Rupert Murdoch Begins Blocking News Aggregators, Search Engines
By Joe Coscarelli | January 9th, 2010
New Corp honcho Rupert Murdoch has been known to refer to those running the web as “plagiarists” and “parasites,” threatening to remove all of his content from search engines like Google (especially if Bing is willing to pay up). Many wondered if he was bluffing, but now the process seems to have begun, with the Times Online blocking aggregation of its stories.
Aggregator NewsNow, via The Next Web, is reporting that they are being blocked from indexing Times Online stories:
As a consequence of this action — apparently the first change to the Times Online’s blocking policy since May 2008 — two million visitors to NewsNow.co.uk every month will no longer find headlines and links to content on the Times Online site in their news search results.
According to Struan Bartlett, Managing Director and Chairman of NewsNow: “It is lamentable that News International has chosen to request we stop linking to their content and providing in-bound traffic and potential subscribers to the Times Online and right now it looks as though NewsNow has been singled out. We note that no other major search engine has been blocked by NI in this manner. NewsNow is not fundamentally different to other news search engines that are part of the Internet infrastructure, such as Google News and Yahoo. Why block us and not them?”
The blocking has been technically implemented via the robots.txt protocol, a convention for requesting search engines, web spiders and other web robots refrain from asking for pages from all or part of a website.
Whether this will be the first domino in a line of things to come remains to be seen — Google News is, of course, far more noteworthy than a “homegrown” UK aggregator — but it is certainly a move in the direction previously threatened by Murdoch and his companies. But if it does happen, expect a far larger outcry when Murdoch and crew start blocking sites that steer the internet conversation.
Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth?
By Paul Craig Roberts | January 7, 2010
What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida’s expertise in pulling off 9/11.
If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida “mastermind” behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.
After such amazing success, al-Qaida would have attracted the best minds in the business, but, instead, it has been reduced to amateur stunts.
The Underwear Bomb plot is being played to the hilt on the TV media and especially on Fox “news.” After reading recently that The Washington Post allowed a lobbyist to write a news story that preached the lobbyist’s interest, I wondered if the manufacturers of full body scanners were behind the heavy coverage of the Underwear Bomber, if not behind the plot itself. In America, everything is for sale. Integrity is gone with the wind.
Recently I read a column by an author who has a “convenience theory” about the Underwear Bomber being a Nigerian allegedly trained by al-Qaida in Yemen. As the U.S. is involved in an undeclared war in Yemen, about which neither the American public nor Congress were informed or consulted, the Underwear Bomb plot provided a convenient excuse for Washington’s new war, regardless of whether it was a real attack or a put-up job.
Once you start to ask yourself about whose agenda is served by events and their news spin, other things come to mind. For example, last July there was a news report that the government in Yemen had disbanded a terrorist cell, which was operating under the supervision of Israeli intelligence services. According to the news report, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told Saba news agency that a terrorist cell was arrested and that the case was referred to judicial authorities “for its links with the Israeli intelligence services.”
Could the Underwear Bomber have been one of the Israeli terrorist recruits? Certainly Israel has an interest in keeping the US fully engaged militarily against all potential foes of Israel’s territorial expansion.
The thought brought back memory of my Russian studies at Oxford University where I learned that the Tsar’s secret police set off bombs so that they could blame those whom they wanted to arrest.
I next remembered that Francesco Cossiga, the president of Italy from 1985-1992, revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, a false flag operation under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The bombings were blamed on communists and were used to discredit communist parties in elections.
An Italian parliamentary investigation unearthed the fact that the attacks were overseen by the CIA. Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated in sworn testimony that the attacks targeted innocent civilians, including women and children, in order “to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
What a coincidence. That is exactly what 9/11 succeeded in accomplishing in the U.S.
Among the well-meaning and the gullible in the West, the supposition still exists that government represents the public interest. Political parties keep this myth alive by fighting over which party best represents the public’s interest. In truth, government represents private interests, those of the office holders themselves and those of the lobby groups that finance their political campaigns. The public is in the dark as to the real agendas.
The U.S. and its puppet state allies were led to war in the Middle East and Afghanistan entirely on the basis of lies and deception. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist and were known by the U.S. and British governments not to exist. Forged documents, such as the “yellowcake documents,” were leaked to newspapers in order to create news reporting that would bring the public along with the government’s war agenda.
Now the same thing is happening in regard to the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program. Forged documents leaked to The Times (London) that indicated Iran was developing a “nuclear trigger” mechanism have been revealed as forgeries.
Who benefits? Clearly, attacking Iran is on the Israeli-U.S. agenda, and someone is creating the “evidence” to support the case, just as the leaked secret “Downing Street Memo” to the British cabinet informed Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government that President Bush had already made the decision to invade Iraq and “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
The willingness of people to believe their rulers and the propaganda ministries that serve the rulers is astonishing. Many Americans believe Iran has a nuclear weapons program despite the unanimous conclusion of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to the contrary.
Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives fought hard with limited success to change the CIA’s role from intelligence agency to a political agency that manufactures facts in support of the neoconservative agenda. For the Bush Regime creating “new realities” was more important than knowing the facts.
Recently I read a proposal from a person purporting to favor an independent media that stated that we must save the print media from financial failure with government subsidies. Such a subsidy would complete the subservience of the media to government.Even in Stalinist Russia, a totalitarian political system where everyone knew that there was no free press, a gullible or intimidated public and Communist Party enabled Joseph Stalin to put the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution on show trial and execute them as capitalist spies.
In the U.S. we are developing our own show trials. Sheikh Mohammed’s will be a big one. As Chris Hedges recently pointed out, once government uses demonized Muslims to get the new justice (sic) system going, the rest of us will be next.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.
Israel’s Iron Kipa by Gilad Atzmon
January 7, 2010 | 
Gilad Atzmon
In English they call it the “Iron Dome” in Hebrew they call it the “Iron Kipa” which could also be translated as ‘Iron Skullcap’ or even ‘Iron Yarmulka’*. Seemingly the Israelis love to mix iron with God.
The Iron Dome, Kipa or Yarmulka is the new Israeli guided missile system. It is there to stop rain of rockets from falling over Sderot, Ashkelon or Tel Aviv. According to Haaretz, “the defense establishment this week successfully intercepted a barrage of rockets for the first time using the newly developed Iron Dome system”.
The new Israeli invention uses small guided missiles to blow up Katyusha-style rockets. Israel plans to station the first working unit outside the Gaza Strip next year.
I can only praise the Israelis and their scientists for their creative imagination and their survival instincts. It is possible that this ‘Iron Dome’ is exactly what we need in order to turn Israel and Zionism into history once and for all.
The tactic is very simple indeed: while mortar shells cost just a few dollars, guided missiles cost many thousands more. While Palestinian mortar barrages can be launched from every corner in occupied Palestine, Israel will have to deploy its newly invented Iron Kipa over its borders and around its towns. Every home-made Palestinian mortar shell or Qassam Rocket could easily exhaust the Israeli economy and the military’s human resources. Moreover, from now on, thanks to the Iron Kipa, the war with the Palestinian resistance can take place in the sky rather than in Palestinian cities and villages.
But there is one more hidden implication entangled with the new kosher defense system. If the Israelis do possess the means to protect themselves from Palestinian mortars and any ballistic capacity, then Israel cannot justify its occupation of the West Bank any more. Haaretz has described it in very clear words. “Iron Dome’s success” says the Israeli paper, “could improve the prospects of Israel eventually ceding the West Bank land to the Palestinians, as Israeli officials have said that any withdrawals should be conditional on the deployment of a reliable defense against rocket attacks.”
It seems as if the Israelis are really excelling in shooting themselves in the foot. Don’t ever under estimate the Zionist brilliance and Israeli innovation in particular. Once again the Israeli engineers proved that they know how to transform the Kipa into Iron and vice versa.
*Yarmulka – a skullcap worn by religious Jews (especially at prayer)
Where’s the Beef, Mr. Murdoch?
By Philip Giraldi | Anti-war.com | January 07, 2010
Regarding policy towards Iran, the American national interest would be best served by avoiding any involvement, if only because comments from the White House will be seen as outside interference, strengthening the hands of the conservatives. But there are many in the United States who do not see it quite that way, hoping to tighten the screws on the rulers in Tehran. They have been exploiting the so-called deadline of the year’s end for Iran and the US to enter into meaningful negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program. To be sure, many of those who are pushing hardest for sanctions are really only interested in war and regime change with sanctions as a first step establishing an irreversible course of action based on conflict rather than diplomacy.
Parallel with developments in the political arena, attempts to demonize Iran in the media appear to constitute a growth industry. False articles about Iran poison the foreign policy discourse because they create a dangerous narrative, that Tehran’s rulers are irredeemably evil and completely unwilling to compromise. In intelligence circles this is called disinformation. Nowhere is this barrage of disinformation more evident than in the media empire controlled by Rupert Murdoch, which includes the Wall Street Journal, the Times newspapers in Britain, and Fox television. Murdoch’s media marched in lockstep as a virtual propaganda mill in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Murdoch himself is much esteemed by Israel and by Jewish organizations and he has been outspoken in his approval of Israeli policies, including the devastation of Gaza one year ago. He has received numerous awards in Israel and the US for his support of Israel, most recently in November when he was given the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Laureate Award. In March 2009 he received the National Human Relations award from the American Jewish Committee. Murdoch is generally believed to be extremely close to Tel Aviv’s intelligence service Mossad and some of the stories featured in the media he controls would appear to be disinformation supporting Israeli government positions.
Over the past month there has been a spate of stories demonizing Iran, often based on evidence that most would regard as dubious. A December 14th article in the Times of London called “Secret document exposes Iran’s nuclear trigger” detailed how “confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.” The article was attacked by Gareth Porter and myself based on informed sources suggesting that the document the article relied on was a forgery. The document in question, alleged to be “from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project,” was of unknown provenance and US intelligence agencies do not believe it to be genuine. Times leader writer and columnist Oliver Kamm in turn unloaded on Porter and me as “Lindberghians,” sleazily insinuating in my case that I was an anti-Semite, while failing to address our legitimate suspicions about the document. In passing he also trashed Antiwar.com, inaccurately calling it isolationist, and described Ron Paul somewhat bizarrely as “Republican presidential nominee of insanitary political lineage and, ahem, highly imaginative schemes for monetary policy.” Kamm is a former merchant banker whose understanding of foreign policy apparently derives from his ability to make money in the bizarre financial services world that prevailed prior to the 2008 meltdown. His neoconish credentials and somewhat bizarre worldview have been examined by Justin Raimondo.
Other stories relating to the alleged threat posed by Iran have appeared recently in the Times. On December 21st appeared “North Korea weapons aircraft ‘was heading to Iran.’” The Times conceded that the destination of the flight was a mystery but relied on its sister paper the Wall Street Journal as the source for the story. The Times then adds its own analysis, “From Iran the weapons could have been passed on to militants in Lebanon or Gaza.” So the story about a plane that turned out to be registered in Georgia and carrying North Korean weapons becomes a story about Iran with no real hard evidence of Tehran’s involvement. Since the account of the arms shipment first surfaced it has vanished without a trace, suggesting that many other media outlets did not find it credible. But some readers were convinced by it. The story attracted a comment by one Daniel Evans who wrote “North Korea and Iran are targeting Israeli civilians to be killed by Hamas and Hezbollah. All in order to facilitate Iran’s nuclear annihilation of Israel and USA. Full scale war is the appropriate response.”
On December 31st, the Times featured an article “Peter Moore freed after US hands over Iraqi insurgent.” The story was about a British contractor who had been held by an Iraqi group for 31 months. So what does it have to do with Iran? According to the Times the extremist Shia group that allegedly held Moore is “allied to Iran,” adding “there were unconfirmed reports that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was involved in the kidnapping operation and that the hostages were smuggled into Iran…held in two prisons run by al-Quds, which specializes in foreign operations.” But both the British Foreign office and no less than General David Petraeus have both said that the alleged Iranian involvement is only speculation. Unfortunately, true or false the story resonates, convincing some that Iran is outside the pale. In a comment on the article posted on Times Online, one Daniel Case wrote “I think it is time to go into Iran and change the regime. I would love to see the religious nutters at The Hague charged with crimes against humanity. Let them all rot in jail.”
Also on New Year’s Eve, another Murdoch paper, the New York Post, featured an editorial by Ralph Peters, “O’s day of reckoning,” calling on President Obama to take action against Iran over the expiry of the end-of-year negotiating deadline. He cites, inter alia, the Iranian “…attempt to import more than 1,300 tons of make-a-nuke uranium ore from Kazakhstan” and refers to the government in Tehran as “turbaned tyrants” and “authentic fanatics.” The uranium ore story had surfaced the day before based on an intelligence report that was prepared by a country that “could not be identified because of the confidential nature of the information.” Both Iran and Kazakhstan have denied that any sale was being discussed and the media outrage is again derived from one anonymous report of unknown reliability. Is it a coincidence that the story should surface at a time when there are increasing demands for Obama to do something about Iran?
Bogus stories about Iran have a long history in the Murdoch media empire, most particularly in the Times. In April 2009, the newspaper reported that Israel was planning a massive attack on Iran’s nuclear sites “within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.” The article, light on content and heavy on innuendo, undoubtedly was intended to alarm new president Obama to force him to panic and take action against Iran to forestall an Israeli strike. A month earlier, the Times reported that Iran was supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan with surface to air missiles that could destroy helicopters. The story was denied by the US and British defense departments and turned out to be untrue, but it left behind the impression that Iran was assisting attacks on allied forces in Afghanistan. Such a highly emotional story line, which might be reduced to “they are killing our soldiers,” was used subsequently by Senator Joseph Lieberman and others in the US Congress to justify harsh sanctions against Iran.
In July 2008, the Times claimed that Iran might be developing germ warfare agents because of the reported purchase of 215 wild monkeys from a Tanzanian dealer for drug testing at the Razi Vaccine and Serum Institute in Tehran. It is unfortunately true that many countries continue to test drugs on primates but testing drugs does not necessarily equate to germ warfare. The story was never corroborated.
A September 2007 story on the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor included a somewhat implausible account of how Israeli commandoes had seized nuclear material from the site before it was bombed. The story was unique to the Times and appears to be untrue, almost certainly coming from an Israeli government source. If Israel had actually seized any compromising material, it would have show it to the world’s media to bolster its case against Damascus. The story also provided the opportunity to throw punches at Iran, claiming that Iran, Syria, and North Korea constitute a new “axis of evil” and quoting a source at the neocon Washington Institute of Near East Policy who described Syria as a “client” of Iran.
In April 2007, the Times featured a shocking article claiming that Iran was assisting al-Qaeda in Iraq to enable it to stage a “Nagasaki or Hiroshima size attack” against a western target, possibly using a dirty bomb. Most intelligence sources considered the story to be highly implausible, bordering on ridiculous. A month earlier the Times described the defection of Iranian former Revolutionary Guard General Ali Reza Asgari. Per the Times, Azgari was the “father of Hezbollah” and was carrying documents proving Iran’s links to terrorists. In reality, Azgari was a 43-year-old businessman snatched off an Istanbul street in a joint CIA Turkish operation. He had been out of the Iranian government for several years, had no documents, and had not been in Lebanon since 1989.
Two Times articles in August and September 2006 described how Iran was seeking to buy uranium from the Congo and also attempting to obtain ballistic missiles from criminal members of the security services in the Ukraine that would be capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Neither article was ever independently corroborated. The original source of the uranium story appears to have been a memo leaked from the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary for Defense Policy headed by Eric Edelman, who succeeded Doug Feith.
I am not suggesting for a moment that the Times and other Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers don’t do some good reporting, and I would note in particular their exemplary coverage of the Sibel Edmonds story [editor’s comment – Hmmm I wonder why that might be?]. But I would warn that the conjunction of Middle East issues, most particularly the “Iranian threat,” and the newspaper’s editorial slant in favor of Israel and interventionism invite caution. If a breaking story relates to Iran and appears first in the Times it is probably not completely true and might be completely false, a shaky foundation for building a case for war.
Another Iranian Revolution? Not Likely
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | New York Times | January 5, 2010
THE Islamic Republic of Iran is not about to implode. Nevertheless, the misguided idea that it may do so is becoming enshrined as conventional wisdom in Washington.
For President Obama, this misconception provides a bit of cover; it helps obscure his failure to follow up on his campaign promises about engaging Iran with any serious, strategically grounded proposals. Meanwhile, those who have never supported diplomatic engagement with Iran are now pushing the idea that the Tehran government might collapse to support their arguments for military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets and adopting “regime change” as the ultimate goal of America’s Iran policy.
Let’s start with the most recent events. On Dec. 27, large crowds poured into the streets of cities across Iran to commemorate the Shiite holy day of Ashura; this coincided with mourning observances for a revered cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who had died a week earlier. Protesters used the occasion to gather in Tehran and elsewhere, setting off clashes with security forces.
Important events, no doubt. But assertions that the Islamic Republic is now imploding in the fashion of the shah’s regime in 1979 do not hold up to even the most minimal scrutiny. Antigovernment Iranian Web sites claim there were “tens of thousands” of Ashura protesters; others in Iran say there were 2,000 to 4,000. Whichever estimate is more accurate, one thing we do know is that much of Iranian society was upset by the protesters using a sacred day to make a political statement.
Vastly more Iranians took to the streets on Dec. 30, in demonstrations organized by the government to show support for the Islamic Republic (one Web site that opposed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in June estimated the crowds at one million people). Photographs and video clips lend considerable plausibility to this estimate — meaning this was possibly the largest crowd in the streets of Tehran since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s funeral in 1989. In its wake, even President Ahmadinejad’s principal challenger in last June’s presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, felt compelled to acknowledge the “unacceptable radicalism” of some Ashura protesters.
The focus in the West on the antigovernment demonstrations has blinded many to an inconvenient but inescapable truth: the Iranians who used Ashura to make a political protest do not represent anything close to a majority. Those who talk so confidently about an “opposition” in Iran as the vanguard for a new revolution should be made to answer three tough questions: First, what does this opposition want? Second, who leads it? Third, through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran?
In the case of the 1979 revolutionaries, the answers to these questions were clear. They wanted to oust the American-backed regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and to replace it with an Islamic republic. Everyone knew who led the revolution: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who despite living in exile in Paris could mobilize huge crowds in Iran simply by sending cassette tapes into the country. While supporters disagreed about the revolution’s long-term agenda, Khomeini’s ideas were well known from his writings and public statements. After the shah’s departure, Khomeini returned to Iran with a draft constitution for the new political order in hand. As a result, the basic structure of the Islamic Republic was set up remarkably quickly.
Beyond expressing inchoate discontent, what does the current “opposition” want? It is no longer championing Mr. Mousavi’s presidential candidacy; Mr. Mousavi himself has now redefined his agenda as “national reconciliation.” Some protesters seem to want expanded personal freedoms and interaction with the rest of the world, but have no comprehensive agenda. Others — who have received considerable Western press coverage — have taken to calling for the Islamic Republic’s replacement with an (ostensibly secular) “Iranian Republic.” But University of Maryland polling after the election and popular reaction to the Ashura protests suggest that most Iranians are unmoved, if not repelled, by calls for the Islamic Republic’s abolition.
With Mr. Mousavi increasingly marginalized, who else might lead this supposed revolution? Surely not Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who became a leading figure in the protests after last summer’s election. Yes, he is an accomplished political actor, is considered a “founding father” of the state and heads the Assembly of Experts, a body that can replace the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. But Mr. Rafsanjani lost his 2005 bid to regain the presidency in a landslide to Mr. Ahmadinejad, and has shown no inclination to spur the masses to bring down the system he helped create.
Nor will Mohammad Khatami, the reformist elected president in 1997, lead the charge; in 1999, at the height of his popularity, he publicly disowned widespread student demonstrations protesting the closing of a newspaper that had supported his administration… Full article
What does the US really face in Yemen?
By Ein Katzenfreund | Aletho News | January 6, 2010
It is widely known that Al Qaeda is a subsidiary brand under the control of CIA, MI6 and Mossad with the purpose of spreading fear and terror. When the Western media use “Al Qaeda” to produce war sentiments in the population, then it should be immediately clear to everyone that there is something very suspicious happening. Currently, the mass media are scaremongering using the label “Al Qaeda” to persuade the population of the western world to join a US war in Yemen. But the US is not at war in Yemen against Al Qaeda. It is against the Shia Houthis whose strict anti-Americanism has already been a thorn in the US’s and its lackeys in the Arabian peninsula’s flesh.
Since August 11th 2009 the Shia Houthis have resisted being “eradicated” by the presidents’ “Operation Scorched Earth” and are defending the area around Sadah against Yemeni government troops, Saudi artillery and aircraft, Moroccan and Jordanian special forces and the US. It has been admitted in the Western press that the US has used “Special Operations Forces“ and “specialists from the CIA” for over a year, and more recently, cruise missiles. General David Patraeus has declared that the US Navy on the coast of Yemen is there to prevent arms smuggling to the Houthis. According to information provided by Houthis the United States also operates a top secret airfield in northern Yemen, from where, almost daily, deadly bomb attacks are launched against the population in the area controlled by the Houthis.
According to the Yemeni government the Houthis only have about 3,000 fighters, but they managed to repulse an offensive of 30,000 Yemeni soldiers from their territory. This is the reason the US is currently planning to extend the secret war in Yemen against the Houthis so severely that it couldn’t any longer be hidden from the public.
What the war of annihilation against the Houthis is all about is as far as possible concealed. In the region of Qatif in eastern Saudi Arabia the world has witnessed violent protests in recent months by the local Shia majority against the oppression, economic disadvantage and discrimination by the US supported dictators from the Saudi capital Riyadh. The Wahhabi Saudi dictators and its backers in the US have shown naked panic of an armed revolt in Qatif by the Shia majority. The Houthis have responded to attacks from Saudi Arabia by repeatedly capturing border posts inside Saudi Arabia, gaining completely free access to heavy weapons and know-how for serious Shia resistance in Qatif.
If it comes to an anti-American revolution in Saudi Arabia, that would be a massive economic problem for the U.S. mafia state and it’s empire of global dominance. While the warfare state was busy assaulting Afghanistan and Iraq, they thought they dominated the Arabian Peninsula safely, but they have now got a resistance movement there.
The US war to eradicate the Houthis is fought to secure the Saudi dictatorship. The Western population is lied to about who the enemy is in Yemen, what is at stake in the war and what kind of crimes the United States are responsible for there. The population is to be sold the war to eradicate Houthis by the mass media as an operation against Al Qaeda. Therefore Al Qaeda in Yemen is made by the mass media larger and larger.
The first mass media revelation of US involvement was that the U.S. had carried out two bombing raids with cruise missiles against “Al-Qaida in Yemen”. That was the beginning of a PR campaign, that presented Al Qaeda as the enemy of the US in Yemen. The population was signaled by the US government with the information it gave, that Al Qaeda in Yemen is a great danger. In fact, the US has massacred with their rockets many more innocent people, but who’s interested in such small details when you have mass media. This was followed by another incident for the propaganda needs of the U.S. government. A young man tried supposedly to blow up a US civilian aircraft by lighting his underwear. Given the systematic way, that US security organizations have failed to notice all information before the bomb attempt, it seems reasonable to conjecture that the attack of the underwear bomber was planned by the CIA and was intended as a false-flag operation to make Al Qaeda in Yemen look more dangerous.
Let’s go to the core facts. What is actually the strength of Al Qaeda in Yemen? The German security services mouthpiece “Die Zeit” explained to its readers last week that in Yemen 100 to 200 Al Qaeda fighters might be found. For the transatlantic propaganda leaflet for would-be intellectuals, “Der Spiegel”, this number was too small, and so it said two days later, that in Yemen there are “up to 300″ Al-Qaeda people hiding. For the state run German news programm Tagesschau, which is very well known for it’s stories from 1001 nights about Yemen, this number also was too little, and so they told their audience about the strength of Al Qaeda in Yemen “according to Western Intelligence, 1500 and numbers growing”. There one should agree completely. A tenfold increase of fighters of such an obscure organization as Al Qaeda in a week would be a remarkable growth. But nothing of this is true. It is pure war propaganda from the German media. In an interview with the Austrian paper “Die Presse” Mustafa Alani from the Gulf Research Center from Dubai confesses that all this western propaganda is pure nonsense. He says just 50 Al Qaeda people are on the watch list of Yemenite security services. So, in conclusion, Al Qaeda in Yemen is barely more than a fiction.
Western media is trying to build up fear with photos of Al Qaeda trainees, who are armed with old rifles. While doing this the mass media are quiet about the fact that in Yemen all males are, by tradition, armed. If people knew that, they would understand that pictures of armed Al Qaeda trainees in Yemen are just a circus, photographed by people as a souvenir to take home. If you have a look in comparison to just a few videos from Houthis, you will quickly understand that the Al Qaeda in Yemen stories are ridiculous nonsense.
It is also striking that there have recently been a lot of reports of hijacked ships in the Gulf of Aden. The pirate attacks fit very well into the concept of the U.S. propaganda, because David Patraeus may get more warships then to try to enforce the naval blockade against the Houthis. Gordon Brown and Barack Obama have just announced that at the end of the month, on the brink of a long-planned conference on Afghanistan, they will hold a key international meeting on security in Yemen. By then the public will probably be so filled with fear that they swallow the propaganda for the US-led war in Yemen. The failure of any anti-war movement challenge to the propaganda campaign bodes ill in this regard.
But even if Barack Obama manages to fool the public with the Al-Qaeda nonsense about the war against Houthis, that does not mean that the U.S. and their puppets are winning the war. Al Jazeera has just broadcast a message from a commander from the anti-American resistance group Al-Shabaab in Somalia, that appeared, contrary to the Rita Katz Al Qaeda theatre, very real. Sheikh Mukhtar Robow is calling on Somali fighters in Yemen to enter in the fight “against the enemies of Allah”. In the light of such horrific images of the atrocities of the United States everyone can imagine how much anger the US-colonialists will face. In Yemen the U.S. should be prepared to face legions of experienced resistance fighters and an almost entirely armed population. The US has just declared another dirty global war to conquer the world, but this time they are going to lose it.
The author manages a German language news blog at – http://www.mein-parteibuch.com/
Two-state solution needed, and fast– for U.S. and Israel!
By Philip Weiss | January 4, 2010
A few weeks back I wrote that there are too many Jewish Israelis in the American press, and Lisa Goldman, a writer in Tel Aviv, called me an anti-Semite. I’ve been working on a big post responding to her charge, but in the meantime I was back at it again last night, when I said that the New York Review of Books should stop hiring so many Israeli writers.
How do I justify such national prejudice? Especially when I’m here in Israel, where I’m meeting a lot of amazing Israeli journos and intellectuals who have walked their talk and are trying to change their country?
I admit that it is a national prejudice on my part. It reflects these feelings: after the Iraq war, I woke up to the incredible conflation of American and Israeli interests that the neocons were pushing in the U.S. discourse. I found it extremely confusing when everyone from Tom Friedman to Bill Kristol was saying that a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv was a reason for us to invade Iraq. Those guys were themselves confused about which country they cared about more. At this time, too, Jeffrey Goldberg emerged as the most important Jewish journalist in the U.S., in some measure because he had spent time in Israel and served in the IDF. He has been replaced, or is starting to be replaced, by Gershom Gorenberg, an American-cum-Israeli, who has written for the New York Review of Books and the Weekly Standard too. Meanwhile the New York Times began printing Zev Chafets, a former Israeli gov’t spokesman, on American political trends, and the American Enterprise Institute was paying Dore Gold $98,000 a year as a scholar, notwithstanding the fact he is a former Israeli ambassador living in Jerusalem and churning out Islamophobia.
It never ends. Rahm Emanuel, who volunteered at an IDF base, became the White House chief of staff, and another Obama appointee announced that Israel is her homeland, and Harvard names as the new dean of the Law School, Martha Minow, who has published an article with an Israel co-author saying that Israel’s treatment of detainees is a model! (Sorry if that irritates; I just returned from a demonstration for Jamal Juma, who has been detained on flimsy grounds because he’s a human rights worker, and I’m reading the Goldstone report, which says that 750,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned during the Occupation, and Omar Barghouti told me at the demonstration that imprisonment has touched every Palestinian family–something Dean Minow didn’t mention.) Oh and after the Gaza war, the New York Review of Books offered itself as a forum for Israelis to hash over the war. Not a Palestinian in sight. The New York Times has an Israeli reporter in its Jerusalem bureau, and lately the Washington Post announced that its next Jerusalem correspondent would be someone who had worked at the Jerusalem Post. Then there’s the New Republic, which really is the new republic–of US and Israel. It has featured Benny Morris and Michael Oren, both Israelis, one an ambassador, explaining why Israel is so cool.
Can you see why I’m confused?
It is true that my real objection is to Zionism in the American discourse, but not all of these folks wear their Zionist ribbons on their chests, and it’s hard enough sorting out American writers’ agendas let alone Israelis’.
So yes, on this score, I admit, I’m a bit of a nativist. I apologize here to all my Israeli friends and promise to work on my issues. But the special relationship has hurt America in the Middle East and part of the price of disentangling that relationship may be some discrimination against Israelis in the American discourse. Separation, partition; call it what you will. But the U.S. and Israel need to be two states, not one.
Pakistan’s Strategic Nuclear Assets: Why are they a thorn in the side of so many?
By Shahid R. Siddiqi |Axis of Logic | January 2, 2010
When India exploded its first nuclear device in 1974, culminating a program launched as far back as 1951, Western powers only reacted with customary “show of concern”. But on the other hand, Pakistan’s nuclear program, initiated in response to the Indian acquisition of nuclear weapons, evoked immediate and “serious concern” from the same Western powers. This discriminatory attitude has since persisted. Pakistan has remained under pressure from the US-led lobby to scrap its program while the Indians remained uncensored.
India has often tried to justify its nuclear program as a counter to the Chinese threat. This is preposterous. China has shown no belligerency towards India. The war of 1962 resulted from India’s arrogance in refusing to amicably settle a boundary dispute with China, just as it has done with Pakistan. And if China was such a big threat why have other countries of the region not complained or scrambled to seek nuclear umbrellas?
Bhutto and the “religious bomb”
That Western attitude was discriminatory can also be seen by the religious color it gave to Pakistan’s bomb by calling it an ‘Islamic bomb’.
One has never heard of the Israeli bomb being called a ‘Jewish Bomb’, or the Indian bomb a ‘Hindu Bomb’, or the American and British bomb a ‘Christian Bomb’ or the Soviet bomb a ‘Communist’ (or an ‘Atheist) Bomb’. The West simply used Pakistan’s bomb to make Islam and aggression synonymous, although Pakistan’s bomb was merely for defensive purposes and was not even remotely associated with Islam.
With India going nuclear soon after playing a crucial role in dismembering Pakistan in 1971 and enjoying an overwhelming conventional military superiority over Pakistan (in the ratio 4:1) a resource-strapped Pakistan was pushed to the wall. Left with no choice but to develop a nuclear deterrent to create a balance of power and ward off Indian threat, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto declared: “Pakistanis will eat grass but make a nuclear bomb”. And sure enough, they did it. But soon both he and the nuclear program were to become non-grata. Amid intense pressure, sanctions and vilification campaign, Henry Kissinger personally delivered to a defiant Bhutto the American threat: “give up your nuclear program or else we will make a horrible example of you.”
And a horrible example was made of Bhutto for his defiance. Bhutto signed Pakistan’s nuclear program with his blood to enable Pakistan to become the 7th nuclear power in the world, forcing India to shun belligerency. Although there has never been real peace in South Asia, at least there has been no war since 1971.
Pakistan’s nuclear program: a deterrent to Indo-Israeli dominion
Ignoring its perspective on acquisition of strategic assets, Pakistan’s Western ‘friends’ refused to admit it to their exclusive nuclear club, pressuring it to give up nuclear ambitions instead. However, expediency made them look the other way when it suited their purpose. In 1980s and post 9/11 when Pakistan was needed to play a key role in Afghanistan as the ‘front line state’, the American spotlights on its nuclear program were switched off.
But Pakistan’s nuclear program remained under threat from the foes – India and Israel, who felt their interests were threatened. In collusion, both of them missed no opportunity to directly or indirectly malign Pakistan’s nuclear program or subvert it. Both countries having similar geo-strategic interests in their respective regions, see Pakistan as an obstacle to their designs.
India sees Pakistan as an unnatural creation which, having been carved out of its body, now refuses to submit to its diktat and obstructs its quest for unchallenged domination of South Asia and the Indian Ocean region.
Israel looks at Pakistan’s military prowess and its nukes as indirectly strengthening the hands of Arab states with which it has remained in a state of conflict and which it has continued to terrorize all these years. It is conscious that several Arab states look up to Pakistan for military support when faced with external threat to their security that comes mainly from Israel. It is unsettling for Israel to see such a state to be in possession of nuclear weapons.
Israel also cannot overlook the fact that Pakistan Air Force pilots, when flying mostly Russian aircraft, surprised the Israeli Air Force and shot down several relatively superior Israeli jets in air combat in the 1973 Arab Israel war. They shattered the myth of the invincibility of Israeli pilots who believed themselves to be too superior in skill and technology. These Pakistani pilots happened to be assigned to Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi air forces on training missions when the war broke out and they inconspicuously joined the operations.
The foiled Israeli plan to bomb Kahuta
Having successfully bombed and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, Israelis were encouraged to launch a similar attack on Kahuta, a village to the east of Islamabad where Pakistan’s nascent nuclear research program was located. In collaboration with India, the Israelis made plans for this mission in early 1980s. Using satellite pictures and intelligence information provided by the CIA, they reportedly built a full-scale mock-up of Kahuta facility in the southern Negev Desert and pilots of F-16 and F-15 squadrons went through mock attack exercises.
According to the story published in London by The Asian Age citing revelations by journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark in their book ‘Deception: Pakistan, the US and the Global Weapons Conspiracy’, the Israeli Air Force planned to launch an air attack on Kahuta in mid 1980s from Jamnagar airfield in Gujarat (India) and land and refuel at a base in northern India. The book claims that “in March 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi signed off (on) the Israeli-led operation, bringing India, Pakistan and Israel to within a hairs breadth of a nuclear conflagration”.
Another report claims that Israel had planned to launch an air strike directly out of Israel. After midway and midair refueling, Israeli warplanes were to shoot down a commercial airline flight over the Indian Ocean that routinely flew into Islamabad early morning. The Israelis would have flown in a tight formation to appear as one large aircraft on radar screens preventing detection. Using the drowned airliner’s call sign they would have entered Islamabad’s air space, knocked out Kahuta and flown on to land in Jammu, an Indian airbase, to refuel and make an exit.
Reliable reports say that in mid 1980s this mission was actually launched one night. But the Israelis were in for a big surprise. They discovered that the Pakistan Air Force had already sounded an alert and had taken to the skies in anticipation of this attack. The Indo-Israeli mission had to be hurriedly called off.
Pakistan reminded the Israelis that Pakistan was no Iraq and that the Pakistan Air Force was no Iraqi Air Force. Using indirect channels, Pakistan is reported to have conveyed that an attack on Kahuta would force Pakistan to lay waste to Dimona, Israel’s nuclear reactor in the Negev Desert. Pakistan drew up contingency plans for a retaliatory strike on Dimona in case of any future Israeli misadventure. India was also warned that Islamabad would attack Trombay if its facilities in Kahuta were hit.
The above quoted book claims that “Prime Minister Indira Gandhi eventually aborted the operation despite protests from military planners in New Delhi and Jerusalem.”
This Indo-Israeli plan was also confirmed by a paper published by the Australian Institute for National Strategic Studies. It stated,
“Israeli interest in destroying Pakistan’s Kahuta reactor to scuttle the ‘Islamic bomb’ was blocked by India’s refusal to grant landing and refueling rights to Israeli warplanes in 1982.”
Clearly India wanted to see Kahuta gone but did not want to face retaliation against its own nuclear facilities at the hands of the Pakistan Air Force. Israel, on its part wanted this to be a joint Indo-Israeli strike so that Israel alone would not be held responsible.
The Reagan administration also showed reluctance to support the plan as any distraction on Pakistan’s part at that juncture would have hurt American interests in Afghanistan where Pakistan was engaged as key US ally against the Soviets.
The Propaganda Campaign
Although the two countries had to give up plans to hit Kahuta, they continued their diatribe against Pakistan’s nuclear program through an organized propaganda campaign which has been accelerated today. Israel used its clout over the American political establishment and the Western media to create hysteria. India also worked extensively to promote paranoia. Pakistan’s program was branded as unsafe, insecure and a threat to peace, although it is technically more sound, much safer and more secure than that of India and has ensured absence of war in the region.
Use of terrorists to destabilize Pakistan
The US invasion of Afghanistan provided another opening for the Indo-Israeli nexus to target Pakistan’s strategic assets. This time the strategy was to present Pakistan as an unstable state, incapable of defending itself against religious extremist insurgents, creating the specter of nuclear assets falling into their hands in Islamabad. This was achieved by creating a proxy organization – Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Pakistan-Afghan border areas where they recruited rogue elements and spread chaos to destabilize Pakistan through terrorism. Suggestions were floated that in view of the possibility of Pakistan succumbing to extremists, its nuclear assets should be disabled, seized or forcibly taken out by the US. Alternatively, an international agency should take them over for safe keeping. […]
The Indo-Israeli nexus is losing the initiative. But as long as the American umbrella is not denied, Afghanistan will remain a playground for these mischief mongers. It is now up to the US to walk its talk if it is sincere about its claim that it wants to see a secure and stable Pakistan. It must put an end to conspiracies to destabilize Pakistan.
Read his bio and more analyses and essays by
Axis of Logic Columnist, Shahid R. Siddiqi
© Copyright 2009 by AxisofLogic.com
Rabbis to US Ambassador: Time to ‘Go Biblical’ with Arabs
By Gil Ronen | December 30, 2009
(IsraelNN.com) A delegation of the Rabbinical Congress for Peace (RCP) met with U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mr. James Cunningham, today and called for a reassessment of the entire U.S. policy vis-à-vis the Israelis and Palestinians. The rabbis told Ambassador Cunningham that it was time to try the Biblical approach to the dispute over the Land of Israel.
“The past 17 years have proven without a shadow of a doubt that every square inch ceded by Israel to the Palestinians was transformed into a platform of hatred and terrorism,” RCP Director Rabbi Avrohom Shmuel Lewin told the ambassador. “In other words, the ‘land for peace’ formula in the Israel-Palestinian context, besides being a formula that goes against the Divine will, is ineffective, obsolete, and an exercise in futility. Most of all it is a dangerous policy that only leads to bloodshed and instability in the region and harms vital American interests in the region as well,” Lewin said.
‘Land for peace doesn’t work’
The delegation was headed by Rabbi Joseph Gerlitzky, Chairman of the RCP, who is also the Rabbi
of Central Tel Aviv where the US embassy is located. Rabbi Gerlitzky presented the ambassador with the Halachic (Jewish legal) ruling signed by over 350 prominent rabbis in Israel that it is forbidden to give up even one inch of territory controlled by Israel today because it will bring bloodshed and instability to the region.
“In the name of the overwhelming majority of rabbis in Israel,” he said, “we request of you Mr. Ambassador, to convey our Halachic message to President Barack Obama that it is time for a complete reversal and reassessment of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The ‘land for peace’ policy never worked and harms U.S. interests in the region and the world at large.”
Left to right: Rabbi Sholom Gold, Mr. Marc Sievers of the US Embassy, Rabbi Dov Lior, Rabbi Joseph Gerlitzky, Ambassador James Cunningham, Rabbi Moshe Havlin, Rabbi Avrohom S. Lewin. The Rabbis handed the ambassador a Halachic Ruling signed by over 350 rabbis in Israel that forbids giving up land controlled by Israel today.
The ambassador was visibly moved by Rabbi Sholom Gold, a leading rabbi in Jerusalem, who described the suffering that the Jewish People have endured ever since the implementation of the Oslo Accords and the agreements that followed. “It’s all a play of words, there is no peace process,” he said. “From the day that we started conceding and withdrawing we did not have one day of rest and peace. Why should our enemies want to make peace with us when they see that with terrorism they get what they want? Even the U.S., Israel’s supposedly best friend, sides with them in demanding a freeze and evacuation of settlements. Is the triumph of Arab terror one of American interests?” Gold asked.
Going Biblical
Rabbi Dov Lior, the Rabbi of Kiryat Arba-Hevron, said: “G-d gave the US the power and influence to affect the rest of the world and supporting Israel is the key to America’s success.”
Ambassador Cunningham told the rabbis that he does not see how the problem can be solved “without taking into consideration the Palestinians,” to which Rabbi Gold remarked: “Ever since we started taking the Palestinians into consideration the situation only worsened.”
The ambassador asked the rabbis, “So what is your solution to the problem?”
Rabbi Gerlitzky replied: “You must switch the entire approach to the situation. We all believe in the Holy Bible and up until now we tried every formula except for that which is delineated in the Bible. Let’s try it and who knows, Mr. Ambassador, maybe this is your defining moment, that G-d Almighty has placed you in this capacity in order to precipitate a new course which will bring a true peace to the entire region.”
Kazakhstan denies uranium deal with Iran
Russia Today | December 30, 2009
Kazakhstan has denied US reports of possible uranium supplies to Iran.
“Kazakhstan unconditionally observes all requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), so any [uranium] sale surpassing the IAEA control is out of the question,” a spokesperson for the Kazakh Foreign Ministry was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.
The authorities in Tehran have also refuted the reports. According to Iran’s official media, the Iranian UN office said in a statement that this information was “not true”.
The statement came after the Associated Press cited intelligence sources as saying that the countries are about to sign a deal to export 1,300 tons of uranium ore from Kazakhstan.
According to the agency, Iran is willing to pay US$450 million for the consignment. It also said that Kazakh government officials acting on their own were behind the deal.
The UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency have launched talks with the Kazakh government in order to clarify the situation.
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“Evidence-based medicine has been hijacked:” A confession from John Ioannidis
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John Ioannidis is perhaps best known for a 2005 paper “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” One of the most highly cited researchers in the world, Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford, has built a career in the field of meta-research. Earlier this month, he published a heartfelt and provocative essay in the the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology titled “Evidence-Based Medicine Has Been Hijacked: A Report to David Sackett.” In it, he carries on a conversation begun in 2004 with Sackett, who died last May and was widely considered the father of evidence-based medicine. We asked Ioannidis to expand on his comments in the essay, including why he believes he is a “failure.” … continue
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