JERUSALEM — Undercover Israeli intelligence officers appeared on national television Saturday to talk about assassinating Palestinians in a program broadcast on Israel’s Channel 10.
Oren Beaton presented a photo album of Palestinians he killed during his time as a commander of an undercover Israeli unit operating in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
Beaton explained that he kept photos of his victims.
“This is a photo of a Palestinian young man called Basim Subeih who I killed. This is another young man. I shredded his body, and the photo shows the remnants of his body,” he said.
The TV program also featured an undercover agent referred to as “D”, who openly admitted killing “wanted Palestinians.”
He complained of suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and said that the state had rejected his demands for compensation.
The Channel 10 presenter appealed to the Israeli government to meet the agent’s demands.
“Those are the Shin Bet agents we only hear about and never see, and thanks to them we live safely,” she said.
The report was filmed in the Palestinian territories, and showed agents wandering around the streets of Ar-Ram in occupied East Jerusalem with handguns under their shirts, illustrating that the agents were still operating in Palestinian cities.
The agents, who speak fluent Arabic, are shown surrounded by masked Palestinian collaborators secretly deployed to the area to protect them.
The program provided previously unconfirmed details about the operational methods of undercover agents.
The report explained that officers conducted surveillance before an assassination, investigating the target’s friends and classmates.
Agents would even ask about the target’s favorite meals and habits at home, the report said.
In this way, agents would put together an image of the target’s behavior and routine.
Agent “D” said officers would then “seize the target and wait until the commander arrives to confirm his identity. Then we shoot him.”
This confirms previous accounts from Palestinians who have said they witnessed Israeli agents shooting Palestinians at point-blank range.
Last night at Netroots Nation, I had a conversation with Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, the only Muslim in the Congress, and after I congratulated him for his outspokenness on Gaza, he told me of his support for the Palestinian statehood initiative in the United Nations.
“We all say we’re for two states. Everyone is for two states. Well for me this is the rubber meeting the road. Why do we oppose it if we are for the two state solution?
“Because,” he said, answering his own question, “we are captured by the Likud and to the right of the Likud. We are not captured by Israel or even by the lobby.” Israel, he said, has a more diverse political discourse than the United States, and as for the lobby in the U.S., it’s more progressive than people give it credit, it’s the Republican right that is making trouble.
“We are captured by the dispensationalists and the dominionists. It’s a myth that the Jewish lobby is doing it. Every single Jewish congressman in the Democratic Party is for two states and for peace. But the Republican party is driving the debate, and it’s dominionists and dispensationalists who need the Jews of Israel for the end times.”
I disagreed with him. His is the conventional dodge of any Democratic or by extension communal Jewish responsibility for Palestinian rightslessness, when support for Israeli maximalism is imbedded in his own party. I told Ellison about the debate between his good friend Brian Baird, a former congressman, and then-congressman Anthony Weiner in New York in March. “Weiner has said racist and intolerant things, including that there’s no occupation.”
Ellison said, “I don’t think that Anthony necessarily represents where the Democratic Party would be given its druthers.” He said that Jews vote 80 percent for Obama and their concerns are far more diverse than Israel, they have a progressive agenda. Again we differed. I said that opinion polls show that Jews are conservative on the Israel issue, against dividing Jerusalem for instance, and that this is not a trivial area for us, and we’re an empowered community.
“A lot of communities have had you know people who are not tolerant, Every community has its own us versus them going on,” Ellison said, and he included the black community. “But you got to remember 80 percent of Jews voted for Obama.”
He went on to say, “I’ve been to Sderot, I understand the Israeli security need.” He said he has heard some insensitivity toward Israeli concerns from the Palestinian solidarity community.
The fault in Ellison’s thinking is, Rightwingers can’t be driving this debate if they did not have adherents inside the Democratic Party; and they do. Anthony Weiner is hardly alone. The Democratic Party is also extreme. And Obama is, according to the Wall Street Journal and Commentary and the Jewish press, afraid of losing Jewish money, which is likely a majority of Democratic giving, if he say, comes out against settlements in the Security Council or supports a Palestinian state in the General Assembly.
I’m having some great conversations at Netroots, meaning kindred spirits, like Ellison. But in spite of Ellison’s great efforts, this issue continues to be special, even in the progressive community. Yesterday at Netroots, a heavyweight panel including two congressmen (John Garamendi, Jim McGovern) and Darcy Burner and Steve Clemons said that Democratic Party antiwar folks have to make common cause with the Republican libertarians on Afghanistan, so as to get us out of there, by putting pressure on the president. The thrust of the panel was that Obama has become a war president, and we must take him on by talking, from an American national interest, along with Republicans, about how much money we are wasting that we could be spending on education and infrastructure.
There is no panel here to talk about a creative coalition to take on the Republican right on settlements/Palestine. Because, embedded in the Democratic Party’s left-prog base, is support for Israel no matter what.
Though again, I’m having good conversations here, there are a lot of us here. Netroots is like J Street that way. The base is to the left of the leadership. More to come soon.
What is meant by this phrase “orderly default” which is all over the news this morning? It sounds so sensible. I think it is another entry in the liars lexicon.
When the banks and pundits say orderly, they mean orderly for the banks. Not orderly for Greece or the Greeks or the Portuguese or Irish.
Greece is going to default. Everyone finally admits this after denying it vehemently. The simple fact is that the Greek economy is not growing fast enough to have any hope of even keeping pace with their debts and the interest on them. Their debts are accumulating faster than their economy is growing. In fact the Greek economy is hardly growing at all – less than 1% at best.
So the ‘orderly’ plan is to give Greece loans to extend the time before the mathematics of compound interest and a contracting economy catch up with them. In this time the plan is to pay off lumps of the principle by selling organs. Organs of the state; a port here, a phone system there. The fisherman sells his boat and his net to clear his debts. And then what? Well then he is fodder for the wage pool and the loan shark.
But ‘putting off’ the inevitable begs the question – why put it off? Who is benefiting by putting it off? If Greece is going to default why not do it sooner, because in the mean time the Greeks are suffering massive violence to the fabric of their society and for what? Certainly not to avoid default. We already know they are going to. It’s just a question of sooner or later. So why later? Who benefits?
The answer is, the banks. Particularly the banks of France and Germany. They would like default put off in the hope that as time goes by their broader financial circumstances improve so that they would be better able to deal with whatever losses come from an eventual Greek default. Put if off long enough and maybe there won’t be any losses. Which sounds sensible – for the banks. But while the delay buys time, literally, for the Banks to improve their broader situation the exact opposite happens to Greece and the Greek people. The longer they wait to default, the longer they struggle to pay off debts that are crushing them and which they will have to default on eventually, the worse their broader situation gets. So the wait and do it slowly scenario is anything but orderly for the Greek people.
So again, why is this slow, ‘orderly’ torture of Greece being advocated?
I think the answer is that for as long as the ‘orderly default’ plan can be enforced upon the Greeks it provides the banks with the delicious prospect of asset stripping an entire nation.
Because that is exaclty what is going on in Greece . What the ‘orderly’ default provides is a window of opportunity when predatory financial players can strip Greece and in future maybe Portugal and Ireland as well, of everything the banks could never get their hands on in any other circumstance.
If you are a business and you get in trouble you file for bankruptcy protection. That is, you protect your assets from predators while you sort out your debts, defaulting on those you cannot pay, cutting deals to pay some small percentage of each debt and then emerge as a chastened but going concern at the other end. This is precisely what Greece and the Greeks are being denied by their own government. The ‘orderly default’ plan is to keep Greece out of bankruptcy protection, keep them paying, keep the nation in a state of semi-anarchy and panic with seemingly no way out of the mess – except by selling off at fire sale prices whatever their creditors fancy – for as long as possible.
This is very orderly if you are one of the banks. You lose nothing. The tax payers in Greece and in your own nations lose because they pick up the tab of keeping the torture going through endless bail outs. The tax payers are like the torturer’s assistant whose job is to revive the victim with a glass of water, so they can be tortured some more. Bail outs solve nothing for Greece, but do serve admirably for keeping the present ‘open for pillaging’ situation going.
In this defenseless state you can then asset strip the nation for as long as the local government can keep the lid on all-out uprising.
And best of all, at the end of this process, you will have a ruined economy, with impoverished people who will work for nothing, without any labour laws left to protect them – since those pesky things will have been swept aside in the austerity measures – and you will also be the new owners of all the assets the people and their nation once owned.
Not only does that give you a compliant nation and workforce, but having such a cowed and defeated place close to hand will serve wonderfully as a crow bar for uprooting any ‘restrictive’ and ‘inflexible’ labour laws and practices in neighbouring countries. And since that is explicitly what the IMF talked about in their blue print for Europe’s future, it is hard not to see this as at least part of the intention of the ‘orderly default’.
Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois sure is earning the hundreds of thousands of dollars the Israel lobby dumps into his coffers. In a report based on a recent “fact-finding” trip to the Middle East, Kirk calls for U.S. naval and special operations forces to support Israel in combating the upcoming flotilla to Gaza.
Kirk’s report reads:
The IHH plans to send a second flotilla to breach Israel’s coastal security later this month. To prevent further violence, the United States should:
1) immediately designate the IHH as a terrorist entity under Executive Order 13224, which targets “terrorists, terrorist organizations, and those providing financial, technological, or material support to terrorists, terrorist organizations, or acts of terrorism”;
2) make available all necessary special operations and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk; and
3) make it clear to Turkish President Erdogan that Turkey will be held accountable for any actions that support or enable the IHH to launch its flotilla.
The flotilla, set to sail to Gaza at the end of this month, aims to nonviolently challenge the Israeli blockade that has suffocated the Gaza Strip. Kirk’s call for the U.S. Navy to provide “special operations and naval support to the Israeli Navy” to stop the flotilla is particularly alarming because a contingent of American citizens will be a part of the flotilla. Kirk would have no problem, it seems, with the U.S. Navy being deployed against U.S. citizens aiming to break the blockade, which has been termed “collective punishment” by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
What lies in store for Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and, in short order, the United States, is the wholesale sell-off of public property to private corporations at bargain basement prices. What the despots who gather in their secretive lairs at Davos, Cernobbio, Bilderberg, and G8/G20 are bringing about is a world where no property is owned by the state, which by default means the people. Total corporate control over every facet of life equals extreme fascism.
What is occurring in Greece is a bellwether for what will befall other nations in Europe, as well as the United States, if the bankers get their way. And in Greece, the people know how generations of investments by the taxpayers are being turned over to vampire capitalists who have the full backing of the International Monetary Fund, European Commission, and the European Central Bank.
The European and global bankers have demanded that the Greek government sell off entirely or assume a minority stake in a number of state enterprises and utilities.
For example, this year global capitalists are slated to acquire 84 percent of OTE, the Greek telecommunications provider. In addition, private bankers will assume 66 percent ownership of the Greek Postal Savings Bank; 51 percent of the National Lottery; 60 percent of the Salonika Water Authority; 68 percent of DEPA, the natural gas utility; and 25 percent ownership of the ports of Piraeus and Salonika.
Next year, the capitalist grab for public property increases in intensity with Athens International Airport coming under 79 percent private ownership. The global capitalists will also obtain 100 percent ownership of the Egniata toll motorway; 60 percent of Hellenic Post; 66 percent of OPAP, the state-run video-lotto and online sports betting firm; 73 percent of the Athens Water Authority; 83 percent of DEI, the Greek Electric Authority; and 51 percent of the Greek Regional Airports Authority.
The Greek Communist Party has vowed to fight against the acquisition of public property by the private sector. In fact, it is the Communist parties of Europe that have been the most vocal against the power grab by the bankers but their opposition to the privatization moves receives very little attention by the corporate-controlled media.
Massive sell-off lists of public property are now being drawn up by the governments of Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Ireland. In the United States, there are calls for the privatization of the US Postal Service, Social Security, and Medicare.
One Libyan government official this reporter spoke to in Tripoli, during an intensive NATO bombing assault, opined that the same fate is in store for the Libyan Socialist Jamahiriyah. With the highest standard of living in Africa, Libyans could witness the U.S.- and NATO-backed rebel government begin to sell off Libyan government assets to global capitalists. The Libyan official said, “These people [global bankers] would sell the air if they could get away with it.”
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required)
San Francisco – In a decision with likely wide-ranging impact, a judge in Las Vegas today dismissed as a sham an infringement case filed by copyright troll Righthaven LLC. The judge ruled that Righthaven did not have the legal authorization to bring a copyright lawsuit against the political forum Democratic Underground, because it had never owned the copyright in the first place. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Fenwick & West LLP, and Las Vegas attorney Chad Bowers are defending Democratic Underground.
“We are pleased that the Court saw through Righthaven’s sham assignment of the copyright and dismissed its improper claim,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “Today’s decision shows that Righthaven’s copyright litigation business model is fatally flawed, and we expect the decision to have wide effect on the over 270 other cases Righthaven has brought.”
Righthaven sued Democratic Underground last fall over an excerpt of a Las Vegas Review Journal news story that a user posted on the forum, claiming that the newspaper had transferred copyright to Righthaven before it filed the suit. However, a document unearthed in this litigation showed that the copyright assignment was a sham and that Righthaven was merely agreeing to undertake the newspaper’s case at its own expense in exchange for a cut of the recovery.
“In dismissing Righthaven’s claim in its entirety, Chief Judge Hunt’s ruling decisively rejected the Righthaven business model of conveying rights to sue, alone, as a means to enforce copyrights,” said Laurence Pulgram, head of copyright litigation at Fenwick & West in San Francisco. “The ruling speaks for itself. The court rejected Righthaven’s claim that it owned sufficient rights in the copyright, stating that claim was ‘flagrantly false–to the point that the claim is disingenuous if not outright deceitful.'”
Judge Hunt also noted that “Righthaven has made multiple inaccurate and likely dishonest statements to the Court” and rejected Righthaven’s efforts to fix things after the fact with a May 9, 2011, amendment to the original assignment agreement. The judge expressed “doubt that these seemingly cosmetic adjustments change the nature and practical effect” of the invalid assignment.
As part of his ruling today, the judge ordered Righthaven to show why it should not be sanctioned for misrepresentations to the court. The Court permitted Democratic Underground’s counterclaim to continue against Stephens Media — the publisher of the Review Journal — allowing Democratic Underground to show that it did nothing wrong in allowing a user to post a five-sentence excerpt of a 50-sentence article.
“This kind of copyright trolling from Righthaven and Stephens Media has undermined free and open discussion on the Internet, scaring people out of sharing information and discussing the news of the day,” said Opsahl. “We hope this is the beginning of the end of this shameful litigation campaign.”
“To Righthaven and Stephens Media, the Court has issued a stinging rebuke,” added Pulgram. “For those desiring to resist the bullying of claims brought by pseudo-claimants of copyright interests, the ruling today represents a dramatic and far reaching victory.”
“We have to get to a place where every part of our society is cognizant of the kinds of threats that are out there, and empowered to take some common sense steps to counter that.” — Janet Napolitano
Homeland Security head, Janet Napolitano, continued her campus tour in a recent stop at NYU Law School where she gave a speech about the state of security as we approach the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and following the announced death of Osama bin Laden.
In the video below Napolitano lays out a sweeping surveillance agenda that includes citizen spies who have a mission of “shared responsibility” to thwart “Core” al-Qaeda, foreign groups “inspired by” al-Qaeda, as well as domestic “extremist” groups, which apparently include an increasing number of plots by U.S. citizens. She added that “there is no single portrait” of today’s potential terrorist, citing recruiting tactics “including Hip Hop videos, if you can imagine that.” And, naturally, cyberspace. Each of the four key ways that she stated as critical to Homeland Security’s mission will widen the Stasi-style network of unpaid employees of the State virtually deputized to spy on their neighbor in the private and public sector and issue reports to the DHS federal security matrix.
Strengthen the nation’s 72 fusion centers, which coordinate with local police, businesses, churches, universities and more in a cooperative effort to federalize local communities.
Continue the expanded use of Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR), initially used for IRS reporting and for businesses to alert government officials to large cash purchases at their establishments. The new initiative will cover all sectors that will share back to DHS.
3. Launch the National Terrorism Advisory System to replace the general color-coded terror alert system and set up a “base level” high risk, which will be augmented with specific messages. One component of this new system that she does not address is that it will be directed toward the individual by utilizing a text messaging system, as well as social networks to issue government statements and warnings (or propaganda).
Continue expansion of a national “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign that began with the NY Metropolitan Transit Authority, and kicked off at private businesses like Wal-Mart whereby people can receive ongoing messages via telescreens in government buildings, private businesses and public areas, then report on anyone for any reason without consequence for false reports.
She also predictably suggests that the counter-terrorism apparatus is a useful tool that can save citizens in need of rescue from natural disasters. More likely, it is the roll-out of soft martial law that will create a permanent state of fear, suspicion, false arrests, police brutality, and the end of the American republic in the same fashion that led to the end of every society that chose the path of security over freedom.
This weekend, dozens upon dozens of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world will be gathering behind closed doors at a luxury hotel in Switzerland. All of the participants are sworn to secrecy and swarms of heavily armed security guards are making sure that nobody unauthorized gets in. Decisions will be made at this meeting which will fundamentally change our future. The CEO of Amazon.com will be there, as will the head of Google, one of the co-founders of Facebook and one of the top executives from Microsoft. The president of the EU will be in attendance, along with the president of the World Bank, the president of the European Central Bank, the head of the World Trade Organization and the top commander of NATO. Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller will be there. Royalty from all over Europe will be attending as well. Past attendees have included several U.S. presidents, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Prince Charles, current British Prime Minister David Cameron, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and current Texas governor Rick Perry. You would think that these meetings would be something that the mainstream media would want to cover. But unfortunately, the mainstream media mostly ignores the Bilderberg Group meetings, and if they do cover them they just crack a bunch of jokes about “conspiracy theories” and they do their best to play down the importance of the meetings.
Under normal circumstances, a gathering of top executives from Google, Facebook and Microsoft would have the media salivating. So would a gathering of some of the most important international politicians on the globe.
So why doesn’t the mainstream media want to talk about the Bilderberg Group?
From June 9th to June 12th, over a hundred of the most powerful people on the planet will meet in utter secrecy and will discuss the future of the world.
All of the participants have been sworn not to reveal what is discussed.
Yet this doesn’t interest the mainstream media at all?
Every year since 1954, the Bilderberg Group has been holding these meetings. For years, even the existence of this group was denied. On U.S. talk shows anyone that dared to suggest that the Bilderberg Group existed was mocked as a “conspiracy theorist”.
Well, in recent years the alternative news has brought so much attention to the Bilderberg Group that everyone finally admits that, yes, the Bilderberg Group really does exist.
But now the mainstream media does everything they can to downplay the importance of the organization.
They suggest that anyone that believes that there is anything wrong with dozens of the most powerful people on the planet meeting in utter secrecy to discuss the future course of world events is “crazy”.
If the Bilderberg Group is so unimportant, then why would people like Bill Clinton, Prince Charles, David Cameron, Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, Bill Gates, Angela Merkel, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Rick Perry, David Rockefeller, Herman van Rompuy, Jean-Claude Trichet, Jeff Bezos, Chris R. Hughes, Eric Schmidt, Craig J. Mundie, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Richard Perle, Paul Volcker, Lawrence Summers, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden take the time to attend?
A full list of the “official attendees” of the Bilderberg Group in 2011 can be found here.
However, the truth is that the “unofficial attendees” are often even more interesting.
But the mainstream media acts like all of this is no big deal.
If they do decide to talk about the Bilderberg Group, they tend to crack jokes and make fun of “conspiracy theorists”.
The following are 10 really stupid things that the mainstream media has said about the Bilderberg Group in 2011….
#1CNBC: The 120 participants attend in a private capacity and, officially, they do not forge agreements over global economic policy.
#2BBC News: The gnashing of teeth over Bilderberg is ridiculous, says Times columnist David Aaronovitch. “It’s really an occasional supper club for the rich and powerful,” he argues.
#3Time Magazine: A vestige of the Cold War, the only drawback of the meeting could be that the Chinese and the Russians are still missing.
#4Forbes: Admittedly, it’s fascinating that some secret society, like the Wizard of Oz, choreographs events on a global stage. Puppet masters of the public’s fate. Conspiracy theories punctuate the otherwise mundane din of modern life, but riveting as it all appears, I’m not buying it. Would they? Absolutely. Could they? Implausible.
#5Fox News: But the secretive nature of the meetings, that first began in 1954, has sparked countless conspiracy theories by those who believe the group is trying to form a new world order of sorts.
#6CNBC: Its secrecy only serves to add fuel to the innumerate conspiracy theories that circulate around the event, with Internet message boards often channelling Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown and putting the “club” in the same bracket as the Freemasons and “Illuminati.”
#7BBC News: Secret cabals extend beyond the Bilderberg Group. The Illuminati, which derives from a 16th Century Bavarian secret society, is alleged to be an all powerful secret society, including US presidents, that has controlled major world events. The Freemasons – famous for their peculiar handshakes – is a secret fraternity society that has become more open in recent years after extensive criticism.
#8The Baltimore Sun: I suppose the Bilderberg Group, which was founded in 1954 at the Hotel Bilderberg in Holland, can supply us with a few thrills while we wait for Dan Brown to knock out another book. But a hotel in St. Moritz — especially one that features Teddy’s World for kids — doesn’t seem like the place to plot world domination. Shouldn’t they be meeting in a secret underground lair?
#9NBC Affiliate KETK: If you believe Mafia hitmen hired by Castro killed JFK, or President Clinton was involved in murder, or George W. Bush planned 9-11…then this story is for you. That’s because the real Masters of the Universe are gathered in St. Moritz to decide your future. It’s called the Bilderberg conference, and it means more to European reporters than anyone here.
#10BBC News: Some people are more susceptible than others to believing in wacky cabals, says Prof Chris French, of Goldsmith College’s psychology department. “It’s people who tend to be alienated by the mainstream, who feel powerless. They have a need to have a sense of control.”
Look, the truth is that dozens of the most powerful people on the planet are not meeting in utter secrecy just to play poker and smoke cigars.
They are having very real discussions that will have a very real influence on the direction of world events.
If that doesn’t fit in with how you prefer to view the world, that is too bad. The ultra-elite are going to keep on doing what they are doing whether you acknowledge them or not.
In fact, they would very much prefer for most people to keep on ignoring them because that makes it so much easier for them to achieve their goals.
Sadly, most Americans will completely ignore the Bilderberg Group in 2011 because the mainstream media is telling them that it is not an important event.
Presentation by Phil Giraldi at the Council for National Interest Press Briefing, “Questioning Military Aid to Israel”
“The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States.” That was the conclusion of a Pentagon administrative judge in 2006. One very good reason why Israel should not receive billions of dollars in military assistance annually is its espionage against the United States. Israel, a Socialist country where government and business work hand in hand, has obtained significant advantage by systematically stealing American technology with both military and civilian applications. US-developed technology is then reverse engineered and used by the Israelis to support their own exports with considerably reduced research and development costs, giving them a huge advantage against foreign competitors. Sometimes, when the technology is military in nature and winds up in the hands of a US adversary, the consequences can be serious. Israel has sold advanced weapons systems to China that incorporated technology developed by American companies—including the Python-3 air-to-air missile and the Delilah cruise missile. There is evidence that Tel Aviv has also stolen Patriot missile avionics to incorporate into its own Arrow system and that it used US technology obtained in its Lavi fighter development program—which was funded by the US taxpayer to the tune of $1.5 billion—to help the Bejing government develop their own J-10 fighter.
The reality of Israeli spying is indisputable. Israel always features prominently in the annual FBI report called “Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage.” The 2005 report, for example, states:
“Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel’s sizable armaments industry.”
It adds that Israel recruits spies, uses electronic methods, and carries out computer intrusion to gain the information. The 2005 report concluded that the thefts eroded US military advantage, enabling foreign powers to obtain expensive technologies that had taken years to develop.
A 1996 Defense Investigative Service report noted that Israel has great success stealing technology by exploiting the numerous co-production projects that it has with the Pentagon. “Placing Israeli nationals in key industries … is a technique utilized with great success.” A General Accounting Office (GAO) examination of espionage directed against American defense and security industries, also undertaken in 1996, described how Israeli citizens residing in the US had stolen sensitive technology to manufacture artillery gun tubes, obtained classified plans for a reconnaissance system, and passed sensitive aerospace designs to unauthorized users. An Israeli company was caught monitoring a Department of Defense telecommunications system to obtain classified information, while other Israeli entities targeted avionics, missile telemetry, aircraft communications, software systems, and advanced materials and coatings used in missile re-entry. The GAO concluded that Israel “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.”
In June 2006, a Pentagon administrative judge overruled an appeal by an Israeli who had been denied a security clearance, stating, “The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage.” More recently, FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported how many cases of Israeli espionage are dropped under orders from the Justice Department. He provides a “conservative estimate” of 125 worthwhile investigations into Israeli espionage involving both American citizens and Israelis that were stopped due to political pressure from above.
Two stories that have been reported in the Israeli media but are strangely absent from the news on this side of the Atlantic demonstrate exactly what is going on and what is at stake. The first report confirms Tel Aviv’s efforts to obtain US technology are ongoing. Stewart David Nozette, a US government scientist who was arrested in an October 2009 FBI sting operation after offering to spy for Israel, has been waiting in jail to go to trial on espionage charges. New documents in the case were presented in the Federal court in Washington last year. The documents confirm that Nozette was a paid consultant for Israeli Aerospace Industries and it is believed that he passed to them classified material in return for an estimated $225,000 in “consulting” fees. Examination of his computer by the FBI revealed that he was planning a “penetration of NASA” the US space agency and that he was also trying to crack into other scientists’ computers to obtain additional classified material. Other documents demonstrate that he was cooperating with two Israeli scientists who were administrators with Israeli Aerospace Industries, Yossi Weiss and Yossi Fishman. Nozette made several trips to Israel without reporting them, which he was required to do because of his high security clearance. The FBI reportedly also has incriminating letters and other documents that were obtained from his computer.
The second story relates to the pending sale of twenty F-35 fighter planes to Israel. The F-35 is one of the most advanced fighter planes in the world. The $130 million planes would be purchased with US military assistance money, which means they would effectively be a gift from the US taxpayer. But Israel is balking at the sale reportedly because it wants to install some of its own local content in the aircraft. The Pentagon has already made some concessions but is disinclined to grant approval for all the changes because to do so would require giving the Israelis full access to the plane’s advanced avionics and computer systems. Israel also wants to independently maintain the aircraft, which would also require access to all systems. It would be nice to think that the Pentagon wants to keep the maintenance in American hands to preserve jobs during these tough economic times, but the Defense Department has never cared about US workers before when the issue is Israel. The real reason for the standoff is that Lockheed-Martin and the Pentagon both know that Israel will steal whatever it can if it gains access. It would then use the technology to market its own products at a price below that of US defense contractors. The result would be a triple whammy for Uncle Sam: the expensive planes are given to Israel free, the technology is then stolen, and future sales vanish as our Israeli friends market their knock down versions of weapons systems reliant on the stolen technology.
I agree with Congressman Ron Paul when he says “We cannot afford to have ‘business as usual’ when we are bankrupt.” The US-Israel military aid entanglement—what we give, sell, and especially what is stolen—is unaffordable and unjustifiable.
The meaning of the term “antisemite” has significantly changed in recent years. There was a time when this term referred to those who despised Jews. Later, the term referred to those who promoted myths about a global Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. Today the term “antisemite” is used by the ruling elite to lambast human rights activists who advocate equal rights between Jews, Christians and Muslims, the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the vision of a common, democratic state for both Palestinians and Israelis. The word “antisemite”, which initially conveyed a negative and even sinister meaning, refers now to positive and highly commendable attitudes that can be carried with honour. One may lament this change of meaning, but one should remember that a word does not carry any particular meaning. It is merely a conventional symbol that refers to external contents. By convention, society could agree to name animosity towards Jews “xakaculca”, democracy “zbzb” and elefants “democracy”.
Advocacy for a just and democratic solution to the conflict in Israel/Palestine is grounded on international human rights norms, including the right to equality and the right of everyone to return to her country. These norms are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (articles 1, 2, 7, 13(2)) and the Preamble of the U.N. Charter. This advocacy also seeks its legitimacy from the constitutional principles that underpin the Western democratic order. According to current terminology, as imposed by those who mould public opinion, the word “antisemitism” now refers to human rights advocacy and to the struggle for democracy. There is no need to combat the new convention. One merely has to adjust to it.
Inasmuch as the term “antisemite” now refers to human rights advocates and radical democrats, I declare myself a radical antisemite.
The recent rash of civilian killings by NATO forces in occupied Afghanistan raises several basic questions: Why do US-NATO air and ground forces kill so many civilians, so persistently, over such long stretches of time, in regions throughout the country? Why have the number of civilians killed increased in the course of the conflict? Why do NATO-US airplanes continue to bomb civilian housing and village gatherings and ground troops indiscriminately assault homes and workshops? Why are the pleas of NATO collaborator President Karzai to desist in home bombings going unheeded? Finally, knowing that the killing of civilians, entire families including children, mothers and the elderly alienates the local population and breeds widespread and profound hostility, why do the NATO-US military refuse to alter their tactics and strategy?
Explanations and Excuses for Civilian Killings
Apologists for the NATO killings of civilians are as abundant as their explanations are lacking in substance. Pentagon spokespeople speak of “accidents”, “errors of war”, “collateral damage”; media pundits blame the guerrilla fighters for engaging in warfare in areas populated by civilians; neo-conservative academics and their “think tank” colleagues blame Islamic fundamentalism for converting villagers to their cause and “forcing” NATO to kill civilians in order to create martyrs and to use their deaths as a recruiting device.
These patently superficial explanations raise more questions than answers, or in some cases, inadvertently refute the justification for the entire war. The “error of war” argument begs a more basic question: what kind of war is NATO-US engaged in that constantly finds the guerrillas ‘melting’ into the population, while the occupation breaks down doors and perceives each and every household as a possible sanctuary, or outpost of the resistance? What kind of military relies on high altitude fighter planes and pilotless planes directed from distant command posts to attack population centers, in which commerce, farming and household economies engage the population? Clearly only an army of occupation, an imperial army, is willing to repeatedly sacrifice a multitude of civilians to kill a single or a few suspected combatants. Only a military operating in a hostile civilian environment is going to assume that lodged behind every door of every home there is an “enemy”; that every family is sheltering a combatant; that it is better to “go in shooting” than to risk a bullet in the gut. ‘Accidents of war’ do not ‘just happen’ for an entire decade, covering an entire country. The killing of civilians is a result of a war of imperial conquest against an entire people who resist the occupation in whatever form is appropriate to their circumstance. The pilots and ground troops recognize that they are a hostile alien force, whose presence is commanded from above by Generals and politicians dealing with abstract schemes of ‘terrorists-linked to Al Qaeda’ that have no relation to the dense web of personal bonds of solidarity between resistance fighters and civilians on the ground in Afghanistan.
Working from these abstract categories, the strategists label extended family compounds as ‘hideouts’; family gatherings as ‘terrorist meetings’; trade caravans as ‘guerilla smugglers’. The conflicting interests of the imperial politicians, generals, strategists and military officers on the one hand and the civilian population and resistance form an immense gap. The greater the number of civilian/combatants killed the faster the career advances for imperial officers –eager for promotions and prized pensions. “Success”, according to the imperial world view is measured internationally by the number of client rulers; nationally by the number of flags pinned to the war maps denoting ‘secure cities’; and locally by the body counts of massacred families.
On the ground, among the millions in intimate family and clan circles, where sorrow and anger co-exist, resistance in all of its manifold forms unfolds: Sacred vows and the profane pledges to ‘fight on’ grow out of the millions of daily humiliations affecting young and old, wives and husbands, in homes, markets, roads and by-ways. The hostile stare of a mother sheltering an infant from soldiers breaking into a bedroom is as telling as the crackle of gunfire of a sniper hidden in a mountain crevice.
A People’s War: Not a War on Terror
The killing of civilians is not “accidental”. The fundamental reason that so many civilians are killed, everyday, in every region for over a decade, is because the civilians and the combatants are indistinguishable. The image of the Afghan combatants as some kind of footloose professional bomb throwing terrorist is completely off the mark. Most Afghan fighters have families, cultivate farmland and tend herds; they raise families and attend mosque; they are ‘part-time civilians’ and part-time fighters. Only in the schematic minds of the “great strategists of war” in the Pentagon and NATO headquarters do such distinctions exist. Their deadly military mission to ‘save the people from terrorist fundamentalists’, a self-serving self-deception, is, in fact, a ladder up the military-political hierarchy. Each step up depends on waging a ‘just war’ to a successful conclusion.
The civilian-combatants are a mass popular phenomenon. How else can we explain their capacity to sustain armed resistance for over a decade, indeed, advancing with the passing of time? How can we explain their military success against the armed forces and advisers from 40 countries, including the US, Europe and a clutch of Afro-Asian-Latin American mercenaries? How can we explain the growing resistance despite suffering from military occupation, backed by the most advanced technological instruments of war? How can we explain the ebb of popular support for the war in the ‘Conqueror’s country and the growing number of recruits for the Resistance? The combatants have the loyalty of the Afghan people; they do not have to spend billions to buy the spurious ‘loyalties’ of mercenaries who can and have at any moment ‘turned their guns the other way’.
Weddings are bombed because combatants attend weddings – along with hundreds of relatives and friends. Villages are bombed because peasants cultivate crops, which contribute to the resistance. Civilian shelters become military sanctuaries. Afghanistan is polarized: the US military versus a people in arms. Faced with this reality, the real policy of NATO-Pentagon is to rule or/and ruin. Each bomb killing dozens of civilians in search of one sharpshooter deepens the isolation and discredit of the puppet ruler. “President” Karzai has seen his mission of building a ‘civilian base’ to reconstruct the country utterly discredited. His impotent complaints to NATO to cease bombing civilian targets fall on deaf ears; because the NATO command knows very well that ‘the civilians’ are the ‘deep resistance’ – the vast reserve of support for the combatants; their eyes and ears far excel all the electronic intelligence devices of the Occupier. Just as Karzai cannot convince the civilians to turn against the combatants so he cannot convince the imperial armies to stop bombing civilian homes and gatherings.
Washington knows that with each withdrawal (or retreat), the terrain, the towns and villages are occupied by resistance fighters who emerge from everywhere. The best that the US-NATO politicians can negotiate is a safe orderly departure. The best that they can hope is that their local collaborators do not defect or flee abroad prematurely turning over billions of dollars in military ordinance to the resistance. The best the collaborators can hope is that they will secure an exit route, a visa, an overseas account and a comfortable second home abroad. What is absolutely clear is that the US, NATO and its collaborators will have no role to play in the newly independent Afghanistan.
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James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). Petras’ most recent book is The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack. (Clear Day Books – A subsidiary of Clarity Books). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu. Read other articles by James, or visit James’s website.
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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The meaning of the term “antisemite” has significantly changed in recent years. There was a time when this term referred to those who despised Jews. Later, the term referred to those who promoted myths about a global Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. Today the term “antisemite” is used by the ruling elite to lambast human rights activists who advocate equal rights between Jews, Christians and Muslims, the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the vision of a common, democratic state for both Palestinians and Israelis. The word “antisemite”, which initially conveyed a negative and even sinister meaning, refers now to positive and highly commendable attitudes that can be carried with honour. One may lament this change of meaning, but one should remember that a word does not carry any particular meaning. It is merely a conventional symbol that refers to external contents. By convention, society could agree to name animosity towards Jews “xakaculca”, democracy “zbzb” and elefants “democracy”.
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