their butts chewed."
Friday, September 14, 2007
Nicholas Lysson: Holocaust and Holodomor
HOLOCAUST AND HOLODOMOR
By Nicholas Lysson
April 2007
(Complete text: http://desip.igc.org/holo_lysson.html )
One might think the worst holocaust deniers—at least the only ones who command serious attention—are those who insist the Nazi holocaust, as it involved the Jews only, was without parallel.
Guenter Lewy argues for example in The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (Oxford University Press, 2000) that while the Gypsies were gassed, shot and otherwise exter-minated in great numbers, right alongside the Jews, they were not true victims of “the” Holocaust (capital “H”) but only of something collateral. Lewy even suggests the Gypsies invited their own destruction with certain cultural traits—in particular, sharply divergent moral standards for dealing among their own and with outsiders.
But pre- or anti-Enlightenment Judaism is hardly a less ethnocentric or hostile moral system. As Edward Gibbon correctly notes in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, ch. 15 (1776), “the wise, the humane Maimonides openly teaches [in The Book of Torts, 5:11] that, if an idolator fall into the water, a Jew ought not to save him from instant death.” See also Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai’s remarkable second-century exercise in ejusdem generis: “The best of the heathen merits death; the best of serpents should have its head crushed; and the most pious of women is prone to sorcery” (Yer. Kid. iv. 66c; Massek. Soferim xv. 10; comp. Mek., Beshallah, Wayehi, 1, and Tan., Wayera, 20, all as cited by JewishEncyclopedia. com). For “heathen” some translators simply write “goyim”; for “prone to sorcery” they write “a witch.” Rabbi Simeon is mentioned more than 700 times in the Talmud.
Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, in Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (2d ed. 2004), say (p. 1) “that in the usual English translations of talmudic literature some of the most sensitive passages are usually toned down or falsified,” and indeed (pp. 150-51) that “the great majority of books on Judaism and Israel, published in English especially, falsify their subject matter,” in part by omitting or obscuring such teachings. For a fuller discussion of the point, see Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, esp. ch. 2 (1994), available online. As to Jews, Gypsies or anyone else, of course, ethnocentrism or even outright cultural hostility as a rationale for genocide is obscene.
A particularly relevant parallel to the Nazi holocaust is the Ukrainian holodomor of 1932-33, a state-created famine—not a crop failure—that killed an estimated five million people in the Ukraine, one million in the Caucasus, and one million elsewhere after the Soviet state confiscated the harvest at gunpoint. Throughout the famine, the state continued to export grain to pay for industrialization. See Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow (Oxford University Press, 1987). Norman Davies gives the following description in Europe: A History, p. 965 (Oxford University Press, 1996). His first paragraph assembles quotations from Conquest; the bracketed phrase is his own:
“A quarter of the rural population, men, women and children, lay dead or dying” in “a great stretch of territory with some forty million inhabitants,” “like one vast Belsen.” “The rest, in various stages of debilitation,” “had no strength to bury their families or neighbours.” “[As at Belsen] well-fed squads of police or party officials supervised the victims.”
. . . All food stocks were forcibly requisitioned; a military cordon prevented all supplies from entering; and the people were left to die. The aim was to kill Ukrainian nationhood, and with it the “class enemy.” The death toll reached some 7 million. The world has seen many terrible famines. . . . But a famine organized as a genocidal act of state policy must be considered unique.
See also Oksana Procyk, Leonid Heretz and James E. Mace, Famine in the Soviet Ukraine, 1932-33 (Harvard University Press, 1986); Nicolas Werth, “The Great Famine,” in Stephane Courtois, et al., The Black Book of Communism, pp. 159-68 (Harvard University Press, 1999); Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin, pp. 257-59 (1996); Miron Dolot, Execution by Hunger (1985); Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, pp. 84-85 (2003); and the Commission on the Ukrainian Famine, Report to Congress (1988). That report, at pp. 6-7, cites estimates of the number killed that range as high as 8 million in the Ukraine and 9 million overall.
Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley, pp. 248-49 (2000) gives this description, drawn from still further sources, all cited in his notes:
A population of “walking corpses” . . . even ate horse-manure for the whole grains of seed it contained. . . . Cannibalism became so common-place that. . . local authorities issued hundreds of posters announcing that “EATING DEAD CHILDREN IS BARBARISM.”. . .
They staggered into towns and collapsed in the squares. . . . Haunting the railway stations these “swollen human shadows, full of rubbish, alive with lice,” followed passengers with mute appeals. . . . [They] “dragged themselves along, begging for bread or searching for scraps in garbage heaps, frozen and filthy. Each morning wagons rolled along the streets picking up the remains of the dead.” Some were picked up before they died and buried in pits so extensive that they resembled sand dunes and so shallow that bodies were dug up and devoured by wolves.
Read more: http://desip.igc.org/holo_lysson.html
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Raw Story: US Demands Purge of Voter Roles
RawStory.com
Purge of voter rolls could swing 2008 election
http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=7499
09/12/2007 Filed by Jason Rhyne
Using statistics and methodology that some voting experts are calling "flawed," the Justice Department's Voting Section is telling 10 US states to purge voter rolls which allegedly show more registered voters than are eligible--a house-cleaning effort AlterNet's Steven Rosenfeld says could swing the 2008 election.
"Voting Section Chief John Tanner called for the purges in letters sent this spring under an arcane provision in the National Voter Registration Act, better known as the Motor Voter law, " says Rosenfeld, adding that the letters "notify states that 10 percent or more of their election jurisdictions have problematic voter rolls. It tells states to report 'the subsequent removal from rolls of persons no longer eligible to vote."
According to experts interviewed by Rosenfeld, however, the Justice Department is misrepresenting the information they are using to make their recommendations.
"That data does not say what they purport it says," David Becker, senior voting rights counsel for People for the American Way, said. "They are saying the data shows the 10 worst voter rolls. They have a lot of explaining to do." Rosenfeld also quotes U.S. Election Assistance Commission consultant Kim Brace, who said "You are basically seeing them grasping at whatever straws are possible to make their point."
Obtaining the same data used by the Voting Section, AlterNet's analysis found that "some states facing Justice Department pressure to purge voters have long been targeted by GOP 'vote fraud' activists, especially where concentrations of minority voters have historically elected Democrats -- such as St. Louis, Philadelphia and South Dakota's Indian reservations."
"Voter roll purges, if incorrectly done, can be a factor in determining election outcomes -- particularly in tight races," Rosenfeld writes. "Looking toward the 2008 election, it appears the purges could be a new and legal way to accomplish a controversial longstanding Republican Party electoral tactic -- thinning the ranks of likely Democratic voters in states where there may be close races."
"The GOP agenda is to make it harder to vote," Joe Rich, former Voting Section Chief told AlterNet. "You purge voters. You don't register voters. This is ripe for partisan decision making. You pick the states where you go after Democrats."
Earlier this year, ePlubirus Media examined what they called a "breathtaking politicization" of the Voting Section after Rich was replaced as chief in 2005 by John Tanner.
"Tanner has waged an aggressive effort to remake the section in his own image -- not an image that most people who promote the core mission of the Voting Rights Act, which the Section is primarily responsible for enforcing, would support," ePlubirus reported.
The 10 states that received Voting Section letters, according to AlterNet, are Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Vermont.
Purge of voter rolls could swing 2008 election
http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=7499
09/12/2007 Filed by Jason Rhyne
Using statistics and methodology that some voting experts are calling "flawed," the Justice Department's Voting Section is telling 10 US states to purge voter rolls which allegedly show more registered voters than are eligible--a house-cleaning effort AlterNet's Steven Rosenfeld says could swing the 2008 election.
"Voting Section Chief John Tanner called for the purges in letters sent this spring under an arcane provision in the National Voter Registration Act, better known as the Motor Voter law, " says Rosenfeld, adding that the letters "notify states that 10 percent or more of their election jurisdictions have problematic voter rolls. It tells states to report 'the subsequent removal from rolls of persons no longer eligible to vote."
According to experts interviewed by Rosenfeld, however, the Justice Department is misrepresenting the information they are using to make their recommendations.
"That data does not say what they purport it says," David Becker, senior voting rights counsel for People for the American Way, said. "They are saying the data shows the 10 worst voter rolls. They have a lot of explaining to do." Rosenfeld also quotes U.S. Election Assistance Commission consultant Kim Brace, who said "You are basically seeing them grasping at whatever straws are possible to make their point."
Obtaining the same data used by the Voting Section, AlterNet's analysis found that "some states facing Justice Department pressure to purge voters have long been targeted by GOP 'vote fraud' activists, especially where concentrations of minority voters have historically elected Democrats -- such as St. Louis, Philadelphia and South Dakota's Indian reservations."
"Voter roll purges, if incorrectly done, can be a factor in determining election outcomes -- particularly in tight races," Rosenfeld writes. "Looking toward the 2008 election, it appears the purges could be a new and legal way to accomplish a controversial longstanding Republican Party electoral tactic -- thinning the ranks of likely Democratic voters in states where there may be close races."
"The GOP agenda is to make it harder to vote," Joe Rich, former Voting Section Chief told AlterNet. "You purge voters. You don't register voters. This is ripe for partisan decision making. You pick the states where you go after Democrats."
Earlier this year, ePlubirus Media examined what they called a "breathtaking politicization" of the Voting Section after Rich was replaced as chief in 2005 by John Tanner.
"Tanner has waged an aggressive effort to remake the section in his own image -- not an image that most people who promote the core mission of the Voting Rights Act, which the Section is primarily responsible for enforcing, would support," ePlubirus reported.
The 10 states that received Voting Section letters, according to AlterNet, are Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Vermont.
Edgar Steelle's Latest Rant:: Military Exercises: Be Very Afraid : Oh yeah, dollar plunging
Here is Edgar Steele's latest rant. Every so often I open one of his emails. The thing that usually impresses me is his tracking of the fall of the dollar which he says is currently below 80 on an index of currencies and falling rapidly -- even more rapidly than he predicted a week ago.(I have to take his word for it as I don't even have the expertise to check up on his figures.) I'm distributing this selection mostly because of the first three items on his ominous portents list. Air Force stand downs, civil defense drills, emergency alert in Illinois?? Where does he get this information? Does he make it all up? However, he does well to remind us of the recent nuclear missiles mysteriously traveling cross country and Cheney's ominous warning that the next 9/11 will be a nuclear attack. (Of course he's right about the phony Bin Laden tape and that Bin Laden died in 2001.) But my guess is that they never planned on more than one 9/11. I imagine that they figured that the attack on Iran will serve very well as 9/11 #2.
As far as the collapse of the economy, he doesn't seem to realize that the fact that he's been predicting it for years takes AWAY from his credibility. On the other hand, it was clear from the first Bush-Cheney tax cut for the rich that they were making a full fledged assault on the economy, and like other items in their agenda of destruction, they have been very successful.
Ronald
The Dollar in the Punch Bowl
by Edgar J. Steele
September 12, 2007
Downloadable audio files of The Dollar in the Punch Bowl:
http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/punch16-16.mp3
http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/punch32-24.mp3
http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/punch48-44.mp3
Streaming mp3: Good (16 kb/16 khz) Better (32 kb/24 khz) Best (48 kb/44 khz)
Latest Nickel Rants:
8/27/07 - Abe Foxman: Holocaust Denier mp3 audio
6/14/07 - Please Don't Throw Us in the Briar Patch! mp3 audio
5/06/07 - Never Fry Bacon When You're Naked mp3 audio
1/23/07 - Obama? Yomama! mp3 audio
1/14/07 - Brain Worms mp3 audio
Latest Columns:
8/27/07 - Tipping Point mp3 audio
5/20/07 - Hell, No - I Won't Go!!! mp3 audio
3/25/07 - "Jesus Had it Coming..." mp3 audio
1/15/07 - Marchin' Lootin' Killin' Day mp3 audio
My name is Edgar J. Steele. This is a Nickel Rant.
Some ask why I write financial articles, rather than continually pout over America's general political and social condition, seemingly my normal wont.
I have said, straight out, that my financial writings are designed to lure the unsuspecting back to my lair (www.ConspiracyPenPal.com) where I then can have my way with them.
But there is another reason to carry on about the financial end of things: Economics is just another way of looking at the same old gloom and doom I have been preaching for years.
What's more, national economics now is quickening and merging ever more closely with our political and social condition. After all, that is what war always is about, you know: economics. And ... has anybody proven better than have Bush and our current Congress that politics is about nothing but money?
The Dollar Does a Swan Dive...
Now the dollar has breached 80 (remember 85, then 84, then 82, all of which now seem so long ago?), measured as it is against that index of foreign currencies. The dollar is dropping faster this week than a cheap hooker's panties, despite obvious illegal and manipulative bailing taking place by the usual suspects, producing modest gold/silver declines this morning on the heels of several days' strong gains.
We may find out as early as today if the first part of my prediction of just last week - that "they" will weakly defend the dollar at 79, yet draw the battle line at 78 - comes true. Actually, I already know it will come true. After all, it has to.
However, even I am just a little surprised to see that it might happen so quickly. And so will the rest of my years'-old prediction come true, namely that the dollar eventually will sail on down to 65, enroute to oblivion.
...Right into the Punch Bowl
Picture the financial markets as a giant party, with everybody queuing up to drink the Kool-Aid. Suddenly, someone keels over, then another. Somebody cries out: "Ewwww...there's a giant t**d floating in the punch bowl."
WhirlyBen (Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, which is private, not federal, has no reserves and is no bank, yet controls the dollar absolutely) shouts, "Relax, it's just a fake, plastic gag prop. Here, let me shovel in a bunch more to prove it."
"Gag is right," shouts another, "God, the smell is awful!"
That's kind of like what is taking place right now with regard to the dollar, as people begin to realize what "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States" really means.
Something's Coming...
There are ominous portents all over the landscape just now, indicating that something big is in the offing:
1. The impending and unprecedented Air Force Stand-Down ordered for this Friday, together with numerous civil defense "drills" scheduled during the coming week throughout America, not to mention war drills scheduled throughout the world.
2. The cancelled El Al (Israeli) flight schedule for Friday through Sunday (yes, the front end of the Jewish high, holy days, but that is not the point or the cause, rest assured).
3. The mysteriously meandering nuclear missiles that illegally flew cross-country suspended under wing on a bomber, not just as freight, which our government now claims was the result of an error (yeah, right, an error involving 5 nuclear missiles ... or was that 6 and now one is missing, as some claim?).
4. The Fed meeting scheduled for next Tuesday where discount rate cuts almost inevitably will be announced (if not sooner because of the ever-expanding mushroom cloud rising up over the collapse of America's housing and mortgage industries).
5. That just-released, already-proven-phony Bin Laden videotape (yes, Virginia, he died several years ago, just as then was reported upon extensively in the Arabic-language press but suppressed in the West, as so much is suppressed here).
6. That "accidental" emergency alert triggered in Illinois this morning.
7. Bush straining with everything he's got to get the American public on board with his "kill Iranians for Israel" plans.
8. Israel claims, suddenly, to have discovered nuclear installations in Syria.
9. Oil is about to breach $80 per barrel.
10. Dick Cheney's "gut feeling" that America's next terrorist attack "will be nuclear."
11. Michael Chertoff's "gut feeling" that America "will soon be hit hard."
Use Our Dollar or Die
Remember that, for years, I have predicted that WWIII must start to mask implosion of the dollar. Hardly anybody seems to have noticed that the dollar, no longer backed by gold or, even, oil, now is backed by American military force alone (use our Dollar or die - just ask Iraq and, soon, Iran).
"They" clearly have made the stock market a priority. After all, crashing it (in absolute dollar terms) would lead to the current derivative hangover turning into a first-class nightmare faster than necessary. Discount and interbank interest rates - and general short-term interest rates, too - all have to ratchet down in order to continue the market's current death-defying act of levitation.
They Live!
Who are "They?" Please, there are children present. Go rent a copy of "They Live," then follow it up with a rewatch of "The Matrix" (ignore the sequels, which are trash) and you will understand. Then come back and ask me that question again.
The average American seems not to care that the measuring stick (the dollar) gets shorter every day, just so long as his stock portfolio or retirement account doesn't drop in value, as measured by the number of those sticks. He will, believe me. He will. I almost added "but then it will be too late," but it has been too late for years, already.
Meanwhile, you can have the punch if you like. I'll stick to things a bit more precious, things with a metallic aftertaste.
New America. An idea whose time has come.
My name is Edgar J. Steele. Thanks for listening. Please visit my web site, www.ConspiracyPenPal.com, for other messages just like this one.
-ed
Copyright ©2007, Edgar J. Steele
Forward as you wish. Permission is granted to circulate both the written and audio version of this Nickel Rant among private individuals and groups, post on all Internet sites and publish in full in all not-for-profit publications. The audio version of this Nickel Rant may also be freely used in its entirety by for-profit broadcasting entities, but is not to be included in any recorded format which then is sold to others. The audio version may be rebroadcast, either live or archived on the Internet, either copied or linked directly to my web site, profit and nonprofit alike, so long as it is used in its entirety. In fact, I encourage any and all radio hosts to use it freely. Contact author for all other rights, which are reserved.
On-Line link to this rant in HTML format: http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/punch.htm
As far as the collapse of the economy, he doesn't seem to realize that the fact that he's been predicting it for years takes AWAY from his credibility. On the other hand, it was clear from the first Bush-Cheney tax cut for the rich that they were making a full fledged assault on the economy, and like other items in their agenda of destruction, they have been very successful.
Ronald
The Dollar in the Punch Bowl
by Edgar J. Steele
September 12, 2007
Downloadable audio files of The Dollar in the Punch Bowl:
http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/punch16-16.mp3
http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/punch32-24.mp3
http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/punch48-44.mp3
Streaming mp3: Good (16 kb/16 khz) Better (32 kb/24 khz) Best (48 kb/44 khz)
Latest Nickel Rants:
8/27/07 - Abe Foxman: Holocaust Denier mp3 audio
6/14/07 - Please Don't Throw Us in the Briar Patch! mp3 audio
5/06/07 - Never Fry Bacon When You're Naked mp3 audio
1/23/07 - Obama? Yomama! mp3 audio
1/14/07 - Brain Worms mp3 audio
Latest Columns:
8/27/07 - Tipping Point mp3 audio
5/20/07 - Hell, No - I Won't Go!!! mp3 audio
3/25/07 - "Jesus Had it Coming..." mp3 audio
1/15/07 - Marchin' Lootin' Killin' Day mp3 audio
My name is Edgar J. Steele. This is a Nickel Rant.
Some ask why I write financial articles, rather than continually pout over America's general political and social condition, seemingly my normal wont.
I have said, straight out, that my financial writings are designed to lure the unsuspecting back to my lair (www.ConspiracyPenPal.com) where I then can have my way with them.
But there is another reason to carry on about the financial end of things: Economics is just another way of looking at the same old gloom and doom I have been preaching for years.
What's more, national economics now is quickening and merging ever more closely with our political and social condition. After all, that is what war always is about, you know: economics. And ... has anybody proven better than have Bush and our current Congress that politics is about nothing but money?
The Dollar Does a Swan Dive...
Now the dollar has breached 80 (remember 85, then 84, then 82, all of which now seem so long ago?), measured as it is against that index of foreign currencies. The dollar is dropping faster this week than a cheap hooker's panties, despite obvious illegal and manipulative bailing taking place by the usual suspects, producing modest gold/silver declines this morning on the heels of several days' strong gains.
We may find out as early as today if the first part of my prediction of just last week - that "they" will weakly defend the dollar at 79, yet draw the battle line at 78 - comes true. Actually, I already know it will come true. After all, it has to.
However, even I am just a little surprised to see that it might happen so quickly. And so will the rest of my years'-old prediction come true, namely that the dollar eventually will sail on down to 65, enroute to oblivion.
...Right into the Punch Bowl
Picture the financial markets as a giant party, with everybody queuing up to drink the Kool-Aid. Suddenly, someone keels over, then another. Somebody cries out: "Ewwww...there's a giant t**d floating in the punch bowl."
WhirlyBen (Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, which is private, not federal, has no reserves and is no bank, yet controls the dollar absolutely) shouts, "Relax, it's just a fake, plastic gag prop. Here, let me shovel in a bunch more to prove it."
"Gag is right," shouts another, "God, the smell is awful!"
That's kind of like what is taking place right now with regard to the dollar, as people begin to realize what "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States" really means.
Something's Coming...
There are ominous portents all over the landscape just now, indicating that something big is in the offing:
1. The impending and unprecedented Air Force Stand-Down ordered for this Friday, together with numerous civil defense "drills" scheduled during the coming week throughout America, not to mention war drills scheduled throughout the world.
2. The cancelled El Al (Israeli) flight schedule for Friday through Sunday (yes, the front end of the Jewish high, holy days, but that is not the point or the cause, rest assured).
3. The mysteriously meandering nuclear missiles that illegally flew cross-country suspended under wing on a bomber, not just as freight, which our government now claims was the result of an error (yeah, right, an error involving 5 nuclear missiles ... or was that 6 and now one is missing, as some claim?).
4. The Fed meeting scheduled for next Tuesday where discount rate cuts almost inevitably will be announced (if not sooner because of the ever-expanding mushroom cloud rising up over the collapse of America's housing and mortgage industries).
5. That just-released, already-proven-phony Bin Laden videotape (yes, Virginia, he died several years ago, just as then was reported upon extensively in the Arabic-language press but suppressed in the West, as so much is suppressed here).
6. That "accidental" emergency alert triggered in Illinois this morning.
7. Bush straining with everything he's got to get the American public on board with his "kill Iranians for Israel" plans.
8. Israel claims, suddenly, to have discovered nuclear installations in Syria.
9. Oil is about to breach $80 per barrel.
10. Dick Cheney's "gut feeling" that America's next terrorist attack "will be nuclear."
11. Michael Chertoff's "gut feeling" that America "will soon be hit hard."
Use Our Dollar or Die
Remember that, for years, I have predicted that WWIII must start to mask implosion of the dollar. Hardly anybody seems to have noticed that the dollar, no longer backed by gold or, even, oil, now is backed by American military force alone (use our Dollar or die - just ask Iraq and, soon, Iran).
"They" clearly have made the stock market a priority. After all, crashing it (in absolute dollar terms) would lead to the current derivative hangover turning into a first-class nightmare faster than necessary. Discount and interbank interest rates - and general short-term interest rates, too - all have to ratchet down in order to continue the market's current death-defying act of levitation.
They Live!
Who are "They?" Please, there are children present. Go rent a copy of "They Live," then follow it up with a rewatch of "The Matrix" (ignore the sequels, which are trash) and you will understand. Then come back and ask me that question again.
The average American seems not to care that the measuring stick (the dollar) gets shorter every day, just so long as his stock portfolio or retirement account doesn't drop in value, as measured by the number of those sticks. He will, believe me. He will. I almost added "but then it will be too late," but it has been too late for years, already.
Meanwhile, you can have the punch if you like. I'll stick to things a bit more precious, things with a metallic aftertaste.
New America. An idea whose time has come.
My name is Edgar J. Steele. Thanks for listening. Please visit my web site, www.ConspiracyPenPal.com, for other messages just like this one.
-ed
Copyright ©2007, Edgar J. Steele
Forward as you wish. Permission is granted to circulate both the written and audio version of this Nickel Rant among private individuals and groups, post on all Internet sites and publish in full in all not-for-profit publications. The audio version of this Nickel Rant may also be freely used in its entirety by for-profit broadcasting entities, but is not to be included in any recorded format which then is sold to others. The audio version may be rebroadcast, either live or archived on the Internet, either copied or linked directly to my web site, profit and nonprofit alike, so long as it is used in its entirety. In fact, I encourage any and all radio hosts to use it freely. Contact author for all other rights, which are reserved.
On-Line link to this rant in HTML format: http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/punch.htm
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