America’s ‘Freeze’ Still Favors Israel
By James Gundun | Palestine Chronicle | September 15, 2010
At first glance Washington’s sudden support for extending Israel’s settlement ‘freeze’ in the West Bank appears to be typical 11th hour positioning at Sharm el-Sheikh. Having delayed until the final moments in hope of reaching a compromise with the Palestinian Authority (PA), US officials must now rush to strike a deal before September 26th, when the “freeze” expires and direct negotiations between Israel and the PA potentially collapse.
President Barack Obama initiated the call for an extension of the “freeze” on September 10th, followed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday and US envoy George Mitchell on Tuesday.
That America’s credibility in the Middle East, along with Obama’s, hangs in the balance has provided the necessary fuel to break Washington’s pro-Israel stance. With one indirect round of negotiations already scuttled and widespread pessimism harassing the current negotiations, the White House cannot afford for direct talks to collapse so prematurely. America’s ability as an independent mediator would be subjected to new doubt, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict left to drift into September’s UN Security Council meeting, US Congressional elections, and Obama’s December review of the Afghan war.
Embarrassment would be an understatement.
America seems to have no other choice if a settlement “freeze” is the only means of keeping Palestinians in negotiations, especially in light of Egypt’s reiteration for an extension. But it should be no mystery why US officials are so supportive of a settlement “freeze” – the “freeze” is no freeze at all. As Obama said himself, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has significantly reduced settlement construction in the region.” Many reports can be found over the last ten months alleging the same idea – that settlement construction has slowed but not halted.
Further allegations claim that Israel builds in undefined areas and thus off the grid. Why does it makes sense for the US to extend the “freeze?” Because a “freeze” still allows for settlement planning, approval, and construction.
In one way this strategy makes sense. The Palestinians are adamant on a true freeze, fully aware of the difference between Israel’s public statements and its action on the ground. Without any limitation on Israeli settlements they have no domestic support for continuing negotiations – they need a “freeze” in the West Bank to maintain their dignity. Thus America’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is essentially the compromise needed to keep negotiations alive.
Unfortunately Israel doesn’t appear to see this logic. That Netanyahu faces his own domestic pressure from Israeli settlers is valid, but stiff resistance to freezing settlement construction seems driven by ulterior motives. Though Israeli officials complain that the Palestinians are running their mouths to reporters while they keep quiet, Netanyahu doesn’t miss an opportunity to cast PA President Mahmoud Abbas as the main obstacle to a two-state solution.
“The end of the settlement freeze must not be allowed to foil the talks,” Netanyahu told Abbas. “We have taken on an ambitious mission of reaching agreement within a year and we must focus on that.”
Netanyahu’s behavior makes his intentions clear: to make Abbas cave, not cave himself. Direct negotiations are progressing more like a game of chicken and Netanyahu has no intention of blinking. Both he and his Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, have publicly ruled out an extension to the “freeze,” realizing that their worst-case scenario still allows for discreet construction. While new reports surface of an Interior Ministry committee discussion over hundreds of new units in East Jerusalem, Netanyahu is deploying the usual substitutes of prisoner releases and checkpoint removals.
By offering “confidence-building measures” in place of an actual settlement freeze, Netanyahu hopes to force Abbas out of negotiations while simultaneously blaming him for their collapse. The “freeze” will end, allowing him to build unrestricted until America can corral the two sides for a new round of negotiations. The Palestinians, sensing Netanyahu’s trap, have held their line on a settlement moratorium while privately backtracking from their absolutist position.
But while they stand a good chance of accepting America’s version of a “freeze,” anything less is likely to veto further direct negotiations. Palestinians surely realize that America won’t be able to deliver anything else if not this, and must steadfastly hold to their demands.
Washington has 12 days to clean up a toxic mess partially of its own creation. Polar reports out of Sharm indicate the odds favor collapse over compromise, with Netanyahu’s spokesman claiming “substantive issues” were addressed and the Palestinians noticeably frustrated with the Israel’s priorities. “We continue our efforts to make progress, and we believe that we are moving in the right direction over all,” Mitchell said at a news conference afterward.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reported the Palestinian viewpoint from Bethlehem: “Americans came pretty much empty handed… They [US negotiators] had no solution to bridge the gap between Palestinians and Israelis.”
One thing is certain. If America can’t even secure a partial settlement freeze from Israel, Palestinians will feel no urge to trust America’s arbitration over all final status issues. Only false hope would anticipate fair judgment over refugees and Jerusalem when Washington still protects Israeli settlement construction. Washington coerced the Palestinians to direct talks in the first place by claiming settlements would be addressed within the first month of direct negotiations. As a result Palestinian officials need something tangible to show their people, not the image of Netanyahu weaseling out of his obligations under America’s blind eye.
Sharm has become child’s play, with one Western diplomat remarking of Washington’s summit, “They feel they’ve got to give it some momentum. It’s a way of getting them past the settlement freeze.”
A few summits won’t “get the Palestinians past the settlement freeze.” In fact, holding another summit in Jerusalem throws settlements in their face. Palestinian spokesperson Ghassan Khatib warned that “progress” in direct talks would not soften the Palestinians’ demands. “Nothing can compensate the need for cessation of settlement activities. Everything else is meaningless.”
America agrees, but only out of the need to protect Israel and itself. The Palestinians come last as usual – not the way to equitably resolve one of the world’s most lopsided conflicts.
– James Gundun is a political scientist and counterinsurgency analyst based in Washington D.C. Contact him in The Trench, a realist foreign policy blog, at www.hadalzone.blogspot.com.
Who does Mahmoud Abbas represent?
By News Sources on September 18, 2010
Mark Perry reports on the latest incident in the West Bank which indicates that the Palestinian acting president, Mahmoud Abbas, can now only impose his authority by force.
On Aug. 25, one week prior to the opening of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, a group of Palestinians held a conference in Ramallah to discuss – and protest — President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to travel to Washington to attend the talks. The Ramallah gathering, to be held at Ramallah’s Protestant Club meeting house, had been meticulously planned by a prominent coalition of political activists that included Palestinian businessmen, acknowledged leaders in Palestinian civil society and respected leaders of Palestinian political parties. “This was to be an open forum, an assembly to debate and discuss,” Munib al-Masri, the founder of the Palestine Forum and one of the meeting’s organizers said in an interview from his home in Nablus. “Our intention was to exercise our right to assemble and debate. Tragically, that’s not what happened.”
As the crowd of attendees (later estimated at between 250-300 people) began to gather at noon on Aug. 25, a group of about 100 non-uniformed officers from the Palestinian General Intelligence Service entered the hall carrying placards featuring Abbas’s picture and shouting pro-Abbas slogans. Across the street, at the headquarters of Al Haq — an independent human rights organization — Shawan Jabarin, the organization’s director (who had been invited to attend the meeting), heard of the commotion and decided to walk to the meeting hall. Jabarin described the scene: “This was going to be a large and important meeting,” he said, “so there were already 200 to 300 people in the hall at noon. But it was clear they wouldn’t be allowed to speak. The security people were shouting slogans, intimidating people. I saw a sign — ‘Stop Supporting Iran.’”
Inside the hall, those disrupting the meeting (Israeli journalist Amira Hess described them in Haaretz as “young men of similar appearance — well-developed muscles, civilian clothes and stern facial expressions”) began to shout down the first speaker, Dr. Mamdouh Al Aker, the director of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (PICCR). When Aker asked for a moment of silence “in memory of those who gave their lives for the Palestinian people and the Arab nation” he was whistled down and the crowd of young men began to shout in unison: “With our blood and our souls, we will redeem you, Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas].” The young men, now a phalanx of intimidating muscle and anger, began to push and shove the attendees out of the building. “People were frightened and were pushed outside, shoved out by the security people,” Al Haq’s Jabarin remembers. “It was outrageous, so I directed my staff to take pictures.”
Mustafa Barghouti, the head of the Palestinian National Initiative (a leading and increasingly strong political movement inside Palestine) and one of the most prominent leaders scheduled to speak at the meeting was in the crowd as it was pushed out of the meeting house. He attempted to maintain order and separate the meeting’s attendees from the group disrupting the gathering. “People were pushed into the street,” he remembers, “and that’s when the beatings began. It was very violent. The General Intelligence people were pushing people to the ground.” On the street in front of the Protestant Club, meanwhile, members of the Al Haq staff began to document the incident. “We had a camera, one of my staff members had a camera,” Jabarin says, “and we were trying to take pictures. But my staff member who had the camera was pushed down and the security official attempted to take the camera, to break it. This man was beating him and when one of my other staff members tried to help him, she was pushed to the ground and beaten. They got the camera.”
Standing nearby, Bassam al-Salhi, general secretary of the Palestine Peoples’ Party (and a former candidate for president), also attempted to stop the beatings. “This was mob violence,” he says. “But I thought that if we could somehow move up the street we could stop the confrontations.” Facing continued harassment, the group decided to walk to a nearby park, but were prevented from doing so by the Ramallah police. “They didn’t participate in the violence,” Salhi says of the police, “but they didn’t try to stop it either. Eventually, we had nowhere to go – so people just ran away. They had no choice.” The leaders of the conference, meanwhile, decided to take their protest of the incident to the headquarters of Watan, a local television station. But when they appeared on camera, a vocal group of security officials shouted them down, waving their placards in front of the Watan cameras. Inevitably, perhaps, the continued intimidation of the speakers was successful – and the crowd at Watan dispersed.
Writing from Gaza, Laila El-Haddad says:
There is very little patience in Gaza for this latest set of talks. They are not only being conducted without a national consensus by what is broadly considered an illegitimate government, but they also completely marginalise the Gaza Strip and overlook the blockade and asphyxiation it has suffered for more than four years.
“When people started to talk about negotiations and going back to the peace process and all, I thought, wait a minute, who took our opinion before going there?” said Ola Anan, 25, a computer engineer from Gaza City. “I mean, Mahmoud Abbas is now a president who’s out of his presidential term. So in whose name is he talking? In the name of Palestinians? I don’t think so.”
Abu el-Abed, a 30-year-old fisherman who sells crabs in the coastal Gaza enclave of Mawasi said: “We hear about the negotiations on television, but we don’t see them reflected on the ground. They’re not feasible. Gaza’s completely marginalised as far as negotiations go. There’s no electricity, there’s no water. There’s no movement. Living expenses are high. And the borders are all closed.”
Ultimately, Gazans know very little or care very little about what is happening in Washington, because what’s happening in Washington cares very little about them, says Nader Nabulsi, a shopkeeper in Gaza City’s Remal neighbourhood: “These negotiations don’t belong to us, and we don’t belong to them.”
Nabulsi, like many others here, feels the negotiations are farcical given the fractured nature of the Palestinian leadership, but also given the fact that most consider Abbas’s government illegitimate and his term expired.
The Zionist Strategy of Demonizing Islam
By Anait Brutian | Between the Lines | August 18th, 2010
On August 4, 2010, Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine and chair of the Interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, published an article in Sabbah Report, entitled “Shame on ADL for Opposing Mosque 2 Blocks from Ground Zero.”
Rabbi Lerner’s position on the ADL’s (Anti-Defamation League) objection to building an Islamic Community Center in Manhattan, near Ground Zero is praiseworthy. But his interpretation of ADL’s reasons for resisting such a project lacks insight. ADL leader Abe Foxman’s statement: “In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right,” spells out the real reasons behind the decision. That decision cunningly reinforces the notion that Muslim fundamentalists were behind the attacks of 9/11 – a position also perpetrated by the architects of those attacks.
Rabbi Lerner’s statement: “It was not ‘Muslims’ or Islam that attacked the World Trade Center, but some Muslims who held extreme versions of Islam and twisted what is a holy and peace-oriented tradition to justify their acts and their hatred,” echoes George W. Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, September 20, 2001, whereby the blame for 9/11 was put on “a fringe form of Islamic extremism … that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.” Unfortunately, both positions – the first, explicitly, the second, apologetically – demonize Islam.
As rightly noted by Jack G. Shaheen in his book Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilified a People (see also, Reel Bad Arabs – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5), a consistent stereotype of Arabs and their religion existed since the earliest, most obscure days of Hollywood. Perhaps, this was the continuation of European fascination with Orientalism. However, in the hands of Hollywood, it acquired a new malicious bend that increased proportionally with the number of Jewish entrepreneurs in Hollywood. Arabs were typically presented as rich and stupid, and their Western captives as victims of prejudice, manipulation and oppression. This pattern was further exploited by Zionists to include violence and acts of terrorism.
In 1993 Foreign Affairs published an article by Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington entitled: “The Clash of Civilizations?” that expanded into a book with the same title in 1996. The article endorsed the idea that “during the Cold War, the world was divided into the First, Second and Third Worlds.” According to Huntington, “those divisions … [were] no longer relevant”: “It is far more meaningful now to group countries not in terms of their political or economic systems or in terms of their level of economic development but rather in terms of their culture and civilization.” “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations.”
Amplifying the “differences among civilizations,” Huntington emphasized the role played by history, language, culture and tradition. According to Huntington, differences of religion are the most important among cultural discrepancies: “Even more than ethnicity, religion discriminates sharply and exclusively among people. A person can be half-French and half-Arab and simultaneously even a citizen of two countries. It is more difficult to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim.” Huntington identified seven or eight major civilizations including “Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African,” predicting that the most important conflict will occur “along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another”: “The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”
According to Huntington, the same “fault lines” will replace the “political and ideological boundaries of the Cold War as the flash points for crisis and bloodshed”: “… Conflicts between groups in different civilizations will be more frequent, more sustained and more violent than conflicts between groups in the same civilization.” Huntington identifies these conflicts as “the most likely and most dangerous source of escalation that could lead to global wars.” “The West and the Rest” in Huntington’s prediction of future clashes amounts to a conflict between “the West and several Islamic-Confucian states.” Islam is not identified as the single source of conflict; rather it appears in juxtaposition with Confucian civilization. Yet, Huntington’s reliance on the opinions of Indian Muslim author M. J. Akbar – “The West’s ‘next confrontation’ … ‘is definitely going to come from the Muslim world” – allows him to ignore the advice of Bernard Lewis, whose article “The Roots of Muslim Rage” inspired his title.
Bernard Lewis’ statement: “We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations – the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both,” quoted by Huntington, had a continuation: “It is crucially important that we on our side should not be provoked into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival” – that was perhaps more relevant for the argument than the emphasis on the clash of civilizations. This statement and the embedded advice were ignored by Huntington. Instead, Huntington sites historical and modern factors to promote the idea that a “bloody” clash between Western and Islamic civilizations is imminent: “Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years.”
A superficial overview of history allows him to state that “Islam has bloody borders.” This statement, notoriously emphasizing a civilizational conflict between “Islam and the West,” became the credo of Zionists like Steven Emerson, whose crusade against Muslims conveniently took yet another turn – anti-Muslim attitudes were camouflaged as anti-terrorist sentiments. Emerson’s 1994 PBS video, Jihad in America “was faulted for bigotry and misrepresentations.” Robert Friedman accused Emerson of “creating mass hysteria against American Arabs.” Emerson accused Bill Clinton for “legitimizing self-declared ‘civil rights’ and ‘mainstream’ Islamic organizations that in fact operated as propaganda and political arms of Islamic fundamentalist movements.” He went as far as to declare that “Muslim terrorist sympathizers were hanging out at the White House.”
Conveniently ignoring the growing problem of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel and the United States (see, “The Ugly Face of the Zionist Jihad: The Halachic Guide for the Killing of Gentiles”), and typically prefacing his “diatribes” by stating that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims, Emerson blacklisted Islam by espousing in a deliberate assault against it: “The level of vitriol against Jews and Christianity within contemporary Islam, unfortunately, is something that we are not totally cognizant of, or that we don’t want to accept. We don’t want to accept it because to do so would be to acknowledge that one of the world’s great religions – which has more than 1.4 billion adherents – somehow sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine.”
After the events of 9/11, a few of Emerson’s earlier comments acquired the status of “prophesy.” In 1994 he claimed that radical Muslims in the United States were plotting the “mass murder of all Jews, Christians and moderate Muslims.” In 1996 he attacked the Council on Foreign Relations for including “Muslim points of views” in its newsletter. And finally, in1997 he warned that “the U.S. has become occupied fundamentalist territory.”
The anti-Muslim rhetoric of the “grand inquisitor” acquires a new meaning, when one considers Emerson’s “friends.” Yigal Carmon, “a right-wing Israeli intelligence commander, who endorsed the use of torture” stayed in Emerson’s Washington apartment during his trips “to lobby Congress against Middle East peace initiatives.” A retired CIA counterterrorism specialist Vince Cannistraro said that Emerson’s allies, Pomerantz, Revell and Carmon were “Israeli-funded.” “How do I know that?” Cannistraro explained – “Because they tried to recruit me.” Cannistraro’s assertions were vehemently denied, but others suspected Israeli backing as well. Jerusalem Post of September 17, 1994 noted that Emerson had “close ties to Israeli intelligence,” Mossad, whose director reported only to the Israeli Prime Minister.
Hollywood’s groundwork was certainly useful to all that planned on instigating a clash of civilization between Muslims and non-Muslims. Huntington’s civilizational conflict between “Islam and the West” became the cornerstone of Zionist propaganda. But long before the establishment of Israel, the Zionist intellectual Maurice Samuel in his You Gentiles of 1924 polarized the Gentile and the Jewish worlds: “There are two life-forces in the world I know: Jewish and Gentile, ours and yours … Your outlook on life, your dominant reactions, are the same to-day as they were two thousand years ago. All that has changed is the instrument of expression” (pp. 19-20). Samuel admits that the “surface credo of a Jewish faith” imposed on a Gentile way of life did not make a fundamental difference: “But in the end your true nature works itself into the pattern of the borrowed faith, and expresses itself undeniably” (p. 22).
According to Samuel there is a “clear and fateful division of life – Jewish and Gentile,” with an “unsounded abyss between” them. Gentiles have a “way of living and thinking” that is distinctly different from Jews: “I do not believe that this primal difference between gentile and Jew is reconcilable. You and we may come to an understanding, never to a reconciliation. There will be irritation between us as long as we are in intimate contact. For nature and constitution and vision divide us from all of you forever…” (pp. 22-23).
Samuel’s description provides a classic example of a real “clash of civilizations.” The notion of a clash also fits Samuel’s final solution, based on the destruction of the existing world order: “A century of partial tolerance gave us Jews access to your world. In that period the great attempt was made, by advance guards of reconciliation, to bring our two worlds together. It was a century of failure. … We Jews, we, the destroyers, will remain the destroyers forever. Nothing that you will do will meet our needs and demands. We will forever destroy because we need a world of our own, a God-world, which it is not in your nature to build” (p. 155).
The modern equivalent of Samuel’s “God-world” and “destroyers” is religiously motivated terrorism – the accusation conveniently hurled at Muslims. After 9/11 – a false flag operation, no doubt – every Mossad-induced terrorist hoax, from shoe-bombers to crotch-bombers, is blamed on Muslims. Meanwhile, terrorist attacks on civilians of a humanitarian aid ship are dubbed as self-defence. There certainly is a clash of civilizations, witnessed by its concomitant double standard. But the clash is not between Muslims and non-Muslims, as the Zionists claim. Rather, the real clash, as Samuel described so promptly, is between Jews and Gentiles. The bogus clash, conveniently induced through tags like “Islam has bloody borders,” is of Zionist origin. It fits the Zionist strategy of demonizing Islam, and is an expedient cover for the real clash between Jews and Gentiles.
The Hate Mongers Among Us
By Jeff Gates | September 13, 2010
Hate is a harsh word. As the counterpoint to love, hate reigns supreme among those emotions that the faith traditions seek to expunge from the human heart.
Hate we’re told is the face of evil seen in plumes of smoke and ash on 911. Yet hate also serves a purpose for those adept at catalyzing conflicts.
In the aftermath of that horrific event, hate we’re assured is a desired emotional state. Yet induced hate led us into two unwinnable wars. Hate may yet take us into Iran. Or Pakistan.
That hate is also bankrupting us both financially and psychologically.
This article identifies those who induce us to hate-and describes how.
As the “how” of hate mongering becomes transparent, its common source will become apparent. With transparency comes accountability. That’s when you can watch for hate to emerge yet again to shield those who hide behind the toxic charge of “anti-Semitism.”
With the shared knowledge of how hate is evoked and sustained, those provoked to hate can say with confidence “Never Again” to those complicit in inducing this evil.
Hate can be personal or geopolitical. Those who induced us to war in the Middle East made it personal. The murderous provocation of 911 was emotionally wrenching and intensely personal. As a people, our gut reaction ensured that support for the war would become widespread.
In the aftermath of that mass murder on U.S. soil, Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic, summed up the situation: “We are all Israelis now.”
So now we can all be persuaded to hate Muslims-even if we’ve never met one.
The shared mental environment was flooded with what then seemed like plausible justifications for the invasion of Iraq: Iraqi WMD; Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda; Iraqi meetings with Al Qaeda in Prague; Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories; Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium from Niger.
We now know that all those rationales were fixed around a preset agenda. Yet a critical mass of false beliefs sufficed to take us to war. For those skilled at inducing hate, consensus beliefs need not be true, they need only be credible-and only for a limited time.
With a corrupt consensus ruling the day, anyone offering proof that Iraq was not a threat was dismissed as unpatriotic or soft on terrorism.
This 911-prompted hate fest started with Iraq, a former ally, as a U.S.-led invasion kicked off The Clash of Civilizations. The bravado of “bring ’em on” quickly became “shock and awe” as a vicious invasion was pursued with a relaxed “Aw Shucks” attitude supported with a media campaign comprised of photo ops of a commander-in-chief nonchalantly clearing brush at his home in Crawford, Texas.
Brand America became “We’re still the world’s biggest and baddest in the war-waging business. Just you watch.”
And watch us go broke as America led an Atlantic coalition that, like Israel, alienated much of the Muslim world.
An Invalid War
Plus there’s another strategic problem: our reason for invading Iraq was “invalid.” That’s the assessment of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He should know. After the invasion, the invalid storyline quickly shifted to “Saddam the Evil Doer” as our rationale.
How can the rationale be invalid? If we’re all Israelis now, surely that entitles us to invade lands belonging to Muslims, kill them, transform them into refugees and, with impunity, create widespread outrage among the broader Muslim population.
Let’s fast-forward to nine years after a high-profile slaughter in Manhattan and survey our success in the stark light of hindsight. Are we more secure? Are we more prosperous? Are Americans facing a brighter future? Are our children proud of the outcome?
Israel has occupied Palestinian land for more than six decades. The September 13th issue of Time magazine captured the Israeli sentiment: “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.”
Israelis are too busy prospering to care. Outraged Muslims are a nuisance but they’re now largely marginalized and, for the most part, manageable. Is that what happened to us? Have Americans become Israelis?
Not long ago an internal poll of friendly foreign intelligence agencies ranked our best and worst allies-those who behave as friends to the U.S. versus those who are clearly foes. Israel ranked dead last as a reliable ally. Though their brazen theft of technical and industrial secrets is well known among those in the know, the broader U.S. public remains deceived or in denial.
Most Americans still see Israel as an ally. The facts confirm that’s a dangerous delusion.
Meanwhile Mossad agents are recruiting Arab-Americans to spy on their neighbors in the U.S. Though Tel Aviv is called on the carpet three times as often as other nations, Israel still ranks third in the aggressiveness of its U.S. operations, behind only China and Russia.
That ranking may well be out of date with Israel now first in foreign operations on U.S. soil.
Other Telling Signs
Zionist Jews deployed terror and intimidation to occupy Muslim lands long before Harry Truman was induced in 1948 to recognize an extremist enclave as a legitimate nation state. Disputes over land remain at the heart of the expansionist agenda for Greater Israel.
On September 7th, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas asked that the U.S. settle a dispute over the Israeli expansion of settlements that threaten to derail Mideast peace talks. Those talks have dragged on since 1967. Settling those disputes would disrupt the Zionist agenda.
In a telling rebuke, on September 12th, Tel Aviv rejected a proposed visit to Israel by the foreign ministers of France, Spain, Britain, Germany and Italy. Why? These senior diplomats sought a remedy to that dispute in order to achieve a long-evasive peace.
Therein lies Israel’s strategic strength. Absent this sustained provocation (43 years and counting), hatred might subside and peace may become a possibility. That’s a danger Tel Aviv works hard to avoid.
September 12th also saw the release of a new report indicating that 2,066 new homes would be constructed in the West Bank as soon as the temporary freeze expires September 26th.
Meanwhile back in the U.S., Americans remain unaware of how many contracts for Homeland Security were awarded to Israeli firms or to firms owned by pro-Israelis. Nor do Americans realize how many Homeland Security outlays have been directed to Jewish community centers.
That’s all the more reason for Zionists-both Jewish and Christian-to create an uproar about an Islamic Community Center planned for construction two blocks from the 911 site in Manhattan.
And all the more reason for a Christian-Zionist preacher to designate the ninth anniversary of 911 as “International Burn a Koran Day” at his 50-member church.
The Koran gambit gained global attention, stoked by a media dominated by Jewish Zionists. High profile political personalities ensured that this hate-mongering stunt was kept in the forefront of international news coverage in the lead-up to the anniversary of modern history’s best-known hate-mongering provocation.
Signs of a rift between U.S. politicians and U.S. national security
Even with the media support required to sustain hate in plain sight, today’s background chatter suggests that those worried about U.S. national security are at work in the shadows to counter the influence of the Israel lobby.
If so, that is good news-for the United States.
When Israeli-American writer Jeff Goldberg appeared again in the news, you knew psy-ops were underway. In March 2002, Goldberg published in The New Yorker a lengthy story alleging an alliance between the religious jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Iraq.
Though a nonsensical premise, his account made such an alliance appear plausible to a public lacking in knowledge of the Middle East. Goldberg’s storyline made it easier for Saddam Hussein to be portrayed as both an Evil Doer and a threat to the U.S.
Goldberg’s collaborator was James Woolsey, a former Director of the CIA and an avid Zionist. Woolsey assured us that Iraqi intelligence officials met in Prague with Al Qaeda. By association, his stature in intelligence lent credibility to phony intelligence fixed around an Israeli agenda.
Goldberg reemerged in July to promote Evil Doer status for Iran. Writing in the July 22nd issue of The Atlantic, he argued the Israeli case for bombing Iran and urged that the U.S. again join the fray. No one in mainstream media mentioned his earlier manipulation.
Based on the consistency of his “journalism,” it came as no surprise to see Goldberg reemerge just in time for the ninth anniversary of 911. Aided by an array of false intelligence reported by a complicit media, that murderous provocation helped persuade the U.S. to invade Iraq to remove Evil Doer Saddam Hussein.
That March 2003 agenda was first promoted in 1996 in A Clean Break, a strategy paper written for Benjamin Netanyahu by an Israeli-American team led by Richard Perle. This Jewish-Zionist operative re-emerged in July 2001 to chair the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board where he was joined by Woolsey and others supportive of this Israeli agenda.
Advancing the Narrative
Fast-forward to September 2010 and we find Goldberg back at work promoting his interview with Fidel Castro. Emerging fact patterns suggest it came as no surprise to our national security apparatus that the theme of this latest well-timed Goldberg article was the Cuban leader’s concern that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “anti-Semitic.”
The timing of this report came as a surprise to those aware that Castro has long been critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Goldberg reports he was “summoned” to Havana to discuss Castro’s fears of a global nuclear war. After conceding in the interview that the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis “wasn’t worth it,” Castro turned to a theme of topical importance to Tel Aviv, insisting that the Iranian government must understand that Jews “were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world.”
Knowing Cuba’s pre-revolution alliance with Meyer Lansky and other kingpins in Jewish organized crime, one must wonder if this “journalist” was dispatched to commence negotiations for gambling concessions as a means to fill the Castro government’s depleted coffers.
The recent relaxation of restrictions on travel to Cuba may signal a pending return to Cuba’s “glory days” as a nearby haven for organized crime.
Castro’s well-timed comments about persecuted Jews may have been a signal that Cuba is again open for business-any business. At the very least, his comments were like a healing balm to nationalist Zionist settlers who have plans to construct another 19,000 home in the West Bank.
So much for those who seek to quell Israel’s long-running land dispute with the Palestinians in order to keep peace talks on track.
Within two days of the release of the Goldberg interview, vandals in Sacramento, California used a swastika to deface an image of Israeli basketball star Omri Casspi. The identity of the vandals has not been confirmed.
This much has been confirmed: timing is everything when seeking to sustain a storyline. Casting Castro as pro-Israeli was a stroke of genius.
Here’s where it starts of get interesting as Americans wake up to find themselves unwitting combatants in the first real Information Age War. When waging modern-day warfare in the shared field of consciousness, media is routinely deployed to displace facts with false beliefs.
Thus the need for substantial and sustained influence in that domain by those determined to shape the political narrative. No one does that better than those who induced the world’s greatest super power to wage a war on their behalf.
Recent developments suggest that the dynamics may be shifting in the “field” where political narratives are advanced and where today’s wars are either won or lost. That field is the shared field of consciousness where consensus beliefs are created and sustained.
In news reported from the Middle East on September 10, Washington took a surprising stance in support of Iranian claims that Tehran was not building a new uranium enrichment facility. That statement came after an Iranian dissident group, in a well-timed release, charged that Iran had a new secret nuclear site 120 kilometers north of Tehran.
That disclaimer preempted a lead editorial in The New York Times published in the U.S. later that same day-just before the ninth anniversary of 911. That editorial sought to give credence to a report that had already been dismissed as not credible.
Was this an example of U.S. national security attempting to reclaim the narrative? Does this signal a new aggressiveness by the U.S. in waging field-based warfare against those whose successful deceptions led us to war in the Middle East?
Two days prior, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech stating “there may not be another chance” for Mideast peace. That statement came the same day that a senior Palestinian negotiator confirmed they would not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Clinton said nothing.
Could these developments signal a crack in the Zionist agenda that has shaped U.S. foreign policy for more than six decades? Are Zionists losing their chokehold on the White House?
If so, will the Israel lobby again rally Congress to Israel’s defense?
Will we see another “unbreakable bond” resolution urging that U.S. interests continue to take second place to Tel Aviv’s agenda for the region?
Will the national security interests of the U.S. prevail or will Zionist goals again triumph?
Timing is Everything
While these events were unfolding, The New York Times continued to stoke the controversy surrounding “International Burn A Koran Day.”
The nation’s “newspaper of record” conceded that this well-timed controversy began with local coverage by The Gainesville Sun (owned by The New York Times) when pastor Terry Jones posted a sign outside his small church that read “Islam is of the devil.”
By August 26th, The Times was prepared to publish a major article on Jones and the anti-Islam views of his 50-member congregation. By September 9th, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was prepared to say with confidence that Zionists were responsible for the Jones plan to burn a Koran on 911.
In a fortuitous case of timing, recordings played in a federal courtroom on September 8th showed how a government informer induced a 2009 synagogue bomb plot in New York. The recordings made it clear that those on trial as “homegrown terrorists bent on jihad” were not even modestly well versed in Islam. To make a plausible case for later use in the courtroom, the informer prompted comments consistent with the hate-mongering motivation at the heart of the prosecution’s case.
Do these small chinks in the Zionist armor suggest that Israeli dominance of U.S. foreign policy may be drawing to a close?
The Use of Pliable and Reliable Assets to Advance a Narrative
Many of America’s most prominent political leaders were induced to comment on “International Burn A Koran Day”-a high profile provocation proposed by a Christian-Zionist preacher with a small congregation in a small town in Florida.
When U.S. General David Petraeus spoke out against the proposal, the issue immediately gained an international profile as did Pastor Terry Jones who quickly became an international celebrity.
One need not dig deep to identify who may have advised General Petraeus to grant a global profile to a provocation consistent with Israeli goals for the region.
In March, as head of Central Command, Petraeus offered testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee confirming facts that have long been obvious but are seldom mentioned: our “special relationship” with Israel and its oppressive occupation of Palestine undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East and endanger American personnel. Read it for yourself:
“The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests… Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas….”
Petraeus is often spoken of as a potential Republican presidential candidate. Thus the chagrin among some in Washington when this high profile military leader appeared to curry favor with Max Boot, a former Wall Street Journal op-ed editor and outspoken Zionist. In an apparent attempt to soften the candor of his written testimony before the Senate, he wrote to Boot:
“Does it help if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night?! And that I will be the speaker at?the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in mid-Apr at the Capitol Dome…”
Boot wrote back to assure him that those comments were not necessary as Petraeus had not been described as anti-Semitic. Boot then posted a pro-Petraeus piece on the website for Commentary, a neoconservative publication, assuring readers that the general is not anti-Israel and dismissing his anti-Israel comments as inserted by staff in his statement-that Petraeus reviewed.
The Supporting Cast
After General Petraeus, now senior commander in Afghanistan, created a high profile for the Burn-A-Koran controversy, comments were offered by Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. With that, the provocation went viral.
These fuel-the-fire comments were followed by a personal appeal to Pastor Jones in a phone call from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that also went viral.
As any game theorist could predict, even the possibility of such a psy-ops (a Koran book burning) was guaranteed to galvanize anti-American sentiments and catalyze anti-American demonstrations. As the book burning gained steadily more profile, this provocation increased the probability of catalyzing long-lasting anti-American sentiments.
This stunt bears a remarkable resemblance to a Newsweek story alleging that a U.S. soldier flushed a Koran down the toilet. Though that May 2005 account by Michael Isikoff was later withdrawn in substantial part, its publication provoked an earlier well-timed response by setting off anti-American demonstrations in Muslim countries worldwide.
At first, the story gained only scant attention. That muted response changed dramatically when Pakistani cricket star Imran Khan gave Isikoff’s story an international profile by announcing from Islamabad that American military personnel had desecrated a holy Islamic text.
That’s when this Clash of Civilizations-catalyzing, U.S.-discrediting account went viral. In practical effect, Khan’s celebrity was appropriated to associate the U.S. military with conduct similar in its psy-ops effect to the profile given an American proposing to burn a Koran.
Newsweek was recently acquired by Sidney Harman, the husband of California Congresswoman Jane Harman, the Jewish Zionist chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security. At the time of this provocation, Newsweek was a magazine affiliate of The Washington Post newspaper, an influential opinion-shaping newspaper based in the nation’s capital.
In the annals of “field-based warfare,” the Koran-flushing story will go down in history as a classic psy-ops for its success in targeting the minds of a built-in audience outside the U.S.-cricket fans-as a vulnerable and receptive shared field of consciousness.
When the high-profile Imran Khan described the alleged incident as factual, this operation transcended the literacy barrier as it provoked Muslims who did not even need to read in order to be reached-and provoked.
And because the story targeted cricket fans, its impact was disastrous to Americans while also remaining invisible to America where cricket is neither a well known activity nor a widely played sport.
In what passes for mainstream American media, the Isikoff story was called news. In national security parlance, the well-timed launch of that provocative storyline is called tactical psy-ops. So far, the Koran-burning story is being attributed solely to the whims of a southern preacher.
Stay tuned. It may be only a coincidence that Jones was a high school classmate of Rush Limbaugh, America’s most provocative radio talk show host.
Information Age Warfare
If this sounds familiar, it should. You may recall when the wartime role played by global media became apparent in the Clash-catalyzing “cartoon riots” that swept the world in February 2006. That reaction followed the publication in France, Germany, Italy and Spain of graphic images of the prophet Muhammad that first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September 2005.
Citing free speech as the rationale, cultural editor Flemming Rose published a compilation of cartoons certain to be seen by Muslims as blasphemous, including one featuring Muhammad with a bomb in place of a turban.
An Ashkenazi native of Ukraine, Rose worked as a reporter for five years in Moscow during the oligarchi-zation of Russia. As his contribution to that nationwide fraud, he translated into Danish a fawning 1990 autobiography (Against the Stream) of presidential candidate Boris Yeltsin whose administration enabled the wildly successful financial pillaging of Russia.
Six of the top seven Russian oligarchs were Ashkenazim who qualified for Israeli citizenship.
Rose’s career tracks the trajectory of a typical media asset. After Russia, he relocated to Washington, D.C. Again employed as a journalist, he traveled to China with Bill Clinton before returning to Moscow to work for Jyllands-Posten, a rightwing Danish publication known for its anti-immigrant news fare.
Before catalyzing the cartoon crisis, Rose published a flattering interview with the Islam-bashing Daniel Pipes who heads Campus Watch. This organization monitors, disrupts and seeks to intimidate pro-Palestinian speakers when they accept invitations to speak at U.S. colleges.
Pipes is the neoconservative, Jewish-Zionist son of “Team B” leader Richard Pipes a Polish emigre. Team B was a 1976 alternative intelligence assessment whose success with phony intelligence during the presidency of Gerald Ford (when G.H.W. Bush was C.I.A. Director) informed those who fixed the intelligence that enabled the U.S. to segue seamlessly from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism during the presidency of G.W. Bush.
After the promotion of Rose to cultural editor and publication of the provocative cartoons, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer featured Pipes on The Situation Room. By showcasing Pipes, Blitzer ensured the airwaves would carry his anti-Islam interpretation of the Rose-catalyzed, media-fueled crisis.
Blitzer elected not to inform the viewers of CNN (“the most trusted name in news”) that he (Blitzer) served as an editor of Near East Report, the Israel lobby’s in-house journal, or that he spent 17 years with The Jerusalem Post, or that he published a sympathetic book on Israeli super-spy Jonathan Pollard who did more than anyone in history to damage U.S. national security.
The ensuing crisis cost many lives while the reaction to that provocation consumed the public’s attention and polarized public opinion internationally. Appearing on television, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used the crisis to criticize Iran and Syria, adding American credibility and military authority to stoke The Clash of Civilizations as the post-Cold War narrative.
Overall, the response heightened tensions and made an attack on Iran appear more reasonable as scenes of widespread outrage by Muslims fueled Islamo-phobia in the West. To escape the media scrutiny, Rose fled to the U.S. where he vacationed in Miami.
Timing is Everything
The usual suspects stepped into the fray in support of Pastor Terry Jones’ First Amendment right to further outrage an already outraged Muslim population for whom the Koran is a sacred text.
Supporting cast for the Jones stunt included New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg who chose an annual Iftar dinner at Gracie Mansion to cite the U.S. Constitution in support of this provocation. Likewise for New York Times columnist Charles Blow whose prominently placed op-ed on September 11th urged that “great American debates” should not be “tempered for terrorists.”
National security may (at long last) be catching on to how those complicit in these psy-ops use our guaranteed freedoms (of speech, press, religion, etc.) to undermine our freedom. It’s no coincidence that those most concerned about domestic eavesdropping by national security are drawn from the same ranks as those complicit in this ongoing manipulation of public opinion.
The high profile nature of this latest 911 anniversary ensured that agent provocateurs would use the event to keep hate alive. The day prior, President Obama urged that Israel extend its “temporary partial freeze” on settlements for the sake of sustaining the peace talks.
Meanwhile Jewish Zionist Pamela Geller sponsored a speech at Ground Zero by Dutch politician Geert Wilders who likens the Koran to Mein Kampf. A staunch supporter of Israel, Wilders is known for his incendiary speeches with a strong anti-Islam theme.
Geller, a disciple of Russian philosopher Ayn Rand (Alisa Rosenbaum), advocates measures to “Stop Islamization of America.” She emphasizes the role of Barack Obama in doing the bidding of “Islamic overlords” in what she calls “The Obama Administration’s War on America.”
An outspoken Jewish Zionist, Geller urges that Israel “give up nothing.” A regular commentator on Zionist-dominated media outlets (CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, The New York Times), she insists that Israel should “take back Gaza” and “secure Judea and Samaria”-better known as the West Bank, the key area of contention on expansion of the settlements.
Geller is also a driving force behind anti-Islam hate groups working to scuttle plans for an Islamic Cultural Center two blocks from the 911 site. Allied with others in the hate campaign, she was among the first in November 2009 to describe the shootings on Fort Hood, Texas as a “Muslim terror attack.”
Staying on message to advance the narrative
Keeping the “anti-Semitism” theme front-and-center remains essential to advance the hate-monger’s narrative with the assistance of mainstream media.
Thus the Anti-Defamation League criticized the current cover of Time magazine for what ADL President Abe Foxman suggested was a portrayal of Israelis as more interested in making money than in striking a peace accord with the Palestinians.
The article highlighted Israel’s booming real estate market and the pleasure Israelis are taking in late-Summer vacations.
Nevertheless, according to Foxman: “The insidious subtext of Israeli Jews being obsessed with money echoes the age-old anti-Semitic falsehood that Jews care about money above any other interest, in this case achieving peace with the Palestinians.”
Foxman insisted that Managing Editor Richard Stengel issue an apology to readers both for the timing of the article and for calling up old anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews and money.
As if right on cue, the next day filmmaker Michael Moore jumped into the Islamic Cultural Center debate, arguing that the center should not be near the 911 site but inside it as a way for Muslims to recover their religion from Islamic extremists.
In his branded controversial style, Moore could have left it at that. Instead, he used his assured media profile to relate an account of George Washington’s wish to see Jews receive equal rights.
Impressionistic Warfare
From a psy-ops perspective, the subject matter is secondary to the impressions left with the public. The imbedding of imagery and emotion is the strategic purpose of much of what you see.
For instance, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, speaking to ABC’s “This Week,” said on September 12th that the controversy over the site of an Islamic Cultural Center has heightened concerns among Muslims of rising anti-Muslim sentiment, saying he felt there was “growing Islamophobia in this country.”
That’s a foreseeable result of creating widely shared impressions that foster and sustain widely shared beliefs that, in turn, are kept intact with emotional triggers. That’s how the hate-monger narrative progresses in plain sight.
When waging war in the shared field of consciousness, the most powerful weapon is often the power of association. Michael Moore’s film success shows how it’s done.
In his popular Fahrenheit 911, he deployed impressionistic “weaponry” to associate the war in Iraq with “Bush Oil.” How was that done? He showed on film that one of the several dozen siblings of Osama bin Laden served on the board of advisers to the Carlyle Group, an investment banking firm in Washington, D.C.
Also serving on that board was former president George H.W. Bush, the father of George W. Bush. Therefore, by the power of association, the war in Iraq was for “Bush Oil.” Storylines don’t need to true, just plausible. The point of psy-ops is not reality but credibility.
Impressions gain the traction required to advance a storyline-in plain sight.
Consensus beliefs create and sustain a narrative-in plain sight.
Psy-ops succeed when they attract enough eyeballs to misdirect the public’s attention-in plain sight.
Fahrenheit 911 was produced by Miramax, a Disney subsidiary. Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein loudly claimed that Disney reneged on its promise to distribute Moore’s film. Disney chief executive Michael Eisner objected-just as loudly.
The high profile sparing between these two Hollywood titans dragged on for months in mainstream media. By the time the film was released, the interest generated by this “dispute” ensured that Moore’s film opened on a record number of screens for a “documentary.”
At virtually no cost, that public relations ploy helped ensure an international audience for a film that discredited not only the U.S. but also the office of the president. In its practical effect, the Moore film helped ensure there was virtually no mention of how key Zionist goals were advanced by this war-in plain sight.
Real-time Terror
Meanwhile, September 12th news reports highlighted the extradition to France from Egypt of a terrorist who reportedly planned to bomb an Israel Defense Forces event in Paris. Noticeably absent were facts about the timeframe of this threat or even when the arrest was made.
That account provided an opportunity for the chief of French intelligence to make a high profile announcement that the risk of a terrorist attack on France “has never been higher.” This week, the French Senate is scheduled to vote a ban on wearing Islamic veils known as burgas, a vote certain to reinforce The Clash of Civilizations as the consensus narrative
Also on September 12th, the leader of Shin Bet announced in Tel Aviv: “Hamas forces in Gaza and the West Bank are engaged in an effort to foil peace talks.” Israel’s domestic security chief told cabinet ministers “threats are due to increase in the near future, as diplomatic developments occur…This isn’t just an estimate but is supported by real intelligence.”
Unmentioned in this volatile mix is the psychology of the hate monger. The purveyors of hate routinely project onto their opponents both their own personality traits (hatred) and, as here, their anticipated agenda. This announcement is far more likely to mean that Shin Bet will stage provocations designed to make it appear that Hamas is the instigator of violence.
For the Zionist agenda to continue in plain sight, peace must be avoided no matter what the cost. Disruption of the peace process, in turn, must plausibly be the work of others. The hate monger must appear to be hated; the aggressor must plausibly appear to be the victim.
Thus the need to portray as anti-Semitic (a hater) those who document the dynamics of how hate-mongers induce hate-in plain sight.
The Assassination of Bibi Netanyahu
Should we see a revival of the U.S. national security apparatus, we will also see a push back against the right-wing extremist coalitions that have long ruled Israel. However, any resistance to the Zionist agenda runs the risk that Israel’s masters of game theory warfare will collapse another government.
That’s how Tel Aviv responded when in June 1963, President John F. Kennedy pressured David Ben-Gurion for inspections of Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona. This young president sought to ensure that the Zionists of that era did not start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. He foresaw what we now see.
Before JFK’s strongly worded letter could be physically delivered, Ben-Gurion resigned citing undisclosed personal reasons. By the time a replacement governing coalition was in place and fully functional, the Kennedy problem had been handled.
In the parlance of national security, that’s called an entropy strategy.
Fast-emerging circumstances suggest the likelihood of a similar strategy, particularly should there emerge any prospect of peace with the Palestinians. As Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman candidly put it, peace is impossible: “not next year and not for the next generation.”
Should “Bibi” pressure his fragile governing coalition for an extension of the “temporary partial freeze” on settlements, members of his nationalist government could withdraw, collapsing the government. Key members of the coalition signaled their intentions on September 12th by announcing that any extension of the freeze will end the Netanyahu government.
On September 13th, four Likud Party members threatened to withdraw budget support if the freeze is extended. That threat was issued as Netanyahu departed for peace talks in Sharm el-Sheikh with Palestinian leaders and U.S. Secretary of State Clinton.
The recurring possibility of governmental collapse has long given Tel Aviv leverage over peace talks sought by the U.S. That era may soon draw to a close if our national security apparatus is now guiding U.S. foreign policy. To date, our elected officials have proven themselves unable to navigate through the manipulations often deployed by Israel to stymie agreement on the terms of a peace accord.
Tel Aviv knows the power that the perception of political vulnerability offers in negotiations. When the game theory dynamics of Israeli psy-ops are fully grasped, that leverage will quickly dissipate as negotiators realize they have long been manipulated. That makes the duplicity personal.
The key barrier to realization is the fast-fading belief among policy-makers in the U.S. and the E.U. that Israel is an ally and a friend rather than a sophisticated foe skilled at using deception to leverage its small numbers to great effect.
Though collapse is one possible strategy, Bibi may instead be assassinated.
The threads of a plausible storyline were laid in a September 9th article on Haaretz.com where he was compared to French president Charles de Gaulle against whom French nationalists staged numerous assassination attempts.
Either approach would inject enough entropy into the peace process to sustain the Palestinian conflict and extend the occupation yet again.
Either strategy would strengthen the hand of the hate-mongers as settlers build another 19,000 homes and U.S. legislators continue to pretend that the Zionist state is a victim of anti-Semitism rather than a serial agent provocateur.
* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates’ latest book is Guilt by Association
Washington peace talks: democracy need not apply
Matthew Cassel, The Electronic Intifada, 15 September 2010
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From left to right: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Barack Obama, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House on 1 September 2010. (AFP) |
It was an image for the history books. At least that’s what the five world leaders would like to have thought as they strutted down the red carpeted hall of the White House recently with their heads held high. Forming a well-choreographed and symbolic flying “V,” the US president led the way, flanked by his counterparts representing Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt. These men in suits wanted to show the world that they’re ready to plow through any and all obstacles that stand in the way of peace in the Middle East.
It’s a picture that bears a striking resemblance to one taken a decade and a half earlier when then US President Bill Clinton led the same nations’ representatives down the the same red-carpeted hall at the White House. All one needs to do is replace those leaders with their successors, save the Egyptian president who was present in both. Another historic image — although one most have probably forgotten — that also sought to send the message that peace is on its way.
And yet here we are, 16 years later, with the highly anticipated peace still on its way, or so we’re told. A closer look at the five representatives in the picture should help explain why it’s yet to arrive.
Spearheading the group is Barack Obama. Despite running a campaign built around the slogan of “change,” the US president has shown that when it comes to the Middle East his policies barely differ, if at all, from those of his predecessors. Not only has he continued the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan while arming and supporting the most brutal and undemocratic autocracies around the region, but he has also been sure to maintain the US’ “special friendship” with Israel regardless of the ongoing injustices the latter commits on a daily basis.
Next to him is Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. As leader of the country who receives the most aid from the US, Netanyahu has not only continued the occupation and the siege of Gaza, but he refuses to slow down — not to mention end — the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land in the West Bank through settlement construction and land theft. If left unchecked, Netanyahu’s aggressive rhetoric and actions toward nearby nations will most likely spark another regional Israeli-led conflict before he leaves office.
But more importantly than understanding these two nations whose roles in the Middle East should come as no surprise to anyone by now, is understanding the “other” side represented in Washington: the Arab governments.
At the forefront is the supposed representative of the Palestinian people, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In recent years, the PA’s most notable governing role has been its repression of an already oppressed people in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. To quell any popular protest by Palestinians against the Israeli occupier, the PA has used its American-supplied and Israeli-approved weaponry and riot gear, and arrested and beaten Palestinians who voice their dissent. This was most clear during Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008-09 and after the more recent attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla when Palestinian protestors in Ramallah and elsewhere were prevented from taking to the streets. Only two weeks ago, after a car full of Israeli settlers were killed in the occupied West Bank, the PA waged an arrest campaign rounding up hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied territory in a move that has been condemned by numerous Palestinian human rights organizations.
More importantly than the above, is the question of the Abbas government’s legitimacy. Recently, the Israeli daily Haaretz quoted Abbas’ spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudaineh as saying: “President Mahmoud Abbas came to power through free, democratic and authentic elections supervised by more than two thousand international and Arab monitors.”
One has to first wonder how “free” and “democratic” elections can be when held in a territory under foreign military occupation. Moreover, the majority of Palestinians are living in a forced state of exile and were not invited to cast their ballots. But for the sake of argument, let’s take Abu Rudaineh at his word.
Abu Rudaineh seems to contend that those elections, held in January 2005, somehow granted the PA president with an unlimited mandate. However, the term was limited, and Mahmoud Abbas was elected by voters to serve four years in office, meaning that his elected mandate as president of the PA expired more than a year and a half ago.
In a move out of the autocratic ruler playbook, Abbas’ term was extended by the PA’s “emergency powers” out of fear that he would be replaced by someone from a rival party — most likely from the more popular Hamas movement — should new elections be held. Ironically, the most recent “free” and “democratic” elections held in Palestine were in 2006, when Hamas defeated Fatah, taking the majority of seats in parliamentary elections. It’s no surprise that Abu Rudaineh made no mention of this event in his statement.
Despite being elected by the Palestinian people living under occupation, Hamas has been subjected to boycott by the US and the PA and the area of governance it has been confined to laid siege to by Israel and Egypt. While Hamas hasn’t been ideally democratic in its governing of the besieged Gaza Strip, its continued ostracism by Washington, Israel and the PA sends the message that when it comes to peace talks, democracy need not apply.
This message was reinforced through the presence of the two other Arab leaders at Abbas’ side.
On one end is Hosni Mubarak who has ruled Egypt under suffocating “emergency laws” (sound familiar?) since 1981 when he became president. Although friendly with the US and Israel, Mubarak runs one of the most brutal and corrupt dictatorships in the region. With a leadership dependent on — and one of the main beneficiaries of — US aid, Mubarak’s mukhabarat (intelligence service) tolerates no dissent. Many of those who have tried to challenge his rule have joined the tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt’s jails, where torture and abuse are well-documented and commonplace.
Pictured opposite Mubarak is Jordan’s King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein. Although Jordan is often hailed in the US as a “modern” and “moderate” state, there is little democracy to speak of there. Parliament, which has very little power, was dissolved last year half way through its term without any explanation, and elections delayed until this November will be held under a law widely criticized by opponents and passed by cabinet decree under “emergency provisions.” Draconian laws on the press and nongovernmental organizations severely limit freedom of speech and association, and political activists carry out their work in the ubiquitous shadow of the country’s security services.
It’s no coincidence that both of these men are considered two of the US’ strongest allies in the Middle East. Both continue a US-backed policy of “peace” with Israel despite that policy having little to no support from their populations.
That said, the image of the five men at the White House can easily be dissected as the following: a dictator, a monarch, a puppet and two heads of government responsible for the region’s only military occupations — not the best ingredients for making world peace.
Although not invited to the White House, the numerous grassroots movements across the Middle East present the best hope for bringing peace and justice to this region. And it’s those increasingly popular movements that people around the world concerned with the fate of the Middle East should support. In the meantime, let the puppets and their masters walk on red carpets in Washington while the real change is made by those with their feet on the ground.
Matthew Cassel is based in Beirut, Lebanon and is Assistant Editor of The Electronic Intifada. His website is http://justimage.org.
States test whether public pension benefits given can be taken away
By Stephen C. Fehr | Stateline | August 10, 2010
State legislators are beginning to challenge one of the ironclad tenets of public pension policy: that states cannot legally reduce pension benefits for current and future retirees. Lawmakers in Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota voted earlier this year to limit cost-of-living increases they previously had promised to thousands of current and future retirees, who courts historically have protected from benefit reductions. Not surprisingly, retirees in each state have filed lawsuits asking judges to restore their annual benefit increases to what they were previously.
Lawmakers, state retirement systems, public employee unions and others in the pension policy arena are closely watching the outcome of the legal challenges. If the courts do not reinstate the retirees’ benefits, a flood of states could follow the lead of Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota. The reverse also would be true. “If the plaintiffs are successful, it may discourage legislators in other states from attempting to diminish benefits,” says Keith Brainard, research director at the National Association of State Retirement Administrators.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, among other officials, favor scaling back pension benefits already promised to current employees and retirees. And a lively debate on the issue is underway in Illinois, where lawmakers reduced the cost-of-living adjustment for newly hired workers. Interest is keen everywhere: Lawmakers from around the country packed a session on modifying public pension benefits at the recent annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Louisville.
Up to now, states trying to trim the rising cost of worker retirement benefits have taken the legally safer — and politically easier — approach of targeting benefit cuts at newly hired employees. Steps states have taken this year include increasing the amount employees contribute toward their own pensions, raising the retirement age and adjusting the formula upon which benefits are based.
But many state lawmakers and pension administrators have concluded that cutting benefits for new employees alone will not save enough money in the short term to keep pension plans solvent over time. So they are searching for ways to zero in on the benefits of current retirees and employees.
Colorado lawmakers, facing projections showing the state’s pension system would run out of money within 30 years, approved a package of benefit reductions that lowered the annual 3.5 percent cost-of-living increase for retirees in 2010 to zero. In future years, the increase will be set at 2 percent, barring another sharp decline in investments. If the changes stand, the average retiree would lose more than $165,000 in benefits over the next 20 years, the retirees say in court papers.
South Dakota reduced the cost-of-living increase from 3.1 percent to 2.1 percent this year; future-year amounts will be tied to how well the system’s investments perform in the market. Minnesota eliminated a 2.5 percent cost-of-living increase and set it at between 1 and 2 percent for its different employee pension funds.
Case law and state constitutions
History is on the employees’ side. State statutes, constitutions and case law consistently define a public pension as a contract between the state and its employees that cannot be impaired. For example, Alaska’s state constitution makes it clear that “membership in employee retirement systems of the state or its political subdivisions shall constitute a contractual relationship. Accrued benefits of these systems may not be diminished or impaired.” Eight other states protect workers in their constitutions. They are Arizona, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, New Mexico, New York and Texas.
In states without constitutional guarantees — Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota fall into this category — statutes and court cases consider retirement benefits an unbreakable contract between the state and workers. That same protection is in the contract clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says: “No state shall … pass any … law impairing the obligations of contracts.”
Courts have determined that cost-of-living increases, which keep pension income on pace with inflation, are part of a worker’s benefits that cannot be diminished. (Generally, increasing benefits faces no legal hurdles.) The principle of safeguarding the purchasing power of pension income through a cost-of-living adjustment is well established. Social Security, the federal government’s retirement program, instituted automatic annual cost-of-living increases in 1975. The amount of the increase has averaged about 3.3 percent a year, although for the first time in 2010, there was no increase because the consumer price index did not rise.
The Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota lawmakers are hoping that the courts will agree that the current financial turmoil facing states imperils public pension systems as never before and calls for a new approach. If legislatures are not permitted to cut retirement costs now, the argument goes, the ability of the public pension systems to pay future benefits will be jeopardized.
“If we don’t reduce these automatic pension increases, the entire fund is poised to go bankrupt,” Republican Josh Penry, minority leader of the Colorado state Senate, told the Denver Post. “Think United [Airlines]. Think GM. That didn’t work out well for the company or the retirees.”
Attorneys for the states say in court filings that limiting cost-of-living increases was justified, and actuarily necessary. “There can be no dispute that preserving the solvency of PERA [The Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association] is a legitimate governmental interest,” Colorado officials argue. Minnesota’s pension legislation “was reasonable and necessary to maintain and restore the financial stability of Minnesota’s public pension plans,” say the state’s pleadings.
Managing market swings
Although Colorado lawmakers and state pension officials blame much of the retirement fund’s current financial troubles on investment losses suffered during the 2007-09 recession — the median decline for funds nationally was 25 percent in 2008 — the truth is that Colorado lawmakers failed to make their annually required contributions to state pension funds in good times and bad. They also boosted retiree benefits without considering future costs.
Colorado’s pension fund was fully funded in 2000. Eight years later, before the recession hit, Colorado fell to 70-percent funded and was heading down further, according to a report released in February by the Pew Center on the States, which publishes Stateline. Most pension specialists recommend a funding level of 80 percent or higher.
Minnesota lawmakers also slid on their pension fund payments. Their pension system’s funding level dropped from 101 percent in 1999 to 81 percent in 2008.
“The Legislature was cutting off funds and starving the pension system,” says Stephen Pincus, a Pittsburgh attorney representing the retirees in all three states. “They shouldn’t now be able to cry there’s no money in the pension system. They had a large hand in creating the crisis.”
South Dakota offers a twist. The state Legislature has been one of the best in the nation at financing its public employee pension system over the years; it was 97-percent funded in 2000 and 2008, according to the Pew report. Lawmakers even increased benefits two years ago. The state retirement system investments did lose more than 20 percent in value in 2008, but gained as much in fiscal 2010.
Pincus says that makes South Dakota’s targeting of current employees and retirees suspect. “There’s no crisis in South Dakota,” he says. “They had one bad year. So they’re going to shore up their pension fund by cutting benefits to those who already receive them?”
Rob Wylie, executive director of the South Dakota retirement system, counters that when the funding level fell to 76 percent after the 2008 losses, it triggered for the first time a state law requiring the pension system to take immediate steps to return the funding level to 100 percent. Savings gained from reducing benefits for newly hired employees would have taken too many years for the system to catch up, Wylie says. So after consulting with retirees the pension board chose to ask lawmakers to trim the cost-of-living increase.
“We could have reversed the increase in the funding formula we approved in 2008,” says Wylie. “But the retiree groups said can you find another way to slow the growth in costs without decreasing the formula? So we did.”
Asked why states are taking the risky strategy of aiming at current retirees, Robert Klausner, a Florida attorney who specializes in public pension law, says many state officials believe they have less to lose in the courtroom by challenging pension protections than taking no action at all. “The belief is that if the employer [the state] prevails, it will have been worth the political risk,” Klausner says. “And if they lose, they will be no worse off than before.” Klausner adds that legislatures are taking the politically-difficult step and letting the courts be the “bad guy” if they overturn the law. Retired judges are among the plaintiffs in Colorado and South Dakota.
The first case to be heard is the one in Minnesota, where a September 15 hearing is scheduled on a motion for summary judgment that will be filed by the state. Colorado’s Supreme Court already has sided once with retirees, saying in a 1961 ruling, “Whether it be in the field of sports or in the halls of the legislature it is not consonant with American traditions of fairness and justice to change the ground rules in the middle of the game.”
Meredith Williams, executive director of the Colorado retirement system, says he is confident the state can prove that the system’s current and future financial stress will compel the court to allow the cost-of-living rollback. “PERA has been upfront about the challenges we face,” he says.
See related stories:
Pension overhaul treats lawmakers, other state workers differently (7/29/2010)
In graying West Virginia, a mountain of retiree health bills (7/13/2010)
In some states, pension pain yields budget gains (5/20/2010)
In New Hampshire, a new way on retiree health costs (5/12/2010)
Vermont’s pension experiment (3/25/2010)
States tackling public employee retirement benefits in 2010 (2/19/2010)
—Contact Stephen C. Fehr at sfehr@pewtrusts.org.
Stateline Staff Writer John Gramlich contributed reporting to this piece. Photo illustration by Danny Dougherty, Stateline.
The Bizarre Background of the ‘911’ New York Mosque
By F William Engdahl | Global Research | September 14, 2010
For days the headline in US and even world news has been whether or not a fanatic Christian preacher from a tiny Florida church will or will not burn the Moslem Koran in protest to the announced plans to build a mosque 400 meters from the site of the World Trade Twin Towers. Conveniently, the drama was focused on the 9th anniversary of the collapse of three (not two as widely believed) towers on September 11, 2001. Now details about the real estate group that is allegedly ready to invest $100 million in the mosque construction suggest that the entire drama is being deliberately orchestrated. The question is by whom to what ends?
In a move to maintain high drama, on September 10, bombastic New York real estate wheeler-dealer Donald Trump made public his offer to buy out the prime owner of the proposed Islamic Center for “patriotic” reasons. The deal was reportedly rejected categorically by Hisham Elzanaty, an Egyptian-born businessman who says he provided a majority of the financing for the two buildings where the center would be built. Here is where it begins to become interesting.
It turns out according to investigations by various New York newspapers that the property is registered not in the name of Elzanaty, but of an entity called Soho Properties, a real estate company at 552 Broadway, New York, New York. According to their website Soho Properties was founded by Sharif El-Gamal in 2003. The website describes their activities: “We are a company focused on pursuing the real value in real estate investments, especially when pricing dislocations create value-driven opportunities. Soho Properties unlocks the value in an investment by successfully executing various strategies, which include re-tenanting/repositioning assets, renovations, aggregations, developments and participating in unique opportunistic situations.” 1
Who is Sharif El-Gamal then? It seems, according to various New York police records and the research of a Florida private detective on behalf of clients who claim to have been defrauded by the El-Gamal group, that Sharif El-Gamal has a rather dubious background, for someone who is the mogul of a $100 million real estate deal. Sharif is in a partnership with his brother, Sammy El-Gamal, and Nour Mousa, nephew of Amr Moussa, an Egyptian diplomat and the Secretary General of the Arab League.
In November 2009, it was reported that the firm spent $45.7 million to buy 31 West 27th Street in New York City, a 12-story 10,000 m2 office building. El-Gamal said: “We just bought it for the income. It’s got great long-term leases, and the financing was really attractive.” In a depressed New York real estate market, the El-Gamal brothers seem not to be such shrewd businessmen. They reportedly bought it from the Witkoff Group, which had bought the building in 2006 for $31.5 million, during the boom in New York real estate.2
Then in July 2009, Soho bought the 47–51 Park Place building on the site of the planned Cordoba House, now referred to as the “Ground Zero Mosque” and “Park51”, to allegedly build a $100 million, 13-story, glass and steel Islamic cultural center and mosque that is in the planning stage. Soho Properties paid the owner $4.85 million in cash for the property.
Waiters into real estate tycoons
The question being asked is where did the large sums of money come from for the two El-Gamal brothers? It seems they are anything but your typical New York millionaire real estate tycoons.
According to an article in the New York Post, Hisham Elzanaty, one of the money men behind the developer of the “Ground Zero” mosque was sued for allegedly defrauding an insurance company for nearly $1.8 million, according to court documents. Elzanaty, who reportedly owns medical companies that operate out of a building in the Bronx, allegedly billed State Farm Insurance for unnecessary tests related to automobile accidents that would maximize the insurance payout, the court papers say. Elzanaty, who was reportedly a “significant investor” in mosque developer Sharif el-Gamal’s $4.8 million mosque project, was also ordered to repay $331,000 after an audit showed Medicaid had overpaid him. 3
According to Florida private investigator Bill Warner and to various New York reports, there is an investigation ongoing into Sammy and Sharif El-Gamal of the SOHO Properties by the New York State Dept of Licensing in Manhattan for non-payment of apartment rental deposits to customers that were supposed to be in escrow.
Court records from Florida to New York State reveal that Sharif and his younger brother, Samir “Sammy” El-Gamal, 35, a partner with him in his company SoHo Properties, both have a history of numerous tax and debt issues, dating from at least 1994 to the present. In one case, a NY Police officer arrested Sharif in 1994 for “promoting prostitution.” He pleaded guilty to a mis-demeanor of disorderly conduct. In another instance, Sharif told a court he didn’t hit a tenant from whom his brother and he were trying to collect back rent. He said to police, the tenant’s “face could have run into my hand.” 4
The brothers’ background does not suggest billionaire real estate project preparation. Sharif waited tables at the restaurant Serafina, while Sammy waited tables at Tao. Then Sharif worked as a waiter at Michael Jordan’s, named after basketball star. But he, ostensibly a devout muslim, was fired for arriving reeking of alcohol, among other things. This is around when Sharif started acquiring a criminal record, say people familiar with his career.5
The geopolitical manipulation
The entire ‘911’ Mosque controversy has been made into world news by CNN and other select media. The US head of the military command in Afghanistan, General Petraeus got into the fray with a plea to the Florida pastor not to burn Korans, a move which naturally led several other wanna-be preacher bigots to say they too planned to burn Korans on the ninth anniversary of the World Trade Center event. The President, Barack Obama, got into the act by praising the building of the mosque as a symbol of Americans’ religious freedom and tolerance.
At the end of the day it all fueled a “Clash of Civilization” tension across America, and had the convenient effect, whether the mosque is built on the site or not, of reinforcing the US Government version of the collapse of the World Trade towers on September 11, 2001, namely that the destruction was carried out by two commercial hijacked jets being deftly rerouted into the two towers. And that the Boeing jets had been allegedly hijacked by 19 Arab students, armed only with paper box cutters, who had just been trained at a Florida flight school to fly small Cessna-size private planes. By keeping alive the myth of the “Second Pearl Harbor,” as George W. Bush once called 911, perhaps some people such as Barack Obama or General Petraeus hope to keep attention on the need for US military occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even spreading the war beyond Afghanistan.
One interesting question in the entire business is who put up millions of dollars for the sleazy El-Gamal brothers’ Soho Properties to pay $5 million cash for the property and to buy the other property for $46 million? Did the very established Witkoff Group, whose head, Steven Witkoff was selected as “Man of the Year” by The Jeffrey Modell Foundation in 1998, and who do major deals from London to New York not do a due diligence research on their new potential clients? Or is this all play money games using intelligence agency or other fake companies to create the explosive scenario at the anniversary of 911? These are some of the interesting questions to ask.
Notes:
1 Soho Properties, accessed in http://www.sohoproperties.com/pdfs/SP3rdQ08Newsletter.pdf
2 Dana Rubenstein, SoHo Properties Buys Chelsea Building for $45.7 M., The New York Observer Real Estate, November 9, 2009, accessed in
http://www.observer.com/2009/real-estate/witkoff-sells-chelsea-building-457-m
3 Tom Liddy, Ripoff Mosque Man Sued, New York Post, September 4, 2010.
4 Asra Q. Nomani , Rift Imperils Ground Zero Mosque, August 30, 2010, Yahoo News, accessed in
http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/9670_sharifelgamalandthegroundzeromosque
5 Ibid.
Kelly’s strange death linked to Iraq war
Press TV – September 15, 2010
The mysterious death of British weapons inspector David Kelly could be linked to the controversial invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to a group of experts.
The invasion of Iraq was carried out under the pretext that the country’s ruler at the time, Saddam Hussein, was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), deployable within 45 minutes.
Kelly began one of the most explosive episodes in British politics when he communicated his doubt about the issue to a number of journalists, including Andrew Gilligan.
On July 17, 2003, Dr. Kelly was found dead. The Hutton Inquiry into the highly suspicious case was sealed as suicide.
Over the past seven years, there have been numerous calls for a new inquiry. The largest and most persistent calls came from two groups of doctors and former doctors who argue the manner of Kelly’s death does not seem to match known evidence.
Gilligan, who has since become one of the key figures in the Kelly investigations, has accused the British Labor Government for exaggerating the claims for going to war with Iraq.
Gilligan’s main source for his allegations against the government of Tony Blair was none other than Kelly himself.
“I came across him as somebody with an expertise in the field, I was covering Iraqi biological and chemical weapons,” Gilligan told Press TV about his first meeting with Kelly.
Gilligan said that Kelly had doubts over one of the key pieces of intelligence that had underpinned the WMD dossier. “The source was not regarded by Kelly and other experts as reliable.”
Gilligan says Kelly’s death came as a shock to him. “He didn’t strike me as the suicidal type. He had been a weapons inspector in Iraq for goodness sake; he was perfectly well used to confrontation and pressure.”
One of the strongest cases for an alternate theory of what happened to Kelly has come from a Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, whose 2007 book on Kelly’s points to murder and not suicide.
Lord Howard, a former Conservative Party leader, says a new inquest would be the only way to clear up any lasting doubts.
However, Justice Secretary Kenneth Clark has so far resisted calls to re-open the case and make public the records that were sealed by Lord Hutton for a period of 70 years.
Retired doctor David Halpin recently held a meeting with a group of lawyers concerning the case. He says they are looking for ways to push for a fresh inquiry into the case.
When Press TV asked Halpin about the importance of investigating the true nature of Kelly’s death, he quoted leader of the enlightenment in England John Locke, “Where the law ends, tyranny begins.”
Quartet lobbying enriched Abbas’ family
Blair abuses his post as envoy, brokers business deals
Ma’an – 13/09/2010
LONDON — Middle East Quartet envoy to Jerusalem Tony Blair’s lobbying in favor of a Palestinian telecommunications company enriched the family of President Mahmoud Abbas, a UK tabloid reported Sunday.
A special investigation published in The Daily Mail’s weekly edition on Blair’s financial gains from lobbying on behalf of Wataniya includes allegations that Abbas’ son made a fortune through the former British prime minister’s actions.
According to the report, Blair mounted an intense political lobbying campaign to rescue the struggling mobile-phone business owned by a client of the bank that pays him millions of dollars annually. Wataniya almost collapsed before launching its service, jeopardizing a multimillion-dollar investment, because Israel’s government was refusing to let it use the frequencies it needed to operate.
Acting in his capacity as the international Middle East peace envoy, Blair helped to save the company by spending months putting pressure on Israel’s prime minister and his colleagues in a bid to change their minds, pointing out the need to help the Palestinians’ economy.
What Blair never mentioned is that JP Morgan, the American investment bank that employs him as a consultant, has a financial stake in Wataniya through Wataniya’s owner, the Qatari firm Qtel, which is an important client of JP Morgan. Blair’s spokesman told the tabloid he had no knowledge of any connection between JP Morgan and Qtel. He repeated the denials to the Israeli press.
Still, the allegations also call into question some of the gains by the Ramallah-based Palestinian president’s son, Tarek Abbas, whose firm has reportedly secured a lucrative contract to provide advertising for Wataniya.
In July 2008, Blair brokered what Wataniya thought was a cast-iron deal with Israel to make the frequencies it needed available. In order to provide a modern 3G service to include mobile internet, Wataniya had been seeking a bandwidth of 4.8 megahertz. On the strength of this agreement, it continued to build mobile-phone masts, switching centers and other installations it needed to operate.
Wataniya managed to secure special additional loans from a US government program that had been set up to help Palestinian farmers and small businesses — despite the backing it had from Qtel and, indirectly, banks such as JP Morgan.
PA to renew Israeli talks without settlement freeze
Press TV – September 13, 2010
Despite Israel’s refusal to extend its settlement freeze, the Palestinian Authority (PA) will still resume the second round of direct talks with Tel Aviv. The upcoming meeting will be held at Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and acting PA Chief Mahmoud Abbas held the first round of negotiations in Washington on September 2.
Following the first meeting, Abbas warned that he would leave the negotiations should Israel resume its illegal settlement activities.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell will also travel to Egypt to attend the meeting. The four officials will then move to al-Quds (Jerusalem) for a second day of talks on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama will meet with Abbas and Netanyahu in New York next week during the UN General Assembly meeting.
The second round of Israeli-PA talks comes after Israel on Monday approved the construction of more than 13,000 new settler units in the occupied West Bank.
In November, the Israeli premier announced a 10-month freeze on illegal settlement expansion projects in the occupied West Bank. But Tel Aviv has repeatedly violated the freeze, which expires on September 26, by continuing to construct more settlement units.
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British weapons and personnel doing much of the killing in Yemen
Press TV – June 18, 2019
A detailed report published by the Guardian newspaper has shown how Britain is massively contributing to Saudi Arabia’s devastating war on Yemen as it suggests that London is not only supplying the bombs that fall on Yemenis, but it provides the personnel and expertise that keep the war going.
The comprehensive report by Arron Merat published on Tuesday showed that Britain was doing much of the killing in Yemen as the country continues to provide Saudi Arabia with everything it needs to turn its southern impoverished neighbor into a graveyard.
“Every day Yemen is hit by British bombs – dropped by British planes that are flown by British-trained pilots and maintained and prepared inside Saudi Arabia by thousands of British contractors,” said Merat in the report. … continue
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