The Neoconservative Echo Chamber 2.0
Ali Gharib & Eli Clifton | IPS | September 09, 2010
One of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, was once quoted as saying: “If there’s a problem you want to solve, start a magazine.”[1] His words were taken to heart by the most recent generation of neoconservative leaders—including his son, William, who founded the Weekly Standard. The strategy was simple: With the right audience of elites, and a targeted message that captures their imagination, the limits of what you can do are nearly boundless. “With a circulation of a few hundred,” the elder Kristol once remarked, “you could change the world.”[2]
The embodiment of this neoconservative modus operandi, however, has not been small-circulation magazines, but the proliferation of so-called “letterhead organizations”—committees of eminent persons who, though they never actually meet to discuss issues, sign their names to letters addressed to the powers that be, often sitting U.S. presidents. That such letters could make splashes in the elite media is a reflection of the way neoconservatives have embedded themselves in the Washington establishment—their opinions mattered and, most importantly, sometimes ended up becoming policy.
Indeed, one of the best-known neocon letterhead groups, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), led by Bill Kristol, helped launch the campaign for militarily removing Saddam Hussein from power with a 1998 letter to then-President Bill Clinton. The letter garnered only 18 signatories,[3] but within five years, and under a new president, it had achieved its goal.
But neoconservatives’ methodology in the new millennium has undergone a transformation. As much of their rhetoric has been discounted or rejected—including touting the Iraq War as a success; defending a territorially-maximalist Israel; and lobbying for a strike on Iran—neoconservatives are broadening the movement’s horizons. They seem determined to expand beyond a strictly elite audience and appeal directly to the masses. The magazines with a circulation of a few hundred have given way to appearances on Fox News, CNN, newspaper editorial pages, and, most recently, the internet. The new neocon mantra might be: “If there is a problem you want to solve, start a YouTube channel.”
The new expansion of neoconservatives’ messaging reflects shifts in both the personnel and personalities of neocon groups and publications—younger neocons tend to be bloggers or public relations specialists, not intellectuals (or pseudo-intellectuals)—as well as the changing landscape of U.S. political support for policies that neocons espouse, most notably, a far-right Likudnik take on Israel and its relationship to the United States.
Support for right-wing Israeli policies is slipping from its demographic foundation, the otherwise-liberal American Jewish Zionists. This development was highlighted by Peter Beinart in a June 2010 essay for the New York Review of Books, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment.” The provocatively titled article questioned whether unstinting support for figures like Israel’s über-nationalist foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman turn off rank-and-file liberal American Jews from the Zionist project and, therefore, Israel.[4]
The trend appears to be especially prevalent among young American Jews[5]—a point that surely has set off alarms in the “Israel Lobby” as attendees at conferences grow grayer year after year. As a result, neocons and other Likudniks in the United States are increasingly turning to those who will uncritically support their policies. Disdain for Palestinian aspirations (and, apparently, Muslims in general) coupled with the aging of the old guard has spurred neocons to turn to the country’s ever-swelling ranks of Christian Zionists, who represent tens of millions of voters.[6]
The Emergency Committee
This past July, Bill Kristol, Christian Zionist heavyweight Gary Bauer, a handful of right-wing luminaries and up-and-comers formed the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI).[7] Rather than drafting letters in policy-speak to advocate directly to the president (as Kristol had done with PNAC), ECI produces ad campaigns in local congressional races, publishing fear-mongering adverts on YouTube and local TV slots, which are quickly disseminated through right-wing channels. But like their predecessors, these new groups have little or no grassroots support—meaningful participation is limited to board members, a few advisers, and staff—qualifying them as archetypal astroturf organizations.
ECI launched with a 30-second television commercial targeting Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), a Senate candidate, for being insufficiently pro-Israel. The commercial—which began to air on July 13 in the Philadelphia area on CNN, FOX, and during two baseball games[8]—claimed that Sestak helped fundraise for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a charge he has denied,[9] and signed a letter accusing Israel of participating in “collective punishment” in its blockade of Gaza.
Ironically, Sestak is far from being anti-Israel. He has described Israel as a “vital ally of the U.S.” on many occasions. Katharine Seelye pointed out in the New York Times that the ECI spot was misleading and factually inaccurate. Sestak never fundraised for CAIR. Further, the congressional letter mentioned was signed by numerous liberal pro-Israel groups and did not call the Gaza blockade “collective punishment.” Rather it said that humanitarian concerns “must be addressed without resulting in the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.”[10] Seelye also pointed out that, “in fact, Mr. Sestak supported the blockade.”[11]
It seems that ECI was attacking Sestak for being too supportive of the Barack Obama administration’s Middle East policy and for receiving campaign contributions from a progressive Zionist group—the self-proclaimed “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” organization J Street PAC. Indeed, the attacks were so aggressive and baseless that many observers questioned whether the commercial was even targeted at Jewish voters in Pennsylvania.
“The target audience is not really Jewish voters in Philadelphia and its suburbs—they tend to be a reliable Democratic constituency and an important source of campaign donations. Rather, the ad is aimed more at mobilizing the right and evangelicals in support of Mr. Sestak’s Republican opponent, former Representative Pat Toomey,” wrote Seelye.[12]
The cyber battle ground
The television ads certainly played a role in calling attention to ECI and its attack on Sestak. But the ad’s launch on YouTube, on the same day that ECI’s website went live and their doors opened for business, also says a lot about how neoconservative letterhead organizations operate in the age of the internet.
Sestak unsuccessfully tried to keep the ad off television because of its errors and exaggerations.[13] But once these genies are out of the bottle on the internet, their momentum is difficult to undo. Some news organizations reported ECI’s claim about the congressional letter as fact. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, for example, described the letter Sestak had signed as “calling the Jewish state’s maritime blockade ‘collective punishment’.”[14]
The cyber battle ground has been a major recent focus of neocons and other groups affiliated with the Israel Lobby, possibly because of the gains of J Street, which promotes more robust U.S. pressure in the peace process. J Street has a strong presence on the internet, with a sleek website that seems aimed at young American Jews disillusioned with the rightward stance of many of the groups that comprise the lobby. Indeed, all the candidates attacked by ECI have either been endorsed by J Street’s political action committee or signed letters along with J Street. Kristol even took a thinly veiled swipe at J Street when discussing the launch of ECI with Politico’s Ben Smith, describing his new group as “the pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community,”[15] a play on J Street’s “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” slogan.
By premiering its commercials on YouTube, ECI enables right-wing blogs and mainstream news outlets to embed the short clip on their websites and discuss the emergence of the new group and its mission to attack insufficiently pro-Israel candidates. In a very noticeable trend, ECI’s videos—there have been four to date, attacking Sestak, Ohio Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, Virginia Rep. Glenn Nye, and, most recently, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes—have all been publicly announced and received early promotion on the blog of the Weekly Standard.
Tactical shift
With their long track record of elite-focused organizing—a trend dating back to the 1970s-era Committee on the Present Danger—the neoconservatives’ shift to more tech-savvy public relations campaigns seems to be a calculated decision. Nowhere has this new approach been more evident than in Kristol and Bauer’s decision to select an up-and-coming neoconservative, Noah Pollak, to be the group’s executive director.
Pollak was a surprising choice given that former political appointees or other high profile individuals with established credentials and connections to policymakers have headed up other recent neoconservative letterhead groups, such as the Foreign Policy Initiative or PNAC. Pollak represented a sharp change in direction: Rather than being an intellectual or eminent D.C. character making a foray into journalism and advocacy, Pollack is a journalist-turned-activist who has no intellectual or high-profile government accomplishments to speak of.
Other neocons seemed to appreciate the shift: Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum said, of ECI, that “the real news is the group’s director: Noah Pollak, a friend of mine, and a brilliant advocate for rethinking Israel’s self-defense in a new media era.” It’s notable that Frum did not tout any book by Pollak (he has none, while many of his elder ideological comrades are prolific authors) or even any grand strategic idea beyond a public relations scheme based on updating nineteenth century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s clichéd assertion that war is “political relations… by other means.” Frum cited Pollak’s contribution to the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) effort in Gaza in the winter of 2008 and 2009, crediting Pollack with the initial idea behind the IDF YouTube channel.[16] The channel was a vital tool for Israeli public diplomacy after the May 2010 Israeli naval raid on the Mavi Marmara.
After graduating from the University of Vermont in 2003, Pollak launched a career working for numerous neoconservative publications, including Azure, an Israeli magazine published by the Likudist Shalem Center (which also launched a think tank funded by rightwing billionaire Sheldon Adelson); Commentary, a flagship of the neocon movement where Pollak wrote both for the print edition and the “Contentions” blog; and Middle East Quarterly, the journal of Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum, where Pollak was an assistant editor.
Pollak’s resume hints at another characteristic of these cyber-savvy versions of letterhead organizations: Their staffs are not much different from their earlier incarnations. Indeed, as Frum says, the significant point is not that Kristol and Bauer hired Pollak, who is obviously a dyed-in-the-wool neoconservative, but that they made him director of the group. Neoconservatives are relatively few in numbers, so the pool of potential employees was never large—it’s Pollak’s position that’s news. In an earlier era, the blogger among the book authors would have a less celebrated position in the letterhead group—former Weekly Standard blogger and online editor Michael Goldfarb was a mere research assistant during his early-career stint with PNAC.
These days, as a senior vice president of Orion Strategies, Goldfarb is advising ECI as well as other new-school letterhead groups, such as the Kristol-Liz Cheney founded Keep America Safe. Like ECI, Keep America Safe makes short internet videos and television commercials attacking Obama’s policies in the Middle East and in the so-called “war on terror,” drawing on familiar supporters like Mel Sembler, a Republican party donor and financial benefactor of the American Enterprise Institute and the Adelson-funded Freedom’s Watch.
But the web of neoconservative connections at ECI doesn’t stop there: in addition to Bauer and Kristol, the third member of the group’s board is Rachel Abrams[17], daughter of Midge Decter, step-daughter of neocon patriarch Norman Podhoretz (therefore step-brother of Commentary editor John Podhoretz), and wife of arch-neoconservative hardliner and former George W. Bush administration official Elliott Abrams.
Also, ECI initially shared a physical office address (918 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington, D.C. 20003) with a letterhead organization that played a key role promoting the invasion of Iraq, the Committee to Liberate Iraq (CLI).[18] In an e-mail exchange with Salon’s Justin Elliot, Goldfarb dismissed the shared address: “I’m on the record as an adviser to ECI and its no secret that I work at Orion, where the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq sign is still proudly displayed on the front of the building.”
But the revelation does demonstrate, as Elliot pointed out, “just how small a world the still-influential neocon foreign policy community occupies.”[19] Goldfarb’s employer Orion, for instance, is the lobbying outfit of Randy Scheunemann, a top foreign policy adviser to Bob Dole’s and both of John McCain’s presidential runs, and the former director of both PNAC and CLI.
Letterhead proliferation
Gary Bauer is a perennial link between neocons and the Christian right: Bauer was a founding member of PNAC and sits on the boards of Cliff May’s Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Christians United for Israel. The onetime religious right presidential hopeful and his family even take an annual beach vacation with Bill Kristol’s family. (At a Christians United for Israel confab, Kristol once jokingly refused to comment on whether Bauer removed his trademark dark business-suit to go into the ocean.[20])
Most recently, Bauer launched his own letterhead/attack-ad organization, Keep Israel Safe, with Weekly Standard contributing editor Tom Rose. They modeled the group on Cheney’s Keep America Safe (right down to the name) and, as one might expect, the Weekly Standard was instrumental in the group’s launch, getting an exclusive by “obtain[ing] an advance copy” of the first attack ad on Obama even before the group’s website was up.[21]
Keep Israel Safe has since released two more videos distorting Obama’s record and condemning his approach to Middle East peace.[22] Keep Israel Safe’s namesake—Cheney’s Keep America Safe—also focuses on internet videos, creating four original videos since its launch last year.[23] 2009 tax filings from Keep America Safe reveal just how cheap it is to produce these internet videos: while the group raised nearly half a million dollars and spent only a quarter of that, the four videos cost only $12,154 to produce – that’s just over $3,000 per video.
No wonder, then, with the price tag of these videos so low and distribution costs at zero, that the YouTube advertisement has proliferated among advocates of hardline militarist policies.
Another group that has produced a short internet video is Stop Iran Now, which focuses less on Israel and more on the other neocon obsession du jour—promoting the idea of a military attack on Iran.[24] Naturally, this ad, too, was run on the Weekly Standard’s blog.[25] Like Keep Israel Safe, Stop Iran Now’s website is only a video portal and a space to sign a petition against Obama.
ECI also seems to be keeping costs low while producing lots of videos. The three videos targeted at House races all follow the same template and, indeed, run through the same introductions. The voice-overs are amended to mention the specific member of Congress, and that member’s signature is highlighted on a copy of the “collective punishment” letter, then a picture of the specific member pops up on screen just before the end of the spot. The cost of editing these videos to fit the different races is likely minuscule. (Because the group is so new, tax filings for ECI are not yet available.)
As Salon’s Elliot noted, making internet videos updates perfectly the old model of letterhead organizations with a “low-budget, high-impact model that was used so successfully by the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. It’s a model that involves a very small staff and physical footprint coupled with the ability to get lots of free coverage from a hungry political media.”[26] Indeed, whenever a member of one of the groups behind the videos shows up on a cable news show, the short clips tend to be aired in full.[27]
Desperate times?
The zeal with which the right-wing promotes the videos may point to growing desperation. While neoconservatives have made gains—for instance, in their campaign for escalating measures against Iran—the operative consensus in Washington seems to be that Obama is not yet ready to carry out the hawks’ ultimate goal of bombing the Islamic Republic.[28]
Their efforts to keep the U.S. public uncritically supportive of Israel is in even more dire straights. Beinart’s article is emblematic of a rising consciousness about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. While the Weekly Standard predictably takes a hard line, a growing number of outlets and blogs have arrived at more nuanced editorial positions about the transgressions of the Jewish State.
Take Andrew Sullivan who, like Beinart, is a one-time editor of the New Republic, a liberal magazine with a neoconservative foreign policy. Sullivan’s popular Daily Dish blog now routinely runs items critical of Israel’s expansionist streak (a prominent feature of the Likud party),[29] policies in the Occupied Territories,[30] and—most notably—Israeli intransigence in the peace process[31] (not to mention neoconservative promotion and complicity in these[32] and other hardline notions[33]).
Even the New York Times, which since the early 1970s has espoused what many critics charge is an Israel-centric bias, runs items critical of Israel both occasionally in the newspaper and more regularly on its blogs, such as Robert Mackey’s the Lede blog.[34]
Recent shifts in both public discourse and the political leanings of the country have made positions taken by neoconservatives increasingly untenable. The invasion of Iraq has become something of an albatross around the necks of those who lobbied for it, and the failure to find the promised weapons of mass destruction has seriously tainted those hawks who promised that Saddam Hussein was developing stockpiles of chemical, biological, and possible nuclear weapons. The neocons, while retaining their perches in the media and some think tanks, are largely discredited—especially given the current occupant of the White House.
The Obama challenge
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 has left the neoconservative community in Washington increasingly isolated from policy elites. Obama’s stated willingness to meet with leaders like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,[35] his emphasis on repairing the U.S. image in the Middle East, and his preferences for dialogue over bombastic rhetoric have put neocons and their allies on the defensive. Where Democrats are concerned, Bill Clinton’s liberal interventionist foreign policy was more susceptible to the overtures of moralistic pleas from neocons than is Obama’s calculating realist-heavy approach.
Thus, it was logical that neoconservative activists would turn to a populist strategy of engaging congressional races, promoting “security” issues in local political campaigns, and reaffirming their movement’s ties with the Christian right—a far larger voting bloc than the Jewish, right-wing pro-Israel constituency. But while the lowering costs of technology have given Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer, Liz Cheney, and their fellow travelers an ability to speak directly to the U.S. public, serious questions should be asked about how successful their movement can be as they shift from elite-centered advocacy to populist messaging focused on Christian Zionists and the Tea Party Movement—a movement which Bill Kristol has suggested is comprised of the “pro-American wing” of the U.S. public.[36] While neoconservative influence on the young Tea Party movement is up for debate, it’s clear that the new outraged populists do owe something to neocons—it was Kristol, after all, who discovered Tea Party darling Sarah Palin during a Weekly Standard Alaskan cruise in 2007.[37]
But perhaps more telling are the sagging public approval numbers for the ongoing war in Afghanistan. According to a recent Gallup/USA Today poll, 43 percent of respondents thought it was a mistake to go to war in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.[38] This marks a dramatic drop from the 93 percent of Americans who supported U.S. military action in Afghanistan in November 2001.[39] The public’s taste for war and a militarized foreign policy is quickly fading.
War fatigue, the changing demographics of the Israel Lobby, and new political realities in the United States are forcing hawks to reinvent their advocacy methods. The movement has fallen far, but with allies on the populist fringe of U.S. politics, the neoconservatives seem to have found fertile ground for their fear-mongering messages, which could have profound repercussions in the months and years to come.
While the switch from elites to grassroots represents a sort of demotion for those men and women who used to have the ears of diplomats, presidents, and cabinet members, they are nonetheless achieving a level of recognition and acceptance in the mainstream which the elder generation—not the least of them Irving Kristol—would have found hard to imagine.
To see William Kristol make his weekly appearances on Fox News or Noah Pollak head up the ECI’s ad campaign in congressional races, it’s hard to miss the obvious irony. While suffering losses in their influence over policy elites in Washington, the neoconservatives have become an ingrained and accepted component of the American right-wing. And while Clinton was easier to pressure, it took the unstinting support of President Bush for the neoconservatives to see their goals in Iraq fulfilled. In the post-Obama era, which may arrive sooner than many expect, it is frightening to contemplate what sort of policies the next president—propped up by Christian Zionist zealots—will pursue vis-à-vis the United States’ engagement with the world.
Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton are independent journalists who write for the Inter Press Service blog Lobelog (http://www.lobelog.com/) and are contributors to Right Web (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/).
[1] Chester E. Finn Jr., “Remembering Irving Kristol,” Education Next, September 21, 2009, http://educationnext.org/remembering-irving-kristol/
[2] Barry Gewen, “Irving Kristol, Godfather of Modern Consveratism, Dies at 89,” The New York Times, September 18, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/us/politics/19kristol.html
[3] http://web.archive.org/web/20070810113947/www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
[4] Peter Beinart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” The New York Review of Books, June 10, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/
[5] Alex Magnet, “Support of Israel Declining Among Young Jewish Americans, Poll Says,” The New York Sun, December 2, 2005, http://www.nysun.com/national/support-of-israel-declining-among-young-jewish/23870/
[6] Ron Kampeas, “Religious Passion Combines with Politics at CUFI Parley,” The Jewish Telegraph Agency, July 25, 2010, http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/07/25/2740190/religious-passion-combines-with-politics-at-cufi-parley
[7] Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib, “Familiar Neocons and Christian Zionist Head up New Emergency Committee for Israeli”,” LobeLog,July 13, 2010 http://www.lobelog.com/familiar-neocons-and-christian-zionist-head-up-new-emergency-committee-for-israel/
[8] Katharine Q. Seelye, “A Punch and a Counterpunch in Pennsylvania Senate Race, The New York Times, July 21, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/us/politics/21adbox.html
[9] Greg Sargent, “War Escalates Between Joe Sestak and Right-Wing Pro-Israel Group,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2010 http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/war_escalates_between_right-wi.html
[10] Nathan Guttman, “Congressional Letter to End Gaza Blockade Splits Activists,” The Forward, February 3, 2010, http://www.forward.com/articles/124917/
[11] Katharine Q. Seelye, “A Punch and a Counterpunch in Pennsylvania Senate Race, The New York Times, July 21, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/us/politics/21adbox.html
[12] Katharine Q. Seelye, “A Punch and a Counterpunch in Pennsylvania Senate Race, The New York Times, July 21, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/us/politics/21adbox.html
[13] Ben Smith, “Lawyer: Sestak ‘Willing to Put His Life on the Line to Defend Israel’,” Politico, July 15, 2010, http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0710/Lawyer_Sestak_put_his_life_on_the_line_to_defend_Israel.html
[14] Ron Kampeas, “Pa. Senate Race Turning into Israel Proxy Fight,” The Jewish Telegraph Service, July 20, 2010, http://jta.org/news/article/2010/07/20/2740128/pa-senate-race-seen-as-national-test-for-j-street
[15] Ben Smith, “Group to Oppose President Obama’s Mideast Policy,” Politico, July 12, 2010, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39613.html
[16] David Frum, “Emergency Committee for Israel,” The Daily Dish, July 13, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/07/emergency-committee-for-israel.html
[17] Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib, “Familiar Neocons and Christian Zionist Head up New “Emergency Committee for Israel”,” LobeLog, July 13th, 2010, http://www.lobelog.com/familiar-neocons-and-christian-zionist-head-up-new-emergency-committee-for-israel/
[18] Eli Clifton and Jim Lobe, “Emergency Committee Based at Old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,” Lobelog, July 15th, 2010, http://www.lobelog.com/emergency-committee-based-at-old-committee-for-the-liberation-of-iraq/
[19] Justin Elliot, “Bill Kristol’s New Israel Group Using Officees of Old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,” The War Room, July 16, 2010, http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/07/16/liberation_of_iraq_and_committee_for_israel/index.html
[20] Ali Gharib, “Going Undercover at Mad Pastor Hagee’s Christians United for Israel Summit,” AlterNet, July 26, 2008, http://www.alternet.org/rights/92860/going_undercover_at_mad_pastor_hagee%27s_christians_united_for_israel_summit/
[21] John McCormack, “New Group, Keep Israel Safe, Launches with Hard-Hitting Ad,” The Weekly Standard, April 29, 2010, http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/exclusive-keep-israel-safe-launch-hard-hitting-ad
[22] Keep Israel Safe, Accessed: August 14, 2010, http://www.keepisraelsafe.com/
[23] “Video Archive”, Keep Israel Safe, Accessed: August 14, 2010, http://www.keepamericasafe.com/?page_id=1347
[24] Stop Iran Now, Accessed: August 14, 2010, http://www.stopirannow.com/
[25] Daniel Halper, “Stop Iran Now Debuts New Ad,” The Weekly Standard, July 6, 2010, http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/stop-iran-now-debuts-new-ad
[26] Justin Elliot, “Bill Kristol’s New Israel Group Using Offices of Old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,” War Room, July 16, 2010, http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/07/16/liberation_of_iraq_and_committee_for_israel/index.html
[27] MSNBC, “Morning Joe”, July 13, 2010, as posted to YouTube by the Emergency Committee for Israel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIv_wfGyD4w
[28] Steve Clemons, “Stop Hyperventilating: Obama Will Not Choose War with Iran,” The Huffington Post, July 23, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/stop-hyperventilating-oba_b_657096.html
[29] Andrew Sullivan, “Did Netanyahu Know?” The Daily Dish, March 11, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/did-netanyahu-know.html#more
[30] Andrew Sullivan, “Israel’s Long Campaign to Punish Gazans,” The Daily Dish, June 25, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/06/gazas-economy.html
[31] Andrew Sullivan, “Petraeus on Israel,” The Daily Dish, March 14, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/petraeus-vs-netanyahu.html
[32] Andrew Sullivan, “The Real Neocon Line: Disproportion as Policy,” The Daily Dish, June 1, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/06/the-real-neocon-line-disproportion-as-policy.html
{33] Andrew Sullivan, “Neocons for Ahmadinejad,” The Daily Dish, June 17, 2009, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/neocons-for-ahmadinejad.html
[34] Alex Kane, “These ‘Times’ Demand Robert Mackey,” Mondoweiss, June 11, 2010, http://mondoweiss.net/2010/06/these-times-demand-robert-mackey.html
[35] Caren Bohan, “Obama Qualifies Position on Talking to Enemies,” Reuters, May 27, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2635405920080527
[36] William Kristol, “Collapse: The Left is Unpopular, Undisciplined, and Ill-Tempered,” The Weekly Standard, August 23, 2010, http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/collapse
[37] Jane Mayer, “The Insiders: How John McCain Came to Pick Sarah Palin,” The New Yorker, October 27, 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/27/081027fa_fact_mayer
[38] Richard Wolf, “Poll: Waning Support for Obama on Wars,” USA Today, August 3, 2010, http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-08-02-afghan-poll_N.htm
[39] “America and the War on Terrorism,” p. 57, The American Enterprise Institute, July 24, 2008, http://www.aei.org/docLib/20050805_terror0805.pdf
Barack Obama: Torturer-and-Assassin-in-Chief
By Jacob G. Hornberger | September 9, 2010
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling yesterday in the case of Binyam Mohamed vs. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. confirms two things: the U.S. government wields the omnipotent, unreviewable power to torture people and, two, that Barack Obama, despite his much ballyhooed pre-election campaign hype about “change,” is actually just serving George W. Bush’s third term in office.
The plaintiffs’ claims against Jeppesen arose out of the CIA’s infamous kidnapping and rendition program, in which the CIA kidnaps people and then transports them to brutal foreign regimes for the purpose of torture. According to the plaintiffs’ complaint, which the Court was required to accept as true for purposes of ruling on the defendant’s motion to dismiss, the victims were subjected to horrible medieval-like torture techniques, such as breaking of bones, cutting into sexual organs, and pouring of painful liquids into open wounds.
The U.S. government intervened in the case, claiming that the suit should be dismissed based on the “state-secrets doctrine,” a pernicious doctrine that is found nowhere in the Constitution but which, the Court held, trumps the due process provisions of the Bill of Rights.
The government claimed that to allow the suit to go forward would entail the disclosure of government secrets, which would supposedly threaten national security.
The government’s position, however, which the court unfortunately bought into, is sheer nonsense. The state-secrets doctrine does nothing more than protect government officials from having their wrongdoing disclosed to the American people. That’s its purpose. That’s its effect.
Contrary to the government’s plea and the Court’s holding, the government’s secrets regarding its torture and rendition program have nothing to do with so-called national security. National security is invoked in order to protect federal officials from criminal and civil liability for their commission of serious crimes.
What should the Court have done? It should not only have let the case go forward, it should have expressly ordered that the plaintiffs were fully entitled, through pre-trial discovery, to delve into every nook and cranny of this dark, nefarious program and to disclose everything about it to the American people and the people of the world. At the end of this road, the nation would continue to stand, in fact on a much more solid moral foundation.
No doubt there would be some insecurity suffered by CIA agents and their enablers, similar to the insecurity that CIA officials undoubtedly felt after being convicted of serious crimes regarding kidnapping, rendition, and torture in Italy. But the security of federal officials who have engaged in wrongdoing is not the same as the security of the nation.
After the John Kennedy assassination, the U.S. government ordered all documents in the case to be kept secret from the American people for 50 years, based on the ludicrous notion that national security was at stake. The claim was ridiculous. The documents were kept secret for one purpose only: to hide from the American people the overwhelming evidence that contradicted the official findings of the Warren Commission. When much of the hidden evidence was finally released in the 1990s, in the wake of the storm produced by Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, the nation remained standing. National security was never at stake. What was at stake was government credibility, which, deservedly, received serious blows from the disclosure of what the government had claimed were national-security secrets some 30 years before.
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling confirms that we now live in a country in which the president and his military and paramilitary forces can torture anyone they want with impunity. Add to that the president’s claim of power to assassinate anyone he wants. How is all this different from any ordinary totalitarian dictatorship? Sure, the torturer-and-assassin-in-chief is democratically elected, but so what? What difference does that make to the victims?
The Constitution called into existence a federal government with limited, enumerated powers. If a power wasn’t enumerated, it couldn’t be exercised. Where are the powers to torture and assassinate people? One searches the Constitution in vain for them. Moreover, how can a ludicrous “state-secrets doctrine,” which appears nowhere in the Constitution, trump the express restrictions on power that the American people imposed on federal officials with the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment?
Ultimately, the root of this evil weed lies in U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. Empire goes abroad and stirs up hornets’ nests. That produces rage among the victims, which then manifests itself in terrorist retaliation. The terrorist retaliation is then used as the excuse by federal officials to ignore the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by claiming omnipotent powers to wage “war on terrorism,” including the power to torture people and the power to assassinate people.
Americans would be wise to pull the evil weed out by its root, which means dismantling America’s overseas military empire, bringing all the troops home from everywhere and discharging them, abandoning all overseas bases and relinquishing any ownership or leasehold rights to such properties, dismantling the standing army and military-industrial complex, and restoring America’s founding principles of anti-militarism, anti-imperialism, anti-interventionism, and a limited, government constitutional republic to our land.
Solidarity with French activists
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, 9 September 2010
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), on behalf of its constituent organizations and unions representing the majority of Palestinian civil society, strongly condemns the decision taken by French authorities to prosecute people of conscience for calling for a boycott of Israeli produce. These state-sanctioned forms of repression amount to active support for Israeli violations of international law and have serious implications on political freedoms in France and across Europe.
On 13 September, five members of the group “Boycott 68” will appear in court charged with “incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence” after distributing leaflets asking shoppers to boycott Israeli products (“Halte aux procès politiques contre les défenseurs du droit!” BDS France). Last year, Sakina Arnaud was fined 1000 euros for attaching a “Boycott Israel” sticker to a fruit juice carton. Arnaud will appear in court again on 24 September to appeal the decision. The campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, called for by Palestinian civil society in 2005, is a nonviolent, just and effective way of pressuring Israel to comply with international law and end its institutionalized discrimination and violence towards Palestinians. People of conscience all over the world, including many progressive Israelis and Jews, engage in BDS campaigns as a form of solidarity with an oppressed people, suffering under Israeli occupation and apartheid. BDS is based on unambiguous respect for international law and universal human rights; as such, it is categorically opposed to all forms of racism and racial discrimination, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. The BNC is therefore deeply troubled by state-sanctioned smear campaigns against BDS activists.
Most of the cases against solidarity activists have been brought following pressure from Bureau National de Vigilance Contre l’Antisemitisme (BNCVA) with assistance from other pro-Israel pressure groups and are part of a wider campaign of attacks against Palestine solidarity activism. “Altogether, we have filed over eighty similar complaints, everywhere in France,” the President of BNCVA boasted recently (“Soutien d’eurodéputés à des militants français poursuivis pour avoir appelé au boycott d’Israël,” Le Pays, 9 September 2010). The BNC has previously criticized the French Prime Minister for making unfounded and inflammatory insinuations about the movement to boycott Israel. According to activists, police regularly demand the names and addresses of those present at BDS demonstrations. The BNC is astounded that the authorities in a country that has historically contributed so much to the development of the principles of citizenship and human rights would succumb so easily to the demands of the Israel lobby and curtail political freedoms so blatantly.
French MEPs Jacky Henin and Nicole Kill-Nielsen recently spoke out against the repression of Palestine activists. “In that case, justice is used for political purposes,” said Henin (“Soutien d’eurodéputés à des militants français poursuivis pour avoir appelé au boycott d’Israël“). The BNC hopes that these comments will enrich the debate in France about the repression of those who stand in solidarity with Palestinians.
The actions taken by French state bodies to shield Israel from legitimate criticism and opposition show the strength of the BDS movement on one hand, but also reduce the possibilities of a just and lasting peace, present a serious threat to freedom of expression, and bolster Israel’s impunity in violating human rights on the other. The failure of the French government to end its complicity in maintaining and protecting Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian rights, let alone to hold Israel accountable for these violations, calls into question France’s compliance with its own obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice against Israel’s wall and colonial settlements. Its active repression of principled activists who attempt to remedy this failure is reprehensible.
The BNC warmly salutes all French BDS activists due to appear in court and is inspired by their stated intention to step up their campaigns in reaction to this repression. We call upon the French government to:
- Drop all charges against activists engaged in nonviolent, morally commendable solidarity campaigns aimed at challenging Israel’s grave violations of international law and official French complicity;
- Take measures to ensure that France’s rich history of political freedom is maintained and that freedom of association and freedom of speech are not curtailed in this shameful way again;
- End France’s complicity in maintaining Israel’s occupation and apartheid and hold Israel accountable for its persistent violation of international law.
Zionist False Flag Terror and Deceptions
Timeline
1946: July 22. Menachem Begin’s Irgun Jewish terrorists dress as Arabs and bomb the King David Hotel, killing 92 people. The Irgun also plot to assassinate British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin; fortunately, this conspiracy is foiled by MI6.
1948: May 14. David Ben-Gurion declares the independence of the new Zionist State of Israel, born from deception and from the blood of victims of Jewish terrorism hours before the British Mandate is due to expire. It takes effect at midnight, Tel Aviv time. May 15. Eleven minutes after midnight, U.S. President Harry Truman officially recognises the proclaimed Jewish state in Palestine.
1954: July. An Israeli spy ring is arrested in Egypt. These Israeli secret service agents have been assigned to attack U.S. and British interests in Egypt. “Operation Susannah” is a typical example of false-flag terrorism in which the perpetrators pin the blame on another party – in this case, Egypt and “the Arabs” – for political gain. The operation is unsuccessful, the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon is forced to resign as a result of the scandal, and the incident becomes known as the Lavon Affair.
1967: June 8. Israel carries out a sustained air and naval attack on the USS Liberty for over an hour, employing torpedoes, machine guns and napalm rockets, even to the extent of machine-gunning lifeboats launched to save the most seriously wounded. 34 men are killed and more than 170 wounded.
1987: Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer, is convicted of spying for Israel. It is not the only case.
1991: Israeli security officials inspect the garage of Zim American Israeli Shipping in the WTC, and conclude that the WTC garage is vulnerable to a car bomb.
1993: February 26. The WTC garage is hit by a car bomb. The FBI has been aware of the plot via their informant Emad Salem yet let it go ahead, killing six and injuring more than a thousand in the resulting fires after a plan to substitute harmless powder for the explosives was called off by an FBI supervisor. According to Israeli intelligence sources, Ahmad Ajaj, involved in the early stages of the plot, was a Mossad mole. There now exists a pretext for subsequent “fireproofing upgrades”.
1995: Benjamin Netanyahu, former unit team leader in the IDF’s elite special forces unit Sayeret Matkal and future Israeli Premier (1996-9 and 2009-), writes about “militant Islam” bringing down the World Trade Center. Benjamin’s father Benzion was secretary and pallbearer to Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky who founded the Revisionist Zionist Alliance, a militant faction within Zionism. Benzion Netanyahu’s mentor was Abba Ahimeir, Jabotinsky’s lieutenant, who wrote a column in the Revisionist Zionist magazine Doar Hayom. Under the title “From the Notebook of a Fascist”, Ahimeir would praise Mussolini and refer to Jabotinsky as “our Duce”, and said that Hitler is on the right track but for his “excessive anti-Semitism”. The Irgun Zvai Leumi was one of several Jewish terrorist organizations inspired by Jabotinsky’s movement. Menachem Begin was, like Benzion Netanyahu, another close disciple of Jabotinsky. Begin was the final commander of the Irgun in 1946 when its Jewish terrorists dressed as Arabs and blew up the King David Hotel.
1996: After Netanyahu is “unexpectedly” elected Israeli Prime Minister in the wake of a wave of so-called “suicide bombings”, the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies publishes a paper for him entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.
1997: September 24/25. Members of the Mossad’s Kidon (bayonet) unit arrive in Jordan. Two of them travelling with fake Canadian passports have been assigned to execute Hamas leader Khaled Mashal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chaired the Israeli “Committee X” that decided on the assassination. As in Operation Susannah, the plan goes badly wrong. The attempt to poison Mashal with nerve gas is interrupted before he is killed outright, the two Mossad assassins are arrested, and four of their teammates end up trapped in the Israeli Embassy in Amman. Israel has to bargain for their release by providing an antidote to save Mashal and by freeing another Hamas leader and other prisoners. Netanyahu only agrees to provide the antidote after pressure from Bill Clinton. Efraim Halevy is sent in to defuse the situation and get the Israelis out. For his handling of the affair, Halevy is awarded the job of Director of the Mossad.
1998: January 17. News breaks via the Drudge Report of a sexual relationship between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, who is of Russian Jewish descent. Clinton would have been vulnerable to blackmail by, for example, a “foreign embassy” that was tapping his telephones. January 20. Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is in a weak position domestically but who has a few more aces up his sleeve, arrives in Washington for talks with Bill Clinton. November / December. Philip Zelikow, a Jewish American writer and historian, co-authors an article which describes a “transforming event” rather like “Pearl Harbor”, which would “divide our past and future into a before and after”. In another few years, Zelikow will be the executive director of the “9/11 Commission”.
1999: May 28. The website domain emperors-clothes.com is created by Jared Israel. September 16. Jared Israel posts a fairly lengthy article at the Emperor’s Clothes website, taking a position that is critical of the U.S. government and of the New York Times‘ bias towards U.S. government policy. The article Credible Deceptions has no less than 35 references to “bin Laden”, and is rightly skeptical of the notion that “CIA employees” Osama bin Laden et al would have suddenly transformed from employee to enemy. Israel suggests that bin Laden is “an enemy in fiction”. Credible Deceptions is said to have been written as early as August 28, 1998, revised September 16, 1999, and reposted February 18, 2001. October 31. Rabbi Dov Zakheim is CEO of SPC International – a world leader in aircraft remote control technology incorporating a “Flight Termination System” capable of simultaneously taking over a number of in-flight aircraft and issuing commands via a “Command Transmitter System“. EgyptAir Flight 990 (a Boeing 767) plunges into the Atlantic, killing all 217 on board including 33 Egyptian army officers. No mechanical cause for the crash is ever found, and it is blamed on a “suicidal Muslim” co-pilot, a claim that is publicised by the New York Times, which has been under Jewish ownership since 1896. A few weeks later, bioterrorism “expert” Jerome Hauer announces he will step down from his position as Director of the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management early in 2000, having successfully conducted an emergency operation from the OEM, based on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building Seven (WTC7), in response to the outbreak of West Nile Fever in the city which occurred the year after he persuaded Mayor Giuliani to develop a vaccine against it. As of 1999 – 2000, the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head, MD (NSWC-IH), is the “only reliable source of aluminum nanopowders in the United States“.
2000: January. More than a hundred Israelis pose as “art students” (January 2000 – September 2001) and attempt to penetrate U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) offices and other federal buildings including 36 sensitive Department of Defense (DoD) sites. September. Rabbi Zakheim of SPC is amongst the signatories to Rebuilding America’s Defenses, a report published by The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which wrote of the advantages of a “new Pearl Harbor“.
2001: Fireproofing “upgrades” are being carried out at the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, as also occurred over several years pre-2001. The contract holder is Turner Construction, whose CEO is Tom Leppert. WTC tenants have been completing various modifications throughout the leased spaces. January 20. George W. Bush is sworn in as president, and says, “We will confront weapons of mass destruction…”. A clique of warmongers with strong attachments to Israel and PNAC are to achieve power in the Bush administration. February 15. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV network broadcasts a documentary entitled “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?” This weak conspiracy theory has plenty of evidence against it, and very little to support it. The broadcast would help to deflect attention from any actual major criminal conspiracy that might be imminent, by branding those who exposed the crime as “conspiracy theorists” – particularly if someone were to conflate the “Apollo hoax” theory with the real conspiracy. March 4. Fox TV, owned by Rupert Murdoch, a long-time friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, broadcasts the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen TV series, an episode about a plot by a secret cabal within the U.S. government to electronically hijack by remote control a Boeing heading for Boston and divert it to crash into the World Trade Center. The broadcast would help to deflect attention from any imminent false-flag attack by Israel by: (i) Diverting suspicion to the Bush administration. (ii) Reinforcing the concept of an attack based on remote-controlled planes as “fiction” or “conspiracy theory”. March 19. Fox TV rebroadcasts its “Moon hoax” conspiracy theory. April. Real estate developer Larry A. Silverstein is still in the running as one of three bidders for the 99-year lease on the World Trade Center, after having been viewed as a “dark horse” who was unlikely to win the deal. However, Port Authority chairman Lewis M. Eisenberg is in charge of negotiations. Eisenberg was a partner of Goldman Sachs for many years, and is on the planning Board of the UJA / United Jewish Federation “charity”. Silverstein served as Chairman of the Board of the United Jewish Appeal. July. Six weeks before the WTC is destroyed in terror attacks involving Boeings that, evidence suggests, are electronically hijacked by remote control, Benjamin Netanyahu’s friend Larry Silverstein, in partnership with billionaire Australian Frank Lowy who fought “in the Jewish underground”, takes control of the WTC lease, and insures the buildings against terror attacks for billions of dollars, with a clause stating that in the event of a terrorist attack, the partners could not only collect the insured value of the property, but would also be released from all of their obligations under the 99-year lease. August 26. New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik leaves for a four-day trip to Israel, where he is to meet government officials to discuss terrorism. The trip has been approved by Mayor Giuliani, with New York taxpayers picking up the tab. August 29. In Jerusalem, Bernard Kerik assures Israeli leaders that the NYPD is “on top of” all potential terrorist threats. See September 16, 2001 and November 8, 2007 for more on Kerik. September 4. The Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co. moves out of the WTC, transferring their HQ to Norfolk, Virginia. September 6. In the U.S. stock options market, an extraordinary proportion of trades are betting that the United Airlines price will fall. The put / call ratio is 25, i.e., “puts” are about 96.154 percent of the volume, and “calls” only 3.846 percent, as opposed to a typical 50:50 ratio. September 10. The Washington Times publishes details of a study by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), which has this to say of Israel’s Mossad: “Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.” San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown is warned not to fly the next day. An internal memo is sent around Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, advising all employees of a possible terrorist attack against American buildings. Goldman Sachs is a Jewish investment banking firm, with headquarters in Lower Manhattan close to the World Trade Center. In the U.S. stock options market, an extraordinary proportion of trades are betting that the American Airlines stock price will fall. The proportion of “put” options, at more than 80 percent, (85.79 percent at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, according to this source) far exceeds the proportion of “call” options. September 11. Benjamin Netanyahu and Rudy Giuliani are in New York. Odigo, an Israeli instant messaging company with offices in Herzliya, Israel, provides two hours’ advance warning of an attack on the World Trade Center. At 9:00 a.m., officials at the National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, VA, start to run an exercise involving a plane crashing into a tower. Another drill is scheduled at the 97th floor of the WTC South Tower where Fiduciary Trust has offices, and numerous other war games and exercises distract NORAD so that any truly hijacked (electronically or otherwise) planes cannot be intercepted in time. A group of Israelis, some of whom are Mossad agents, park their van and set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers. Uncharacteristically, Larry Silverstein does not breakfast at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower that day since he has a “dermatologist’s appointment”, and another consequence is that his two children, who work at Silverstein Properties, are running late. Silverstein’s lucky streak is compounded when each Tower of the WTC complex – which he insured for $billions against terror attacks a mere six weeks ago – is struck by an aircraft in synchronized terror attacks. A group of Israelis dance and celebrate with high fives and cries of joy and mockery, even prior to the second impact as most onlookers still believe it has been a terrible accident rather than terrorism. George W. Bush is informed by Andrew Card that a second plane has hit the WTC, and continues to read a story about a pet goat to schoolchildren as if nothing has happened. Each Tower completely collapses, mostly into its footprint. There is a remarkable correlation between the impact floors of each Tower that supposedly failed due to “fires”, and those floors that had received fireproofing “upgrades”, particularly in the case of the North Tower (WTC1). The steel was certified to ASTM E119 by Universal Laboratories. In subsequent tests to be sponsored by NIST on corresponding floor assemblies subjected to greater heat exposure and protected with less fireproofing than at the WTC on 9/11, it will be found that the test specimens “were able to sustain the maximum design load” without collapsing for as long as the tests were run: 2 to 3 1/2 hours). Within hours, Jerome Hauer goes on TV to tell everyone that “It… certainly has the fingerprints of somebody like bin Laden”, and that the World Trade Center collapsed because of “the velocity of the plane” and “intense heat probably weakened the structure as well”. Hauer reportedly advises the White House to start taking Cipro, an effective antibiotic against anthrax. Five Israelis are arrested that afternoon after tie-ins to the 9/11 attacks are found in their van, such as maps of the city with certain places highlighted. Bomb-sniffing dogs react as if the van has traces of explosives. Another team is caught attempting to blow up the George Washington Bridge with a truck packed with tons of explosives. A “panel truck with a painting of a plane flying into the World Trade Center” is stopped, and found to contain yet another team of “ethnic Middle Eastern people” – i.e., Israelis. There is evidence to suggest that this van exploded. Bush is whisked away to the United States Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, where Warren Buffett is hosting his annual golf charity event. Ann Tatlock, the CEO of Fiduciary Trust Co. International, having been invited to this charity event, is, like the Silversteins, spared a fiery fate as a plane smashes into her company’s offices right where 650 of her employees work, killing 87 of them. Building 7, which was never struck by a plane, completely collapses into its footprint despite the fact that any structural damage or weakening from fires would have been asymmetric. The initial WTC7 collapse is very close to free-fall speed. There are many, many more “coincidences and oddities“.
Running in parallel with the above timeline going up to the WTC demolitions is another, shorter timeline relating to the Pentagon attack:
2000: March 3. It is reported that the Pentagon’s finances are “in disarray”, and that in 1999 the Defense Department’s accountants had to make almost $7 trillion in “adjustments” to try to reconcile bookkeeping discrepancies. They cannot show receipts for $2.3 trillion of those corrections. There are hundreds of computer systems running various military accounts, but these are not integrated, and the financial records are not up to accounting standards or capable of even facing an audit. It follows that the Pentagon would be vulnerable to a “terror attack” that destroyed the relevant computers and documents, also killing dozens of accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts. A percentage of $2.3 trillion is still an inordinate amount of cash, and if a proportion went missing, the Pentagon Comptroller would be able to say, “We tried our best, but sadly, due to the terror attacks, we will never know exactly how much money is missing – or where it went”.
2001: February. George W. Bush nominates Rabbi Zakheim to serve as Comptroller at the Pentagon and Under Secretary of Defense. May 4. Dov Zakheim is sworn in as Pentagon Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Defense. May 31. Thomas E. White – who went on JINSA trips to Israel and who as former CEO at Enron is linked to the massive fraud there – is sworn in as Secretary of the Army, thirty days after being nominated by George W. Bush. September 10. A group of top Pentagon officials are warned not to fly the next day. Donald Rumsfeld confirms that $2.3 trillion of transactions cannot be accounted for. September 11. Thomas White, Paul Wolfowitz, Randy “Duke” Cunningham and others are at a breakfast meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, in which the latter predicts that some kind of “shocking” world event will occur in the near future. The meeting is about to break up as the first plane slams into the North Tower. As the alleged Flight 77 is ten miles out from the Pentagon, a young man asks Vice President Cheney, “Do the orders still stand?” Cheney turns and whips his neck around and replies, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” Since there are no shoot down orders in effect at 9:37:45 – the time of the Pentagon strike – or earlier, “the orders” seem to be stand down rather than shoot down. Thomas White is at the Army Navy Country Club when, as he says, “the plane that hit the Pentagon came right over the top of the Army Navy Club and bounced down the hill and hit the side of the Pentagon”. Steve Riskus allegedly sees a Boeing 757 featuring an “AA” logo with the eagle in the middle on the tail crash into the Pentagon after screaming overhead at 530 mph and knocking over a few light poles on the way. The domain criticalthrash.com subsequently carries Riskus’ photos and other reports consistent with an AA jetliner, although most of these witnesses are employed in defense or in the media. In the afternoon, Donald Rumsfeld says, “My interest is to hit Saddam Hussein“, and orders his aides to plan for striking Iraq.
Looking beyond 9/11/2001, events unfolded like this:
2001: September 12. U.S. officials say they have identified “all of the hijackers“, who very obligingly are found to have left numerous clues such as a copy of the Koran, a flight training video and a fuel consumption calculator in luggage that supposedly failed to make the connection to the alleged Flight AA11, and Arabic language flight training manuals in a rented white Mitsubishi Mirage found at Boston’s Logan airport late Tuesday the 11th. It is estimated that the conspiracy must have involved hundreds if not thousands, and, in an attempt to explain why Western intelligence was “oblivious” to the plot, it is suggested that Osama bin Laden planted agents inside the U.S. military and intelligence services. September 13. U.S. officials say they have identified “most of the hijackers“, believed to number eighteen. Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari, originally thought to be brothers, were suspected, but Adnan was found to be alive and living in Florida, and Ameer died in a small plane crash on September 11, 2000. Yet if those identities were stolen and were on the flight manifests, it would be remarkable if the authorities were able to trace the real identities of the individuals involved within, say, three days. For anyone in need of “Saudi suicide pilots” to frame as patsies, the deceased pilot Ameer Bukhari, a Saudi Arabian national of Vero Beach, Florida, would be an ideal choice provided they could keep the lid on the fact that he had died in the “wrong” year. It is reported that the Bukhari “brothers” rented a silver-blue Nissan Altima and drove from Boston to Portland, bizarrely only to fly back to Boston. Atta rented the Mitsubishi sedan found at Logan airport, and also had a red Pontiac registered in his name. There is a general ban on flights, which must be approved on a case-by-case basis. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to the U.S., meets George W. Bush. The authorities give permission for a private jet to fly around the U.S. picking up members of the bin Laden family, which has business ties with the Bush family through the Carlyle Group. About 140 top Saudi officials are on the plane. The Emperor’s Clothes website runs a couple of articles skeptical of the official 9/11 story, including an interview between editor Jared Israel and Rudi Dekkers of Huffman Aviation. Don Radlauer, of the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya, Israel (and formerly – until 1997 – of Weybridge, Surrey, UK and of New York), publishes a report detailing the flight paths of the alleged four hijacked planes. The report attempts to lend credibility to the official story with suggestions that hijacking and steering the planes would be an easy task – even though a rather diminutive non-pilot was said to have wrestled control of Flight 77 from the tough, highly trained, weightlifting former Navy fighter pilot Charles Burlingame and steered a Boeing 757 to hit the Pentagon at 530 mph as its engines cleared the lawn by a couple of feet. Radlauer’s “take off” times correspond to the “pushed back from the gate” times, with Flight 93 for example being delayed for 41 minutes due to congestion. The 41-minute delay could explain why Flight 93 failed to hit its intended target, as the Air Force stand down could not be maintained indefinitely. September 14. U.S. officials say they have identified nineteen “hijackers“, with Hani Hanjour now included. Evidently the scriptwriters had pilots and Saudis available for the frame-up, but were short of credible “Saudi pilots”. Dominick Suter of “Urban Moving Systems Incorporated” or urban MOving SyStems incorporAteD, the Mossad front that the joking, celebrating, dancing Israelis ostensibly worked for, flees the U.S. for Israel. September 16. Osama bin Laden denies responsibility for the attacks, but according to Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, the passport of “hijacker” Satam al Suqami has been discovered several blocks from the WTC crash site. Kerik’s claim is not credible since, given the physical characteristics such as mass, cross-section and drag coefficient of a passport, even if it had survived the fireball, flying over rooftops for several blocks would be in contravention of the laws of aerodynamics. In another attempt, the passport is said to have been found “in the vicinity of Vesey Street”, to the north of the Twin Towers. Unfortunately, the scriptwriter forgot that Suqami was supposed to be on Flight 11, said to have approached from the north. The “Bukharis drove the rented Nissan Altima to Portland” story has evolved into “Mohamed Atta and Abdul Alomari drove the rented Nissan Altima to Portland”, which necessitated abandoning the previous claim of “Atta rented the Mitsubishi found at Logan” since that would make even less sense. However, the “Abdul Alomari hijacker” was originally Abdul Rahman Alomari, a pilot, friend and neighbor of Adnan Bukhari. When Alomari was found to be alive, as was Adnan Bukhari, the hijacker was said to be Abdulaziz Alomari. Problem is, he is alive too. And he’s a non-pilot. September 18. Terrorists launch an anthrax letters campaign targeting Democratic U.S. Senators and news media offices, seven days after the 9/11 attacks, and seven days after Jerome Hauer had advised the White House to begin taking Cipro. For an excellent timeline of the anthrax attacks and a subsequent spate of deaths amongst microbiologists, see here. September 19. Don Radlauer, of the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya, Israel, publishes a report on pre-9/11 insider trading involving surges in volume of put options for American Airlines, United Airlines, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch over the trading days before the attacks. He confirms that there was no news at that time to justify such an imbalance of trades, calculates the potential profit for the insiders at over $15 million, suggests that “Osama bin Laden” was behind it, and says, “we are dealing with an expert in masking ownership of corporations and making covert deals”. See here for some more clues as to the identity of those skilled in masking ownership of corporations. September 25. Rudy Giuliani bans photography at the World Trade Center ruins. September 28. Osama bin Laden again denies having anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, but suggests some possible suspects: Those within the American system who rebel against it and work for some other system, those who want to stir up conflict between Islam and Christianity, American Jews, or U.S. intelligence agencies. Before the month is up, nearly half of the alleged “suicide hijackers” have turned up alive and well. And that’s from the new, improved list, excluding Abdul Rahman Alomari and the Bukharis. No less than three of the alleged “suicide pilots” – Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad al-Jarrah – had reported their passports stolen in late 1999. Jarrah’s uncle Jamal explains in a five-minute interview that his nephew was not a radical, had no interest in politics, and did not change his appearance or behavior. Within a month of 9/11 it is quite evident that the alleged hijackers’ drinking, cocaine snorting, gambling, trysts with hookers and frequenting of strip joints does not square with religious extremists with such hatred of Western culture that they are prepared to kill themselves and thousands of others. October 8. Edward A. Coburn, 31, of Fresno, California, is arrested after bursting into the cockpit of an American Airlines jetliner bound for O’Hare airport, screaming, “We’re going to crash into the Sears Tower” and that terrorists are “steering” the plane towards the Sears Tower. Coburn, who works for a Silicon Valley company, is described as “intelligent, decent and immaculate”, “polite”, a “mellow type” who was “very kind and very nice”, a “real good guy”, etc. October 10. Three days after the launch of the war in Afghanistan, Mossad agent Salvador Guersson Smecke and Israeli illegal immigrant Saur Ben Zvi are caught and arrested inside the Mexican Congress chamber in possession of guns, grenades, dynamite, detonators and wiring while posing as “press photographers”. October 11 (assuming the Thursday prior to October 17). Moshe Elmakias, 30 and Ron Katar, 23, described as “Middle Eastern”, are arrested by Plymouth Police in Pennsylvania after being found with a Sony video camera and tape with detailed video footage of Chicago’s Sears Tower, days after a bizarre incident in the cockpit of a jetliner bound for Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Elmakias’ tractor-trailer, which has a Florida registration and a sign posted on the side reading “Moving Systems Incorporated”, was seen by a Pizzeria Uno manager backed up to the Dumpster at the rear of the restaurant with a freshly dumped pile of furniture adjacent to the Dumpster. Also observed with Elmakias is a female, Ayelet Reisler, 23. Elmakias is a Jewish name, as is Katar, Reisler and the forenames Moshe, Ron and Ayelet. Although Elmakias claims to be in Plymouth to make a pick up, he cannot provide a name or telephone number of the customer. The President of Moving Systems Inc. is Simo Elbaz of Florida, aka Simon Elbaz aka Simon Miller aka Jonathan Miller, as subsequently shown in a February 2003 indictment naming Elbaz, Elmakias and several others on charges of wire fraud, extortion, and making a false bill of lading. October 26. A mere 45 days after the 9/11 terror attacks, George W. Bush signs the “Patriot Act” into law. The US government has awarded itself additional powers, e.g. the power to break into its citizens’ homes and conduct secret searches without telling them for months or indefinitely, and to spy on people’s choice of books. These powers are subsequently exploited so that the government can eavesdrop on private communications even when there is no evidence of involvement with a foreign country or a terror group. October 27/28 (last weekend in October). Six men with Israeli passports are stopped by police in the Midwest and found to have photos and descriptions of a nuclear power plant in Florida and the Trans-Alaska pipeline. They also have “box cutters and other equipment”. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller are said to be “furious” that the Immigration and Naturalization Service let them go without consulting the FBI. The incident is later reported in the Israeli press, although Ashcroft denies that he and Mueller were “furious”. November 14. The Emperor’s Clothes website, which was so quick to recognize that the “bin Laden turned from employee to archenemy” story was bogus, posts an article Guilty For 9-11: Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers. Unfortunately, it studiously ignores all the evidence of Israeli involvement. November 23. The Washington Post runs an article entitled “60 Israelis on Tourist Visas Detained Since Sept. 11“, saying that employees of Quality Sales, Inc. in Toledo, Ohio and other Israelis in the U.S. have been detained. The Israelis worked at malls selling trinkets and toys such as rubber band-propelled helicopters. Israeli mall kiosks are suspected Israeli intelligence fronts. The Post reports that this week, the authorities began to release the five detained “moving company” Israelis, young Israeli army veterans, who were observed celebrating with cries of joy and mockery as they trained their cameras on the burning WTC. They are being returned to their homes in Israel. December 13. An “Osama confession video” is conveniently “found”, out of all the buildings in Jalalabad (population estimated at roughly 250,000 as of 1999) in occupied Afghanistan within 5 weeks of it allegedly having been made, in which the only similarities between the “confessor” and OBL are that both of them wear a turban and have a beard. Before the year is out, it is evident that the weapons-grade Ames strain of anthrax found in letters sent to media outlets and senators in September and October originated at a U.S. government lab, despite a feeble attempt to frame Arab Muslims for the crime. Structural engineers say that the decision to rapidly recycle the WTC steel was a “serious mistake” that is handicapping the investigation. Dr. Frederick W. Mowrer, an associate professor in the fire protection engineering department at the University of Maryland, says, “I find the speed with which potentially important evidence has been removed and recycled to be appalling.” Mayor Rudy Giuliani is suspected of being behind the decision, but officials in the mayor’s office do not reply to written and oral questions about who decided to recycle the steel.
2002: January 11. The first prisoners arrive at “Camp X-Ray“, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Detainees arrive shackled in orange jumpsuits with blacked-out goggles and earplugs, and are made to kneel in a “holding area”. They are housed in 8 feet square wire cages and have a mattress, a sheet, a blanket, two towels, soap, shampoo, a copy of the Koran and two buckets. Jamal al Harith is just one example of an unfortunate who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time: a country that was invaded and occupied under a false prospectus, a person who was seized and transported thousands of miles to be imprisoned and abused without trial simply to maintain the fiction that the invasion of Afghanistan was to save the world from “terrorists“. March 11. Rabbi Dov Zakheim delivers a commemorative sermon on the Pentagon lawn to hundreds of co-religionists from 40 countries. Chabad Lubavitch rabbis have gathered ostensibly to launch the centenary commemoration of their spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, yet the rabbis sing “Oseh Shalom” at 9:38 a.m. at the crash site, exactly six months after the extremely lucrative Pentagon attack. March 25. Sixteen microbiologists have died, in a mysterious spate of deaths that started less than five months ago. Back in the 1980s, a series of “suicides” amongst scientists working in the defense industry had prompted Doug Hoyle to raise the issue in Britain’s Parliament with a question to the Under-Secretary of State for Defence. April 28-29. Guantanamo Bay prisoners are transferred from the temporary Camp X-Ray to the larger Camp Delta, construction of which officially began on February 27. May 7. A group of Israelis are caught with a rental truck that tested positive for TNT and RDX plastic explosives shortly after midnight, very close to the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Oak Harbor, Wash., where the Navy conducts explosive ordnance training for bomb disposal mobile units. September 10. Philip Zelikow admits that Iraq poses a threat to Israel, but not to the USA. October 12. In the deadliest terrorist atrocity to hit Indonesia, bombs are detonated on the island of Bali. 202 are killed, none of whom are Israelis. Australia suffers the highest number of casualties at 88, consistent with a goal of inducing Australia to increase its contribution to the “war on terror” and bring in “anti-terror” legislation. The second bomb, in a Mitsubishi van, causes much more damage than the bombers expect. The official story is initially that the Mitsubishi bomb consisted of the high explosive C-4, and this is subsequently revised to a low explosive improvised potassium chlorate, aluminum powder and sulfur composition which is inconsistent with the damage. The ringleader of the bombers suggests that an intelligence agency – “the CIA or KGB or Mossad” – had tampered with the bomb. In the February 1993 WTC bombing, the FBI’s plan to substitute a harmless powder for the real explosives was called off by an FBI supervisor; in the Bali 2002 bombing, intelligence operatives could have substituted a more powerful explosive.
2003: February. Sixteen moving companies and 74 operators, owners and employees are indicted on charges of fraud and extortion. Many of the names involved are Jewish names. Included is Moshe Elmakias aka Moses Makias of Moving Systems Incorporated, who was caught in October 2001 with detailed video footage of the Sears Tower. March 16. Three heads of state – George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Spanish Premier Jose Maria Aznar – travel to an American airbase in the Azores for a “summit”, i.e., an hour-long meeting where deals can be done behind closed doors without the risk of hacked phones, days in advance of the impending “shock and awe” campaign to bring “democracy” to Iraq and rid it of its “WMDs”. March 27. The Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures is approved for immediate implementation. For example, if a prisoner is escaping beyond the perimeter fence and there is no other means to prevent escape, then the guard should “fire to make the person(s) unable to continue…” without warning shots. In a list of “offenses”, tampering with restraints is listed as “category III”. June. Biological weapons experts working for the British government prove the Iraqis are right and the British government is wrong, in that the trailers that Tony Blair, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell claim are “mobile biological weapons labs” are in fact hydrogen generators for inflating artillery balloons. July 18. Dr David Kelly, a biological weapons specialist and expert on Iraq’s weapons who knew that the claims about “WMDs” are a pack of lies, is found dead after failing to return from one of his regular walks in the woods yesterday. Officially, the death is ruled to be a “suicide”. However, no fingerprints have been found on the knife he allegedly used to kill himself, he was not wearing gloves and none were found at the scene, a full transection of a single ulnar artery – which will quickly retract and close down thereby promoting clotting – is highly unlikely to kill, as is ingestion of one-third of a lethal dose of the painkiller co-proxamol, very little blood was found at the scene, and it would have been very difficult for Kelly to cut through the tendons of his left wrist since his right hand was very weak due to an elbow injury and he favored his left hand for any task requiring strength. All the evidence points to murder. Other scientists have died in various circumstances, some suspicious and others not suspicious. October. In a speech before retiring as Malaysia’s prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad shrewdly observes that Jews rule the world by proxy, and get others to fight and die for them.
2004: April 9. Eddie Guigui Shalev, an Israeli national who served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the paratroops regiment, says that based on his observations, Hani Hanjour was a “good” pilot, contrary to all available evidence. May 8. Shmuel Dahan, 22 and Almaliach Naor, 19, both Israelis, are arrested in Tennessee following a three-mile high-speed chase after their rental truck is seen speeding and they refuse to stop. Dahan, an Israeli military veteran, is found to have a “Learn to Fly in Florida” business card in his wallet. Florida flight instructor Nissan Giat says that he met Naor at a moving company where the Israeli man works and gave him one of his cards. The Israelis’ ID is fake, and a brown bottle which they threw from the truck whilst being pursued is found to contain a thick liquid like drain cleaner. Tests indicate the liquid is a mixture of Astromid 18 – a latex stripper/cleaner, gluconic acid and water. No explanation is provided as to why these were mixed. The nearby Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin is “the nation’s sole provider of fuel for the Navy’s nuclear subs“. Although the Israelis claim to be moving furniture, the Sheriff is skeptical, saying that the furniture is so old that it’s hard to see why anyone would want to move it. May 19. Rudy Giuliani says that officials never imagined that planes would be used as missiles, although they prepared for anthrax, smallpox and “dirty bombs”. May 21. Tamir D. Sason, 24 and Daniel Levy, 23, both of Metar, Israel, are caught attempting to get into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, Georgia, without proper identification, prompting a nearly 3-hour lockdown. They have supposedly been contracted by a moving company. Bomb-sniffing search dogs react positively to a briefcase in the cab of the truck, although no explosives are found. Submarines at Kings Bay are armed with nuclear ballistic missiles. July 15. Mossad agents Uriel Kelman, 30, and Eli Cara, 50, are convicted and jailed for six months for fraudulently attempting to obtain a New Zealand passport in the name of a tetraplegic man in order to create a false identity for Zev Barkan. July 22. The 9/11 Commission publishes its final report, the 9/11 Commission Report, which would more accurately be called the “9/11 Omission Report”. September 2. The FBI has a file of documents compiled in July and August showing that the Bureau is aware of various torture tactics at Guantanamo Bay that go back to 2002. Prisoners are shackled to the floor in the fetal position for 18 hours or more so that they urinate and defecate on themselves, subjected to extremes of temperature, threatened with dogs made to bark and growl, have their hair and beard wrapped in duct tape, deprived of sleep by the use of strobe lights and loud music, made to stand in stress positions, etc. One FBI agent heard banging sounds like thunder, but was perplexed by the fact that the weather was fine. On going to investigate, a prisoner was seen in an interview room kneeling on the floor with his forehead on the ground, holding his nose which appeared to be bleeding. The interviewers claimed that he “threw himself to the floor“. Another agent traveled to interview a prisoner, and found he had “a black eye, facial cuts around the nose, and his fingers on both hands were taped up”. October. A “close friend” of George W. Bush – identified as Tom Bernstein who, along with Bush and other businessmen, was a former owner of the Texas Rangers baseball club, a deal which netted Bush millions of dollars – sends him a copy of Natan Sharansky’s new book The Case for Democracy with a note urging him to read it. Bush does so – and so does Condoleezza Rice. Tom Bernstein is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, was appointed by Bush in 2002 to serve as a Council Member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and from 2002 to 2005 has been Co-Founder and Chairman of the International Freedom Center, a cultural institution developed for the World Trade Center Site. He is connected to Natan Sharansky through the International Freedom Center, to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger through the Fresh Air Fund, and Elie Wiesel through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. November 2. President Bush ‘wins’ a second term with the aid of Diebold electronic voting machines. Where a paper trail exists, the divergence between exit polls and results is within the expected statistical margin of error. In contrast, results from the voting machines have almost consistently swung towards Bush. The National Election Data Archive demonstrates that, for Ohio, the probability of these discrepancies occurring due to chance ranged from 1 in 17,800 down to 1 in 867,205,500. Dr Stephen Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania calculates the odds at 250 million to one against for just three of the major swing states – Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania – to swing as far as they did from their exit polls. November 11. Bush meets with Natan Sharansky for more than an hour. He invites him into the Oval Office for a discussion of Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy and how it applies to the “war on terror”.
2005: January. One possible motive for the Iraq war becomes apparent when it is reported that $8.8 billion of Iraqi money has gone “missing” between October 2003 and June 2004 from the former UN Oil-for-Food fund, oil sales and seized assets. In a lengthy interview with the Washington Times, George W. Bush says, “If you want a glimpse of how I think about foreign policy read Natan Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy.” July 7. Benjamin Netanyahu and Rudy Giuliani – who were in New York on 9/11 – are located in London on the morning of the 7/7 bombings. Netanyahu and the Mossad receive advance warning and, ironically, in a futile attempt to deflect from Israeli foreknowledge, former Mossad head Efraim Halevy demonstrates inside knowledge by revealing that he already knows the bombings were simultaneous when the authorities spend the next two days claiming that the three Tube explosions were spread over a period of 26 minutes from 08:51 to 09:17. The Israeli company Verint Systems, a subsidiary of Israel’s Comverse Technology, handles video security at the London Underground. In a CCTV-rich environment such as London, there ought to be numerous time-stamped images to prove that the alleged bombers were in London on 7/7, yet the authorities never release any such images. Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, a former Israeli intelligence officer, is listed on Verint documents as Chairman of the Board of Directors, e.g. as of April 2003. Dan Bodner, current CEO of Verint, was an Israeli Army officer. The official tale of “Muslim suicide bombers” is physically impossible, given the actual train times of the day, and the official scenario of exploding backpacks is contradicted by eyewitnesses and photos indicating the explosions originated underneath the carriages. Rudy Giuliani, friend of Bernard Kerik who announced the “discovery” of an alleged 9/11 suicide hijacker’s passport claimed to have survived the jet fuel fireball, was in Yorkshire the previous day. Miraculously, a till receipt obtained from a garden center at Tulip Retail Park in Leeds, Yorkshire is “found” to have survived one of the deadly Tube train blasts, and cited as ‘evidence’ for the official version of events. November 9 (9/11 by Israeli or European calendars). Israeli Jews staying at the Radisson hotel, Amman, Jordan, are evacuated in advance of terror attacks. According to the official story, “suicide bombers” are responsible, and even though the blast at the Radisson was caused by a bomb hidden in a false ceiling, it is still claimed to be the work of “suicide bombers“. There were no Jewish casualties, most of the dead were Jordanian Sunni Muslims, two Israeli casualties were both Arabs, and five Palestinians died including Major-General Bashir Nafeh, the head of military intelligence in the West Bank.
2006: July 31. Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, the Israeli-born founder and former CEO of Comverse Technology, is charged by U.S. authorities with multiple counts of fraud and related offenses. He was on vacation in Israel, but instead of returning to the U.S. to face indictment, travels to Germany and subsequently flees to Namibia. August 15. September 18. Benjamin Netanyahu, Warren Buffett, and Stef and Eitan Wertheimer attend a party at the King David Hotel, Jerusalem, to celebrate Buffett’s $5 billion acquisition of an 80% stake in the Wertheimer family’s Iscar Metalworking Company. The Israeli government also receives $1 billion in taxes from the deal. Stef Wertheimer, founder of Iscar, is considered the wealthiest Israeli living in Israel. Eitan Wertheimer and Netanyahu are residents of Caesarea, the only town in Israel that is managed by a business, the Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Caesarea Development Corporation that has donated over 100 million shekels in recent years to organizations such as the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. September 27. Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, ex-CEO of Comverse Technology, is arrested in Namibia after an international manhunt. He is wanted by the U.S. authorities to face multiple charges including conspiracy, securities fraud, and money laundering. September 30. It is revealed that, whilst preparing to flee fraud charges in the U.S., Kobi Alexander transferred $57 million from his Citigroup account to bank accounts in Israel: Bank Leumi account 603401/78 and Bank Hapoalim account 131883. He was caught when it was found that tens of millions of dollars had gone into his Namibian accounts. October 7. October 11. Kobi Alexander is charged with offering millions of dollars as a bribe to David Kreinberg, former Chief Financial Officer at Comverse, in an attempt to induce him to take sole responsibility for the fraud scheme. Alexander first offered $2 million, then $5 million, and finally “name your price”, pleading that there was no reason why both of them “should go down”.
2007: January 2. As part of a lawsuit involving the American Civil Liberties Union, the FBI releases its July/August 2004 documents detailing the mistreatment and torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. February. Video footage is published demonstrating that the BBC reported WTC 7 had collapsed, some 20 minutes before it actually did so at 5:20 EDT. The BBC’s Jane Standley, on location in New York, said that the building had collapsed when it was clearly visible through the window behind her head. Times are confirmed by a timestamp, and the footage is subsequently confirmed as genuine by the BBC’s Director of Collections at its Internet Archive. February 7. Melbourne scientist Dr Gideon Polya calculates post-invasion excess deaths in occupied Iraq at one million. This compares with an October 2006 estimate of 655,000 from a survey overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Both of these figures exclude up to 1.7 million pre-invasion deaths, including half a million children under 5 by 2000, killed as a result of depleted uranium and 1990 – 2003 sanctions. March 6. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is convicted on four felony counts including obstruction of justice, giving false statements to the FBI, and perjury in relation to the Bush administration’s leaking of the name of a CIA agent to the press. The agent, Valerie Plame, is married to Joseph Wilson, a diplomat who served in Iraq and Africa. Wilson correctly reported in March 2002 that an Italian intelligence report that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium was based on bogus documents, yet George Bush repeated the yellowcake claim in January 2003 when making the case for war. The leaking of Plame’s name was in retaliation for Wilson’s honesty, and part of an attempt to deter any further critics – part of the vast body of proof that the administration’s invasion of Iraq was not simply a mistake based on “faulty intelligence”. March 10. The U.S. military conducts a tribunal at Guantanamo Bay ostensibly to determine if one of their prisoners, alleged to be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is an “enemy combatant”. KSM was reportedly killed in a Pakistan Rangers paramilitary raid on his apartment in September 2002 and his identity confirmed by his wife and children. However, the “KSM” prisoner makes a statement at the tribunal admitting to being responsible for the “9/11 Operation, from A to Z”, the “1993 World Trade Center Operation”, the “Shoe Bomber Operation”, the “bombing of a nightclub in Bali”, “planning, training, surveying and financing the New (or Second) Wave attacks” against skyscrapers including the “Plaza Bank, Washington state” and the “Sears Tower, Chicago”, being in charge of the “Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and others”, and responsible for many other plots and operations. Whoever fabricated this ‘confession’ overlooked the fact that “KSM” was supposedly captured on March 1, 2003 but the Plaza Bank wasn’t founded until early 2006. And it isn’t a skyscraper. If they meant the Columbia Center, that isn’t referred to as “Plaza”; Bank of America Fifth Avenue Plaza is only the 9th tallest building in Seattle, and 1001 Fourth Avenue Plaza was down to 5th tallest by 1990. And the anthrax strain was traced to the US military, and it was Israeli “movers” who were caught with a video camera and detailed video footage of the Sears Tower. It was reported back in November 2005 that KSM’s interrogators said he’d held out for more than two minutes against the waterboarding, and use of waterboarding was subsequently confirmed by Dick Cheney. November 8. Bernard Kerik – who announced Sunday September 16, 2001, that a hijacker’s passport had been “discovered” – is indicted on 16 counts including lying, conspiracy, fraud, and taking and failing to report a $250,000 loan that originated with Israeli billionaire industrialist Eitan Wertheimer, with Brooklyn marble and stone merchant Shimon Cohen serving as intermediary in the transaction. Kerik and Wertheimer spent time together during Kerik’s trip to Israel at the end of August 2001. The Wertheimer family’s vast holdings include companies with United States Defense Department contracts.
2008: April. The Pentagon’s accounting process is said to be “so obsolete and error prone that it’s virtually impossible to tell where much of this money ends up“. July 29. FBI “suspect” for the 2001 anthrax attacks, Bruce E. Ivins, is found dead. Officially, it is alleged that he committed suicide after learning that the FBI was going to charge him and prosecutors would be seeking the death penalty. Ivins became the new scapegoat, after the FBI gave up attempting to pin the blame on Steven Hatfill because there was not a scintilla of evidence against him. However, Ivins had no reason to target media and opposition politicians in order to deter them from questioning the official 9/11 story. Embarrassingly for the FBI, they were forced to play the role of “idiots” who were “baffled” as to Ivins’ motive. August 19. Barry Jennings, an eyewitness whose explicit testimony of early explosions in WTC7 prior to collapse of either Tower contradicts the official version of events, mysteriously dies. August 21. NIST publishes the findings of its three-year ‘study’ into the collapse of WTC7. Not surprisingly, the conclusion that “fires” and “thermal expansion” of some fireproofed steel beams caused the total collapse of this 47-story building is based on political considerations rather than the empirical evidence – evidence that was studiously ignored when it did not support the desired conclusion. Also ignored was the testimony of eyewitness Barry Jennings, who died two days previously. NIST, whose top scientists and engineers have extensive knowledge of nano-thermites, say they have found “no evidence” of explosives at the WTC, but later admit that they did not bother to look for any. December. The bill for Bush’s “war on terror” is estimated to be approaching $1 trillion, excluding long-term health care for veterans and interest on federal borrowing.
Excerpted from Take Our World Back
‘Iran entitled to approve IAEA inspectors’
Press TV – September 10, 2010
The father of Iran’s nuclear program Dr. Akbar Etemad says Iran is entitled to accept or refuse inspectors dispatched by the IAEA.
Former Iranian nuclear chief says Iran is legally bound by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocol to vet inspectors dispatched to visit its nuclear facilities.
The terms of a contract between Iran and the IAEA stipulate that the Iranian government “has the right to accept or refuse the inspectors introduced by the Agency,” Former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) Akbar Etemad told IRNA on Thursday.
The remarks come days after the UN body noted in its latest report that Tehran’s “repeated objections” to the designation of experienced inspectors could hamper the process of monitoring Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Etemad rejected the concept in the agency’s report and said, “Iran has undoubtedly had sufficient reasons to refuse some of the inspectors.”
He further pointed out that the IAEA reports portray Iran as having a legal obligation to implement the Additional Protocol of the agency, whereas Iran’s Majlis (national legislative body) has suspended voluntary execution of the Protocol and all other voluntary and non-legally binding cooperation with the IAEA that are beyond the requirements of the nuclear watchdog.
Iranian officials maintain that the interference of the UN Security Council in Iran’s nuclear dossier has prompted the Majlis to stop the implementation of the Additional Protocol.
Following the imposition of US-engineered UN Security Council sanctions against the Islamic Republic in June, the United States and the European Union imposed further unilateral sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program.
Tehran rejects Western allegations that it is following a military nuclear program, arguing that as a member of the IAEA and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has the right to use peaceful nuclear technology.
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The NYT’s latest Russiagate story on George Papadopoulos is not believable
Attempt to distance Russiagate investigation from discredited Trump Dossier fails on Papadopoulos’s inherent unreliability as a witness
By Alexander Mercouris | The Duran | January 1, 2018
As confidence in Robert Mueller’s investigation crumbles there have been the inevitable leaks intended to suggest that the Russiagate investigation is still on track and that despite the increasing appearances to the contrary there is actually some reality to the case it is investigating.
The leaks take the form of claims that Mueller is planning to issue a “supplemental indictment” of Paul Manafort supposedly fleshing out the tax evasion and money laundering claims he has brought against him, and more information about the strange case of George Papadopoulos. … continue
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