Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program is reaching an immunity stage when no armed intervention could stop it, the Guardian reported.
According to the British daily, Barak indicated that the Zionist state is closer than ever to authorizing a military action, but said there is an “extent of debate and disagreement within Israel’s political and military echelons over the merits of a military strike.”
Speaking at the Herzliya conference Thursday, Barak said that “the world today has no doubt that the Iranian military nuclear program … will enter the immunity stage, from which point the Iranian regime will be able to complete the program without any effective intervention and at its convenience.”
“Dealing with a nuclearised Iran will be far more complex, far more dangerous and far more costly in blood and money than stopping it today. In other words, those who say later may find that later is too late…” he added.
The Zionist Defense Minister further called upon the international community to intensify sanctions on the Islamic Republic so that it stops its nuclear program, and noted that if these did not achieve the desired effect, a different kind of action must be considered.
Sri Lanka has lashed out at the recent US-backed sanctions targeting the Iranian energy sector, stressing that the bans will inflict heavy losses on the country’s economy.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse said Tuesday that the island’s only oil refinery is designed to work with Iranian light crude and any disruption to oil imports from Iran deals a blow to Colombo.
He also noted that by imposing an embargo on the Iranian oil industry, the US and its Western allies “are not punishing Iran, but us… the small countries.”
On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions which seek to penalize countries importing Iran’s oil or doing transaction with the country’s central bank.
In their latest meeting in Brussels on January 23, EU foreign ministers also imposed new sanctions on Iran which include a ban on purchasing oil from the country, a freeze on the assets of Iran’s Central Bank within the EU, and a ban on the sale of diamonds, gold and other precious metals to Iran.
The United States, Israel and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used this pretext to impose four rounds of international embargos and a series of unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Iran has refuted the allegations, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran has a right to use nuclear technology for peaceful use.
Helping to disseminate Israeli talking points on Iran, The Guardian reports:
Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, has warned that tougher sanctions need to be imposed on Iran despite the unprecedented oil embargo agreed by the European Union earlier this week.
Although he conceded the EU measures would add significant pressure to the Tehran regime, Barak told Israel Radio the embargo was unlikely to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. “In my opinion, we are not there yet,” he said.
His comments followed those on Monday by the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in response to the EU decision. Netanyahu warned party colleagues the impact of the embargo was unknown but it was a step in the right direction‚ hinting that he believed further measures would be needed.
“Very strong and quick pressure on Iran is necessary,” he said. “Sanctions will have to be evaluated on the basis of results. As of today, Iran is continuing to produce nuclear weapons without hindrance.”
As Robert Mitchum once said, “There just isn’t any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.”
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who along with his wife, has donated $10 million dollars in recent weeks to Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, has said that he wishes he had served in the Israeli army instead of the US military and that he wants his son to grow up to “be a sniper for the IDF.”
Gingrich himself has also doubled down on anti-Palestinian comments, asserting during a CNN debate last night that they were “invented” in the 1970s.
Adelson owns a newspaper in Israel, ‘Israel HaYom,’ that backs conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and adamantly opposes any peace settlement with the Palestinians.
But while Adelson and Gingrich have bonded on the issue of a hawkish Mideast policy, especially over the threat of a nuclear Iran, some of the casino mogul’s comments could prove embarrassing.
In a talk to an Israeli group in July, 2010, Adelson said he wished he had served in the Israeli Army rather the U.S. military–and that he hoped his young son will come back to Israel and “be a sniper for the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. (YouTube video of speech)
“I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF … our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he’ll come back– his hobby is shooting – and he’ll come back and be a sniper for the IDF,” Adelson said at the event.
“All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart,” he said toward the end of his talk.
Adelson is a major backer of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has been a major factor in pushing for confrontation with Iran. His support for Gingrich has given rise to speculation that the latter’s ever more strident anti-Palestinian positions including that Palestinians are an “invented people” are inspired by that support.
Palestinians “invented” in the 1970s, says Gingrich
In last night’s Republican candidates debate in Florida, Gingrich doubled down on his comments that the Palestinians were an “invented people” alleging that they were “invented” as recently as the 1970s. He also called on Palestinians to give up their right of return.
BLITZER: Speaker Gingrich, you got into a little hot water when you said the Palestinians were an invented people.
GINGRICH:It was technically an invention of the late 1970s, and it was clearly so. Prior to that, they were Arabs. Many of them were either Syrian, Lebanese, or Egyptian, or Jordanian.
There are a couple of simple things here. There were 11 rockets fired into Israel in November. Now, imagine in Duvall County that 11 rockets hit from your neighbor. How many of you would be for a peace process and how many of you would say, you know, that looks like an act of war.
You have leadership unequivocally, and Governor Romney is exactly right, the leadership of Hamas says, not a single Jew will remain. We aren’t having a peace negotiation then. This is war by another form.
My goal for the Palestinian people would be to live in peace, to live in prosperity, to have the dignity of a state, to have freedom. and they can achieve it any morning they are prepared to say Israel has a right to exist, we give up the right to return, and we recognize that we’re going to live side-by-side, now let’s work together to create mutual prosperity.
And you could in five years dramatically improve the quality of life of every Palestinian. But the political leadership would never tolerate that. And that’s why we’re in a continuous state of war where Obama undermines the Israelis.
On the first day that I’m president, if I do become president, I will sign an executive order directing the State Department to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to send the signal we’re with Israel.
The United States has urged Pakistan to abandon the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project promising Washington will help Islamabad with the consequences of the decision.
Spokeswoman of the US State Department Victoria Nuland said on Friday that Pakistan was “one of the countries that we’re working with, primarily from the US Embassy,” to stop buying gas from Iran.
On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions against Iran, which seek to penalize foreign institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank and oil sector.
“We’re talking to countries around the world about the implications of this legislation and our efforts to cut global dependence on Iran,” Nuland added.
Asked if Washington is encouraging Pakistan to buy cheaper gas from US companies, she said, “I don’t have anything specific on where those conversations are leading, but we are talking about all kinds of diversification.”
An article published by the International Herald Tribune on Wednesday noted that Washington is trying to lure Islamabad away from the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project by offering cheaper gas to the country.
The article added that the US has stepped up efforts to lobby Pakistan to abandon not only the IP gas pipeline project, but also liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchases from its western neighbor in return for cheaper gas from US.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office announced on Thursday that the gas pipeline project between the country and Iran did not come under the sanctions imposed on Tehran because of its nuclear program.
“Pakistan is committed to the Pak-Iran gas pipeline and sanctions do not cover this project,” Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit added.
The multi-billion-dollar Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline aims to export a daily amount of 21.5 million cubic meters (or 8.7 billion cubic meters per year) of Iranian natural gas to Pakistan.
Maximum daily gas transfer capacity of the 56-inch pipeline which runs over 900 km of Iran’s soil from Asalouyeh in Bushehr Province to the city of Iranshahr in Sistan and Baluchestan Province has been given at 110 million cubic meters.
Iran has already constructed more than 900 kilometers of the pipeline on its soil.
US President Barack Obama satisfied Jewish supporters in his State of the Union address on Tuesday his with his administration’s determination to “prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and will take no options off the table to achieve that goal”.
“A peaceful resolution of the Iran nuclear dispute is still possible if Iran changes course and meets international obligations,” Obama said in a speech largely devoted to the US economy.
He addressed Syrian President Bashar Assad saying Assad would discover that “forces of change cannot be reversed.”
The US President voiced his commitment to the Zionist entity’s security something that would soothes his Jewish supporters.
“Our ironclad commitment to Israel’s security has meant the closest cooperation between our countries in history,” Obama stated.
Obama’s Israel commitment lauded
U.S. Jewish democrats on Wednesday praised Obama’s address, saying that it was an endorsement of ‘Jewish Values’.
In a statement released by the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) in response to his speech, the NJDC said that the “iron-clad” commitment to Israeli security, and the guarantee that the Obama administration was determined to prevent Iran from obtaining ‘nuclear weapons’ expressed in the address, “speak volumes” about Obama’s record as President.
“On two foreign policy issues of special concern to the American Jewish community, Israel and Iran, President Obama’s words tonight speak volumes,” the statement said.
Overall, they said, his speech reflected “the policy concerns of the vast majority of American Jews. We thank and congratulate the President for this positive, proactive approach to addressing those concerns in tonight’s State of the Union Address.”
For nearly a month, a group of foreign policy researcher-bloggers at the Center for American Progress (CAP), an influential liberal think tank based in Washington DC, have faced an unrelenting smear campaign. The smears, initiated by former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, focused on a few sardonic tweets by CAP bloggers that raised the ire of the pro-Israel and neoconservative political community. One tweet that included the term “Israel Firster” received special attention.
“This kind of demagoguery, anti-Israel invective, and in some cases actual hate speech, is absolutely wrong whether it comes from the extreme Right or Left, and like cancer, it has to be cut out before it metastasizes and destroys the whole body,” Block complained to Jennifer Rubin, a neoconservative columnist for the Washington Post who has accused CAP of “anti-Semitism” and who was recently scolded by the paper’s ombudsman for endorsing a screed advocating the slaughter of Palestinians.
Block’s campaign was transparently designed to force the Democratic establishment to disown a group of researchers who had generated an effective and factually solid counter narrative to the case for a military strike on Iran. And it was well orchestrated, receiving robust and sustained amplification from the right-wing of the pro-Israel community. By January 19, after a who’s who of neoconservative writers and right-leaning Jewish American groups called for the firing of the researchers, and weeks after the small handful of “controversial” tweets had been deleted and apologized for, the smears graduated onto the pages of the Washington Post.
A report by Washington Post staff writer Peter Wallsten summarized the attacks on CAP in a relatively uncritical fashion. In the original edition of the story (uploaded here to Josh Block’s Scribd account), Wallsten featured remarks by Jeffrey Herf, whom he presented as an academic expert on anti-Semitism:
“Israel Firsters” is a point of disagreement.CAP officials and the think tank’s critics agree that the term is over the line. University of Maryland historian Jeffrey Herf, who has published books on anti-Semitism, said the phrase represented a “classic theme of modern anti-Semitism.” He said the suggestion of Jewish “dual loyalty,” along with the accusation that AIPAC was pushing for war with Iran, hearkened back to the early days of World War II, when certain people accused the U.S. government of entering the war as a response to powerful Jewish interests.
“This kind of nonsense is all over the place on the Internet,” Herf said. “The fact that some of this is showing up on the Center for American Progress Web site makes it important.”
In a lengthy blog post at the Atlantic, former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg reproduced the Washington Post’s Herf quote to buttress his attempts to prove that the term “Israel Firster” — an accusation he faces with increasing frequency — is anti-Semitic, and that the bloggers at CAP and a wide array of critics of Israel might therefore be driven by the irrational hatred of Jews.
Unfortunately for the Washington Post and Goldberg, Herf’s statement was utterly false: The term “Israel Firster” never appeared on CAP’s website as he claimed — it appeared in a small handful of Tweets out of a body of thousands published on the personal Twitter account of a blogger, Zaid Jilani, who recently quit the think tank. Further, Herf is not an academically recognized expert on anti-Semitism. He has published two books on Nazi propaganda; his University of Maryland bio states that Herf “specializ[es] in twentieth century Germany.”
In 2006, Herf joined a clique of hawkish neoliberal intellectuals to draft the Euston Manifesto, a full-throated endorsement of George W. Bush’s “war on terror” which claimed the Islamic Republic of Iran sought to carry out “a second Holocaust.” More recently, Herf joined Alan Dershowitz, Caroline Glick, John Bolton, Joe Lieberman and other ideologues as a talking head in the right-wing pro-Israel propaganda documentary, “Unmasked: Judeophobia and the Threat to Civilization.” In leveling false innuendo at CAP and its employees, Herf apparently allowed his ideological zealotry to get the best of him.
Soon after Herf’s quote appeared in Wallsten’s article, it quickly and mysterious disappeared from the article’s online version — and with no acknowledgement by Wallsten or the Post’s editors. The quiet scrubbing of the quote seemed like a tacit admission by the Washington Post that the two aforementioned points were true: Herf’s statement was false, and Herf was not an academically credible or intellectually objective scholar of anti-Semitism. The task of explaining why the paper’s editors did not require Wallsten to publicly acknowledge the erroneous statement’s removal might ultimately fall to Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton. Goldberg, for his part, still features the disappeared, discredited quote on his blog (and the link Goldberg provides to the Washington Post article does not even work).
Curiously, Herf gave voice to attacks on CAP before he was quoted by the Washington Post. On December 28, Herf featured prominently in a hit piece published at the right-wing Jerusalem Post by neoconservative activist Benjamin Weinthal. Weinthal’s article included a segment that read almost like a mimeograph of the passage that had mysteriously disappeared from Wallsten’s article:
In a telephone conversation with the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, University of Maryland historian Jeffrey Herf, who has authored books on anti-Semitism, said the phrase “Israel firsters” is “dangerous.” The notion of “Israel firsters” “delegitimizes support for Israel” and stokes the “dual-loyalty” charge against American Jews, he said.
The dual-loyalty conspiracy theory existed on “the far Left and far Right of American politics but has not yet seeped into the center of American politics,” Herf said.
Instead of performing a diligent search for a credible, academically renowned scholar of anti-Semitism, Wallsten apparently borrowed his source from Weinthal, a neocon zealot who has spent weeks crusading against CAP’s foreign policy research team. If Wallsten did not share Weinthal’s ulterior ideological motives, he was incredibly lazy.
Though Weinthal poses as a “correspondent” for the Jerusalem Post, he is in fact a research fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), an ultra-hawkish think tank at the center
of the push for American military intervention in Iran.
Underlining the incestuous right-wing nature of the smear campaign against CAP, another FDD fellow, James Kirchick, took to the Israeli daily Haaretz to accuse Jilani and other left-wing writers of parroting the rhetoric of the long-deceased anti-Semitic conspiracist Willis Carto by using the term “Israel firster” (I’m sure Jilani was cutting and pasting Carto’s old newsletters directly into his Twitter postings). Meanwhile, Kirchick oversaw an off-the-record email listserv called the Freedom Community that provided a private forum for neoconservative activists and writers to devise strategy and talking points. Josh Block, a Freedom Community member, initiated the smear campaign against CAP by shopping his trove of “research” to fellow email list members, who then disseminated the information in the form of op-eds and blog posts.
FDD’s leadership bears a longstanding grudge against the CAP bloggers it is now targeting. CAP researcher Eli Clifton, who produced a damaging report on FDD’s funding sources and who reported that the Islamophobic mass killer Anders Breivik cited FDD in his manifesto, is a particular nuisance to the think tank. FDD also has an axe to grind with Ali Gharib, who revealed in December 2010 (before CAP hired him) that FDD held a fundraiser at the Pakistani ambassador to the US’s house without bothering to tell the embassy it was hosting a hawkish conference on Iran where money was raised for FDD. Given the damaging stories Clifton and Gharib produced about FDD, is there any wonder the think tank provided encouragement and promotion for Weinthal and Kirchick’s attacks?
While Weinthal and Kirchick launched their attacks from the shores of the neocon right, Jeffrey Goldberg waded into the campaign against CAP under the cover of mainstream Beltway respectability. In his bid to legitimize the smears, however, Goldberg (who has deceptively accused me of “quote fabrication”) wound up hanging his argument on an erroneous quote that has since been scrubbed by its original source. Unless he is comfortable hosting a false and now non-existent quote on his blog, Goldberg might consider issuing a correction.
This is my recent piece on Gingrich and Adelson. After Gingrich’s major victory in South Carolina, this connection is very significant, but the mainstream media barely touches on the Israel aspect.
Gingrich’s Major Backer Arch-Zionist Sheldon Adelson
Gingrich’s faltering presidential campaign was completely resuscitated by a 5 million donation from Las Vegas casino king and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson. (According to Wikipedia, Adelson is currently the 8th wealthiest American and 16th wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $23.3 billion.) Rising from the ashes, Gingrich now has won the South Carolina primary and has a decent chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee.
Adelson has been the major backer of Gingrich for some time. A Washington Post article on the Adelson-Gingrich connection (though kept out of the first section of the paper) states: “Perhaps no other major presidential candidate in recent times has had his fortunes based so squarely on the contributions of a single donor, as Gingrich has on Adelson, who has spent millions in support of Gingrich and his causes over the past five years.”
As the Washington Post article points out, Adelson and his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, have spent time and money lobbying for a bill to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Gingrich has promised that his first executive order as president would be the embassy move.
In 2009, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which is a hard-line Zionist group that wants Israel to retain the occupied territories and expand the Jewish settlements, presented Adelson its most distinguished and historic award, the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion for outstanding achievement in Zionism. His wife received the Louis D. Brandeis Award. The couple now have their names on one of ZOA’s major awards, the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award.
Adelson is intimately involved in Israeli politics. Since 2007, Adelson has owned a daily newspaper in Israel called Israel Hayom, which distributed free of charge, has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the country. The newspaper is ultra-supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to whom Adelson is a close ideological ally and personal friend. The newspaper also has been doing much to promote Gingrich.
It should be recalled that Gingrich was so extreme as to recently say that the Palestinians are an “invented people.” Shortly thereafter, Adelson said that Gingrich had been completely correct. In an address at a Hanukkah celebration in Israel for hundreds of youths visiting that country as part of the Taglit Birthright (Birthright Israel) program (which Adelson funds), Adelson stated: “Read the history of those who call themselves Palestinians, and you will hear why [Newt] Gingrich said recently that the Palestinians are an invented people. There are a number of Palestinians who will recognize the truth of this statement.” He appealed to the Jewish youths to “speak in support of Israel” when they returned to their countries.
If Israel is the “central value” of Adelson’s life (which certainly appears to be true), he is one Jewish American who cannot be accused of having a “dual loyalty.” His loyalty is truly singular!
Like most American conservatives, Gingrich purports to identify with the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, but catering to a person with a view such as Adelson’s puts Gingrich in a position completely opposite to that of George Washington, who, in his Farewell Address of 1796, warned Americans of the grave danger of those who had a “passionate attachment” to a foreign country.
Even the Washington Post’s article on Adelson was not in the major, news section of the paper. And there was no follow up on the NBC program to Gringrich’s response about his major patron’s fundamental concern being Israel—“the central value of his life.” The fact of the matter is that the impact of the Israel lobby on American politics is a taboo issue in the United States mainstream.
When the Republican presidential candidates (Ron Paul being the exception) have talked about foreign policy, it often seems that they are running for the top spot in the Israeli Likud Party, rather than President of the United States of America. Consequently, it is difficult for any candidate to outdo his competitors. However, Sheldon Adelson’s financial backing of Gingrich would seem to indicate that he is the best candidate from the standpoint of the Israeli Right. And Gingrich might go a little farther than his competitors since he even suggests clemency for Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
Adelson’s money enabled Gingrich to win South Carolina, and Adelson could put much more into Gingrich’s campaign. With such financial support, Gingrich might be able to gain the Republican presidential nomination, but it would seem that he has too much baggage to actually defeat Obama, at least this is the conventional wisdom–though stranger things have happened. Nonetheless, having pro-Israel Republican candidates led by Gingrich pushes Obama in a more pro-Israel direction, which entails a harder US line toward Iran. No matter what happens in the US presidential election, therefore, US Middle East policy will be improved from the Likudnik perspective. And this is Sheldon Adelson’s objective.
The government of Greece has submitted its request to the European Union to ease the forthcoming ban on importing Iran’s oil by EU member states.
The EU decision to ban Iran’s oil imports comes after US President Barack Obama signed into law on December 31, 2011, new sanctions which aim to penalize other countries for dealing with Iran’s Central Bank or importing the country’s crude oil, Antiwar website reported.
The EU is expected to hold its summit meeting on Monday, January 23, to make a final decision on proposed embargo on Iran’s oil exports.
EU representatives failed in their latest meeting in Brussels on Thursday to reach an agreement on the details of a planned embargo on Iran’s oil exports and a final decision on the ban is to be raised at the meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday.
The EU members, however, remain divided over several issues, primarily the length of a planned grace period that would allow states heavily dependent on Iranian oil to fulfill existing contracts for a period after the ban went into place.
Some EU members are seeking grace periods of between one and 12 months to allow them to find alternative supplies. Greece, which depends heavily on Iranian crude, is pushing for the longest delay while Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany say they need a maximum period of three months.
EU governments will be prohibited from making new contracts with Iran from the time the embargo is imposed, but can purchase crude previously contracted. This exemption will end on July 1, 2012.
EU countries buy about 500,000 barrels per day of Iran’s oil, making the Union one of the largest markets for Iranian crude.
Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper recently professed some biased opinions, opinions that may well be argued to be dangerous, in an interview with the CBC.1
Harper spoke of overwhelming evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. No evidence was provided.
That Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes caused Harper to respond, “I think there is absolutely no doubt they are lying. Absolutely no doubt.” The words “I think” and “absolutely no doubt” are linguistically at loggerheads. “I think” means “to have a belief or opinion”; beliefs and opinions imply uncertainty. They imply possibility of being wrong. They do not imply “absolutely no doubt.”
As for lying, there is a well-known saying that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks.”2 Then again, one might argue who knows a liar better than another liar? To which one might retort, “How do you know the liar is not lying about someone being a liar?”
The state media CBC did not aid matters with its own piece of disinformation: “An IAEA report last fall said some of Iran’s clandestine activities could be for no other reason than a nuclear weapons program.” The IAEA report has been debunked by many. For example, the IAEA inspector never worked on nuclear weapons.3 Also,
The IAEA claim that a foreign scientist – identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko – had been involved in building the alleged containment chamber has now been denied firmly by Danilenko himself…4
The well-disinformed Harper reply to the CBC disinformation (why can a state media funded to the tune of $1.7 billion annually not get the story and facts right when a small independent internet newsletter with no budget can? What does it indicate?): “And that, I think, is just beyond dispute at this point.” [italics added] So thinks Harper. Harper added more opinion: “I think the only dispute is how far advanced it is.” [italics added]
Harper opined, “I’ve watched and listened to what the leadership in the Iranian regime says, and it frightens me.” First, the language is demonizing. How would Harper respond if his government were referred to as a “regime”? Second, as for frightening, how about a leaked October 2003 European Commission poll of 500 people from each of the EU’s member nations (n=7,500) who were presented a list of 15 nations and asked: “tell me if in your opinion it presents or not a threat to peace in the world.” The choice of 59 percent was Israel as the top threat to world peace.5
On this there is no dispute: Israel is in possession of nuclear weapons. Israel has launched plenty of wars with its neighbors. Why is the Israeli regime not frightening? Yet Israel is the country that Harper said would always have a “steadfast friend” in a Canadian Conservative government.
Harper opines again, “In my judgment, these are people who have a particular, you know, a fanatically religious worldview, and their statements imply to me no hesitation about using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes. And … I think that’s what makes this regime in Iran particularly dangerous.” [italics added]
How is that glass house doing? To talk about “a fanatically religious worldview” when you are allied with hard-Right Christian fundamentalism comes across as chutzpah.6
Harper contends, “While there’s, I think, a growing belief of a number of governments that my assessment is essentially correct, I think there’s still big uncertainty about what exactly to do.” [italics added]
Since Harper is so certain about the danger posed by Iran and its having nuclear weapons, what was Harper’s position on Iraq possessing weapons-of-mass-destruction?
It is inherently dangerous to allow a country such as Iraq to retain weapons of mass destruction, particularly in light of its past aggressive behaviour. If the world community fails to disarm Iraq, we fear that other rogue states will be encouraged to believe that they too can have these most deadly of weapons to systematically defy international resolutions and that the world will do nothing to stop them.7
Another time Harper said, “I don’t know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.”8
Today Iraq is a destroyed country, millions are refugees, upwards of 600,000 people were killed by a US-led invasion supported by Harper — despite his not knowing all the facts. Is this the credibility people would put their faith in?
Where were the background checks done by CBC News and their ace reporter Peter Mansbridge? What of the duty to report honestly and without prejudice? After all there is a good case that disinformation is a crime against humanity and a crime against peace.9
Stephen Harper supporting the American invasion of Iraq, House of Commons, March 20, 2003. Accessed at In Their Own Words.
Stephen Harper, Report Newsmagazine, March 25th 2002. As it turned out, Harper wasn’t the only one who didn’t know all the facts. Accessed at In Their Own Words.
Defenders of the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, which declares the entire world to be a “battlefield” against terrorism and authorizes the U.S. military to detain indefinitely anyone suspected of being a terrorism supporter, have claimed that the White House will only use its new power carefully and with due process. Opponents note that the White House has never hesitated to use any new authority, no matter how outrageous, and that the trend of law enforcement and security agencies is to expand on powers granted, not to rein them in or limit them.
The track record of the Obama administration on civil liberties is particularly bad, as it has broadened its definition of war powers, reneged on its promise to close Guantanamo Prison, and supported numerous dubious terrorism prosecutions. It has also become adept at silencing critics through the repeated exploitation of the state-secrets privilege, which effectively dismisses any case accusing the government of abuse or malfeasance.
So let us accept that the government now has the power to send a team of military police to anyone’s home in any state in the Union and can demand that that person surrender without any recourse to a lawyer or judicial due process. The military can then detain the individual incommunicado for any length of time and can presumably send him to Guantanamo for special confinement, claiming that the reason for the detention is support of terrorism, which can be almost anything, including a letter to the editor of the local paper complaining about the goonery of the Transportation Security Administration. Once in detention, the suspect only has such options as are granted to him by the military. He cannot see a lawyer, cannot invoke habeas corpus or other constitutional privileges, cannot confront any witnesses against him, and cannot challenge any information prejudicial to him even if it is hearsay or fabricated. In other words, the accused can be arrested for no reason and held indefinitely without any protections that enable him to push back against being detained. Most people would consider a criminal justice system that permits such detention ipso facto a police state.
Now let us accept for a moment that the White House and Justice Department are well-intentioned and will not use their newfound authority to detain anyone in a questionable fashion. The expanded powers will only be used to detain foreign terrorists who are caught in flagrante, more or less. That would be fine, perhaps, but for one small problem. Because the definition of a terrorism supporter has become enormously elastic, it can be stretched to include anything. If the whole world has become a battlefield, speaking out or acting against powerful vested interests can be dangerous because those interests can turn around and exploit the system to label one a terrorist. And once you are labeled a terrorist, your constitutional rights vanish and you might as well sit around and wait for that knock on the door — or, rather, for the door to be kicked in.
That is what House Resolution 3131 is all about. It is titled, in part, “To direct the secretary of state to submit a report on whether any support organization that participated in the planning or execution of the recent Gaza flotilla attempt should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization….” The bill then goes on to assert that the two flotillas in 2010 and 2011 opposing Israel’s blockade of Gaza were terrorist actions. But the only problem is that it relies on information from the Israeli Intelligence and Information Center to do so, meaning that Congress is deferring to a foreign government organization to make a judgment that directly impacts that selfsame government. And the Israelis are not shy about calling someone a terrorist, if it suits the narrative they are trying to present. They describe a Turkish organization involved in the first flotilla in 2010, known by its acronym IHH, as linked to al-Qaeda and Hamas based on evidence that no one else in the world accepts, apart from Congress, that is. The Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara was clearly aiming to take on the Israeli navy, armed to the teeth with “100 metal rods, 200 knives, 50 wooden clubs, and a telescopic sight for a gun.” In reality, the rods were torn from the ships rails when the heavily armed Israeli commandos boarded at night from helicopters. The knives were pocket knives and utility knives from the vessel’s galley, and the clubs were broken from deck chairs to repel the attackers. I will not speculate on the telescopic sight, but there was not a real weapon anywhere on board. The Israelis killed nine Turks, shooting several in the head at close range, including an American citizen. Congress has yet to express its outrage at the Israeli action — quite the contrary — and Hillary Clinton’s State Department has been silent, apart from warning the subsequent 2011 flotilla that the American embassy would do nothing to protect U.S. citizens aboard.
Regarding the second flotilla of July 2011, HR 3131 goes on to state that “Greek authorities boarded ships and took into custody several individuals, including Captain John Klusmire of the ship Audacity of Hope as it violated Greek Coast Guard orders by setting sail without permission.” Klusmire is a U.S. citizen who was not breaking any American law, it should be noted. He was later released by the Greek authorities.
The bill concludes with its “Sense of Congress,” surely an oxymoron if there ever was one: “the secretary of state shall submit … a report on whether any support organization that participated in the planning or execution of the recent Gaza flotilla attempt should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization … [to] include information on … the sources of any logistical, technical, or financial support for the Gaza flotilla ships, including the Audacity of Hope, that were to set sail from Greece on July 1, 2011.”
I personally know a number of organizations that provided material or financial support to one or both of the Gaza flotillas. I also personally know that none of those organizations support violence against the state of Israel and that the people behind them believed then and now that they were exercising their constitutional rights in speaking out and acting nonviolently against what they and most of the world regard as an illegal and immoral blockade of Gaza. But, if the bill passes in Congress, a bureaucrat in the U.S. Department of State will now be able to call those people and their associated groups “terrorists,” and Hillary Clinton will be able to confirm that judgment to Congress. Next step is the MPs at the door.
If people cannot see what a slippery slope all of this is, they not thinking very clearly. HR 3131 is admittedly still sitting in congressional committee, but it has some very powerful sponsors, including Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, who heads the Foreign Affairs Committee and is a rabid supporter of Israel. The bill not only indicts whole groups of people exercising their constitutional rights and labels them “terrorists,” it even names one American who was, at the time, breaking no U.S. law. Klusmire’s only crime was to “set sail without permission” — in Greece. It was clearly a bogus charge manufactured to suit by a vulnerable Greek government desperately needing international loans and under pressure from the United States and Israel.
Klusmire’s real crime was to oppose a powerful interest group, the Israel Lobby. To do so these days is to invite a charge of terrorism support with the option of being arrested by the Pentagon and locked up somewhere at the pleasure of the president of the United States. How low have we sunk, Mr. Obama? You portray yourself as a man of honor and a defender of constitutionalism, but you have opened the gates to lawlessness and authoritarian rule. And even if you are as benign as you depict yourself, you have provided the legal tools for those who might follow you — the Gingriches, the Perrys, the Bachmanns, and the Santorums — to possibly do much, much worse.
By Maryanne DemasiMaryanne Demasi | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2026
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
“No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines,” Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America’s overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I’ve spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won’t save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn’t get to say “trust me” the way many doctors do. “I need to prove claims with real data.”
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