Elite Intrigues: It’s Not About Sex, Stupid! James Petras :: 21.11.12 Introduction: The headline stories claim that CIA Director General David Petraeus resigned as head of the CIA because of an adulterous relation with his young biographer and that General John Allen, Supreme Commander of US troops in Afghanistan, was under investigation and his promotion to top commander of US troops in Europe was on hold, because, we are told, of his ‘inappropriate’ comments in the exchange of e-mails with a civilian female friend. We are told that a ‘hard-charging’ local FBI agent, Frederick Humphries, Jr., had uncovered amorous e-mails sent by General Petraeus to his girlfriend-biographer in the course of investigating a complaint of ‘cyber-stalking’. Out of concern that the General’s ‘adulterous behavior’ posed a risk to US national security, Florida-based FBI Agent Humphries handed the evidence over to one of Washington, DC’s most powerful Republican, Congressman Eric Cantor, who in turn passed them on to the Director of the FBI… leading to Petraeus resignation. In other words, we are asked to believe that a single, low-ranking, zealous FBI agent has toppled the careers of two top US Generals: one in charge of the principle global intelligence agency, the CIA, and the other in command of the US and allied combat forces in the principle theater of military engagement – on the basis of infidelity and flirtatious banter! Nothing could be more far-fetched simply on prima facie evidence. In the sphere of tight hierarchical organizations, like the military or the CIA, where the activity and behavior of subordinate functionaries is centrally directed and any investigation is subject to authorization by senior officials (most especially regarding prying into the private correspondences of the heads of the CIA and of strategic military operations), the idea that a lone agent might operate free-lance is preposterous. A ‘cowboy’ agent could not simply initiate investigation into such ‘sensitive’ targets as the head of the CIA and a General in an active combat zone without the highest level authorization or a network of political operatives with a much bigger agenda. This has much deeper political implications than uncovering a banal sexual affair between two consenting security-cleared adults despite the agent’s claim that fornication constitutes a threat to the United States. Clearly we are in deep waters here: This involves political intrigue at the highest level and has profound national security implications, involving the directorship of the CIA and clandestine operations, intelligence reports, multi-billion dollar expenditures and US efforts to stabilize client regimes and destabilize target regimes. CIA intelligence reports identifying allies and enemies are critical to shaping global US foreign policy. Any shift at the top of the US empire’s operational command can and does have strategic importance. The ‘outing’ of General Allen, the military commander in charge of Afghanistan, the US main zone of military operations occurs at a crucial time, with the scheduled forced withdrawal of US combat troops and when the Afghan ‘sepoys’, the soldiers and officers of the puppet Karzai regime, are showing major signs of disaffection, is clearly a political move of the highest order. What are the political issues behind the beheading of these two generals? Who benefits and who loses? At the global level, both Generals have been unflinching supporters of the US Empire, most especially the military-driven components of empire building. Both continue to carry out and support the serial wars launched by Presidents Bush and Obama against Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as, the numerous proxy wars against Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, etc. But both Generals were known to have publicly taken positions unpopular with certain key factions of the US power elite. CIA Director, General Petraeus has been a major supporter of the proxy wars in Libya and Syria. In those efforts he has promoted a policy of collaboration with rightwing Islamist regimes and Islamist opposition movements, including training and arming Islamist fundamentalists in order to topple targeted, mostly secular, regimes in the Middle East. In pursuit of this policy – Petraeus has had the backing of nearly the entire US political spectrum. However, Petraeus was well aware that this ‘grand alliance’ between the US and the rightwing Islamist regimes and movements to secure imperial hegemony, would require re-calibrating US relations with Israel. Petraeus viewed Netanyahu’s proposed war with Iran, his bloody land grabs in the Occupied Territories of Palestine and the bombing, dispossession and assassination of scores of Palestinians each month, were a liability as Washington sought support from the Islamist regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Gulf States, Iraq and Yemen. Petraeus implied this in public statements and behind closed doors he advocated the withdrawal of US support for Israel’s violent settler expansion into Palestine, even urging the Obama regime to pressure Netanyahu to reach some settlement with the pliable US client Abbas leadership. Above all, Petraeus backed the violent jihadists in Libya and Syria while opposing an Israel-initiated war against Iran, which he implied, would polarize the entire Moslem world against the Washington-Tel Aviv alliance and ‘provoke the US-proxy supplied Islamist fundamentalists to turn their arms against their CIA patrons. The imperial policy, according to General Petraeus world view, was in conflict with Israel’s strategy of fomenting hostility among Islamist regimes and movements against the US and, especially, the Jewish state’s promotion of regional conflicts in order to mask and intensify its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Central to Israeli strategy and what posed the most immediate threat to the implementation of a Petraeus’ doctrine was the influence of the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in and out of the US government. As soon as General Petraeus’ report naming Israel as a ‘strategic liability’ became known, the ZPC sprang into action and forced Petraeus to retract his statements – at least publicly. But once, he became head of the CIA, Petraeus continued the policy of working with rightwing Islamist regimes and arming and providing intelligence to jihadi fundamentalists in order to topple independent secular regimes, first in Libya, then on to Syria. This policy was placed under the spotlight in Benghazi with the killing of the US ambassador to Libya and several CIA/Special Forces operatives by CIA-backed terrorists leading to a domestic political crisis, as key Republican Congress people sought to exploit the Obama administration’s diplomatic failure. They especially targeted the US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, whose maladroit efforts to obscure the real source of the attacks in Benghazi, have undermined her nomination to replace Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State. General Petraeus, faced with mounting pressure from all sides: from the ZPC over his criticism of Israel and overtures to Islamist regimes, from the Republicans over the Benghazi debacle and from the FBI, over the personal investigation into his girlfriend and hyped up media smear, gave in. He ‘fessed up’ to a ‘sexual affair’, saluted and resigned. In so doing, he ‘sacrificed’ himself in order to ‘save the CIA’ and his strategy of long-term alliance-building with ‘moderate’ Islamist regimes while forming short-term tactical alliances with the jihadists to overthrow secular Arab regimes. The key political operative behind the high-level FBI operation against Petraeus has been House Majority leader Eric Cantor, who cynically claims that the General’s romantic epistles represent a national security threat. We are told that Congressman Cantor gravely passed the e-mails and reports he had received from the ‘Lone Ranger’ FBI agent Humphries to FBI Director Mueller ordering Mueller to act on the investigation or else face his own Congressional inquiry. Washington-based Representative Cantor is a zealous lifetime Israel-firster and has been hostile to the Petraeus report and the General’s assessment of the Middle East. Florida-based, Agent Humphries was not just any old conscientious gum-shoe: He was a notorious Islamaphobe engaged in finding terrorists under every bed. His claim to fame (or infamy) was that he had arrested two Muslims, one of whom, he claimed, was preparing to bomb the Los Angeles airport while the other allegedly planned a separate bombing. In a judicial twist, unusual in this era of FBI sting operations, both men were acquitted of the plots for lack of evidence, although one was convicted for publishing an account of how to detonate a bomb with a child’s toy! Agent Humphries was transferred from Washington State to Tampa, Florida – home of the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM). Despite their clear differences in station and location, there are ideological affinities between House Majority Whip Cantor and Agent Humphries – and possibly a common dislike of General Petraeus. Concerns over his Islamophobic and ideological zealotry may explain why the FBI quickly yanked Agent Humphries out from his mission of ‘obsessive’ prying into CIA Director Petraeus and General Allan’s e-mails. Undeterred by orders from his superiors in the FBI, Agent Humphries went directly to fellow zealot Congressman Cantor. Who would have benefited from Petraeus ouster? One of the top three candidates to replace him as head of the CIA is Jane Harmon, former California Congresswomen and Zionist uber-zealot. In another twist of justice, in 2005 the Congresswoman had been captured on tape by the National Security Agency telling Israeli Embassy personnel that she would use her influence to aid two AIPAC officials who had confessed to handing classified US documents to the Israeli Mossad, if the AIPAC could round up enough Congressional votes to make her Chairwoman of the US House Committee on Intelligence, an act bordering on treason, for which she was never held to account. If she were to take his position, the ousting of CIA Director Petraeus could represent to the greatest ‘constitutional coup’ in US history: the appointment of a foreign agent to control the world’s biggest, deadliest and richest spy agency. Who would benefit from the fall of Petraeus? – first and foremost – the State of Israel. The innuendos, smears and leaked investigation into the private e-mails of General Allen revolve around his raising questions over the US policy of prolonged military presence in Afghanistan. From his own practical experience General Allen has recognized that the puppet Afghan army is unreliable: hundreds of US and other NATO troops have been killed or wounded by their Afghan counterparts, from lowest foot soldiers to the highest Afghan security officials, ‘native’ troops and officers that the US had supposedly trained for a much ballyhooed ‘transfer of command’ in 2014. General Allen’s change of heart over the Afghan occupation was in response to the growing influence of the Taliban and other Islamist resistance supporters who had infiltrated the Afghan armed forces and now had near total control of the countryside and urban districts right up to the US and NATO bases. Allen did not believe that a ‘residual force’ of US military trainers could survive, once the bulk of US troops pulled out. In a word, he favored, after over a decade of a losing war, a policy of cutting the US’ losses, declaring ‘victory’ and leaving to regroup on more favorable terrain. Civilian militarists and neo-conservatives in the Executive and Congress refuse to acknowledge their shameful defeat with a full US retreat and a likely surrender to a Taliban regime. On the other hand, they cannot openly reject the painfully realistic assessment of General Allen, and they certainly cannot dismiss the experience of the supreme commander of US ground forces in Afghanistan. When, in this charged political context, the rabidly Islamaphobic FBI agent Humphries ‘stumbled upon’ the affectionate personal correspondences between General Allen and ‘socialite’ femme fatale Jill Kelly, the Neocons and civilian militarists whipped up a smear campaign through the yellow journalists at the Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal implying another ‘sex’ scandal – this time involving General Allen. The neo-con– militarist-mass media clamor forced the spineless President Obama and the military high command to announce an investigation of General Allen and postpone Congressional hearings on his appointment to head the US forces in Europe. While the General quietly retains his supreme command of US forces in Afghanistan, he has become a defeated and disgraced officer and his expertise and professional views regarding the future of US operations in Afghanistan will no longer be taken seriously. Key Unanswered Questions Surrounding Elite Intrigues and Military Purges Given that the public version of a lone-wolf, low ranking, zealously Islamophobic and incompetent FBI agent who just happened to ‘discover’ a sex scandal leading to the discrediting or resignation of two of the US highest military and intelligence officials is absurd to any thinking American, several key political questions with profound implications for the US political system need to be addressed. These include: 1. What political officials, if any, authorized the FBI, a domestic security agency to investigate and force the resignation of the Director of the CIA? 2. Have the current police state structures, with their procedures for widespread and arbitrary spying led to our spy agencies spying on each other in order to purge each other’s top personnel? Is this like the sow devouring her own offspring? 3. What were the real priorities of the political power-brokers who protected the insubordinate FBI agent Humphries after he defied top FBI officials’ orders to stop meddling in the investigation of the CIA Director? 4. What were FBI Agent Humphries ties, if any, to the neo-con, Zionist or Islamophobic politicians and other intelligence operatives, including the Israeli Mossad? 5. Despite Obama’s effusive praise of his brilliant ‘warrior-scholar’ General Petraeus in the past, why did he immediately ‘accept’ (aka ‘force’) the CIA Director’s resignation after the revelation of something as banal in civilian life as adultery? What are the deeper political issues that led to the pre-emptive purge? 6. Why are critical political issues and policy disputes resolved under the guise of blackmail, smears and character assassination, rather than through open debates and discussions, especially on matters pertaining to the nation’s choice of strategic and tactical ‘allies’ and the conduct of overseas wars? 7. Has the purge and public humiliation of top US military officers become an acceptable form of “punishment by example”, a signal from civilian militarists that when it comes to dealing with politics toward the Middle East, the role of the military is not to question but to follow their (and Israel’s) directives? 8. How could a proven collaborator with the Israeli-Mossad and Zionist zealot like Jane Harmon emerge as a ‘leading candidate’ to replace General Petraeus, as Director of the CIA, within days of his resignation? What are the political links, past and present between Congressman Eric Cantor, (the fanatical leader of the pro-Israel power bloc in the US Congress, who handed Agent Humphries’ unauthorized files on Petraeus over to the FBI Director Muellar) and Zionist power broker Jane Harmon, a prominent candidate to replace Petraeus? 9. How will the ouster of Director Petraeus and Jane Harman’s possible appointment to head the CIA deepen Israeli influence and control of US Middle East policy and the US overtures to Islamist countries? 10. How will the humiliation of General Allen affect the US ‘withdrawal’ from the disaster in Afghanistan? Conclusion The purge of top-level generals and officials from powerful US foreign policy and military posts reflects a further decay of our constitutional rights and residual democratic procedures: it is powerful proof of the inability of leadership at the highest level to resolve internecine conflicts without drawing out the ‘long knives’. The advance of the police state, where spy agencies have vastly expanded their political power over the citizens, has now evolved into the policing and purging of each other’s leadership: the FBI, CIA , Homeland Security, the NSA and the military all reach out and build alliances with the mass media, civilian executive and congressional officials as well as powerful foreign interest ‘lobbies’ to gain power and leverage in pursuit of their own visions of empire building. The purge of General Petraeus and humiliation of General Allen is a victory for the civilian militarists who are unconditional supporters of Israel and therefore oppose any opening to ‘moderate’ Islamist regimes. They want a long-term and expanded US military presence in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The real precipitating factor for this ugly ‘fight at the top’ is the crumbling of the US empire and how to deal with its new challenges. Signs of decay are everywhere: Military immorality is rampant; the be-medaled generals sodomize their subordinates and amass wealth via pillage of the public treasury and military contracts; politicians are bought and sold by millionaire financial donors, including agents of foreign powers, and foreign interests determine critical US foreign policy. The disrepute of the US Congress is almost universal – over 87% of US citizen condemn ‘the House and Senate’ as harmful to public welfare, servants of their own self-enrichment and slaves of corruption. The economic elites are repeatedly involved in massive swindles of retail investors, mortgage holders and each other. Multi-national corporations and the fabulously wealthy engage in capital flight, fattening their overseas accounts. The Executive himself (the ever-smiling President Obama) sends clandestine death squads and mercenary-terrorists to assassinate adversaries in an effort to compensate for his incapacity to defend the empire with diplomacy or traditional military ground forces or to prop-up new client-states. Cronyism is rife: there is a revolving door between Wall Street and US Treasury and Pentagon officials. Public apathy and cynicism is rife; nearly 50% of the electorate doesn’t even vote in Presidential elections and, among those who do vote, over 80% don’t expect their elected officials to honor their promises. Aggressive civilian militarists have gained control of key posts and are increasingly free of any constitutional constraints. Meanwhile the costs of military failures and burgeoning spy, security and military budgets soar while the fiscal and trade deficit grows. Faction fights among rival imperial cliques intensify; purges, blackmail, sex scandals and immorality in high places have become the norm. Democratic discourses are hollowed out: democratic state ideology has lost credibility. No sensible American believes in it anymore. Is there a broom large enough to clean this filthy Augean stable? Will a ‘collective Hercules’ emerge from all this intrigue and corruption with the strength of character and commitment to lead the revolutionary charge? Surely the sell-out and crude humiliation of American military officials on behalf of the ‘chicken-hawk’ civilian militarists and their foreign interests should make many an officer re-think his own career, loyalty and commitment to the Constitution. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1920&print=1

Nice animation did you create it yourself? It makes me feel like I’m 4 again

More too much time on my hands,,,, turning young mofos onto chill music while providing historical context on this noncommercial music thing of ours is not a waste of time. Seen? More too much time on my hands,,, educating and providing historical context on politics and suppressed news items and narratives is not a waste of time. Seen?@@@@@@@@ Jumping from rock to rock trying not to fall,,,all weather related @@@@@@@ Marvin Gaye, inner city blues http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57Ykv1D0qEE&feature=related Marvin Gaye sings American National Anthem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRvVzaQ6i8A@@@@@@@@ UB40-FOOD FOR THOUGHT 1981 {WITH LYRICS} http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6CynQRjlOM&feature=related@@@@@@@ 25% - UB40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCcXmcSzc3s&feature=related@@@@@@@ 12 Bar - UB40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOiXWidOtCY&feature=relmfu@@@@@@@ UB40 King http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JuqdnPFeTo&feature=related@@@@@@ Saint King,,, the greatest American of all time, disrespected in 2012 by the media http://www.biography.com/imported/images/Biography/Images/Profiles/K/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-9365086-2-402.jpg @@@@@@@ http://seattletimes.com/art/mlk/index.jpg@@@@@@@ UB40 "Little By Little" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuiC83uFj5g&feature=related@@@@@@@ UB40 - One in ten http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvcaxumeiKc&feature=related@@@@@@@ UB40 Many Rivers To Cross http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CktlPIlsBdw&feature=related@@@@@@@ UB40- I Think Its Going To Rain Today (Promo Clip) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wZdSYPi9qI@@@@@@@ Dntel – Umbrella http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By56XR1U8nQ@@@@@@@ Dntel - Why I'm So Unhappy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn3O4mawboc&feature=relmfu@@@@@@@ Flying Lotus - Robo Tussin (Instrumental) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4tE4tuiZaQ&feature=related@@@@@@@ Bye Bye BlackBird - Miles Davis & John Coltrane Live @ Newport '58.mov http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vQuPIjK1Ks&feature=related@@@@@@@ BARE TREES - FLEETWOOD MAC 1972.wmv http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpyDaI3I2Cg Yep I remember some people didn’t t get into Stevie Nick change the sound of Fleetwood Mac,,, well, I say, “Things change Kundun.”@@@@@@@ Fleetwood Mac - Bare Trees [Full Album] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZodsfOUDmvw&feature=related@@@@@@@ The Cure - Seventeen Seconds (Full Album) 720p http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ref8HbuWDo@@@@@@@

Re: “Some people have too much time on their hands” is one of a few typical, predictable responses activist get, so boring’,,, but it doesn’t prove me wrong,,, besides what did you do today of any importance?,,, did you frame a house, or safe lives, or work for peace,,, “imagine there’s a question mark, it’s easy if you try”@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Some people like to promote wasting the limited time we have on our hands,,, they pray to the ‘GOD of Whatever’ and make offering with packed trivia and hope magically things will get better without any effort,,, things such as; the cost of higher education burdening young people with student debt right from the get-go and diminishing employment opportunities are a result of greed, crappy media and THE APATHY MINDSET,,, the apathy mindset of the past years coming to fruition in modern times,,, the thing about Zionist aspersers is they push the idea of conformity and ‘go back to sleep’ when they say, don’t take an alternative look at anything,,, they’re water boys for Satan because clearly they don’t give a rat’s backside about humanity,,, motherfuh’s need to face ‘the real world’ and stop pretending that Israel and its supporter are not the cancerous enemy within / of the United States,,, not a single person can name a single thing that Israel has done for the United States that was positive, not one,, they never gave us money,,, they never brokered a peace, they never fought alone with us,,, not even the war the pushed us into,,, but we kiss their buts because we(not me) are brainwashed and repeat their preposterous mantra, “ Israel has a right to defend itself” or “Israel is the only democracy of the region” ( ho- ho- ho green money giant) in our sleep,,, on the other hand a long list of the negative things Israel has done to the United States can be quickly put together,,, just one or two for the road,,, Israel spies on us and tries to sink our boats,,, ships like the ‘U.S.S. Liberty’,,, Israel buys their way in the American consciences ,,, into our foreign policy using the money we handed over to them, money that was once in our pockets,,, find any beloved veteran with PTSD and you can link back their injuries to the wars, to the cabal that concocted the wars, to the crappie mass-ass-meadow-muffin-media including NpR that sold the wars to the democrats ,,, Zionist and Zionist appeasers tricked America into supporting the wars and now America is broke because of it,,, some people(not me) like to promote finger painting and wasting the limited time we (not me) have on our hands,,, they discourage young students from taking ownership of their future and country,,, they discourage young students from taking advantage of the very limited and very precious ‘time on their hands’ at the university,,, in some ways time wasted, because they could of used the schools resources for teach-ins and organizing etc. for free when they had student status,,, below the radar,,, the Zionist on the other hand promote political activism and education, but only if that political activism and education is for their sicko’ apartheid expansionist cause,,, expansion, included the U.S.,,,, part of their cause is to divide their opposition and conquer us,,, “global justice with local activism” but their definition of “justice” is withheld from the general NpR audience ,,, part of the definition of “global justice with local activism for Israel” is silencing dissent,,, telling everyone else what we can or cannot say in public,,, not me- pete said this in public The Beatles-Imagine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iSwhHMxDh4 WEDNESDAY, MAR 10, 2004 03:13 PM EST The new Pentagon papers A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war. BY KAREN KWIATKOWSKI http://www.salon.com/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/ In July of last year, after just over 20 years of service, I retired as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. I had served as a communications officer in the field and in acquisition programs, as a speechwriter for the National Security Agency director, and on the Headquarters Air Force and the office of the secretary of defense staffs covering African affairs. I had completed Air Command and Staff College and Navy War College seminar programs, two master’s degrees, and everything but my Ph.D. dissertation in world politics at Catholic University. I regarded my military vocation as interesting, rewarding and apolitical. My career started in 1978 with the smooth seduction of a full four-year ROTC scholarship. It ended with 10 months of duty in a strange new country, observing up close and personal a process of decision making for war not sanctioned by the Constitution we had all sworn to uphold. Ben Franklin’s comment that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia had delivered “a republic, madam, if you can keep it” would come to have special meaning. In the spring of 2002, I was a cynical but willing staff officer, almost two years into my three-year tour at the office of the secretary of defense, undersecretary for policy, sub-Saharan Africa. In April, a call for volunteers went out for the Near East South Asia directorate (NESA). None materialized. By May, the call transmogrified into a posthaste demand for any staff officer, and I was “volunteered” to enter what would be a well-appointed den of iniquity. The education I would receive there was like an M. Night Shyamalan movie — intense, fascinating and frightening. While the people were very much alive, I saw a dead philosophy — Cold War anti-communism and neo-imperialism — walking the corridors of the Pentagon. It wore the clothing of counterterrorism and spoke the language of a holy war between good and evil. The evil was recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle East and articulated by Islamic clerics and radicals. But there were other enemies within, anyone who dared voice any skepticism about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. Anthony Zinni. From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it. I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies. I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president. While this commandeering of a narrow segment of both intelligence production and American foreign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of us in the Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that this agenda, whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to the American people. Instead, the public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses, and a war one year later Americans do not really understand. That is why I have gone public with my account. To begin with, I was introduced to Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA. A tall, thin, nervously intelligent man, he welcomed me into the fold. I knew little about him. Because he was a recently retired naval captain and now high-level Bush appointee, the common assumption was that he had connections, if not capability. I would later find out that when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense over a decade earlier, Luti was his aide. He had also been a military aide to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during the Clinton years and had completed his Ph.D. at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. While his Navy career had not granted him flag rank, he had it now and was not shy about comparing his place in the pecking order with various three- and four-star generals and admirals in and out of the Pentagon. Name dropping included references to getting this or that document over to Scooter, or responding to one of Scooter’s requests right away. Scooter, I would find out later, was I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff. Co-workers who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite shared conversations and stories indicating that something deliberate and manipulative was happening to NESA. Key professional personnel, longtime civilian professionals holding the important billets in NESA, were replaced early on during the transition. Longtime officer director Joe McMillan was reassigned to the National Defense University. The director’s job in the time of transition was to help bring the newly appointed deputy assistant secretary up to speed, ensure office continuity, act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies, and help identify the best ways to maintain course or to implement change. Removing such a critical continuity factor was not only unusual but also seemed like willful handicapping. It was the first signal of radical change. At the time, I didn’t realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was not only being removed, but was also being exchanged for that from various agenda-bearing think tanks, including the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Interestingly, the office director billet stayed vacant the whole time I was there. That vacancy and the long-term absence of real regional understanding to inform defense policymakers in the Pentagon explains a great deal about the neoconservative approach on the Middle East and the disastrous mistakes made in Washington and in Iraq in the past two years. I soon saw the modus operandi of “instant policy” unhampered by debate or experience with the early Bush administration replacement of the civilian head of the Israel, Lebanon and Syria desk office with a young political appointee from the Washington Institute, David Schenker. Word was that the former experienced civilian desk officer tended to be evenhanded toward the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, but there were complaints and he was gone. I met David and chatted with him frequently. He was a smart, serious, hardworking guy, and the proud author of a book on the chances for Palestinian democracy. Country desk officers were rarely political appointees. In my years at the Pentagon, this was the only “political” I knew doing that type of high-stress and low-recognition duty. So eager was the office to have Schenker at the Israel desk, he served for many months as a defense contractor of sorts and only received his “Schedule C” political appointee status months after I arrived. I learned that there was indeed a preferred ideology for NESA. My first day in the office, a GS-15 career civil servant rather unhappily advised me that if I wanted to be successful here, I’d better remember not to say anything positive about the Palestinians. This belied official U.S. policy of serving as an honest broker for resolution of Israeli and Palestinian security concerns. At that time, there was a great deal of talk about Bush’s possible support for a Palestinian state. That the Pentagon could have implemented and, worse, was implementing its own foreign policy had not yet occurred to me. Throughout the summer, the NESA spaces in one long office on the fourth floor, between the 7th and 8th corridors of D Ring, became more and more crowded. With war talk and planning about Iraq, all kinds of new people were brought in. A politically savvy civilian-clothes-wearing lieutenant colonel named Bill Bruner served as the Iraq desk officer, and he had apparently joined NESA about the time Bill Luti did. I discovered that Bruner, like Luti, had served as a military aide to Speaker Gingrich. Gingrich himself was now conveniently an active member of Bush’s Defense Policy Board, which had space immediately below ours on the third floor. I asked why Bruner wore civilian attire, and was told by others, “He’s Chalabi’s handler.” Chalabi, of course, was Ahmad Chalabi, the president of the Iraqi National Congress, who was the favored exile of the neoconservatives and the source of much of their “intelligence.” Bruner himself said he had to attend a lot of meetings downtown in hotels and that explained his suits. Soon, in July, he was joined by another Air Force pilot, a colonel with no discernible political connections, Kevin Jones. I thought of it as a military-civilian partnership, although both were commissioned officers. Among the other people arriving over the summer of 2002 was Michael Makovsky, a recent MIT graduate who had written his dissertation on Winston Churchill and was going to work on “Iraqi oil issues.” He was David Makovsky’s younger brother. David was at the time a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and had formerly been an editor of the Jerusalem Post, a pro-Likud newspaper. Mike was quiet and seemed a bit uncomfortable sharing space with us. He soon disappeared into some other part of the operation and I rarely saw him after that. In late summer, new space was found upstairs on the fifth floor, and the “expanded Iraq desk,” now dubbed the “Office of Special Plans,” began moving there. And OSP kept expanding. Another person I observed to appear suddenly was Michael Rubin, another Washington Institute fellow working on Iraq policy. He and Chris Straub, a retired Army officer who had been a Republican staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee, were eventually assigned to OSP. John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was assigned to handle Iraq intelligence for Luti. Trigilio had been on a one-year career-enhancement tour with the office of the secretary of defense that was to end in August 2002. DIA had offered him routine intelligence positions upon his return from his OSD sabbatical, but none was as interesting as working in August 2002 for Luti. John asked Luti for help in gaining an extension for another year, effectively removing him from the DIA bureaucracy and its professional constraints. Trigilio and I had hallway debates, as friends. The one I remember most clearly was shortly after President Bush gave his famous “mushroom cloud” speech in Cincinnati in October 2002, asserting that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction as well as ties to “international terrorists,” and was working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons with “nuclear holy warriors.” I asked John who was feeding the president all the bull about Saddam and the threat he posed us in terms of WMD delivery and his links to terrorists, as none of this was in secret intelligence I had seen in the past years. John insisted that it wasn’t an exaggeration, but when pressed to say which actual intelligence reports made these claims, he would only say, “Karen, we have sources that you don’t have access to.” It was widely felt by those of us in the office not in the neoconservatives’ inner circle that these “sources” related to the chummy relationship that Ahmad Chalabi had with both the Office of Special Plans and the office of the vice president. The newly named director of the OSP, Abram Shulsky, was one of the most senior people sharing our space that summer. Abe, a kindly and gentle man, who would say hello to me in the hallways, seemed to be someone I, as a political science grad student, would have loved to sit with over coffee and discuss the world’s problems. I had a clear sense that Abe ranked high in the organization, although ostensibly he was under Luti. Luti was known at times to treat his staff, even senior staff, with disrespect, contempt and derision. He also didn’t take kindly to staff officers who had an opinion or viewpoint that was off the neoconservative reservation. But with Shulsky, who didn’t speak much at the staff meetings, he was always respectful and deferential. It seemed like Shulsky’s real boss was somebody like Douglas Feith or higher. Doug Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, was a case study in how not to run a large organization. In late 2001, he held the first all-hands policy meeting at which he discussed for over 15 minutes how many bullets and sub-bullets should be in papers for Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A year later, in August of 2002, he held another all-hands meeting in the auditorium where he embarrassed everyone with an emotional performance about what it was like to serve Rumsfeld. He blithely informed us that for months he didn’t realize Rumsfeld had a daily stand-up meeting with his four undersecretaries. He shared with us the fact that, after he started to attend these meetings, he knew better what Rumsfeld wanted of him. Most military staffers and professional civilians hearing this were incredulous, as was I, to hear of such organizational ignorance lasting so long and shared so openly. Feith’s inattention to most policy detail, except that relating to Israel and Iraq, earned him a reputation most foul throughout Policy, with rampant stories of routine signatures that took months to achieve and lost documents. His poor reputation as a manager was not helped by his arrogance. One thing I kept hearing from those defending Feith was that he was “just brilliant.” It was curiously like the brainwashed refrain in “The Manchurian Candidate” about the programmed sleeper agent Raymond Shaw, as the “kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known.” I spent time that summer exploring the neoconservative worldview and trying to grasp what was happening inside the Pentagon. I wondered what could explain this rush to war and disregard for real intelligence. Neoconservatives are fairly easy to study, mainly because they are few in number, and they show up at all the same parties. Examining them as individuals, it became clear that almost all have worked together, in and out of government, on national security issues for several decades. The Project for the New American Century and its now famous 1998 manifesto to President Clinton on Iraq is a recent example. But this statement was preceded by one written for Benyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party campaign in Israel in 1996 by neoconservatives Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith titled “A Clean Break: Strategy for Securing the Realm.” David Wurmser is the least known of that trio and an interesting example of the tangled neoconservative web. In 2001, the research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute was assigned to the Pentagon, then moved to the Department of State to work as deputy for the hard-line conservative undersecretary John Bolton, then to the National Security Council, and now is lodged in the office of the vice president. His wife, the prolific Meyrav Wurmser, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, is also a neoconservative team player. Before the Iraq invasion, many of these same players labored together for literally decades to push a defense strategy that favored military intervention and confrontation with enemies, secret and unconstitutional if need be. Some former officials, such as Richard Perle (an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan) and James Woolsey (CIA director under Clinton), were granted a new lease on life, a renewed gravitas, with positions on President Bush’s Defense Policy Board. Others, like Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, had apparently overcome previous negative associations from an Iran-Contra conviction for lying to the Congress and for utterly miscalculating the strength of the Soviet Union in a politically driven report to the CIA. Neoconservatives march as one phalanx in parallel opposition to those they hate. In the early winter of 2002, a co-worker U.S. Navy captain and I were discussing the service being rendered by Colin Powell at the time, and we were told by the neoconservative political appointee David Schenker that “the best service Powell could offer would be to quit right now.” I was present at a staff meeting when Bill Luti called Marine Gen. and former Chief of Central Command Anthony Zinni a “traitor,” because Zinni had publicly expressed reservations about the rush to war. After August 2002, the Office of Special Plans established its own rhythm and cadence separate from the non-politically minded professionals covering the rest of the region. While often accused of creating intelligence, I saw only two apparent products of this office: war planning guidance for Rumsfeld, presumably impacting Central Command, and talking points on Iraq, WMD and terrorism. These internal talking points seemed to be a mélange crafted from obvious past observation and intelligence bits and pieces of dubious origin. They were propagandistic in style, and all desk officers were ordered to use them verbatim in the preparation of any material prepared for higher-ups and people outside the Pentagon. The talking points included statements about Saddam Hussein’s proclivity for using chemical weapons against his own citizens and neighbors, his existing relations with terrorists based on a member of al-Qaida reportedly receiving medical care in Baghdad, his widely publicized aid to the Palestinians, and general indications of an aggressive viability in Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program and his ongoing efforts to use them against his neighbors or give them to al-Qaida style groups. The talking points said he was threatening his neighbors and was a serious threat to the U.S., too. I suspected, from reading Charles Krauthammer, a neoconservative columnist for the Washington Post, and the Weekly Standard, and hearing a Cheney speech or two, that these talking points left the building on occasion. Both OSP functions duplicated other parts of the Pentagon. The facts we should have used to base our papers on were already being produced by the intelligence agencies, and the war planning was already done by the combatant command staff with some help from the Joint Staff. Instead of developing defense policy alternatives and advice, OSP was used to manufacture propaganda for internal and external use, and pseudo war planning. As a result of my duties as the North Africa desk officer, I became acquainted with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) support staff for NESA. Every policy regional director was served by a senior executive intelligence professional from DIA, along with a professional intelligence staff. This staff channeled DIA products, accepted tasks for DIA, and in the past had been seen as a valued member of the regional teams. However, as the war approached, this type of relationship with the Defense Intelligence Agency crumbled. Even the most casual observer could note the tension and even animosity between “Wild Bill” Luti (as we came to refer to our boss) and Bruce Hardcastle, our defense intelligence officer (DIO). Certainly, there were stylistic and personality differences. Hardcastle, like most senior intelligence officers I knew, was serious, reserved, deliberate, and went to great lengths to achieve precision and accuracy in his speech and writing. Luti was the kind of guy who, in staff meetings and in conversations, would jump from grand theory to administrative minutiae with nary a blink or a fleeting shadow of self-awareness. I discovered that Luti and possibly others within OSP were dissatisfied with Hardcastle’s briefings, in particular with the aspects relating to WMD and terrorism. I was not clear exactly what those concerns were, but I came to understand that the DIA briefing did not match what OSP was claiming about Iraq’s WMD capabilities and terrorist activities. I learned that shortly before I arrived there had been an incident in NESA where Hardcastle’s presence and briefing at a bilateral meeting had been nixed abruptly by Luti. The story circulating among the desk officers was “a last-minute cancellation” of the DIO presentation. Hardcastle’s intelligence briefing was replaced with one prepared by another Policy office that worked nonproliferation issues. While this alternative briefing relied on intelligence produced by DIO and elsewhere, it was not a product of the DIA or CIA community, but instead was an OSD Policy “branded” product — and so were its conclusions. The message sent by Policy appointees and well understood by staff officers and the defense intelligence community was that senior appointed civilians were willing to exclude or marginalize intelligence products that did not fit the agenda. Staff officers would always request OSP’s most current Iraq, WMD and terrorism talking points. On occasion, these weren’t available in an approved form and awaited Shulsky’s approval. The talking points were a series of bulleted statements, written persuasively and in a convincing way, and superficially they seemed reasonable and rational. Saddam Hussein had gassed his neighbors, abused his people, and was continuing in that mode, becoming an imminently dangerous threat to his neighbors and to us — except that none of his neighbors or Israel felt this was the case. Saddam Hussein had harbored al-Qaida operatives and offered and probably provided them with training facilities — without mentioning that the suspected facilities were in the U.S./Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was pursuing and had WMD of the type that could be used by him, in conjunction with al-Qaida and other terrorists, to attack and damage American interests, Americans and America — except the intelligence didn’t really say that. Saddam Hussein had not been seriously weakened by war and sanctions and weekly bombings over the past 12 years, and in fact was plotting to hurt America and support anti-American activities, in part through his carrying on with terrorists — although here the intelligence said the opposite. His support for the Palestinians and Arafat proved his terrorist connections, and basically, the time to act was now. This was the gist of the talking points, and it remained on message throughout the time I watched the points evolve. But evolve they did, and the subtle changes I saw from September to late January revealed what the Office of Special Plans was contributing to national security. Two key types of modifications were directed or approved by Shulsky and his team of politicos. First was the deletion of entire references or bullets. The one I remember most specifically is when they dropped the bullet that said one of Saddam’s intelligence operatives had met with Mohammad Atta in Prague, supposedly salient proof that Saddam was in part responsible for the 9/11 attack. That claim had lasted through a number of revisions, but after the media reported the claim as unsubstantiated by U.S. intelligence, denied by the Czech government, and that Atta’s location had been confirmed by the FBI to be elsewhere, that particular bullet was dropped entirely from our “advice on things to say” to senior Pentagon officials when they met with guests or outsiders. The other change made to the talking points was along the line of fine-tuning and generalizing. Much of what was there was already so general as to be less than accurate. Some bullets were softened, particularly statements of Saddam’s readiness and capability in the chemical, biological or nuclear arena. Others were altered over time to match more exactly something Bush and Cheney said in recent speeches. One item I never saw in our talking points was a reference to Saddam’s purported attempt to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. The OSP list of crime and evil had included Saddam’s attempts to seek fissionable materials or uranium in Africa. This point was written mostly in the present tense and conveniently left off the dates of the last known attempt, sometime in the late 1980s. I was surprised to hear the president’s mention of the yellowcake in Niger in his 2003 State of the Union address because that indeed was new and in theory might have represented new intelligence, something that seemed remarkably absent in any of the products provided us by the OSP (although not for lack of trying). After hearing of it, I checked with my old office of Sub-Saharan African Affairs — and it was news to them, too. It also turned out to be false. It is interesting today that the “defense” for those who lied or prevaricated about Iraq is to point the finger at the intelligence. But the National Intelligence Estimate, published in September 2002, as remarked upon recently by former CIA Middle East chief Ray McGovern, was an afterthought. It was provoked only after Sens. Bob Graham and Dick Durban noted in August 2002, as Congress was being asked to support a resolution for preemptive war, that no NIE elaborating real threats to the United States had been provided. In fact, it had not been written, but a suitable NIE was dutifully prepared and submitted the very next month. Naturally, this document largely supported most of the outrageous statements already made publicly by Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld about the threat Iraq posed to the United States. All the caveats, reservations and dissents made by intelligence were relegated to footnotes and kept from the public. Funny how that worked. Starting in the fall of 2002 I found a way to vent my frustrations with the neoconservative hijacking of our defense policy. The safe outlet was provided by retired Col. David Hackworth, who agreed to publish my short stories anonymously on his Web site Soldiers for the Truth, under the moniker of “Deep Throat: Insider Notes From the Pentagon.” The “deep throat” part was his idea, but I was happy to have a sense that there were folks out there, mostly military, who would be interested in the secretary of defense-sponsored insanity I was witnessing on almost a daily basis. When I was particularly upset, like when I heard Zinni called a “traitor,” I wrote about it in articles like this one. In November, my Insider articles discussed the artificial worlds created by the Pentagon and the stupid naiveté of neocon assumptions about what would happen when we invaded Iraq. I discussed the price of public service, distinguishing between public servants who told the truth and then saw their careers flame out and those “public servants” who did not tell the truth and saw their careers ignite. My December articles became more depressing, discussing the history of the 100 Years’ War and “combat lobotomies.” There was a painful one titled “Minority Reports” about the necessity but unlikelihood of a Philip Dick sci-fi style “minority report” on Feith-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney’s insanely grandiose vision of some future Middle East, with peace, love and democracy brought on through preemptive war and military occupation. I shared some of my concerns with a civilian who had been remotely acquainted with the Luti-Feith-Perle political clan in his previous work for one of the senior Pentagon witnesses during the Iran-Contra hearings. He told me these guys were engaged in something worse than Iran-Contra. I was curious but he wouldn’t tell me anything more. I figured he knew what he was talking about. I thought of him when I read much later about the 2002 and 2003 meetings between Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar — all Iran-Contra figures. In December 2002, I requested an acceleration of my retirement to the following July. By now, the military was anxiously waiting under the bed for the other shoe to drop amid concerns over troop availability, readiness for an ill-defined mission, and lack of day-after clarity. The neocons were anxiously struggling to get that damn shoe off. That other shoe fell with a thump, as did the regard many of us had held for Colin Powell, on Feb. 5 as the secretary of state capitulated to the neoconservative line in his speech at the United Nations — a speech not only filled with falsehoods pushed by the neoconservatives but also containing many statements already debunked by intelligence. War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false. Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq — more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits — an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn’t get the chance for an honest debate. President Bush has now appointed a commission to look at American intelligence capabilities and will report after the election. It will “examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and related 21st century threats … [and] compare what the Iraq Survey Group learns with the information we had prior…” The commission, aside from being modeled on failed rubber stamp commissions of the past and consisting entirely of those selected by the executive branch, specifically excludes an examination of the role of the Office of Special Plans and other executive advisory bodies. If the president or vice president were seriously interested in “getting the truth,” they might consider asking for evidence on how intelligence was politicized, misused and manipulated, and whether information from the intelligence community was distorted in order to sway Congress and public opinion in a narrowly conceived neoconservative push for war. Bush says he wants the truth, but it is clear he is no more interested in it today than he was two years ago. Proving that the truth is indeed the first casualty in war, neoconservative member of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle called this February for “heads to roll.” Perle, agenda setter par excellence, named George Tenet and Defense Intelligence Agency head Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby as guilty of failing to properly inform the president on Iraq and WMD. No doubt, the intelligence community, susceptible to politicization and outdated paradigms, needs reform. The swiftness of the neoconservative casting of blame on the intelligence community and away from themselves should have been fully expected. Perhaps Perle and others sense the grave and growing danger of political storms unleashed by the exposure of neoconservative lies. Meanwhile, Ahmad Chalabi, extravagantly funded by the neocons in the Pentagon to the tune of millions to provide the disinformation, has boasted with remarkable frankness, “We are heroes in error,” and, “What was said before is not important.” Now we are told by our president and neoconservative mouthpieces that our sons and daughters, husbands and wives are in Iraq fighting for freedom, for liberty, for justice and American values. This cost is not borne by the children of Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Bush’s daughters do not pay this price. We are told that intelligence has failed America, and that President Bush is determined to get to the bottom of it. Yet not a single neoconservative appointee has lost his job, and no high official of principle in the administration has formally resigned because of this ill-planned and ill-conceived war and poorly implemented occupation of Iraq. Will Americans hold U.S. policymakers accountable? Will we return to our roots as a republic, constrained and deliberate, respectful of others? My experience in the Pentagon leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq tells me, as Ben Franklin warned, we may have already failed. But if Americans at home are willing to fight — tenaciously and courageously — to preserve our republic, we might be able to keep it. Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terror, Part 1 [CPAC 2010] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziC1AcnTB90 Neo-Cons Obsessed With Middle East: Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski (Ret) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdfz7RgryMU&feature=related Bush, Cheney, PNAC, & The Criminal Conspiracy To Invade Iraq http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egqqCYSfV2k&feature=related NeoCon Elliott Abrams doesn't respect the Constitution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeB_gIgIB9Q&feature=relmfu This Mortal Coil – Tarantula http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwdAxA4K-Cc&feature=watch-vrec Would you say, ‘DJ’s have too much time on their hands?’??????????? I wouldn’t

only to the left of your dial. ~Wisco G

only on the left of your dial.. -Wisco G

Some folks have waaayyyyyy too much time on their hands.

Turkey dinner dance off music @@@@@@@@ It would be nice if the mighty,,, W!,,, H!,,,, U!,,, S! ,,,had a general place to leave comments and or love letters about over all programming in the spirit of democratic transparent open phone line like C-span has,, it would be an antidote for divide and conquer for those of us that are suspicious of social media http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sugexp=les%3Bepsugrpq2&gs_mss=barin+l&pq=g&cp=9&gs_id=12&xhr=t&q=brian+lamb&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bpcl=38897761&biw=1440&bih=783&wrapid=tljp1353535030871016&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=O06tUKnYHKiy0AGStoHgCA @@@@@@@ Mirror In The Bathroom - The English Beat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cbUW2EY4KE @@@@@@@@@ The English Beat - Twist And Crawl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bch9DuV0Y8o&feature=related @@@@@@@ The English Beat-March Of The Swivel Heads http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQFTAFLBdi4 @@@@@@2 The English Beat - Rough Rider http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRmDw6ZhAPo @@@@@@@@@ THE BEAT...ROUGH RIDER http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CXJCnHsT9E&feature=related @@@@@@@ The Beat - Stand Down Margaret (Dub) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDr8cnH6-SU&feature=related @@@@@@@ no hard feelings,,,, NO HARD FEELINGS ya’ll

“RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF,”,,,,,,,, Smooth and easy vibe this will be,,, and yet how to maintain such chillness, ‘chill’ the good way,,, and say what needs to be said, without raising peoples blood pressure is a challenge,,,,,,,,,,, a cure for this struggle will be playing this CD over and over,,, Miami by ‘THE GO FIND’ on the MORR label,,,,,,,,, yes, “people are crazy,” but we have to cut them some slack because we live in ‘crazy’ times,,,,,,, ‘some’ people in the media drive their listeners and viewers nuts with their sets or commentary,,, in my part time humble opinion, it is a ‘lack of mindfulness’ crises that we all are enduring,,, we all endure the transgressions and bull$h!t of others from time to time,,, we fight each other,,, we disrespect each other, we dis-empower each other, and then expect to be happy somehow,,, as if we live in a vacuum or that these negative actions we creative don’t blow back in our faces,,, thinking we can use songs as white phosphorus projectiles and everyone is going to be happy about it, that is ‘crazy’ too,,, our gas mask don’t have the proper filtration capability to handle the mess of things we create for ourselves and our planet,,, worth repeating, smooth and easy vibe this is going to be see,,, and yet how to maintain such chillness and say what needs to be said and ‘only’ raise peoples blood pressure to a point of getting out of bed, is as important has the content or message itself,,, this is something I only recently began to fully understand,,, what’s so damn important? Oh not too much, just humanity hanging in the balance, that’s all,,, “that’s a bold statements”,,,, well, mentally put yourself in the womb of an expectant Palestinian woman,,, what kind of life could you possibly have and look forward to living under an apartheid occupation?,,,, the answer is, you don’t know, and neither do I, we don’t have crystal balls,,, I still cannot fully understand how degrading it must be for Palestinians and what Israel puts them through around the clock, day after day, year after year,,, forget about all the money we send to Israel (8.5 million a day to Israel, a richer better off country than us, thanks AIPAC, not!) that ends up killing, burning and maiming children living under occupation,,, how would you like to be that parent?,,, so automatically, without even thinking, you might respond “well what about the Israelis, don’t they have a right to security?” and if you do that, then that is a big problem, because the answer is ‘yes’ of course it’s a no-brainer,,, but what you’ve done is parrot or gas what you consumed from the media,,, as if you were trained to say that,,, which is scary,,, and have said, in essence, without thinking about it, that the Palestinians ‘don’t have a “RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF,”,,,, right-to-defend-itself,,, like Israel is constantly repeating this vague brainwashing mantra,,, Mustapha I can appreciate how much your people are suffering,,, Jews don’t believe the Palestinian PEOPLE have ‘a right to security’ only they do,,, O.K. I said the ‘J’ word and you are getting nervous as you should because you are a kind empathic person and don’t what to see Jews in any kind of harm, like I don’t want Jews in any kind of harm,,, that’s my Dharma path,,, peace, love and understanding,,,, the Zionist took advantage of our kindness and empathy and use the holocaust as a trump card to get whatever they want and then act in ways just the opposite of peace, love and understanding ‘and sympathy,’ that we afforded to them, nice guys uh?,,, Not!,,, nice payback uh?,,, Not!,,,,, they have assigned and practically claimed like copyright exclusive rights to the word ‘THE’ holocaust, marginalizing all other mass-crimes against humanity insanity,,, then the turn around and treat the Palestinians like they were the ones that were in control of fascist Germany in the 30’s and 40’s,,, the cycle of violence never left the planet,,, it is the Israelis that are now behaving like Nazi exterminators sicko-paths,,,,, “that’s a bold statements” well prove me wrong,,,,, and back to humpty dumpty humanity crises, it is we (not me) don’t even care about civilian deaths and dead children from all the wars we go silent over,,, all we (not me)care about is our social media profile,,, how shallow can we be?,,,, “How low can we go? Death row, what a brother know”- Chuck D. Public Enemy,,, that is a crises in and of itself,,, “indifference, the shapes of things to come”,,,, democracy crises is a representation crises,,,, one group acting like it owns all the rest of us,,, because they are chosen by God, to deceive us?,,, who is driving U.S. foreign policy?,, Native-Americans?,,,, African-Americans?,,, Scottish-Americans?,,, Irish- Americans?,,,, Spanish-Americans?,,, Italian-Americans?,,, Greek-Americans?,,,, French-Americans?,,, Portuguese-Americans?,,,, Brazilian-Americans?,,,, Chinese-Americans?,,,, Japanese-Americans?,,,, Vietnamese-Americans?,,,, Russian- Americans?,,,, German- Americans?,,,, Swedish-Americans?,,,, Danish-Americans?,,,, you-get-the-point-Americans?,,,, No, it is not any of those segments of the United States populations bringing us to war after war, tricking everyone else into Israel expansionism and funding ethnic the cleansing in Palestine,,, these groups are not so well organized and disciplined as one group that has decided what is best for us, behind our backs,, that is the American-Jewish lobby, AIPAC that gets congress elected and judges and ambassadors appointed and put freedom fighters in other countries onto “terrorist” list, with the intention of intimidating us into silence and self-censorship so that you don’t make a t-shirt with Che Guevara images with the Palestine flag behind him,,, afraid to wear it in public afraid fear that the Zionist running the New America will charge you with aiding and abetting terrorist, because they define the terrorism to get what they want,,, only the American-Jewish lobby AIPAC doesn’t bother to tell us that they have decided what is best for us,,, Obama and Clinton are really good people trying to do their best but if you bother to take the time to study up on the ZPC ,the Zionist Power Configuration you will see they are coerced into siding with the war-mongering colonialist expansionists Israel,,,, I know they are holding their noses privately,,,, but Obama never voted for us and neither did Netanyahu do anything good for America so we don’t have to carry Satan’s water anymore no matter how eloquently they try to get us to do so on NpR,,, I know NpR guest are caught between a rock and hard place,,,, listen how they can’t just pit out what they want to say when it comes to Israel,,,, they stammer and stall vocally while they are composing very carefully in their minds what they can and can’t not say and how to say it in a way that won’t get them in trouble with their bosses and media owners,,, college radio DJ’s on the other hand, don’t have owners or bosses to be afraid of like that of mainstream media including NpR,,, there isn’t any reason to be act like a mainstream mouth piece parrot,,, on NpR last night Robert Siegal did a propaganda piece about the, ‘IRON DOME’ but when it comes to explaining to their audience and non Jewish contributes what is going on over there,,, NpR fails to explain the effects of WHITE PHOSPHORUS that Israel sprays Palestinian children with,,, how it burns the skin and trying to put water on it to stop it from burning only makes it worse,,, this is why NpR needs and outside independent audit for real national security reasons,,, to rescue the others held captive at NpR that want to be real journalist not stenographers decimating deception on Israel’s behalf,,, at least study NpR lopsided pro-Israel bias, from the outside listening in,,, on your own if not with university resources and academic credits,,,, if not for patriotic reason,,, if not for all the people that suffered and marched and protested to get back the right to vote ( the right they always had) and have a representational government,,, if not for all the service men and women that sacrificed for our country,,, if not for the Crew of U.S.S Liberty that Israel tried to sink in 1967, (worth a Google)do it for selfish reasons,,, do it for the next generation,,, do it out concern that our country is too broke to start another war for Israel, too broke to start another war with the world that is learning the truth about false flag nine eleven operation which gave birth to the spy-on-everyone-state in The New United States,,, so as you can tell I do not know how to write well, but we live in times when everyone’s voice should be heard,,, writing is a very difficult task for most people,,, it is sad as all hell, when those that can write well try to intimidated us into silence because of a poor spelling and grammar abilities,,, so instead of us laboring over trying to write and read the arguments that justify my bold statements, please check out these links and articles,,, if we allow the U.S. to support the Israeli Navy shelling from sea 1.7 million Palestinian refugees living in an area twenty miles by 4 miles (like shooting like fish in a barrel) then we have lost our humanity -pete siad this Dead Can Dance - Severance (Live 1989 - From Vara TV) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJE9Ks3BBMM @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Echo and the Bunnymen – Rescue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ztaw9Zc2Y @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Public Enemy & Anthrax - Bring the noise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBA-xi8WuCU @@@@@@@@@@@ Public Enemy-Don't Believe The Hype http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK8sxngSWaU&feature=related @@@@@@@@ Colourbox – Tarantula http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anURS4cIrl8&feature=related @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Colourbox - Breakdown (7" Version One) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhamuwAILT8&feature=relmfu @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Colourbox_"Keep.On.Pushing"_EXT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm8xjwdn9DQ&feature=fvwrel @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ M.A.R.R.S. - Pump Up The Volume / A.R. Kane & Colourbox http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrtwCXeKsvg&feature=related @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmyGa29zIqk @@@@@@@@@@@@@ Jewish girl tries to criticise Dr. Norman Finkelstein http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5drXEXkf9s @@@@@@@@@@@@ Jerusalem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RbhpyDGIac @@@@@@@@@ Joy Division - 04 – Colony http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD3BRAiMrAw @@@@@@@@@ Joy Division - Atrocity Exhibition http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3suV4k7gF0&feature=related @@@@@@@@@ Battleground GazaRussia Today :: Middle East :: 11.17.2012 Interview with Russia Today. James Petras analyzes what is happening in Gaza http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1918 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ We Are Not Allowed to Critize Israel!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXAbHHgxT6o&feature=watch-vrec@Brain Lamb C-span the greatest gift to America,open phone lines and cameras in congress@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing! VIDEO WAS CENSORED http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynWjYHP91gA&feature=fvwrel @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@Jimmy Carter unveils truth about Israel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvtC_qzHVM4&feature=related@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ The Project for the New American Century. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Uploads/111/Graph/gaza-boy-blinded-by-white-phosphorus.jpg @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/1/21/1232561961477/White-Phosphorus-001.jpg@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ CNN: Israel burns Palestinians alive with illegal White Phosphorus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VFMnfFEJVQ@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ CNN: Israel Started the War not Hamashttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOK7h1IDgPo&feature=related Mustafa said in or before 2009, the ‘who started it’ debate is a distortion from the larger picture@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1918@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power by James Petras challenges the claims of Zionist apologists who argue that the ‘Israel power configuration’ is just another lobby by empirically examining several major US policies. http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1743&print=1 The Israeli Agenda openly defended, publically practiced and aggressively pursued by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) has greatly influenced the US Presidential elections and the likely future course of Washington’s Middle East policy. The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008 24.02.08 The Israeli Agenda openly defended, publically practiced and aggressively pursued by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) has greatly influenced the US Presidential elections and the likely future course of Washington’s Middle East policy. The strategy of the Jewish state is the complete Zionization of Palestine, the takeover of land, water, offshore gas (estimated to be worth $4 billion dollars) and other economic resources and the total dispossession of the Palestinian people. Tel Aviv’s tactics have included daily military assaults, giant walls ghettoizing entire Palestinian towns, military outposts and controls undermining commerce and production to force bankruptcy, poverty, severe deprivation and population flight. The second priority of the Israeli colonial state is to bolster the Jewish state’s political and military supremacy in the Middle East, using preposterous arguments of ‘survival’ and ‘existential threats’. The key postulate of Israeli Middle East policy is to destroy or intimidate the principle adversaries of its Zionization of Palestine and its expansionist Middle East policy. In pursuit of that policy, it invaded southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah, bombing neighborhoods and critical infrastructure in Beirut and other cities, bombed Syria as a provocation. Earlier the Israeli state played a major role in directing the ZPC in formulating US war policy toward destroying Iraq as a viable nation. Recently Israel, through the ZPC in the US, has engaged in a comprehensive, intense and highly charged political, diplomatic, economic and military campaign to isolate and ultimately destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran as a political counterweight to its ambitions in the Middle East (“Israel: Iran building Nuclear Arms”, Aljazeera February 12, 2008). The principal propaganda tool of the ZPC and its Israeli patrons is to claim Iran represents a ‘military threat’ to Israel, Iraq, the Gulf oil producers and the US. This outlandish charge is repeatedly made by ZPC ideologues. According to the 2008 edition of the International Institute of Strategic Studies Military Balance, Iran’s total defense spending for 2006 was nearly 55% less than Israel despite having ten times the population of the Jewish state and facing hundreds of US- supported terrorist incursions across its borders. Per capita, Israeli military expenditures were 17 times more than Iran ($1,737 per Israeli – not counting US direct military assistance – versus $110 for each Iranian citizen). It is widely acknowledged that Israel has over 200 nuclear weapons capable of striking Iranian population centers while Iran has none. Israel receives over $3 billion US dollars a year in direct US military aid, including the most advanced offensive military technology – while Iran receives no foreign military aid and has little defensive technology. According to US Budgetary Hearings, from 2009 to 2018 Israel will receive a $30 billion dollar package of direct foreign military financing from the US, while Iran will receive nothing from any foreign state. Contrary to Israeli and ZPC propaganda, the Gulf States, Iraq and many US military commanders do not consider Iran a military threat, but rather a factor in stabilizing the volatile situation. The Gulf States invited Iran to their annual meetings; Iraqi government leaders meet with Iranian officials on trade and security and Saudi Arabia is following a similar course by inviting Iranian leaders to Mecca for the Hadj. After the destruction of the secular republic of Iraq, the job of the ZPC has been to push for greater US military aggressin against Israel’s perceived adversaries – Iran being the prime target – by massive falsification of the actual correlation of military forces between Israel and Iran. Israeli and ZPC Intervention in the US Presidential Elections and Economic Policy The second task of the ZPC in pursuit of Israel’s agenda is to ensure no major political candidate debates or questions Israeli genocidal policies toward the Palestinians and its military ambitions in the Middle East. In the US Presidential election of 2008, the ZPC’s role is to ensure that all major candidates endorse, support and promote the Israeli political agenda, despite its genocidal policies (see Gideon Levy, “The Lights have been turned off”, Haaretz February 4, 2008) and repudiation of international law. The ZPC has imposed on all Presidential candidates Israel’s bellicose posture toward Iran, and its explicit policy of liquidating Hamas political leaders. According to Israeli Minister of Housing and construction, Zeev Boim, “all members of Hamas political leadership are involved in terrorist acts against Israel…so they must be liquidated.” (Israeli Army Radio- Galei Tzahal, February 9, 2008 cited in Haaretz). The third task of the ZPC is to use their strategic positions in the White House, Treasury, Pentagon and State Department to undermine Iran’s economy, politically isolate it and provoke internal and external confrontations. Israel 2008: The Theory and Practice of Genocide Israel has totally shredded any and all verbal commitments made at the Bush-organized Annapolis Middle East Conference in November 2007. The Jewish state is building 1000 new housing units in “Palestinian” East Jerusalem. It allows 100 new settler posts to occupy Palestinian land. It has attacked and killed Palestinian civilians, police and supporters of its ‘negotiating partner’ Abbas throughout the West Bank. Israel retains its 300 checkpoints throughout the West Bank, undermining travel, transport, trade and medical treatment. Jewish colonial settlements expand, further encroaching on Palestinian land, under the flimsy pretext that the peace process only precludes whatever the Jewish officials designate as ‘new settlements’, in effect isolating and reducing Palestinian East Jerusalem into a walled enclave. Israeli leaders have intensified their military assaults on Gaza, killing nearly 800 and wounding over 1,000 Palestinians since the democratically elected Hamas government took effective control over Gaza in 2007 (‘IDF to step up Gaza Assassinations’ Haaretz February 13, 2008). Worse still they have imposed the genocidal strategy of starving 1.4 million residents of Gaza into submission, practicing the internationally outlawed practice of collective punishment against civilians in order to incite them into overthrowing their elected government. Israeli officials have publicly embraced and defended their totalitarian policies of cutting off electricity generation in the Gaza Strip, thus drastically reducing or eliminating the supply of safe water, halting all sewage treatment, electricity for hospitals, refrigerators, food and vaccine storage, home, school and business lighting. The Israeli Supreme Court has approved this policy of mass, brutal collective punishment of over 1.4 million civilians. (Haaretz February 2, 2008). They have imposed a tight blockade on food and medical supplies resulting in what the United Nations officials and international human rights groups have called a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented magnitude with widespread disease and famine becoming a reality. The Israeli Army blocks even the movement of sick and critically injured children. The Israeli judicial system led by its Supreme Court judges has ruled in favor of the power cuts, bombing of generators and water treatment plants and blockage of food, providing an unprecedented ‘legal’ framework for genocide. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations have publicly defended Israeli genocidal policies and the ZPC has been successful in securing the support of both major US political parties and presidential candidates for Israeli collective punishment against Palestinian civilians. Deliberate State Genocide in the Service of Colonial Aggrandizement Israeli policymakers claim that their totalitarian tactics are a ‘response to ‘rocket attacks’ by Palestinian ‘terrorists’. In fact there are no attacks from the West Bank – not a single rocket attack throughout the past two years. Even more significant, Israel has repeatedly rejected Hamas offer to sign a joint comprehensive long-term ceasefire involving an end to rocket fire in exchange for an end to Israeli military air and tank assaults. All Israeli leaders have categorically rejected Hamas cease-fire offers and have refused to even negotiate with or recognize the duly elected Hamas leadership. The Jewish state has affirmed its policy of political extraterritorial assassinations of democratically elected political leaders irrespective of rocket or other attacks as part of its strategy of practicing international state terrorism against the Palestinian people, in violation of international law. In summary, genocide and state terror at the service of ethnic dispossession and racial-ethnic colonial settlements is the openly stated, judicially sanctioned practice of the Israeli state. There is no basis for speaking of a Jewish, Zionist or Israeli ‘conspiracy’ against the Palestinians. State terror is practiced openly and publicly defended by the Supreme Court while international law is publicly dismissed as irrelevant to the extent that it infringes on the freedom of action, expansion and ‘security’ of Jewish territorial ambitions, military superiority in the Middle East and Israeli influence over US Middle East policy. As Israeli policy makers clearly embrace totalitarian policies, engaging and justifying international assassination of adversaries and the collective punishment of over 1.4 million civilians in Gaza, their political, academic and journalistic apologists rely on unadulterated vituperation and paranoid screeds against Israel’s critics in the US. The now deceased super-Zionist Congress-person Tom Lantos (Democrat California), accused ex-President Carter of being filled with ‘venom’ for comparing the oppression of the Palestinians to South African Apartheid. Zionist zealot, Eugene Kontorovich, Professor of Law (sic) at Northwestern University, claims that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Israel’s violent seizure and settlement of Palestinian lands (Daily Alert February 15, 2008). Alex Safian ‘refutes’ Professors Walt and Mearsheimer’s classic study of the Israel Lobby in the United States as ‘a fraud’. Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, refers to Israel’s privileging of Jews over Palestinians in the Occupied Territories as ‘the poisonous myth of Israel’s Apartheid’ (National Post-Canada cited in the Daily Alert February 15, 2008). The violent vituperative language follows the deep frustration that Zionist leaders feel in failing to stem the growing rejection of Israel’s totalitarian politics. Their belief that no one should ever attack Israel’s colonial and racist policies leads them to blind rage, blacklisting, censorship and vicious character assassinations. Israel’s expansionist and militarist policies, in violation of international law, are accompanied by a powerful tendency among mainstream Zionist leaders to reject international law, vilifying the United Nations and insulting the International Court of Justice. Pro-Israel Western leaders adopt Israel’s paranoid style of politics and translate it into the American political discourse. Zionist zealot and head of US Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, engages in widespread internal espionage of US citizens in violation of constitutional protections. Zionist fanatic, US Attorney General Michael Mulkasy, refused to investigate the illegal, but widely acknowledged practice of torturing suspects in US custody, including water-torture (water-boarding), considering this internationally outlawed torture to be ‘acceptable under certain conditions’. The most egregious example of Israel’s political and intellectual degeneration is found in the logic of its chain of enemies. Israeli military targeting starts with attacking the Palestinian armed resistance; then it extends to their family members, neighbors, their homes, schools, workshops, offices and fields. It implicates civilians, ambulances and food distribution outlets. It proceeds to target the entire community, a whole people, with round-ups of all males less than 45 years of ages. Paranoia leads to verbal assaults of overseas European and US critics of Israeli crimes against humanity. Israeli death squads cross borders and assassinate political leaders, train terrorists in Iraq, Iran, Colombia and elsewhere to weaken countries, regimes and groups, which politically support the Palestinian struggle for independence and sovereignty. Accompanying the Israeli policy of permanent global war and paranoia are the entire leadership of the Zionist Power Configuration in the US. The ZPC’s introduction of the Israeli paranoid style of politics in our country becomes one of the biggest threats to American freedoms and our desire to avoid Israeli entrapment in another brutal war in the Middle East. The Zionist Power Configuration: 2008 The ZPC is made up of all the major Jewish organizations, pro-Israel plutocrats, media barons and government officials who are Israel Firsters. In the face of the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe imposed by Israel’s food and energy blockade of Gaza, and its thorough repudiation of the terms of the Annapolis peace negotiation the Zionist power configuration had its work cut out for it in selling the Israeli genocidal agenda as a defensive, justifiable policy of a peace-loving democracy. The second task of the ZPC was to overcome the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran which refuted Israeli and White House propaganda painting Iran as a nuclear threat. The Israeli state propaganda machine went on an all out assault of the NIE, claiming to have superior knowledge of hidden Iranian research programs – without providing a shred of reliable evidence. Once the Israeli state defined its position to the NIE, the entire leadership of the Conference of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CPMAJO), all the major Zionist- controlled propaganda centers (‘think tanks’) and an army of Israel-First academics (self-styled ‘intelligence experts’) and ideologues deluged the print and electronic mass media with attacks on the NIE report, echoing and citing the rhetoric and claims of the Israeli state. The White House and Congress (with few exceptions) followed the line of the ZPC, downplaying and distorting the NIE, escalating their bellicose rhetoric and pressure for sanctions on Iran in the UN Security Council and among the EU and NATO countries. The success of the ZPC in sustaining US confrontational policies against Iran, and forcefully selling the Israeli policy to the US political elite even against the findings and report of all the US intelligence agencies is a measure of the decisive power of the ZPC over US Middle East policy. Never in the entire history of the US has a small and economically insignificant foreign power wielded so much influence over Washington in a strategic region through its overseas representatives over and against the advice of America’s entire intelligence establishment. The key to Zionist power is its ability to leverage and multiply its influence through non-Zionist congressional, media, pension fund managers, state and municipal officials and a host of trade union, academic and other notables and civic organizations. Strategically placed Zionists focused on the single issue of Israel, bring to bear the economic and organizational resources of their 1 million affiliates, supporters and media publicists on targeting policy makers in all relevant fields. The targeted individuals and organizations representing many millions of American Gentiles and non-Zionist Jews usually capitulate to the pressure or payoffs or are persuaded to follow the lead of the aggressive focused Zionist zealots. The propaganda value of having non-Zionists with a mass organizational base carrying out Israeli policies is immense. Leveraging the ‘others’ allows the pro-Israel liberal ideologues to obfuscate, downplay and dilute the real power of Israel and the ZPC in the making of US Middle East policy. As a consequence, we find what I call ‘mish-mash’ analyses which argue that “The Zionist pro-Israel lobby (sic) is only one of many groups and interests influencing US Middle East policy”. In other words, Zionist leveraged politicians are given a degree of autonomy and attributed a set of interests, which effectively hides Zionist initiatives, pressures and tactical leverage. In 2008 Zionist direct and leveraged power is manifested in several decisively important areas of US politics, especially in foreign policy. The ZPC and the Presidential Elections All of the major presidential candidates have slavishly followed the most extreme pro-Israel positions promoted by the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. John McCain, the Republican front-runner declares his unconditional support for Israel’s territorial expansion, settlements and genocidal policy toward Gaza. According to the Jewish weekly, The Forward (February 13, 2008), “On Israel,…McCain has been uncharacteristically conventional. He offers unqualified support, expressed in years of public statements…” The same article emphasizes how in 2006 McCain capitulated to Zionist pressure in a matter of days by recanting his position on Israel returning to its 1967 borders: “I’ve never held the position that Israeli should return to the 1967 lines and that is not my position today.” On February 7, 2008 McCain defined US-Iranian policy on strictly Zionist terms: “Those (Democratic) senators won’t recognize and seriously address the threat posed by an Iran with nuclear ambitions to our ally Israel in the region.” (McCain’s speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, February 7, 2008, quoted in Haaretz February 10, 2008). In 2007, McCain happily echoed Israeli demands to bomb Iran with the vulgar and sinister new refrain to an old Beach Boys rock song… “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb…Bomb-bomb Iran”. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have supported every major position and demand of the ZPC: Both have pledged unconditional support for Israel; they have backed Israel’s genocidal policies against Gaza, the expansion of settlements and the total takeover of Jerusalem. Hillary Clinton urges recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – contrary to the United Nations, the European Union and even the Bush Administration’s position. Zionist ideologues are among the top foreign policy and Middle East advisers of all three top contenders for their party’s presidential nomination. The public record reads Zionist decisive influence over the next US President’s Middle Est policy. The only possible deviation is Obama’s statement that he is willing to negotiate with the Iranian government – a policy that the Bush regime, in part, already practices at a lesser official level via meetings in Iraq. For his minor discrepancy from the Zionist war rhetoric toward Iran, Obama was chastised by Malcolm Hoenlein, head of the CPMAJO (Haaretz January 18, 2008). To compensate for talking too much about ‘change’ which worries the paranoid Jewish leaders, like Hoenlein, Obama went out of his way to blame the civilians living in Gaza for the Israeli campaign to starve them into surrender and called on them to revolt against their democratically-elected Hamas government. The ZPC is the only major national political-social apparatus, which engages in a comprehensive, persistent and intensive campaign to direct US foreign policy into a full-scale (diplomatic, military and economic) confrontation with Iran. Silencing Potential Critics of the ZPC Almost every major centrist, leftist or progressive journal, weekly magazine, radio and web site has refused to discuss the singular influence of the ZPC over the Presidential candidates’ Middle East policy - a further indication of the reach and influence of the ZPC. The best indication that the ZPC is not ‘just another lobby’ as Mearsheimer and Walt claim, or a simply another bellicose neo-conservative current of opinion, is found in their slavish adherence to the Israeli state’s policies, even when they blatantly defy and repudiate the rightwing policies of President Bush. At Annapolis (November 2007) President Bush called on Israel to cease building new settlements in order to further peace negotiations. Exactly three months later Israel announced plans to build over 1,000 (1,250) new Jews-only homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem (BBC News, February 12, 2008). The Daily Alert propaganda sheet of the CPMAJO immediately endorsed the Israeli position and set in motion its major lobbyists, op-ed ideologues and media ‘experts’ to justify Israel’s crass repudiation of its agreement with President Bush. Rather than confront this flagrant, highly public, unilateral and shameful Israeli repudiation of its agreement with the White House, President Bush , Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Gates all played ‘Mickey the Dunce’. White House press secretary, Dana Perino, claimed she had not seen the report about Israel’s plans to build new apartments in East Jerusalem – though it was ‘news’ in all the mass electronic and print media. In fear of the ZPC, Perino responded as if the entire affair was simply a problem for the Palestinians: “But obviously, there is no doubt that an announcement of that sort (building 1,125 new Jews-only segregated apartments) would make the Palestinians concerned” (Santa Barbara News-Press February 12, 2008). Zionist Power: Treasury Department Within the government, the principal architect and key operative of the US worldwide campaign to strangle the Iranian economy is a top Treasury Department official, Stuart Levey, a zealous Zionist and key agent of the ZPC in the executive branch. Levey has successfully browbeat the reticent, persuaded the gullible and teamed up with co-thinkers who control state, municipal and private pension funds to withdraw investments from any enterprise which deals with Iran. Levey is a major architect of the Treasury’s economic sanctions policy, which Washington has promoted in the United Nations Security Council. Levey’s policies have succeeded in blocking Iranian private bank transactions. They have received the support of the White House and the National Security Council despite the NIE report, which found that Iran was not engaged in a nuclear weapons program. Mohamed El Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency have confirmed the position of the NIE (Associated Press, February 23, 2008). Unlike Levey, the NIE and the IAEA are agencies, which are not influenced by the Zionist power configuration. Nevertheless, the Israeli demands (pushed by the ZPC) for further sanctions based on unfounded claims of continued nuclear arms programs trumps the NIE and IAEA intelligence findings. The White House, France, England and Germany demand new and harsher sanctions against Iran. Never in the history of Israeli influence over US Middle East policy has the pro-Israel power configuration so much influence as it has today: The US government (President to Congress to Presidential hopefuls) repudiate its own intelligence agencies in favor of the ‘intelligence’ claims of a foreign power. Never has the US Treasury Department been so influenced by Israel Firsters, like Stuart Levey, Daniel Glaser and their colleagues in putting the interests of Israel above and beyond the interests of the major US and European oil companies. At every AIPAC meeting since 2004, in every publication of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations over the past 5 years, in each and every state and citywide conference of Jewish community councils, every effort has been made to promote US military action or economic sanctions against Iran. In fact, the ZPC escalated its campaign against Iran after the NIE was published and intensified their campaign in favor of Israel’s fabricated ‘intelligence claims’ (Daily Alert, November 2007 – February 2008). The dual power position of Israel Firsters in key policy positions and civil society defines their influence over US Middle East policy. The International Dimension The US ZPC has been immensely aided in securing its bellicose anti-Iranian agenda by the appointments of prominent Zionists to key foreign policy positions in England and France. David Milliband, the British Foreign Minister, has close family ties with Jewish settlers from Britain colonizing the occupied West Bank. During a visit to Israel, he spent several days with Israeli officials and an evening with his relatives, while totally ignoring the issue of the 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza suffering from Israel’s genocidal blockade. Milliband has been a fierce defender of keeping the ‘military option on the table’, heightening economic sanctions against Iran and is an unconditional supporter of Israel’s brutal policy preventing the shipment of food and fuel from reaching the suffering people of the Gaza strip. Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister is a lifelong zealous Zionist who, upon taking office, pronounced himself in favor of a military attack on Iran ‘if negotiations fail’. As the new Foreign Minister, Kouchner went to US occupied Iraq and praised the occupation and puppet ‘government’ despite the over 1 million civilian deaths and 4 million destitute refugees which has resulted from the invasion and occupation. Kouchner (appointed by French President Sarkozy – under pressure from the Zionists), like president Bush gave strong backing to any Israeli ‘military pre-emptive action’ (offensive military assault), though a strong negative reaction from the French public forced him to tone down his overt support of Israeli military actions. With such powerful political allies and co-thinkers in the American, French and British governments and the controlling role of the ZPC over US policymakers in the United Nations, it comes as no surprise that Israel received no reprimand for its daily murders and abductions of civilians and Palestinian officials in Gaza and the West Bank. Zion power prevents the UN from even applying its own basic international principles to prosecute crimes against humanity, including torture and collective punishment. Since its founding in the late 19th century and its spread to the US, especially after WWII, organized Zionism has never been so influential in so many spheres of government and had so much control over US Middle East policy as it possesses today. Most major pro-Israel Jewish leaders in moments of candor have publicly acknowledged that they are at the pinnacle of influence, to the effect that ‘we have never had an administration as favorable to Israel as under President Bush.’ Certainly this is an understatement that speaks to an underlying truth : Never has the US engaged in a very costly Middle Eastern war to benefit a foreign power; never has the US deliberately prevented big oil companies from signing billion dollar oil contracts by imposing economic sanctions on Iran in order to weaken a regional opponent of Israel. The Show Must Go On Not only does the ZPC directly influence US policy against Palestine, Iraq and Iran, but it has extended its campaign against ‘third parties’, countries like China which have economic relations with Sudan (a Muslim nation with an independent foreign policy which supports Palestinian rights). To an overwhelming degree, the propaganda campaign behind the so-called “Darfur genocide campaign’ is the Israeli state and its political apparatus in the US, namely the ZPC. Most of the media celebrities, led by prominent Hollywood Zionist director Steven Spielberg, have engaged in an exercise of selective moral indignation – supporting Israel, while ignoring its starvation blockade of Gaza, supporting the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq while attacking China for its ‘immoral’ oil contracts with the Sudan. The CPMAJO has focused on the Darfur ‘genocide’ because by doing so it favors the brutal separatists in southern Sudan, armed and advised by Israel, as a means of depriving pro-Palestinian Sudan of a large oil rich region in the south of the country. The Darfur campaign deliberately and systematically excludes any mention of the Israeli Supreme Court’s approval of Israel’s food and fuel blockade and deliberate prevention of the movement of medical personnel in Gaza and the West Bank, its approval of Israel’s practice of torture (‘forceful interrogations’), armed assaults on the vital infrastructure and civilian population centers of Gaza. Hollywood’s Darfur sideshow is a sham propaganda effort at selective humanitarian concern, which does not deviate a millimeter from the official line promoted by the Israeli state and publicized in the US by the Daily Alert, the principle bulletin of the ZPC. ZPC: Scorecard for 2008 From January to the middle of February 2008, Israeli had killed, wounded and arrested nearly a thousand Palestinians, mostly but not exclusively from Gaza. Over half of those killed, arrested and wounded were unarmed civilians, the rest include Hamas and PLO security officials, militia members and anti-colonial resistance fighters. Of the 700 primitive rockets and shells launched from Gaza, not a single Israeli Jew was killed and fewer than a dozen suffered serious bodily harm. Only a contract farm laborer from Ecuador died on the Israeli side from the rockets. In a speech to Jewish-American leaders in mid-February, Prime Minister Olmert spelled out the gist of Israel’s totalitarian strategy. According to the BBC News (February 18, 2008) “Mr Olmert said, ‘Israel had a free hand to respond and attack anyone who has any kind of responsibility. This applied to everyone, first and foremost Hamas,” (my emphasis). The entire leadership of the major Jewish organizations, whole-heartedly approved the use of unrestrained and unlimited violence (a ‘free hand’) against the entire Palestinian population (‘any kind of responsibility’), which would include individuals who transport, feed, educate, shelter, vote for or interact with Hamas, their family members, friends, neighbors – 99% of the residents of Gaza. Giving priority to targeting ‘first and foremost Hamas’ includes several hundred thousand voters who elected Hamas in free and democratic elections. The ZPC has succeeded in securing the near unanimous US Congressional support for Israel’s mass arrests and daily assaults on Gaza, even when a few mass media outlets published photos of Israeli colonial soldiers parading eighty arbitrarily arrested Palestinian civilians bound and blindfolded to notorious Israeli interrogation centers (BBC News February 18, 2008) for unlimited detention with no legal guarantees against physical and psychological torture. The ZPC has swamped the US mass media with praise of Israel’s cross border assassinations, such as the international political murder of Hizbullah leader, Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, Syria (Daily Alert February 15, 2008). Reproducing articles from the Israeli press (Jerusalem Post, Haaretz) and Zionist think tanks and weeklys (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, New York Jewish Week, YNET News, CAMERA, New York Sun, and Middle East Strategy at Harvard) the Daily Alert has provided legitimacy to international assassinations by official state-directed death squads thereby extending the violence and counter-violence throughout the world. This is a fact recognized by the US FBI and Israeli officials. Heads of the Israeli international secret police, the MOSSAD, openly acknowledge the role of Israeli assassinations in provoking terrorist reprisals by putting a world-wide alert to Jews to avoid Islamic and Arab countries as well as locations where “there is a high concentration of Israelis” (Prime Minister’s Office, reprinted in the Daily Alert February 15, 2008). The Israeli practice of staging international assassinations of opposition leaders in major cities will not only invite retaliation against Israelis and Jews but also endanger sites in the US and EU, for tolerating these acts of state-sponsored terror. In other words, Israeli terror invites terrorist counter attacks like September 11, 2001. Israel, by provoking a new round in the Palestinian ‘war through global terror’ and the US and EU by embracing an Israeli car bomb assassination in Damascus endanger Western lives everywhere. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, their publicists and op-ed ideologues in the mass media are opening the entire Western world to terrorist attacks. By supporting Israeli terror and increasing the chance of Muslim reprisals, the ZPC strengthens the repressive structure of a growing police state in the US. (The ‘professional’ killing by Israeli operatives of a major figure in Damascus, Syria raises the question of the role of Israeli operatives in the as-yet unsolved series of car bomb assassinations in Lebanon – given Israel’s desire to maintain a state of internal tension in that country.) The brilliant and precocious Ivy League academic apologists of each and every act of official Israeli state-sponsored international terror apparently dissociate these acts of assassination from likely reprisals in our country and the consequent further destruction of our remaining precarious democratic freedoms. Could it be that Zionist American intellectuals welcome more US police state agencies and laws in order to prosecute a rising number of Americans who are critical of Zionist influence over the American political process? They might do well to recall that police state structures and laws could be used against them in the future. Except for a small, courageous and isolated band of Anglo-American-Canadian Jewish intellectuals and academics, all the mainline Jewish organizations raised not a single question, let alone criticism regarding Israel’s role in instigating international terror. From the beginning of the year, the ZPC has intensified its campaign to strangle the Iranian economy through US-promoted sanctions in the UN. They raised the ante in demonizing Iran as a military-nuclear threat to Israel, the US and the Gulf States. Almost a third of every issue of the Daily Alert (from January 1 to February 20, 2008) is devoted to reproducing propaganda pieces from Israeli officials claiming the Iranians are a nuclear threat and are advancing toward nuclear war. They repeat Israeli propaganda about an ‘existential threat to the survival of Israel’. The CPMAJO never mention that Israel has a current Middle East monopoly of over 200 nuclear weapons and missiles. Since most leading US Zionists believe that they will not have another President as servile to Israeli interests as the current President Bush (a doubtful proposition) they are pushing hard to find a pretext for a US attack or an Israeli strike backed by Washington before Bush leaves office. While the White House has raised its bellicose rhetoric and aggressively pursued new sanctions, Washington and its backers in the ZPC have failed to isolate Iran. In late 2007 and into 2008, Iran has met with top Iraqi politicians in Baghdad and Teheran, reached agreements with US military officials to stabilize Iraq, addressed the Gulf Cooperation Council at their annual meeting in Doha, while the Saudi monarch invited Iranian President Ahmadinejad to fulfill the Hadj pilgrimage in Mecca in December 2007 (Al Jazeera, February 16, 2008). In other words the ZPC’s militarist anti-Iran strategy has succeeded in isolating the US form its conservative Gulf allies, split US civilians and military policymakers and cost major US and EU oil companies over $20 billion dollars in lost Iranian oil contracts. While the ZPC, via its influence in the mass media and contributions to the leading presidential candidates, has shaped elite opinion in defense of Israeli genocide in Gaza and war policy toward Iran, it has failed to ‘turn’ the great majority of the American public opposed to Middle East wars from favoring the prompt withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and condemning the officially acknowledged use of torture in detainee interrogations. Cracks in the Zionist Monolith There are even some cracks in the ZPC monolithic control of public debate on the Israeli colonization of Palestine and the disastrous role of the pro-Israel power configuration in formulating US domestic security and war policy. Despite the Daily Alerts reproduction of at least a dozen vitriolic, histrionic, ad hominum attacks on Professors Mearsheimer and Walt and their book on the Israel Lobby and former President Jimmy Carter’s book on the Israeli apartheid policy against Palestinians, the issues they raise have circulated widely and continue to influence millions of Americans. Jewish critics, both secular and religious, Zionist and anti-Zionist (especially the younger generations), are publicly challenging the pretense of the mainline Jewish organizations’ claim to speak for the Jewish community with regard to Israel and US Middle East policy. Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, a primarily anti-Zionist Jewish organization, has joined with the province of Ontario’s biggest public sector trade union in denouncing Israeli colonial policy in Palestine and challenging Zionist dominance of the Jewish community and influence over the Canadian trade union movement. Major protestant denominations in the United States, including the Presbyterians and Methodists are supporting divestment of US companies aiding Israel’s brutal colonial rule in the West Bank and Gaza. In the first week of February, the student government at the London School of Economics voted by an overwhelming majority in favor of divestment campaign against companies supporting Israeli occupation. A growing number of universities organized well-attended teach-ins throughout North America, protesting Israel’s apartheid regime and policy, despite vitriolic attacks from prominent Jewish administrators and Zionist academics. Top US military commanders, active and retired, have taken initiatives that directly contravene the ZPC dictates on Iran by praising its cooperation in stabilizing Iraq and playing a critical supporting role in overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan. The major intelligence agencies in the US report on Iran’s absence of a nuclear weapon development program, contradicting the propaganda line of the Administration. This has struck a powerful blow against the ZPC warmongers and their Israel-First agents in the Treasury Department (Levey, Glaser), the National Security Council (Elliott Abrams), the White House (Joshua Bolton), State Department (Wolfowitz) and Pentagon (Shumsky). We are engaged in a life and death struggle against war, terror and genocide – against Imperial and Zionist barbarism. As the ZPC push for a military confrontation with Iran before Bush leaves office; as the ZPC back Israel’s policy of economic blockades to starve the people of Gaza, assassinate its leaders and shred all public order in Gaza; as the ZPC back Israeli state-sponsored extra-territorial murders (likely to provoke new terror retaliatory attacks in the US and EU and the end of democratic freedoms in America); and as the ZPC actively support the shredding of constitutional and judicial liberties of American citizens and residents and the expansion of a repressive security state, we should recognize the following: In the final instance, in fighting the ZPC, we should be aware of powerful enemies in high places, acting against the interests of our country. But we should recognize we also have enormous support among the American people and even tactical allies among some officials in the military and intelligence community. We have a new generation of active dissident Christian, secular and Jewish critics of Israel and the ZPC, as well as billions of supporters among Muslims world wide, among secular Arabs and the majority of citizens in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. Above all, we are defending our own, hard-won democratic freedoms, our own families’ and communities’ security from Israeli-provoked terrorist attacks and, even more important, our right to develop policies in the interest of the American people, free from the dictates of Israel and its agents. February 2008 http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1727&print=1 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 100 Years of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotyping by Mazin B. Qumsiyeh http://www.ibiblio.org/prism/jan98/anti_arab.html @@@@@@@@@@@ phones are optional The Beat "Too Nice To Talk To" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJrriD-CYpc @@@@@@@@@ The Go Find - Modern Times http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yJs5UD0LqU @@@@@@@@@@@@@@

UNRWA criticized Israel’s fabrication of material and its dissemination via social media: On 17 November 2012 at 22:16, the Israeli Defense Forces tweeted from their official Twitter account (@IDFSpokesperson) a link to a video hosted on their official YouTube channel, featuring an animated film that depicts militants firing rockets from a school clearly marked with the UNRWA insignia. UNRWA is concerned about the creation and use of footage that wrongly suggests that UNRWA is allowing its premises to be used for terrorist activities in the current conflict and the unauthorised use of its logo in computer-generated material. In a situation of conflict these allegations have potentially grave consequences. UNRWA takes with utmost seriousness the neutrality of its installations, particularly in times of heightened violence. False allegations, but real death, injury and damage to UNRWA affiliated persons and facilities Israel has long alleged – without evidence – and using fabricated graphic material that schools and hospitals are used as military sites, in order to justify its frequent attacks on them. UNRWA said in an 18 November situation report that among its facilities damaged in the ongoing Israeli attacks, were the Shejaya Elementary Co-ed School which sustained severe damage to the boundary wall and the school building. Marwan Abu El Qumsan, an Arabic teacher in his early fifties, at UNRWA’s Preparatory Boys School in Jabalia, was killed while in his car in an Israeli airstrike on 15 November, and on 18 November a Grade 4 student died following an Israeli air attack in an open area near Beach Camp. Separately, UNRWA said that its workers have rebuilt a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp badly damaged in an Israeli airstrike on 18 November. Tags: UNRWA hasbara schools #GazaUnderAttack http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-tv-admits-no-rockets-were-ever-fired-unrwa-schools-gaza-during-cast-lead@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-officials-use-fake-graphic-justify-bombing-gaza-hospitals@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=1507@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=1500@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=1512@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://www.unrwa.org/gaza@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=1500@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ http://unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=1515@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ UN workers rebuild shattered food distribution centre in Gaza amid the violence; distributions continue 20 November 2012 Gaza Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza Robert Turner and UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi visit Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Workers at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) have rebuilt a badly-damaged food distribution centre in the Jabalia refugee camp, partially destroyed by an Israeli airstrike. This has allowed distributions to continue to thousands of beneficiaries. The centre was hit two days ago, but within 24 hours, UNRWA staff gathered together the necessary building materials and tools and had repaired the building to the point where it was functional again. Read more: Emergency in Gaza “This is yet another tribute to the bravery, resourcefulness and ingenuity of UNRWA workers”, said Robert Turner, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza. “To rebuild this facility as the violence raged is tremendously courageous, but typical of what we are seeing from UN workers right now in the Gaza Strip.” On 19 November, after the facility was rebuilt, more than 6,500 refugees were able to pick up their food rations and feed their families. UNRWA distributes regular food aid to 800,000 refugees in Gaza. Amid the current violence, impoverished refugees are even more vulnerable and increasingly reliant on support from UNRWA. Jabalia distribution centre is not the only UNRWA installation affected. Since the start of the latest upsurge in fighting, several UNRWA installations across the Gaza Strip, including schools and medical centres, have been damaged. UNRWA staff and students have also been affected: On 15 November, an UNRWA Arabic teacher was killed in an airstrike in Jabalia refugee camp. And yesterday, on 18 November, a Grade 4 student of a girls’ school in Beach Camp died in an airstrike. Many others have been injured. Despite the violence, some 12,000 UNRWA staff are continuing to deliver life-saving services: health, sanitation, and food distributions. UNRWA has been forced to shut its 245 schools serving 225,000 students, but since the current round of fighting the Agency has been broadcasting 12 hours per day of educational classes on its satellite TV stations. This innovative new UN service is the first fully dedicated UN TV channel in the Middle East. - Ends - Background information UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to a population of some 5 million registered Palestine refugees. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip to achieve their full potential in human development, pending a just solution to their plight. UNRWA’s services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, microfinance and emergency assistance. Financial support to UNRWA has not kept pace with an increased demand for services caused by growing numbers of registered refugees, expanding need, and deepening poverty. As a result, the Agency's General Fund, supporting UNRWA’s core activities and 97 per cent reliant on voluntary contributions, has begun each year with a large projected deficit. Currently the budget deficit stands at USD 21 million. For more information, please contact: Chris Gunness UNRWA Spokesperson Mobile: +972 (0)54 240 2659 Office: +972 (0)2 589 0267 c.gunness@unrwa.org Sami Mshasha UNRWA Arabic Spokesperson Mobile: +972 (0)54 216 8295 Office: +972 (0)2 589 0724 s.mshasha@unrwa.org http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-israel-shattered-gaza-truce-leading-escalating-death-and-tragedy-timeline http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-israel-shattered-gaza-truce-leading-escalating-death-and-tragedy-timeline "No Place is Safe": After Assault’s Worst Day, Gaza Doctor Says Israel Terrorizing Civilians http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/20/no_place_is_safe_after_assaults Human Rights “It’s our responsibility” to document Israel’s violations, say Gaza human rights defenders Joe Catron The Electronic Intifada Gaza City 20 November 2012 Fieldworkers with Gaza human rights groups are documenting the impact of Israel’s bombing campaign day and night. (Yasser Qudih / APA images) Palestinian human rights organizations in the besieged coastal territory are struggling to document the rising casualties as Israel’s escalated attacks on the Gaza Strip continue into the seventh day. “The bombardments and air raids are everywhere in the Gaza Strip,” Issam Younis said at the Gaza City office of the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights on Monday afternoon. Younis, the center’s director, oversees a staff normally scattered among offices across the Strip — in Gaza City, Jabaliya and Rafah — and whose duties include documentation, advocacy, media and public information work. “The number of casualties is very high,” he said. “For us, it is very difficult and complicated to be everywhere we need to be.” “As a center, our main task is to monitor the human rights situation, and to document the violations that are taking place.” It is crucial, Younis says, to document violations quickly. “We have to be on the spot. This is sometimes dangerous. But our field workers are there, day and night. “We have to follow the attacks, interview victims and eyewitnesses, and document everything. It’s our responsibility to reveal the crimes continually committed by the Israeli army. “And we think the value of our work requires that it be done on time. Some evidence might be destroyed, for example when contents are removed from houses that have been destroyed.” Coping But even as increasing attacks test the center’s capacity, Younis says, the danger throughout the Gaza Strip keeps many of its field researchers from their normal work. “Not all of them can come to the office,” he said. “Some have to stay at home with their families. For others, it is too dangerous to travel. “Some of us are working from home. And all of us are doing what we can to cope with the situation. “It’s important that we do this. We are preparing files for legal cases. And field documentation is a requirement is a requirement for our other work, whether advocacy or legal.” Because of the challenges facing the center, many of its workers from other departments have shifted into field work. “Almost all of the staff are doing field work [to] cope with the unexpected number of violations that should be documented,” Younis says. Only a skeleton crew of three to four staffers remain in the Gaza City office. Those in Rafah and Jabaliya are empty. Repeatedly bombed A few blocks away, Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, looks exhausted. He told The Electronic Intifada that he hasn’t slept for days. “Three hundred meters from my home, there is a civil affairs office owned by the Interior Ministry,” he said. “They do paperwork.” The building, he said, is in a crowded population center. “Within 300 meters of it, you will find tens of thousands of people.” But the Israeli air force has bombed it repeatedly. “And each time, there have been not less than four, five, or six bombs,” he said. “Why are they doing that?” he asked. “They use high-tech F-16s, and very expensive bombs, very big bombs, very sophisticated bombs. “Is any logic there in this? I would say no. There is no logic from a security perspective.” Israel’s strategy, Sourani thinks, is to instill fear in the Gaza Strip’s civilian population. Mentioning an empty football field targeted by Israeli warplanes, he asked rhetorically, “Why did they bomb it? Is it to destroy the field? Why did they use four bombs? “They want to terrorize the people of Gaza! They are doing all these air raids. Are they stupid? This is money, time, risk to the lives of pilots and others, and bringing quite a lot of rage and hatred. Why are they doing this? “I think they want to keep 1.6 million people in 365 square kilometers in fear and terror. I have no other explanation.” “As usual, the situation is unpredictable,” Younis said. “We were not expecting this. But we have to cope. “The worst thing here is the unpredictability,” he added. “We can’t plan for the long term. But we will adjust. We are used to this.” Regular updates and data on the human rights situation Gaza can be found at www.mezan.org and pchrgaza.org. Joe Catron is a US activist in Gaza, Palestine. He works with the Centre for Political and Development Studies (CPDS) and other Palestinian groups and international solidarity networks, particularly in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions and prisoners’ movements. He blogs at joecatron.wordpress.com and tweets at @jncatron. http://electronicintifada.net/content/its-our-responsibility-document-israels-violations-say-gaza-human-rights-defenders/11915

One would think or maybe two or twenty or twenty-two thousands would think about media bias as it relates to their life’s,,, One would think or maybe two or twenty or twenty-two thousands would cultivate some imagination of how much better life could be, how chill life could be without a media that is so willing to deceive mass segments of the population into supporting conflict but mostly just manipulating us into silence and numbness over conflict, training us to lay down,,, training us to lay down while they recruit below the radar or out in public under our noses,,,We play with our toys and social media, constantly looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places distracted and divided and conquered,,, One would think that even if they did not care about the Middle East they would care about the integrity of the media they consume, like food and water,,, people hate the media because they always have the last world,,, people hate the media because they attack others that don’t own media can’t defend themselves against the media,,, people hate the media because the media is not transparent ,,,lack of transparency is a cancer on democracy or any public funded group,,, people hate the media because they are fake and use fake voices like the guy from NpR’s ‘Market Place’, the guy that talks like Crusty the Clown from the Simpsons spinning upward like a Kai jack-in-the-box Ryssdal,,, people the media because there is lack of diversity of idea or ways of look at life,,, we are swimming in a media sea of stagnate homogeny and boredom periodically interrupted with shocking horrifying sound and images designed not to sale products, but to flood our brains and bodies with fear neurobiological chemicals that make us lay down on the floor,,, people hate the media because their products are too expensive, mad out of price, 100 times over,,, people hate the media because the media attacks their critics, not in the medium the critics use, but with the power of technology beyond them(public technology)and then lie about their “collateral damage” (sick and misleading terminology),,, people hate the media because they are insensitive and lack a empathy,,, they really don’t care about us yet they want us to care about them,,, very odd,,, NpR needs an independent audit done by people not afraid of Zionist power,,, people hate the media because if not for sale they don’t care,,,if you listen carful you can her Terry Gross bully the people she interviews,,, they know she stinks but they have to go on her show by contract obligation and their aren’t too many outlets for sensitive alert creative people available to let people know about what they have been working on,,, One would think or maybe two or twenty or twenty-two thousands would look at the TV talk shows from the sixties and seventies to see how much of the dunes were washed away,, anyway Mustapha I fell bad that your people are taking such a beating my friend I’m sure thing s will improve my friend Happy thanksgiving and think about the native peoples from settlement times and think about Palestinians as a indigenous 2****************************************

Mustapha I hope your people are ok Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, Vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl, vin-yl records are holy, preserve the library Mark Stewart – Anger http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPSf4CWRd0 same, same but different no anger here,,, don’t pray for peace, work for peace instea…. FREE PALESTINE!!!!..... I don’t think any of us could handle living under Israel’s boot or know what life is like for the PEOPLE of Palestine, but we say rah rah for Israel like parrots repeating what their hear on TV and the radio,,, cure for brainwashed parrots http://electronicintifada.net/ Why Obama Can’t Take on Israel, By Jonathon Cook Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential election last week was greeted with general unease in Israel. Surveys conducted outside the US shortly before polling day showed Obama was the preferred candidate in every country but two — Pakistan and Israel. But unlike Pakistan, where the two candidates were equally unpopular, he scored just 22 percent in Israel against a commanding 57 percent for Mitt Romney. Given these figures, it is unsurprising that Israel’s right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made little effort to conceal his political sympathies, laying on a hero’s welcome for Romney when he visited Jerusalem in the summer and starring in several of his TV campaign ads. Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, accused Netanyahu of “spitting” in the president’s face, warning that Israel would now be exposed to Obama’s second-term wrath (“Olmert blasts Bibi on Iran, relationship with Obama,” The Daily Beast, 6 November). The general wisdom is that the president, freed of worries about being re-elected, will seek his revenge, both for Netanyahu’s long-term intransigence in the peace process and for interfering in the US campaign. Newspaper cartoons summed up the mood last week. The liberal Haaretz showed a sweating Netanyahu gingerly putting his head into the mouth of an Obama-faced lion, while the right-wing Jerusalem Post had Netanyahu exclaiming “Oh bummer!” as he read the headlines. The speculation among Israelis and many observers is that an Obama second term will see much greater pressure on Israel both to make major concessions on Palestinian statehood and to end its aggressive posturing towards Iran over its supposed ambition to build a nuclear warhead. Bullish mood Such thinking, however, is fanciful. The White House’s approach towards Netanyahu and Israel is unlikely to alter significantly. Netanyahu’s bullish mood was certainly on display as voting in the US election was under way: his government announced plans to build more than 1,200 homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem, the presumed capital of a future Palestinian state (“Israel pushes forward with 1,200 homes in East Jerusalem settlements,” Guardian, 6 November). The reality, as Netanyahu understands well, is that Obama’s hands are now tied as firmly in the Middle East as they were during his first term. Obama got burnt previously when he tried to impose a settlement freeze. There are no grounds for believing that Israel’s far-right lobbyists in Washington, led by AIPAC, will give the president an easier ride this time. And as Ron Ben Yishai, a veteran Israeli commentator, noted, Obama will face the same US Congress, one that has “traditionally been a stronghold of near-unconditional support for Israel” (“Obama better for Israel,” Ynet, 6 November). Obama may not have to worry about re-election but he will not want to hand a poisoned legacy to the next Democratic presidential candidate, nor will want to mire his own final term in damaging confrontations with Israel. Memories are still raw of Bill Clinton’s failed gamble to push through a peace deal — one that, in truth, was a far-more generous to Israel than the Palestinians — at Camp David in the dying days of his second term. And whatever his personal antipathy towards the Israeli prime minister, Obama also knows that, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict aside, his policies in the Middle East are either aligned with Israel’s or dependent on Netanyahu’s cooperation to work. Limited revenge? Both Obama and Netanyahu want the Israel-Egypt peace agreement to hold. Both need to ensure the civil war in Syria does not spiral out of control, as the cross-border salvos in the Golan Heights have indicated in the past few days. Both prefer repressive West-friendly dictators in the region over Islamist gains. And, of course, both want to box in Iran on its nuclear ambitions. So far Netanyahu has reluctantly toed the US line on “giving sanctions a chance,” toning down his rhetoric about launching an attack. The last thing the White House needs is a sulking Israeli premier priming his cohorts in Washington to undermine US policy. A sliver of hope for Netanyahu’s opponents is that a disgruntled US president might still take limited revenge, turning the tables by interfering in the Israeli elections due in January. He could back more moderate challengers such as Olmert or Tzipi Livni, if they choose to run and start to look credible. But even that would be a big gamble. The evidence shows that, whatever the makeup of the next Israeli governing coalition, it will espouse policies little different from the current one. That simply reflects the lurch rightwards among Israeli voters, as indicated in a poll this month showing that 80 percent now believe it is impossible to make peace with the Palestinians. In fact, given the mood in Israel, an obvious attempt by Obama to side with one of Netanyahu’s opponents might actually harm their prospects for success. Netanyahu has already demonstrated to Israelis that he can defeat the US president in a staring contest. Many Israelis are likely to conclude that no one is better placed to keep an unsympathetic Obama in check in his second term. Faced with a popular consensus in Israel and political backing in the US Congress for a hard line with the Palestinians, Obama is an unlikely champion of the peace process – and even of the Palestinians’ current lowly ambition to win observer status at the United Nations. A vote on this matter is currently threatened for 29 November, with the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas apparently hoping that the anniversary of the 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine will provide emotional resonance. Meanwhile, all Israel’s main parties are battling for the large pool of right-wing votes. Shelly Yacimovich, leader of the opposition Labor party, last week denied her party was “left-wing,” in a sign of how dirty that word has become in Israel. She has studiously avoided mentioning the Palestinians or diplomatic issues. And the great new hope of Israeli politics, former TV star Yair Lapid, has rapidly come to sound like a Netanyahu-lite. Last week he publicly opposed giving up even the Palestinian parts of East Jerusalem, arguing that the Palestinians could be browbeaten into surrendering their putative capital (“Lapid: If Israel stands firm Palestinians will give up on East Jerusalem,” Haaretz, 8 November). The reality is that the White House is stuck with an Israeli government, with or without Netanyahu, that rejects an agreement with the Palestinians. As violence flares again in Gaza — as occurred in the run-up to the last Israeli election — it looks disturbingly like four more years of the same. Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His new website is www.jonathan-cook.net. A version of this article originally appeared in The National (Abu Dhabi). Mustapha I hope your people are ok As Israel assaults Gaza, BBC reporting assaults the truth In 2006, an independent panel of senior public figures published a report assessing the impartiality of the BBC’s coverage of the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The panel, chaired by Sir Quentin Thomas, a senior figure in the British Home Office, found “identifiable shortcomings, particularly in respect of gaps in coverage, analysis, context and perspective and in the consistent maintenance of the BBC’s own editorial standards.” The Thomas Report, as it became known, was quickly shoved under the carpet by the BBC, even though it had originally been commissioned by the corporation’s own governors, and business continued as usual (“Report of the Independent Panel for the BBC Governors on Impartiality of BBC Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” April 2006, available on the Internet Archive). In the last few days, the shortcomings highlighted in the report have never seemed so glaring. Gaza reported without context Across the BBC’s output, from the 24 hour rolling news channel, BBC News, to its flagship news and current affairs program Today on Radio 4, the Israeli assault on Gaza has been reported without context, without perspective and with a bias that has wholly favored the heavily-armed, nuclear state of Israel against the mostly refugee population of the besieged Gaza Strip. This pattern of partiality was noted by Thomas and his panel. They made several mentions in their report to the “asymmetry of power between the two sides” and noted that “given this asymmetry, the BBC’s concern with balance gave an impression of equality between the two sides which was fundamentally, if unintentionally, misleading.” To counter this flaw, the Thomas Report recommended that the BBC “should make purposive, and not merely reactive, efforts to explain the complexities of the conflict in the round, including the marked disparity between the position of the two sides.” Yet, rather than providing information to its global audience which would make clear that Israel is deploying a vast arsenal of high tech armory against Gaza’s civilian population, to which the response is crude rockets, the BBC’s coverage of the past days has portrayed the stateless Palestinians as vicious aggressors against an exhausted Israel. On the morning of 15 November, the day after Israel carried out the extrajudicial killing of Hamas military leader Ahmed al-Jabari and unleashed a wave of terror against Gaza’s civilian population, the BBC put an article onto its website headlined: “Gaza rocket arsenal problem for Israel.” The article goes into minute detail about what the BBC’s diplomatic and defense correspondent Jonathan Marcus describes as “the Palestinian rocket arsenal.” There are descriptions of the types of rockets in the “arsenal,” their range, their design, their country of origin, the threat they pose to Israel, the towns in Israel they might be capable of reaching. Marcus also spends time discussing the capability of Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense and Israeli allegations of shipments of arms coming via Sudan to Gaza. Israeli arsenals unreported by the BBC Nowhere in the article, or elsewhere on the BBC, does Marcus investigate Israel’s weapons stockpile, which is funded to the tune of $3 billion a year by the United States. There are no reams of paragraphs devoted to describing the different types of bombs, mortar shells, drones, fighter jets, gunboats, tanks, guns, nuclear warheads or white phosphorus shells that are in Israel’s arsenal. Yet, with the exception of nuclear missiles, all of these have been used at some point against the people of Gaza with devastating consequences. A second article published on the BBC website the same morning is headlined: “Escalating violence takes its toll on Israelis.” Here we have journalist Yolande Knell putting a human face on the Israelis who have faced rocket attacks in the towns of Ashkelon and Kiryat Malachi over the last two days. There are interviews with Israeli men and women describing their fear, their pain at the previous day’s fatalities in Kiryat Malachi, their scramble to find shelter when the air raid sirens sound and the damage to their buildings. Knell describes “eerily quiet” streets in Ashkelon, closed restaurants and schools and how “normal life here remains on hold.” Minimizing Palestinian voices Yet when it comes to how Palestinians in Gaza endure frequent Israeli bombardment, Palestinian voices and their pain are minimized. A BBC article in March claimed the people of Gaza are “almost inured to the endless conflict” and life in the Gaza Strip carries on as normal — a report based on the perspective of BBC correspondent, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, rather than interviews with the Palestinians themselves. When the Palestine Solidarity Campaign complained about the bias inherent in Wingfield-Hayes extraordinary claims, which were juxtaposed alongside an article by Kevin Connolly describing the “dread” felt by Israelis during rocket strikes, a reply was received from Fraser Steel, Head of Editorial Complaints at the BBC. He wrote: “I have to say it seems to me that the aspects of the reports which you single out for criticism can be interpreted as evidence of bias only if one approaches them with a prior assumption of bias on the part of the authors.” The bias that PSC was highlighting is not on the part of the authors, but on the part of their employers, the BBC, and with good reason. Israeli spokespeople unchallenged Since al-Jabari’s assassination on 14 November, the BBC has rolled out all the Israeli heavyweights across its programming: Ron Prosor, Israeli ambassador to the UN; Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister; Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesperson; and Daniel Taub, Israel’s ambassador to the UK. All have been allowed to disseminate, with virtually no interruption or correction, the propaganda line Israel is using for the duration of this assault on Gaza: that Israel withdrew its settlers in 2005 in order to allow Gaza to live in peace but Hamas insisted on a war which Israel has so far resisted, but is now being reluctantly drawn into in order to protect its citizens. On the Today program on 15 November, Taub was interviewed by BBC heavyweight John Humphrys. For four minutes he was allowed to expound Israel’s hasbara line that Hamas rockets rain down on southern Israel with no response from Israel and that no other country but Israel would be so understanding. Humphrys gave no challenge when Taub said: “We have to recognize, seven years ago, we pulled out of every inch of Gaza. We removed 9,000 Israeli civilians along with their homes, their schools, their kindergartens, in order to try and have a peaceful situation with Gaza … Tragically, that opportunity was not taken up. Hamas took over and since then has been waging an intensive war.” The BBC’s major evening current affairs program Newsnight was used as a vehicle for similar hasbara the previous evening by Danny Ayalon, who enjoyed an uninterrupted three minute interview with presenter Gavin Esler. At the very end of the interview Ayalon said: “Not only do they [Hamas] target the civilian population in Israel, but they implant themselves in the midst of the civilian population in Gaza, so in fact they use a population as a human shield for their hideous attacks.” To which Esler replied: “Ok, we’ll leave it there. Danny Ayalon, thank you very much.” There was no attempt, or even it seems a willingness, by this senior BBC journalist to confront and challenge Israeli propaganda and falsehoods. Meanwhile Zionist activist Jonathan Sacerdoti appeared four times as a guest on different BBC television news programs during the first two days of the Israeli assault. The BBC allowed him to pose as an independent expert, neglecting to mention his past work for the Zionist Federation and current role at the Board of Deputies of British Jews (“Who is Jonathan Sacerdoti, the BBC’s Go-To Man on Gaza?” New Left Project, 16 November). BBC failure The findings of the Thomas Report from 2006 are holding true during this latest onslaught on Gaza. This unwillingness by both Humphrys and Esler, together with the presenters on television and radio news, to point out the facts to their Israeli government interviewees is just a symptom of the BBC’s failure to provide context and perspective, as highlighted by the report. And so BBC audiences listen to Regev and the rest without being made aware that Israel is considered by the UN to be an occupying power in Gaza with obligations under the Geneva Conventions to protect the inhabitants. Taub is allowed to freely say that Israel has withdrawn from Gaza, without being made to explain how he can make such a travesty of the truth when Israel holds Gaza under tight military siege, restricting access to food, medicines, water, fuel and other essentials, and restricts the free movement of Gaza’s people in and out of the territory. Prosser can stand in Kiryat Malachi condemning Palestinian rocket attacks, as he did on the BBC News channel on 14 November, and not be asked to comment on Israel’s massacre of 1,400 Palestinians in three weeks in 2008-09 or its continuous bombing and shelling of Gaza since then. And that is how Ayalon can barefacedly mislead BBC viewers with the human shield fallacy, because nowhere on the BBC, including Newsnight will its audience be told that 1.6 million people are crammed into a strip of land about 20 miles long and four miles wide, and consequently there is nowhere that is not inhabited. In its final points, the Thomas Report summed up: “some of the deficiencies are serious and … [the BBC’s coverage] could be a great deal better: more distinctive, challenging and informative.” If only it were. Imagine how many people around the world and those paying the licence fee in the UK would become aware of Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians, its daily violations of international law, its lies and deceits. One presumes this is why the Thomas Report has rarely seen light of day since its publication. Amena Saleem is active with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK and keeps a close eye on the media’s coverage of Palestine as part of her brief. She has twice driven on convoys to Gaza for PSC. More information on PSC is available at www.palestinecampaign.org. http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-assaults-gaza-bbc-reporting-assaults-truth/11894 In photos: Israel relentlessly bombs Gaza, West Bank protests repressed I8 November 2012 Images documenting Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip and solidarity protests in the West Bank and beyond. http://electronicintifada.net/content/photos-israel-relentlessly-bombs-gaza-west-bank-protests-repressed/11901 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Mustapha I hope your people are ok. You know how it is; alternative from the mainstream is where it’s at

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