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Lebanese President Slams WikiLeaks: Says Leaks Aimed at Sowing Division

By Jason Ditz | Anti-war.com | April 17, 2011

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman issued a statement today condemning WikiLeaks and accusing the group of trying to sow division between him and the Hezbollah political bloc. He insisted the leaks were all lies.

The WikiLeaks-published State Department cables claim, among other things, that former Prime Minister Saad Hariri backed Suleiman’s presidency primarily to embarrass Hezbollah and harm Michel Aoun. One cable reports the US opposing Suleiman, believing him to be a “Syrian Agent.”

The most damaging claim, however, was that Suleiman had said in 2007 that Hezbollah was only backing him to keep him from the presidency. Suleiman became president in May of 2008.

Suleiman’s statement also warned the media against publishing stories based on the WikiLeaks cables, saying that the cables “lacked credibility.” WikiLeaks has released about 7,000 cables out of the 251,287 that it has in its possession.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | 1 Comment

Sulaymanieh Protest leaves 35 injured

Press TV – April 17, 2011

Clashes between police and protesters in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region have left at least 35 people injured, including seven policemen, reports say.

In recent months, protests have flared up in the region’s second largest city of Sulaymanieh, where thousands of people have spilled out into the streets to protest against corruption and a lack of freedom.

Police fired shots, used tear gas and batons to disperse the protesters on Sunday.

Seven protesters also suffered bullet wounds and some others were hurt by batons or tear gas, Reuters quoted police and witnesses as saying.

Rekawt Hama Rasheed, general director of the health office in Sulaymanieh, said that seven policemen suffered exposure to tear gas.

Several people were also taken into custody, including journalists, but the exact figure is not known, he said.

Two journalists were among the wounded, one of them a photographer, who was shot while covering the clashes, said Rahman Gharib, an editor at the Kurdish weekly newspaper Hawalati.

Kurdistan is dominated by just two parties, the PUK and the regional president’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

President of Iraq’s Kurdistan region Massoud Barzani had announced plans last month to shake up the regional government and enact reforms, but demonstrators wanted more reforms.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Gadhafi’s Cluster Bombs–and Uncle Sam’s

By Jim Naureckas – 04/16/2011

“Gadhafi Troops Fire Cluster Bombs Into Civilian Areas,” declares a New York Times headline (4/15/11). The lead of the story makes clear that these weapons are considered in many countries to be illegal:

Military forces loyal to Col. Moammar el-Gadhafi have been firing into residential neighborhoods in this embattled city with heavy weapons, including cluster bombs that have been banned by much of the world.

The story, by C.J. Chivers, goes on to explain why these weapons have been banned:

These so-called indiscriminate weapons, which strike large areas with a dense succession of high-explosive munitions, by their nature cannot be fired precisely. When fired into populated areas, they place civilians at grave risk.

Then it gives a graphic description of the human toll of these weapons:

The dangers were evident beside one of the impact craters on Friday, where eight people had been killed while standing in a bread line. Where a crowd had assembled for food, bits of human flesh had been blasted against a cinder-block wall.

And it strongly suggests that the use of cluster bombs deserves to have serious international consequences:

The use of such weapons in these ways could add urgency to the arguments by Britain and France that the alliance needs to step up attacks on the Gadhafi forces, to better fulfill the United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

After all this, the story gets out of the way an awkward fact that complicates this presentation of the use of cluster bombs as proof that Moammar Gadhafi is an international outlaw whose bloodthirstiness must be countered by an intensified military campaign by the civilized world:

At the same time, the United States has used cluster munitions itself, in battlefield situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in a strike on suspected militants in Yemen in 2009.

Oh–so these “indiscriminate weapons” that “place civilians at grave risk” have been used by the United States as well? But only in “battlefield situations,” far from civilians, right? Well, not exactly. The U.S. was criticized by Human Rights Watch for using cluster bombs in populated areas in Afghanistan, killing and injuring scores of civilians (Washington Post, 12/18/02). Amnesty International (4/2/03) called the U.S.’s use of cluster bombs in civilian areas of Iraq “a grave violation of international humanitarian law.” (See FAIR Action Alert, 5/6/03.) NATO employed cluster bombs in its bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo War, with one attack killing 15 civilians in the town of Nis (BBC, 5/7/99); more than 2,000 unexploded munitions from cluster bombs are estimated to remain on Serbian territory, continuing to endanger civilians (AFP, 3/10/09).

The “suspected militants” attacked by a cluster bomb in Yemen in 2009 turned out to be “21 children and 20 innocent women and men” (NewYorkTimes.com, 12/9/10)–all killed in the U.S. attack.

You can be sure that none of these examples of U.S. use of cluster bombs in civilian areas prompted the New York Times to suggest that they justified military attacks on the United States in order to protect civilians. And you’d be hard-pressed to find any descriptions in the Times of the “bits of human flesh” resulting from any U.S. military action.

As for cluster bombs being “banned in much of the world,” that includes Britain. But as WikiLeaks revealed, the U.S. colluded with the British government to circumvent the ban and allow U.S. cluster bombs to remain on British soil. WikiLeaks also disclosed that the U.S. has been lobbying for countries to keep cluster bombs legal, arguing that they are “legitimate weapons that provide a vital military capability” (Guardian, 12/1/10).

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | 1 Comment

Israel thanks US for taxpayer dollars

Press TV – April 16, 2011

The Israeli Prime Minister has thanked Washington for approving new military aid to Tel Aviv at a time when Americans are protesting at the US government’s military spending.

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that the move is further evidence of the close friendship between Israel and the US.

Congress passed a budget bill authorizing military aid to Israel this week, AFP reported.

The stipulation gives an additional USD 205 million in aid to Israel for the acquisition of four new batteries of the Iron Dome missile system.

Two batteries, each holding twenty missiles, were deployed last week during Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.

Last week, thousands of peace, labor and community activists took to the streets of New York to voice concerns over the funding of wars abroad. They expressed their concern over the struggling US economy and reduction in social programs.

Since 2007 Washington has been giving Tel Aviv USD three-billion in aid every year. The money is spent almost entirely on purchasing American weapons as part of a ten-year agreement.

The US Congress Office for Technology Assessment says Israel, the largest recipient of US aid since World War II, has undeclared chemical weapons and an offensive biological warfare program.

Tel-Aviv’s nuclear program is described as an open secret. Israel is believed to be the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East with an arsenal bigger than that of Britain or France.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

Lobby, lobbification and the lobbified: the corruption of the USA’s elected representatives

By Lawrence Davidson | Redress | 18 April 2011

Lobbification is a word I have just coined for the corruptive process that bends politicians to the will of special interests, that is, to the will of lobbies. The result of lobbification can be seen in the stilted and fawning behaviour of the lobbified political brain. Politicians with lobbified brains become the obedient instruments of the lobbies which have captured their political souls. Below are a few examples of the results of lobbification.

An example from the House of Representatives

The majority of the politicians who sit on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee are victims of lobbification. Among the major lobbies that have, over the decades, carried out this corrupting process are the Zionist organizations in their various Jewish and Christian manifestations. In their present state, the lobbified minds of these committee members, so influential in the foreign policy formulation process of our country, are utterly incapable of questioning, much less defying, the hypnotic power of either American Zionists or the Israelis. Here is just one illustration of the resulting mental paralysis.

On Tuesday 5 April 2011 three Israelis appeared before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two were retired Israeli armed forces generals and one was  Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs. Gold is one of those transplanted Americans who have chosen careers as Israeli spokesmen. (As an aside, he is also an Inspector Clouseau look alike.) He served as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and political advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Among other dubious accomplishments, it was Gold who convinced the Clinton administration not to press Israel on the issue of the Golan Heights. The Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once described him as “simply hatred’s scribe”. Here is some of what Gold and his fellow Israelis told the Foreign Affairs Committee:

1. Israel is confronting a new diplomatic assault that could well strip it of territorial defences in the West Bank that have provided for its security for over 40 years…”

2. “The 1993 Oslo agreements envisioned a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with borders to be decided by the parties themselves and not imposed by international coalitions or by unilateral acts.”

3. “Traditional US policy recognized that Israel is not expected to withdrew from all territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War. This was enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242…”

4. “…the entire Middle East is engulfed in flames. Just as Israel faces complete strategic uncertainty … it is being asked to acquiesce to unprecedented concessions that could put its very future at risk.” Therefore, “…to agree to a full withdrawal from the West Bank and to acquiesce to the loss of defensible borders pose an unacceptable risk for the Jewish state.”

During this lament our Congressional Representatives sat there, in their collective lobbified frame of mind, and swallowed it all in as if it were gospel. This was completely predictable. The Foreign Affairs Committee is chaired by Florida Representative  Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, an ardent anti-Castro Cuban American who has spent her political life doing two things: first, distorting our foreign policy toward Cuba so that no vestige of national interest can be found therein, and second, promoting a tactical alliance between reactionary Cuban American groups and the Zionists. Ros-Lehtinen has recently confirmed her lobbified status by demanding that Congress “make it US policy to demand that the UN General Assembly revoke and repudiate the Goldstone Report“. She did this despite the fact that three of the four signatories of the report have avowed its accuracy and continued relevance. The senior Democratic Party member on the committee is  Howard Berman who has never been able to figure out who he should represent more diligently, his California district constituents or Israel.

Both these leading committee members clearly suffer from lobbification and most of the other standing members also display this condition to one extent or another. As a result, when it came to the discussion that followed the Israelis’ presentation, all the possible probing questions remained unasked. Here are some of them, figuratively addressed to Ambassador Dore, and others:

1. What do you mean by “diplomatic assault”, “imposed by international coalitions”, and “unilateral acts”? Do you mean the rather feeble US and European suggestion that your country negotiate in good faith and cease its own series of illegal unilateral acts such as the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem?

2. And how is it that you are now telling us that, for the last 40 years, your “territorial defences” have made you secure? For the past 40 years you have been telling us how insecure you are! Are we to understand that your constant claim of insecurity was a gross exaggeration? Perhaps nothing more than an addictive frame of mind? Or has it been just a facade behind which you carry on expansion in violation of international law?

3. Why do you bring up the Oslo accords? For the last few decades you have been telling us that they are dead letters, irrelevant to current circumstances. You seem to trot them out when they serve your purposes and cast them into oblivion when they do not. Also, are you not aware that in the past your country has violated these accords at will?

4. Is Israel’s determined refusal to negotiate rational concessions really a function of the assertion that the “entire Middle East” is allegedly “engulfed in flames”? If we simply go back to a period when there was no “complete strategic uncertainty” we find that Israel’s position on compromise was exactly the same as it is today. So isn’t this new concern really a contrived excuse to justify your country’s refusal to come to just and fair settlement with the Palestinians?

5. Why are you bringing up the possibility of “full withdrawal” from the West Bank as if it was a spectre gazing over your shoulder? When is the last time the US government or the European Union demanded this of you? Is not the present understanding of the final character of borders based upon the 1967 Green Line one that includes mutually agreed upon and equitable land swaps? Is not this the recognized contemporary understanding of UN Resolution 242?

6. And what is this business of “defensible borders”? When was the last time your country’s borders proved indefensible to conventional military attack? Isn’t it true that, even without the West Bank, your borders have never been seriously crossed by such forces? Your vulnerability lies in your inability to counter guerrilla and terrorist attacks, and to prevent missile penetration. Ultimate security against these threats does not rest in a policy of colonial expansion but rather in an equitable peace agreement.

What a memorable and actually useful committee meeting it would have been if these or similar questions had been posed. But alas, the lobbified brain functions something like Israel’s apartheid wall. Meaningful questions about Israel and doubts about the real consequences of Zionism cannot easily get over or around the nine-metre-high conditioning that is lobbification.

An example from the US Senate

The on-line magazine Politico tells us that “even as they push for huge cuts, 11 freshman GOP [Grand Old Party – the US Republican Party] senators say the US must continue to provide foreign aid to its strongest ally in the Middle East: Israel”.

In a letter to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) the security conscious 11 stated, “as we work to reduce wasteful government spending … we must continue to prioritize the safety of our nation and the security of our allies, including Israel”.

Only the thoroughly lobbified brain can advocate cutting 500 million dollars from federal programmes for health and nutrition for women, infants and children and simultaneously insist on continuing to give Israel 3 billion dollars a year – and, do so in the name of “prioritizing the safety of our nation”!

The senator who organized the letter to McConnell is  Marco Rubio of Florida (a male version of Ros-Lehtinen) and he sits on what committee? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of course. His lobbified state apparently makes it impossible for him to see the connection between our open-ended support of Israel, Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and our nation’s insecurity. It should come as no surprise that Senator Rubio has said that the US must “stand with Israel without equivocation or hesitation” and cease pressuring Israel over its settlement policies.

Conclusion

As the approximately 206.8 million adult Americans go about their daily lives most probably do not realize that they, or at least the approximately 57 per cent who bother to vote in federal elections, have placed into positions of power individuals who have been corrupted by lobby power. This is due to the fact that most Americans do not understand and/or pay attention to how their own political system works. Few and far between are the school “civics” courses that, in theory, explain its intricacies. And, once the Republicans get done gutting the education budgets, those remaining courses will most likely disappear.

Ignorance is not bliss. It is often the prelude to sudden destruction. It is not bliss to be ignorant of the corruption that is undermining your government . Lobbification is synonymous with just that – a dangerous form of political corruption. Our political system is riddled with it. It has been so for a long time and the situation is not improving.

This condition has recently manifested itself in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Ohio and a host of other states in the form of feverish acts of self-destruction. And, as we have seen, Congress has no immunity. Yet the citizenry goes blissfully about its business.

To quote the immortal Samuel Johnson, “Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkling down the torrent of his fate? (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2001, p. 411, No. 19).

Perhaps it is so.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | 2 Comments

‘Democracy’ meddling, twittering agitation

Compiled by Maidhc Ó Cathail |The Passionate Attachment | April 16, 2011

Israel’s Willing Accomplices

In “Muslims Are Their Own Worst Enemy,” Paul Craig Roberts decries “the willingness of some Muslims to betray their own kind for U.S. dollars”:

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman, head of the Foundation for Democracy, which describes itself as “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”

By now we all know what that means. It means that the U.S. finances a “velvet” or some “color revolution” in order to install a U.S. puppet. Just prior to the sudden appearance of a “green revolution” in Tehran primed to protest an election, Timmerman wrote that

“the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting ‘color’ revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques. Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”

So, according to the neocon Timmerman, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, it was U.S. money that funded Mousavi’s claims that Ahmadinejad stole the last Iranian election.

Fool me once…

In a 2009 piece on NED’s funding of Iran’s so-called “Green Revolution,” Daniel McAdams notes the endless gullibility of those who prefer to believe otherwise:

Frankly, what I find more disturbing than the fact that the US government continues meddling in this new magical era of Obama is how many in the United States continue to be taken in by these events color-coordinated from afar…. As if hoping, somehow, that this time it will all be true. That the “people power” really is on the march. That it is a binary world where there are evil incumbents — the old guard — oppressing thrusting “reformers” who are Twittering away toward the bright tomorrow of a world where everyone wants to be just like us! Democracy!

Lessons from Belarus

Daniel McAdams’ excellent 2006 piece on the information war waged by “democracy promoters” against Belarus’ Lukashenko should be a salutary reminder to all those who are unwittingly cheering on the very same forces, which the New York Times belatedly admits, “helped nurture the Arab Uprisings”:

Imagine you are in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, setting up tents and loudspeakers without a permit to occupy the park with a group of several thousand protesters, guzzling beer and vodka. How long do you think it would be before the Secret Service or other uniformed local and federal officers moved in to disburse you? Five minutes?

Yet when less than one percent of the 500,000 Belarusians who voted for the political opposition were recently disbursed from October Square, one block from the presidential residence, the United States and the European Union (where member country France had been engaged in brutally beating youth protesting for more job security) announced a new round of sanctions against the country.

Aside from this absurd double standard is the fact that democracy itself is subverted in this new, revolutionary method of changing governments – all in the name of democracy, of course. Somehow in the new world of color-coded revolutions, a public display of only one percent of those who voted for the opposition – not of all voters, mind you, but just of those who voted for the opposition – is enough for the West to conclude that they represent the true will of the people. It is a new Bolshevism of the West in which a tiny minority is said to in fact be the majority. The media plays into this deception, with its breathless but highly selective reporting of such incidents. The Western media makes no effort to gain actual facts, preferring to rely on salacious but unverified tales of beatings and mass arrests made available in copious quantities by those who stand to benefit most by their dissemination.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Palestinian Prisoners’ Day

Tania Kepler for the Alternative Information Center | 17 April 2011

Today, 17 April, is Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. The day commemorates the release of Palestinian prisoner Mahmoud Hijazi in the first prisoners’ exchange between the Palestinians and the Israelis in 1974.

This year Palestinian Prisoners’ Day comes in the midst of a wave of mass and arbitrary arrests by the Israeli military forces in the West Bank village of Awarta, following the murders of 5 family members in the nearby settlement of Itamar.

So far more than 500 men, women and children have been arrested, questioned, detained, and asked to sign statements in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.

While most villagers were released within hours of their arrest, 50 still remain in detention without charges, including two children, according to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

The situation for Palestinians in Israeli prisons is grim. According to ADDAMEER, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Rights NGO, over 6,800 Palestinians, from the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and 1948 Palestine, are currently imprisoned by the Israeli state. Of those, over 300 are children, 34 are women, 18 are elected Palestinian representatives and almost 300 are ‘Administrative Detainees’ – that is they have been interned without trial not having been charged with any crime or seeing the secret evidence against them.

The prisoners are being detained in 17 prisons and detention centers; such as, Nafha, Ramon, Ashkelon, Beersheba, HaDarom, Gilboa, Shata, Al-Ramla, Damon, Hasharon, Naqab, Ofer and Megiddo.

Over four decades of illegal Israeli military occupation, Palestinians from all walks of life have been illegally detained by Israel. Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel, reports ADDAMEER.

An estimated 10,000 Palestinian women have been arrested and detained since 1967 under Israeli military orders, which govern nearly every aspect of life in the occupied Palestinian territory. As of 1 February 2011, 36 Palestinian women remain in Israel’s prisons and detention centers, including 3 women in administrative detention. The two prisons in which Palestinian women are detained are located outside the 1967 occupied territory, in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Sign this petition to free all Palestinian Women Prisoners in Israeli Jails:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/6/free-Palestinian-women-political-prisoners/

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | 7 Comments

‘US planned Arab world revolutions’

Press TV – April 17, 2011

Press TV interviewed Author Mark Glenn of the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement regarding the Arab uprisings and the United States and Israel’s objectives on foreign policy in the Middle East region.

With Egypt’s pseudo-revolution and the ousting of elderly Arab leaders, Author Mark Glenn explains that US-Israeli operations, rather than the people, have caused these revolutions.

Press TV: As we discuss the situation now unfolding in Yemen, let’s start with the offer of mediation that’s been put forth by the Arab mediators, the Persian Gulf, and Arab states led by Saudi Arabia, and now the US and EU’s support for that mediation offer. Although, they are supporting it, a lot of people are saying their stance towards the Yemen crisis is coming too late and it’s too little.

Glenn: Yes, I would tend to agree with that. I think the offer to support the mediation at this point is just theatrics on the part of America and the West. They plan to allow things to run their course with Saleh, and they plan to see him removed from power as Mubarak was removed, and as Ben Ali was removed, and as they presently are trying to see take place in Libya. We have to remember there have been moves at least as far back as 2008 to remove all of these Arab leaders through these various democratic movements that have been funded to the tune of sometimes as much as 100 to 150mn dollars by the United States government.

They have invested a lot in this and we shouldn’t forget that Hollywood resides in America, and our government is no different from that. They are merely reading from a script here and pretending to support Saleh. But in the end they will see him removed just as the other Arab leaders in that region.

Press TV: One concern that has been made by the revolutionary forces in Yemen is that they say any revolution comes with a counter revolution. They are very skeptical about the role that Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council is taking in terms of how it’s going to affect the post-revolution era in Yemen if that transfer of power to Saleh’s deputy is made. Of course not just President Saleh, but his entire regime is to go. It’s a similar situation that we saw turn out in Egypt. Do you think that those concerns are relevant?

Glenn: Absolutely, it’s relevant and well founded because the powers, namely the United States and Israel, are not going to allow this country or any other country in that part of the world to fall to the sorts of wrong forces. So despite the fact they may be allowing people into the streets right now does not preclude the fact that the United States and Israel will make sure whatever new government comes to power in that country will be a government that is going to serve Israel and America’s interest.

Let’s keep in mind that as you pointed out at the beginning of the news cast that two months have gone by now of daily protests, which means that this has had a very negative economic effect on a country that is already very poor. So these countries that are going through these convulsions and revolutions whatever government winds up coming to power in the aftermath of these revolutions are going to have to deal with the severe economic aftermaths that these revolutions cause, which means the very first act that this new government is going to have to undertake upon assuming power is holding its hand out for economic assistance.

Who is it going to go to for that economic assistance other than the West? So whatever new government winds up coming to power it is already being held over a barrel of Western financial interests. We have to keep this in mind. Even though these revolutions, and certainly these are historic things that we see taking place; nevertheless, at the same time Israel and the United States have invested a lot of time, money and resources in making sure that things run just their way in that part of the world.

They are not going to see almost hundred years of all of these painstaking efforts swept to the side just because you happen to have a few million people pour into the streets from various countries. We see now what is happening in Egypt. This is the revolution that has not taken place. The military is in power and telling people to go back to work and get off the streets.

All that has been affected is that a leader has been removed from power and that’s it. No change is taking place and the Egyptian people are starting now to understand this. And this is why you can see the growing amount of discontent on the street in Egypt. We have to keep in mind, and I hate to be the one to have to say these things that Israel and America are not going to allow these things to take place without having some say in it. We can rest assured at the end of the day it will be a very heavy word they will give on this matter.

Press TV: The issue of the fight against al-Qaeda is a major issue now. We’ve seen this being raised by authorities in the United States. Robert Gates was saying the situation in Yemen is a kind of reading to the situation of ignoring the threat of al-Qaeda. That is an issue which has been raised. So first of all how serious are these concerns about the United States about its cooperation with the Yemeni government, and what it calls its fight against al-Qaeda militants?

Glenn: Well what we have to keep in mind is that all of this instability in these countries where you have people pouring out into the streets. A situation like this is absolutely prime for exploitation by groups such as al-Qaeda. So the fact is that the United States is allowing this to take place; all of this instability and basically creating absolutely ripe circumstances for exploitation [of] protests. The United States is allowing all of this instability that is taking place. These things have to take place [so that the US would] be able to maintain the kind of control that needs to be maintained over these countries.

These rulers are old and dying and the demographic makeup of the Middle East is you have half of the population under the age of 24. And what the United States, Israel and these other Western countries are more afraid of than anything else is that a true grassroots revolution will take place in these countries as happened in Iran in 1979. It has been said over and over in various press releases that they cannot allow anything to take place in these Arab countries like what took place in Iran. So what they are doing is preventing these revolutions from taking place by creating revolutions of their own.

There was a New York Times story that appeared earlier this week that basically admitted that the revolutions, which had taken place at least in Egypt and Tunisia were planned by the government of the United States as far back as 2008. So the idea of Al-Qaeda getting a foothold in these countries, if they truly were worried about that they would be doing everything they could to put down these uprisings, and to make an environment that is not conducive to exploitation by these groups.

Press TV: When you say a grassroots revolution in Yemen, do you think that will be probable or are you optimistic that, that is something the Yemeni people could achieve?

Glenn: Well I have no doubt that the Yemeni people as well as the other people in the Middle East are thirsting for freedom. There’s no question about that. It’s a genuine move on their part. They want to be free. The question is whether or not they are going to be successful. It is whether the United States and Israel are going to allow it to happen.

That is the question. And at the end of the day if the goal of the United States and Israel is just to see these rulers removed and no substantial change takes place in that part of the world, and particularly when it comes to American and Israeli foreign policy objectives, then at the end of the day all we will see is these rulers removed and nothing more. Of course miracles happen and revolutions sometimes do succeed. We look at what took place in Iran in 1979 and the United States and Israel were not happy with the outcome of that. If they could have changed things at that time, they would have.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Deception | 2 Comments

Man arrested in the Arrigoni murder case suspected of collaboration

Palestine Information Center – 17/04/2011

GAZA — The murder of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni raised the serious question as to who stands behind such a gruesome act, especially after the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu declared he has plans to thwart solidarity with the Gaza Strip ”at any price”.

The Palestinian security awareness website Majd has revealed a few surprise discoveries as the case unravels and after several men were taken into custody over suspected involvement in the abduction and murder.

It has come to light that one of the suspects that has been arrested is also suspected of collaboration and has a number of violations on his list, while others appeared naïve.The website said that one of the men got orders to abduct and kill Arrigoni on the internet.

Analysts have not ruled out that Israeli intelligence was behind the crime, as the Israeli occupation faces a crisis in not being able to stop pro-Palestinian activists from going to Gaza and the publicity that accompanies such solidarity activities. That is in addition to growing western popular awareness regarding the facts about occupation which is effectively blowing the occupation’s cover of “legitimacy”.

The “group” responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Arrigoni killed him before the deadline it made for the government to release some of the “group’s” elements, a step which implied premeditation.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ismail Haneyya is scheduled to meet with the foreign press at the Council of Ministers in Gaza on Sunday to talk about Arrigoni’s death and the steps the government has taken to pursue the case.

The crime stirred widespread popular anger amongst Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They have declared that the crime only serves the Israeli occupation.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | 4 Comments