Non-Aligned Movement: IAEA could die saving Israel
Press TV – September 16, 2010
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) warns that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should not protect nuclear-armed Israel at the organization’s own cost.
The movement, which dissociates itself from major superpowers, used the final day of an IAEA meeting in Vienna to highlight Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, a Press TV’s correspondent reported on Thursday.
The 118-member movement expressed its “grave concern over the selective approach of the IAEA towards the issue of the Israeli nuclear capabilities.”
This attitude “puts at stake the viability of the IAEA as an independent technical body,” NAM said.
Tel Aviv is believed to have manufactured scores of nuclear warheads since 1958, a year after IAEA’s inception.
The organization, however, has so far refused to ratify a resolution against Israel’s nuclear activities and has simply sufficed to call on Tel Aviv to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to “place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards.”
Former US President Jimmy Carter has attested to the existence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal, which he said includes between 200 to 300 warheads. Decades of recurrent reporting and aerial footage have also confirmed the possession.
NAM also underlined that “stability and security cannot be achieved in a region, where a massive imbalance of military capabilities is maintained systematically.”
The disproportionate distribution of armed power “allows one party in the region…to threaten” others, it added, referring to Israel.
Nam referred to the situation as “unacceptable” and urged that it be addressed “very seriously” so an end can be put to it.
Israel maintains a policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” in line with which it neither confirms nor denies having nuclear armaments.
Israel, backed by the US, has also so far evaded punitive measures.
Efforts by Arab states and other countries caused an NPT review conference in May to issue a statement, highlighting the importance of Tel Aviv’s acceding to the treaty and its allowing the IAEA to fully inspect its nuclear sites.
In the closing chapters of the IAEA meeting, the European Union staged support for Washington’s stance and asked the Arab countries not to table any further such resolutions.
Who Rules America?
By James Petras – January 13, 2007
In the broadest and deepest sense, understanding how the US political system functions, the decisions of war and peace are taken, who gets what, how and why, requires that we address the question of ‘Who rules America?’ In tackling the question of ‘ruling’ one needs to clarify a great deal of misunderstandings, particularly the confusion between those who make governmental decisions and the socio-economic institutional parameters which define the interests to be served. ‘Ruling’ is exacting: it defines the ‘rules’ to be followed by the political and administrative decision-makers in formulating budgetary expenditures, taxes, labor and social legislation, trade policy, military and strategic questions of war and peace. The ‘rules’ are established, modified and adjusted according to the specific composition of the leading sectors of a ruling class (RC). Rules change with shifts in power within the ruling class. Shifts in power can reflect the internal dynamics of an economy or the changing position of economic sectors in the world economy, particularly the rise and decline of economic competitors.
The ‘rules’ imposed by one economic sector of the RC at a time of favorable conditions in the world economy, will be altered as new dominant economic sectors emerge and unfavorable external conditions weaken the former dominant economic sectors. As we shall describe below the relative and absolute decline of the US manufacturing sector is directly related to the rise of a multidimensional ‘financial sector’ and to the greater competitiveness of other manufacturing countries. The result is an accelerating process of liberalization of the economy favored by the ascending financial sectors. Liberalization in pursuit of unregulated flows of investments, buyouts, acquisitions and trade increases the financial sector’s profits, commissions, incomes and bonuses. Liberalization facilitates the financial sector’s acquisition of assets. The declining competitiveness of the older ruling class manufacturing sector dependent on statist protectionism and subsidies leads to ‘rear-guard’ policies, attempting to fashion an unwieldy policy of liberalization abroad and protectionism at home.
The answer to the question of who rules depends on specifying the historical moment and place on the world economy. The answer is complicated by the fact that shifts among ‘sectors’ of the ruling class involves a prolonged ‘transitional period.’ During this period declining and ascending sectors may intermingle and the class members of declining sectors ‘convert’ to the rising sector. Hence, while power between economic sectors may change, the leading class groupings may not lose out or decline. They merely shift their investments and adapt to the new and more lucrative opportunities created by the ascending sector.
For example, while the US manufacturing sector has declined relative to ‘finance capital,’ many of the major investment institutions have shifted to the new financial ‘growth sectors.’ Concomitantly, the converted sectors of the ruling class will shift their policies toward greater liberalization and deregulation, thus severely weakening the rear-guard demands of the uncompetitive manufacturing sector. Equally important within the declining economic sectors of the RC, drastic structural changes may ensue, to regain profitable returns and retain influence and power. Foremost of these changes is relocation of production overseas to low wage, low tax, non-union locations, the introduction of IT technology designed to reduce labor costs and increase productivity, and diversification of economic activity to incorporate lucrative financial ‘services’.
For example General Electric has moved from manufacturing toward financial services, relocated labor intensive activity off-shore and computerized operations. Through these moves the distinction between ‘manufacturing’ and financial capital has been made obsolete in describing the ‘ruling class’.
To the degree that older manufacturing capitalists retain any economic and political weight in the RC, they have done so via sub-contracting overseas to Asia and Mexico (General Motors/Ford), invested in overseas plants to capture foreign markets, or have been converted in large part into commercial and importing operations (shoes, textiles, toys, electronics and computer chips).
Locally based manufacturers which remain in the RC are largely found among military contractors living off the largesse of state spending and depending on the political support of congressional and trade union officials, eager to secure employment for a shrinking manufacturing labor force.
During this transitional period of rapid and all-encompassing changes in the ruling class, enormous financial opportunities have opened up throughout the world. As a result of political tensions within the ‘governing class,’ key policymakers are drawn directly from the most representative institutions of Wall Street. Key economic policies, especially those which are most relevant to the RC, tend to be overwhelmingly in the hands of tried and experienced top leaders from Wall Street.
Despite (or because of) the ascendancy of various sectors of financial capital in the RC, and their agreements on a host of ‘liberalizing’ economic policies, they are not homogeneous in all of their political outlooks, party affiliations, or their foreign policy outlook. Most of these political differences are questions of small matter — except on one issue where there is a major and growing rift, namely in the Middle East. A sector of the RC strongly aligned with the state of Israel supports a bellicose policy toward the Jewish state’s adversaries (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Palestine) as opposed to another sector of the RC favoring a diplomatic approach, directed toward securing closer ties with Arab and Persian elites. Given the highly militarized turn in US foreign policy (largely due to the ascendancy of neo-conservative ideologues, the strong influence of the Zionist Lobby, and the instability and failures of their policies in the Middle East and China) the RC has pressed for and secured direct control over foreign economic policy.
The tensions and conflicts within the RC — especially between the Zioncons and the ‘free marketeers’ — have been papered over by the enormous economic benefits accruing to all sectors. All RC financial sectors have been enriched by White House and Congressional policies. All have benefited from the ascendancy of ‘liberalizing regimes’ throughout the world. They have reaped the gains of the expansionary phase of the international economy. While the entire ruling financial, real estate and trading sectors have been the main beneficiaries, it has been the financial groups, particularly the investment banks that have led the way and provide the political leadership.
Ascendancy of Financial Capital
‘Finance capital’ has many faces and cannot be understood without reference to specific sectors. Investment banks, pension funds, hedge funds, savings and loan banks, investment funds are only a few of the operative managers of a multi-trillion dollar economy. Moreover each of these sectors have specialized departments engaged in particular types of speculative-financial activity including commodity and currency, trading, consulting and managing acquisition and mergers. Despite a few exposes, court cases, fines and an occasional jailing, the financial sector writes its rules, controls its regulators and has secured license to speculate on everything, everywhere and all the time. They have created the framework or universe in which all other economic activities (manufacturing, retail sales and real estate) take place.
‘Finance capital’ is not an isolated sector and cannot be counterposed to the ‘productive economy’ except in the most marginal ‘local activity’. In large part finance capital interacts with and is the essential driving force in real estate speculation, agro-business, commodity production and manufacturing activity. To a large degree ‘market prices’ are as influenced by speculative intervention as they are by ‘supply and demand.’ Equally important, the entire architecture of the ‘paper empire’ (the entire complex of inter-related financial investments) is ultimately dependent on the production of goods and services. The structure of power and wealth takes the form of an inverted triangle in which a vast army of workers, peasants and salary employees produce value which becomes the basis for near and remote, simple and exotic, lucrative and speculative financial instruments. The transfer of value from the productive activities of labor up through the ladder and branches of financial instruments is carried out through various vehicles: direct financial ownership of enterprises, credit, debt leveraging, buyouts and mergers. The tendency of ‘productive capitalists’ is to start-up an enterprise, innovate, exploit labor, capture markets and then ‘sell-out’ or go ‘public’ (stock offerings). The financial sector acts as combined intermediary, manager, proxy-purchaser and consultant, capturing substantial fees and expanding their economic empires and preparing the way to higher levels of acquisitions and mergers. ‘Finance capital’ is the midwife of the concentration and centralization of wealth and capital as well as the direct owner of the means of production and distribution. From exacting a larger and larger ‘tribute’ or ‘rent’ (commission or fee) on each large-scale capital transaction, ‘finance capital’ has moved toward penetrating and controlling an enormous array of economic activities, transferring capital across national and sectoral boundaries, extracting profits and dumping shares according to the business, product and profit cycle.
Within the ruling class, the financial elite is the most parasitical component and exceeds the corporate bosses (CEOs) and most entrepreneurs in wealth and annual payments. It falls short of the annual income and assets of the super-rich entrepreneurs like William Gates and Michael Dell.
The financial ruling class is internally stratified into three sub-groups: at the top are big private equity bankers and hedge-fund managers, followed by the Wall Street chief executives, who in turn are above the next rung of senior associate or vice-presidents of a big private equity funds who is followed by their counterparts at Wall Street’s public equity funds. Top hedge fund managers and executive have made $1 billion dollars or more a year — several times what the CEO’s make at publicly traded investment houses. For example in 2006 Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, was paid $53.4 million, while Dan Ochs, executive of the hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital paid himself $220 million dollars. That same year the Morgan Stanley CEO received $40 million dollars, while the chief executive of the hedge fund Citadel was paid over $300 million dollars.
While the ‘hedge fund’ speculators receive the highest annual salaries, the private equity executives can equal their hundreds of millions payments through deal fees and special dividend payments from portfolio companies. This was especially true in 2006 when buyouts reached a record $710 billion dollars. The big bucks for the private equity bosses comes from the accumulating stake executives have in portfolio companies. They typically skim 20% of profits, which are realized when a group sells or lists a portfolio company. At that time, the payday runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The subset of the financial ruling class is the ‘junior bankers’ of private equity firms who take about $500,000 a year. At the bottom rung are the ‘junior bankers’ of publicly traded investment houses (‘Wall Street’) who average $350,000 a year. The financial ruling class is made up of these multi-billionaire elites from the hedge funds, private and public equity bankers and their associates in big prestigious corporate legal and accounting firms. They in turn are linked to the judicial and regulatory authorities, through political appointments and contributions, and by their central position in the national economy.
Within the financial ruling class, political leadership does not usually come from the richest hedge fund speculators, even less among the ‘junior bankers.’ Political leaders come from the public and private equity banks, namely Wall Street — especially Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and others. They organize and fund both major parties and their electoral campaigns. They pressure, negotiate and draw up the most comprehensive and favorable legislation on global strategies (liberalization and deregulation) and sectoral policies (reductions in taxes, government pressure on countries like China to ‘open’ their financial services to foreign penetration and so on). They pressure the government to ‘bailout’ bankrupt and failed speculative firms and to balance the budget by lowering social expenditures instead of raising taxes on speculative ‘windfall’ profits.
The Dance of the Billions: Finance Capital Reaps the Profits from their Power
Speculators of the world had a spectacular year in 2006 as global equities hit double digit gains in the US, European and Asian markets. China, Brazil, Russia and India were centers of speculative profiteering as the China FTSE index rose 94%, Russia’s stock market rose 60%, Brazil’s Bovespa was up 32.9% and India’s Sensex climbed 46.7%. In large part the stock markets rose because of cheap credit (to speculate), strong liquidity (huge financial, petrol and commodity profits and rents) and so-called ‘reforms’ which gave foreign investors greater access to markets in China, India and Brazil. The biggest profits in stock market speculation occurred under putative ‘center-left’ regimes (Brazil and India) and ‘Communist’ China, which have realigned themselves with the most retrograde and ‘leading’ sectors of their financial ruling class.
Russia’s booming stock market reflects a different process involving the re-nationalization of gas and petroleum sectors, at the expense of the gangster-oligarchs of the Yeltsin era and the ‘give-away’ contracts to European/US oil and gas companies (Shell, Texaco). As a result huge windfall profits have been re-cycled internally among the new Putin era millionaires who have been engaged in conspicuous consumption, speculation and investment in joint ventures with foreign manufacturers in transport and energy related industries.
The shift toward foreign-controlled speculative capital emerging in China, India and Brazil as opposed to ‘national and state’ funded investment in Russia accounts for the irrational and vitriolic hostility exhibited by the western financial press to President Putin.
One of the major sources of profit-making is in the area of ‘mergers and acquisitions’ (M&A) — the buying and selling of multinational conglomerates, with $3,900 billion in deals for 2006. Investment banks took $18.8 billion dollars in ‘fees’ leading to multi-million dollar bonuses for ‘M&A’ bankers. M&A, hostile or benign, are largely speculative activity fueled by cheap debt and leading to the greater concentration of ownership and profits. Today it is said 2% of the households own 80% of the world’s assets. Within this small elite, a fraction embedded in financial capital owns and controls the bulk of the world’s assets and organizes and facilitates further concentration of conglomerates. The value of speculative M&A on a world scale is 16% higher than at the height of the ‘DOTCOM’ speculative boom in 2000. In the US alone, over $400 billion dollars worth of private equity deals were struck in 2005, three times higher than the previous year.
To understand who are the leading members of the financial ruling class one needs only to look at the ten leading private equity banks and the value and number of M&A deals in which they were engaged:
Private equity rankings by M&A deals (Year to Dec 20 2006)
US Value $bn Number
Blackstone 85.3 12
Texas Pacific 81.9 11
Bain Capital Partners 74.7 9
Thomas H Lee Partners 53.4 6
Goldman Sachs 51.2 5
Carlyle 50.0 14
Apollo Management l 44.9 7
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts 44.5 3
Merrill Lynch 35.9 3
Cerberus Capital Management 28.6 4
Industry Total 402.6 1,157
(Financial Times, 12/27/2006, p 13 — FT montage: Bob Haslett)
The crucial fact is that these private equity banks are involved in every sector of the economy, in every region of the world economy and increasingly speculate in the conglomerates which are acquired.
In the era of the ascendancy of speculative finance capital, it is not surprising that the three leading investment banks, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns reported record annual profits, based on their expansion in Europe and Asia, and their transfer of profits from manufacturing and services to the financial sector. For the year 2006, Goldman Sachs (GS) recorded the most profitable year ever for a Wall Street investment bank, on the basis of big (speculative) ‘trading gains and lucrative investment in the world’s worst sweatshops in Asia. GS reported a 69% jump in annual earnings to $9.54 billion dollars. Lehman Brothers (LB) and Bear Stearns (BS) equity banks also recorded record earnings. LB earned a record $4billion for the year. SB earned a record $2.1 billion dollars. For the year Lehman set aside about $334,000 dollars per junior banker, while top speculators and bankers earned a big multiple of that amount.
For the year 2006 investment banking revenue reached nearly $38 billion dollars compared to $25 billion dollars in 2004 — an increase of 34% (Financial Times Dec. 13, 2006 p.15).
The dominance of finance capital has been nurtured by the speculative activity of the controllers and directors of state-owned companies. State ownership is an ambiguous term since it raises a further, more precise, question: ‘Who owns the state’? In the Middle East, there are seven state-owned oil and gas companies. In six of those companies, the principal beneficiaries are a small ruling elite. They recycle their revenues and profits through US and EU investment banks largely into bonds, real estate and other speculative financial instruments (FT Dec 15, 2006 p.11). State ownership and speculative capital, in the context of closed ‘Gulf-State’ type of ruling classes, are complementary, not contradictory, activities. The ruling regime in Dubai converts oil rents into building a regional financial center. Many Jewish-American-led Wall Street investment banks cohabitate with new Islamic-based investment houses, both reaping speculative returns.
Much of the investment funds now in the hands of US investment banks, hedge funds and other sectors of the financial ruling class originated in profits extracted from workers in the manufacturing and service sector. Two inter-related processes led to the growth and dominance of finance capital: the transfer of capital and profits from the ‘productive’ to the financial and speculative sector and the transfer of finance capital overseas, in the form of take-over of foreign assets now equivalent of around 80% of the US GDP. The roots of finance capital are embedded in three types of intensified exploitation: 1) of labor (via extended hours, transfer of pension and health costs from capital to labor, frozen minimum wage, stagnant and declining real wages and salaries); 2) of manufacturing profits (through higher rents, inter-sectoral transfers to financial instruments, interest payments and fees and commissions for mergers and acquisitions); and 3) via state fiscal policies by lowering capital gains taxes, increasing tax write-offs and tax incentives for overseas investments and imposing regressive local, state and federal taxes.
The result is increasing inequality between, on the one hand, senior and junior bankers, public, private equity, investment and hedge fund directors, and their entourage of lawyers, accountants and, on the other hand, wage and salaried workers. Income ratios range between 400 to 1 and 1,000 to 1, between the ruling class and median wage and salary workers is the norm.
Crisis of the Working and Middle Class: (Begin to Worry the Ruling Class)
Living standards for the working and middle class and the urban poor have declined substantially over the past thirty years (1978-2006) to a point where one can point to a burgeoning crises. While real hourly wages in constant 2005 dollars have stagnated, health, pension, energy and educational costs (increasingly borne by wage and salary workers) have skyrocketed. If extensions in work time and intensification of work place production (increases in productivity) are included in the equation, it is clear that living (including working) conditions have declined sharply. Even the financial press can write articles entitled: “Why Ordinary Americans have Missed Out on the Benefits of Growth” (FT November 2, 2006 p.11).
Financial and investment banks are in charge of advising and directing the ‘restructuring’ of enterprises for mergers and acquisitions by downsizing, outsourcing, give-backs and other cost-cutting measures. This has led to downward mobility for the wage and salaried workers who retain their jobs even as their tenure is more precarious. In other words, the greater the salaries, bonuses, profits and rents for the financial ruling class engaged in ‘restructuring’ for M&As, the greater the decline in living standards for the working and middle class.
One measure of the enormous influence of the financial ruling class in heightening the exploitation of labor is found in the enormous disparity between productivity and wages. Between 2000 and 2005, the US economy grew 12%, and productivity (measured by output per hour worked in the business sector) rose 17% while hourly wages rose only 3%. Real family income fell during the same period (FT November 2, 2006 p.11). According to a poll in the fall of November 2006, three quarters of Americans say they are either worse off or no better off than they were six years ago (FT November 3, 2006 p.13).
The impact of the policies of the financial ruling class on both the manufacturing and service sectors transcends their profit skimming, credit leverage on business operations and management practices. It embraces the entire architecture of the income, investment and class structure. The growth of vast inequalities between the yearly payments of the financial ruling class and the medium salary of workers has reached unprecedented levels. The financial elite receives something in the range of a ratio of 500 up to 1,000 times that of an average worker, depending on how narrowly or broadly we conceive of the financial ruling class.
Members of the financial ruling class have noted these vast and growing inequalities and express some concern over their possible social and political repercussions. According to the Financial Times (December 21, 2006), billionaire Stephen Schwartzman, CEO of the private equity group Blackstone warned “that the widening gap between Wall Street’s lavish pay packages and middle America’s stagnating wages risks causing a political and social backlash against the US’s ‘New Rich’.” Treasury Secretary and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson admitted that median wage stagnation was a problem and that amidst “strong economic expansion many Americans simply are not feeling [sic!] the benefits” (FT November 2, 2006 p. 11).
Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank testified before the Senate that “inequality is potentially a concern for the US economy . . . to the extent that incomes and wealth are spreading apart. I think that is not a good trend” (Ibid). In 2005, the proportion of national income to GDP going to profits, rents and other non-wage and salary sources is at record levels: 43%. Inequality in the distribution of national income in the US is the worst in the entire developed capitalist world. Moreover studies of time series data reveal that in the US inequality increased far greater and intergenerational social mobility was far more difficult in the US than any country in Western Europe. The growth of monstrous and rigid class inequalities reflects the narrow social base of an economy dominated by finance capital, its ingrown intergenerational linkages and the exorbitant entry fees ($50,000 per annum tuition with room and board) to elite private universities and post-graduate business schools. Equally important, the political power of finance capital and its ‘associated’ conglomerates wield uncontested political power in the US in comparison to any country in Europe. As a result the US government redistributes far less through the tax and social security, health and educational system than other countries. (ibid)
While some financial rulers express some anxiety about a ‘backlash’ from the deepening class divide, not a single one publicly supports any tax or other redistributive measures. Instead they call for increases in educational up-grading, job retraining and greater geographical mobility, though it is precisely among the educated middle class which is suffering salary stagnation.
Neither the Democratic Party majority in Congress, nor the Republican-controlled Executive offer any proposals to challenge the financial ruling class’s dominance nor are there any proposals to reverse its most retrograde policies causing the growing inequalities, wage stagnation and the increasing rigidity of the class structure. The reason has been reported in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times: An overwhelming chunk of the funds that Democrats raise nationally for election campaigns comes either from Wall Street financiers or Silicon Valley software entrepreneurs. (FT November 3, 2006 p. 13). The Democratic congressional electoral campaign was tightly controlled by two of Wall Street’s favorite Democrats, Senator Charles ‘Israel First’ Schumer and Congressman Rahm Immanuel, who selectively funded candidates who were pro-war, pro-Wall Street and unconditionally pro-Israel. Democrats slated to head strategic Congressional committees like Zion-Lib Barney Frank have already announced they have ‘good working relations’ with Wall Street.
The Financial Ruling Class Also Governs
Ruling classes rule the economy, are at the top of the social structure and establish the parameters and rules within which the politicians operate. More often than not few actually engage directly in congressional politics, preferring to build economic empires while channeling money toward candidates prepared to do their bidding. Only when an apparent division occurs, especially within the Executive, between the interests of the ruling class and the policies of the regime will elite members of the ruling class intervene directly or take a senior executive position to ‘rectify’ policy.
Ruling Class Political Power: Paulson Takes Over Treasury
Several sharp divergences occurred during the Bush regime between finance capital and policymakers. These policies prejudiced or threatened to seriously damage important sectors of the financial ruling class. Theses include: 1) the aggressive militarist and protectionist policies pursued by senior Pentagon officials and ‘Zion-con’ Senators toward China; 2) the political veto by Congress of the sale of US port management to a Gulf State-owned company and of a US oil company to China; 3) the failure of the Bush regime to secure the privatization of social security and to weaken the regulatory measures introduced in the aftermath of the massive corporate (Enron and World Com) and Wall Street swindles, and 4) the need to put a check on the uncontrolled growth of fiscal deficits resulting from the Middle East wars, the ballooning trade deficits and the weakening dollar.
The headlines of the financial press (FT December 4, 2006 p.3) spell out finance capital’s direct intervention into key White House policy making:
“Goldman Sachs Top Alumni Wield Clout in White House” and “Former Bank Executives Hold Unprecedented Power within a US Administration.”
US financial and manufacturing ruling classes have long influenced, advised and formulated policy for US Presidents. But given the stakes, the risks and the opportunities facing the financial ruling class, it has moved directly into key government posts. What is especially unprecedented is the dominant presence of members from one investment bank — Goldman Sachs. In late November 2006, Goldman Sachs (GS) senior executive William Dudley took over the Federal Reserve Bank of New York markets group. Hank Paulson, ex-CEO of GS is Treasury Secretary — explicitly anointed by President Bush as undisputed czar of all economic policies. Reuben Jeffrey, a former GS managing partner is the chief regulator of commodity futures and options trading, Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff (he decides who Bush sees, when and for how long — in other words arranges Bush’s agenda) served as GS executive director. Robert Steel, former GS vice chairman, advises Paulson on domestic finance. Randall Fort, ex-GS director of global security, advises Secretary of State Rice. The ex-GS officials also dominate Bush’s working group on financial markets and financial crisis management. The investment bankers wielding state power will control the Bush regime’s biggest housing giants (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), tax policy, energy markets — all issues that directly affect the investment banks. In other words, the financial banks will be ‘regulated’ by their own executives. The degree of finance capital’s stranglehold on political power is evidenced by the total lack of criticism by either party. As one financial newspaper noted: “Neither Mr. Bush nor Goldman have been criticized by Democrats for holding too many powerful jobs in part because the investment bank (GS) also has deep ties to Democrats. Goldman represented the biggest single donor base to the Democrats ahead of this (2006) year’s mid-term election.” (FT December 4, 2006)
Among Paulson’s first moves was to organize a top level delegation to China and a working group to work on forming a ‘strategic partnership’. Its task is to accelerate the ‘opening’ of China’s financial markets to penetration and majority takeovers by US operated investment funds. This represents a potential multi-trillion dollar window of opportunity. By seizing the initiative Paulson hopes to undercut the anti-China cohort of neo-con, Pentagon and White House militarists, as well as backwater backers of Taiwanese independence and Congressional chauvinist demagogues like Senator Schumer who threaten to undermine lucrative US-Chinese economic relations.
To lower the fiscal deficit, Paulson proposes to ‘reform’ entitlements — reduce spending on Medicare and Medicaid and to work out a deal with the Democrats to privatize Social Security piecemeal.
Where finance capital has not been able to fashion a coherent economic strategy is with regard to Washington’s Middle East wars. Because of the pull of the Zionist Lobby on many of leading lights of Wall Street — including its unofficial mouthpieces — the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times — Paulson has failed to formulate a strategy. He does not even pay lip service to the Baker Iraq Study Group report’s proposal to gradually draw down troops for fear of alienating some key senior executives of Goldman Sachs, Stern, Lehman Brothers et al who follow the ‘Israel First’ line. As a result, Paulson has to work around the Lobby by focusing on dealing with the Gulf city-state monarchies and Saudi Arabia in order to avoid another disastrous repetition of the Dubai Port management sale. Paulson above all wants to avoid Zionist political interference with the two way flow of finance capital between the petrol-financial-banking complexes in the Gulf States and Wall Street. He wants to facilitate US finance capital’s access to the large dollar surpluses in the region. It is not surprising that the Israeli regime has accommodated their wealthy and influential financial backers on Wall Street by drawing a distinction between ‘moderate’ (Gulf States) with whom they claim common interests and ‘Islamic extremists.’ Israeli Prime Minister Olmert has directed his zealots in the US-Jewish Lobby to take heed of the refinements in the Party Line in dealing with US-Arab relations.
Nevertheless with all its concentrated political power and its enormous wealth and economic leverage over the economy, Wall Street cannot control or avoid serious economic vulnerabilities or possible catastrophic military-political events.
The Future of the Financial Ruling Class
What is abundantly clear is that one of the main threats to world markets — and the health of the financial ruling class — is an Israeli military attack on Iran. This will extend warfare throughout Asia and the Islamic world, drive energy prices beyond levels heretofore known, cause a major recession and likely a crash in financial markets. But as in the case of the relationships between Israel and the US, the Zionist Lobby calls the shots and its Wall Street acolytes acquiesce. As matters now stand, the Jewish Lobby supports the escalation of the Iraq war and the savaging of Palestine, Somalia and Afghanistan. It has neutralized the biggest and most concerted effort by big name centrist political figures to alter White House policy. Baker, Carter, former military commanders of US forces in Iraq have been savaged by the Zionist ideologues. Under their influence the White House is putting into practice the war strategy presented by the ‘American’ Enterprise Institute (a Zioncon think tank). As a result parallel to Bush’s appointment of Paulson and Wall Streeters to run imperial economic policy, he has appointed an entire new pro-war civilian military-security apparatus to escalate and extend the Middle East wars to Africa (Somalia) and Latin America (Venezuela).
Sooner or later a break between Wall Street and the militarists will occur. The additional costs of an escalating wars, the continual ballooning debt payments, huge imbalances in the balance of payments and decreasing inflows of capital as multi-national repatriate profits and overseas central banks diversify their currency reserves will force the issue. The enormous and growing inequalities, the massive concentration of wealth and capital at a time of declining living standards and stagnant income for the vast majority, gives the financial ruling class little political capital or credibility if and when an economic and financial crisis breaks.
With foreign investors owning 47% of all marketable US Treasury bonds in 2006 compared to 33% in 2001 and foreign holdings of US corporate debt up to 30% today, from 23% just five years ago, a rapid sell-off would totally destabilize US financial markets and the economic system as well as the world economy. A rapid sell-off of dollars with catastrophic consequences cannot be ruled out if US-Zionist militarism continues to run amuck, creating conditions of extended and prolonged warfare.
The paradox is that some of the most wealthy and powerful beneficiaries of the ascendancy of finance capital are precisely the same class of people who are financing their own self-destruction. While cheap finance is fueling multi-billion dollar mergers, acquisitions, commissions and executive payoffs, heightened militarism operates on a budget plagued by tax reductions, exemptions and evasions for the financial ruling class and ever greater squeezing of the overburdened wage and salary classes. Something has to break the cohabitation between ruling class financiers and political militarists. They are running in opposite directions. One is investing capital abroad and the other spending borrowed funds at home. For the moment there are no signs of any serious clashes at the top, and in the middle and working classes there are no signs of any political break with the two Wall Street parties or any challenge to the militarist-Zionist stranglehold on Congress. Likely it will take a catastrophe, like a White House-backed Israeli nuclear attack on Iran to detonate the kind of crisis which will provoke a deep and widespread popular backlash of all things military, financial and made in Israel.
Neocon Iran Policy Committee tied to disgraced Iraqi National Congress
By Ali Ghariband Eli Clifton | Lobe Log | September 10th, 2010
The Iran Policy Committee (IPC), the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), and the Iraqi National Congress (INC) are connected in more ways than just a neocon modus operandi of taking exile groups with little or no domestic legitimacy, using their (faulty) intelligence to build a case for war, and promoting them to spearhead regime change in Middle Eastern countries.
On the heels of claims by the MEK and its most staunch U.S. supporters of a covert Iranian nuclear facility, a LobeLog investigation has revealed a host of intimate ties between the IPC and the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Iraqi exile opposition group headed by the now-disgraced dissident Ahmad Chalabi.
The INC was a cause célèbre among neoconservatives for more than a decade before the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. Once neoconservatives took positions of power in George W. Bush’s administration, much of the faulty intelligence they used to build a case for war with Iraq came from Chalabi and his group.
LobeLog has discovered that, through 2006, IPC shared an address, accountants, and some staff with multiple organizations that either fronted for or had direct ties to the INC, even sharing staff members with those groups. Some of those ties have continued through today. Many of the contacts revolve around former International Republican Institute and Freedom House director Bruce McColm, who serves as IPC “Empowerment Committee Chairman.”
Both the groups McColm runs, the International Decision Strategies and its non-profit arm, the Institute for Democratic Strategies, share offices and staff at a quaint, two-story, cream-colored building at 911 Duke St. in Arlington, Virginia.
A name plate by the door reads with the initials of both organizations: IDS.
The 911 Duke St. address also serves as the home of Bartel & Associates, the accountants for the IPC and who are listed as the “person who possesses the books of the organization” on every 990 filed since the hawkish group’s inception in 2005. Bartel & Associates founder, Margaret Bartel, also serves as a vice-president of McColm’s Institute for Democratic Strategies and started working in 2001 managing the accounts of the INC. According to Ken Silverstein and Walter Roche, Jr., in the Los Angeles Times, this included “funds for its prewar intelligence program on Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.”
The address for McColm and Bartel’s groups — 911 Duke St. — is the same address that housed IPC for at least its first year of operation. IPC is best known for its support for regime change in Iran. The group calls for a mix of U.S. military might and an opposition insurgency led by exiled Iranian dissidents. The exile Iranian group of choice is, of course, the MEK, which is listed by the U.S State Department as a “foreign terrorist organization” (and its political front, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, or NCRI).
Does this plan sound familiar? It should — it’s the same one employed after 9/11 in the run up to the Iraq war. The plan must have been easy to transfer from Iraq to Iran, especially considering how much of the INC’s business went down at the little house with blue trim at 911 Duke St.
In addition to Bruce McColm’s for profit group, International Decision Strategies, which lists the INC as a past client, the two-story house at 911 Duke St. also housed at least two groups with direct links to Ahmad Chalabi and the INC.
One is the Iraqui [sic] National Congress Support Foundation, which was registered and receiving mail in care of Chalabi at 911 Duke St. (The group appears to have made less than $25,000 per year, which meant it didn’t have to file tax forms required of tax exempt non-profits.)
The other group housed at 911 Duke St. from at least 2003 until 2005 was Boxwood Inc., a organization run by top Chalabi aide Francis Brooke, and where Margaret Bartel was director and later vice president. Boxwood, according to Silverstein and Roche, was a “firm set up to receive U.S. funds for the intelligence program of the Iraqi National Congress.” Boxwood’s corporate registration, which clearly shows the 911 Duke St. address, can be viewed here (PDF).
In the New Yorker, in 2004, Jane Mayer reported that Boxwood president Francis Brooke and his family lived for free in a “million-dollar brick row house in Georgetown… which is owned by Levantine Holdings, a Chalabi family corporation based in Luxembourg.” Only a week later, foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen confirmed ownership of the building, publishing documentation on her War and Piece blog.
It appears that many of the same people who misled the U.S. into a disastrous war with Iraq are now attempting to do the same in Iran. And they’re doing it with very much the same game plan, and even doing it from the same little town house at 911 Duke St. in Arlington, Virginia.
Bin Laden is Dead; Long Live “Bin Laden”
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | My Catbird Seat | August 17, 2010
Who’s keeping the terror myth alive?
Credit image: Sabbah Report
In the trigger-happy post-9/11 world, the favoured way to instigate a war is to demand that the designated “evildoer” prove a negative.
Iraq was invaded because it couldn’t prove that it didn’t have WMDs. Iran is under constant threat of attack unless it can demonstrate that it’s not seeking nuclear weapons. And now Pakistan is being chastised for allegedly harbouring Osama bin Laden—who in all probability has been dead and buried for eight years.
Questioning Pakistan’s willingness to pursue bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year told a group of Pakistani editors, “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.” And in a recent interview with Fox News, Clinton charged that “elements” of the Pakistani government know where bin Laden is hiding.
But what if bin Laden is not hiding in Pakistan? What if he’s been dead since December 2001? How then does Islamabad prove that some of its government officials are not concealing his whereabouts?
While the mainstream media rarely if ever question the belief that bin Laden is still alive, some cracks have been appearing in the consensus. In a September 11, 2009 piece in Britain’s Daily Mail, Sue Reid wondered, “What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake—and that he is being kept ‘alive’ by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?”
An even more prominent sceptic is UPI Editor at Large Arnaud de Borchgrave whose July 26, 2010 commentary titled “Elvis bin Laden” may herald a new consensus. Sifting much the same evidence as Reid, the “legendary journalist” stated that “some key intelligence officials are taking bin Laden’s reported demise seriously.”
Both articles cited experts who have studied the post-December 2001 audios and videos and concluded they are fakes.
In 2007, Switzerland’s Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which does computer voice recognition for bank security, found that the voices on recordings after mid-December 2001 differed clearly from earlier recordings of bin Laden.
Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s religious studies’ department and the foremost bin Laden expert, noted in a 2007 book the inconsistency between the increasingly secular language of the audios and videos and bin Laden’s earlier distinctive religious speech.
Assessing the evidence, Angelo M. Codevilla, a former U.S. intelligence officer who studied Soviet disinformation techniques during the Cold War and a professor of international relations at Boston University, wryly concluded that “Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama bin Laden.”
So, if bin Laden is as dead as Elvis, who’s been faking all those scary threats in his name?
According to U.S. and British intelligence officials, al-Qaeda’s media wing, As-Sahab Foundation for Islamic Media Publication, has been run since 2001 by Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to radical Islam who now goes by the name Azzam al-Amriki.
Gadahn found his way to the Islamic Society of Orange County while living with his grandfather, Carl Pearlman, a board member of the Anti-Defamation League. Ostensibly a civil rights organization set up to fight anti-Semitism, the ADL is “little more than a de facto adjunct of the Israeli government” which has even been caught spying on American critics of Israel.
Adam’s parents changed their surnames to Gadahn in the mid-1970s. The name refers to the Biblical warrior Gideon who, with the aid of trumpets and clay jars, defeated Israel’s enemies.
As Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo put it, Adam Gadahn is “an awfully odd figure, whose sudden evolution from a nice Jewish boy into Osama bin Laden’s Goebbels is just a little hard to take.”
Equally hard to take is the means by which the public learns of bin Laden’s latest pronouncements
“Almost every statement by Osama bin Laden published on the Internet…is first made public by SITE and IntelCenter,” according to a Spiegel Online profile of Rita Katz, Josh Devon and Ben Venzke, who founded the two companies that supposedly track al-Qaeda online.
SITE co-founder Rita Katz is an Iraqi-born Jew, whose father was publicly hanged in Iraq after the 1967 War as an Israeli spy. Katz, who served in the Israeli Defense Forces, tries to downplay the significance of her background but is not always successful. “When you grow up in a place like Iraq,” she told Spiegel, “you understand maybe a little bit about how Arabs think, and also what they are capable of.”
When Neal Krawetz, a researcher and computer security consultant, analysed a 2006 al-Qaeda video of Ayman al-Zawahiri for alterations and enhancements, he discovered that the As-Sahab and IntelCenter logos had been added at the same time.
Attempting to make light of the understandable suspicions that the “terror trackers” are working for Israeli intelligence, the Spiegel article jokes: “And the conspiracy theories pontificating that SITE and IntelCenter shoot the bin Laden videos themselves will continue to exist in the future. And Katz, Venzke and Devon will continue to see the humor in such theories: Yep, this is Mossad Headquarters. Exactly!”
But with the hunt for the elusive bin Laden having already cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, perhaps Americans should demand conclusive proof that Israel hasn’t conned them into fighting a phoney “war on terror.”
Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan. To read more of his writing, go to Maidhc Ó Cathail: Writing and Analysis.
Nine Years Later – 9/11 And The Shift in Consciousness
By Bernhard Guenther | Sott.net | September 2010
It’s been nine years since 9/11. Millions of people, civilians and soldiers have died world wide in the following war on terror. The American people have lost basic rights due to the Patriot Act. In Europe and other countries, similar “security measures” have been implemented. Anyone who has been on an international flight has experienced some of it first hand. Trillions of Dollars are spent on the war on terror, while millions of people have lost their jobs and homes as the economy is disintegrating worldwide. The emperor is naked and there is an elephant in the living room, but to this day the official story of 9/11 has not been significantly challenged publicly.
I find it interesting how people in this day and age talk about a “shift in consciousness” or “awakening” into a “New Age” while after 9 years the biggest lie is still in place. Especially Liberals and people who believe themselves to be “aware” and “conscious”, yet they vote for Obama and dare not to question 9/11 or man-made “Global Warming”. I think most people simply don’t want the truth, for the truth is a tricky thing. It’s a can of worms most people are not willing to open, as it will challenge their beliefs and ideals on a core level. Hence, they would rather defend/ignore the lie and the lies they tell themselves.
The furthest most people go in regards to 9/11 is that “Bush let it happen” à la Michael Moore, but to realize, by looking into it deeper, that it was actually an Inside Job leading to Israel and not “Islamic Extremists” is still too far out for most people. It’s a touchy subject, because it’ll require them to question much of what they ever thought to be true about this country and the world in general.
Then of course some people don’t care much about the world “out there”, but believe that just by doing yoga, eating raw foods, recycling, planting veggies, focusing on the Self and having a “positive” attitude all will be well and we “create our reality” that way as we enter the “Golden Age”. Obviously we do need to take care of our health, the earth and ourselves, but a true “Shift in Consciousness” and “Awakening” entails much more. A big part of it is to make the “darkness” conscious within AND without, striving for objective truth, even if it doesn’t fit our current beliefs and worldview.
A “shift in consciousness” and “awakening” implies a higher state of awareness, which means to become more aware of it all, which implies again to see the world and oneself more objectively, without blinders on. This doesn’t happen by itself, but requires sincere effort and work to separate truth from lies, within and without. This is not a walk in the park, but it is the work required during this “Time of Transition”. The more we do this together and network, the better for all of us and the “easier” it’ll essentially be through the created synergy. In other words, the more people SEE the world as it IS, the more likely we will create a reality based on Truth and Love.
But ignoring it and hiding in our bubble isn’t going to get rid of this huge elephant in the middle of the living room. Nor will it happen by thinking “positive” thoughts, “meditating” on peace or “visualizing” it away. Just like with honest and sincere self-work, where we need to look at the lies we’re telling ourselves, we also need to confront the lies and pathologies in the world if we truly want to become better people and live in a better world.
As far as I see it, humanity hasn’t even graduated Kindergarten yet, although many people believe themselves to be adults already, dreaming to be awake, yet still asleep. However, we can change the world in a blink of an eye if we’d get out of our comfort zone and sincerely seek truth, network and deprogram ourselves from the lies of “Official Culture”.
The 9th anniversary of 9/11 is here, a lie that has shaped the world in ways that affect EVERYONE. Being silent about it at this point is equivalent of complicity in one of the biggest crimes in history.
What will you do?
We all are responsible of the outcome in this “Time of Transition” and 9/11 is a collective lesson that can’t be ignored much longer. If we truly want to bring peace and love to this world, then we need to start by looking at the world as it IS, not as we like, assume or hope it to be. Building community and striving for self-sustainable solutions are steps in the right direction, but if we don’t pay attention to what is happening around us and stand up for truth, it’ll all backfire eventually, simply because everything IS connected. No matter how well-meaning our intention is, as long as we support lies by mistaking them for truth or by not speaking out against them, we’ll keep feeding entropy and the suffering in the world. During this “Time of Transition” we don’t get to move on until the lessons are learned. This is an opportunity and it’s all up to each one of us. Let’s not miss it.
In the end, we return to the question, just how much do you love truth? Do you really love truth or are you just curious? Do you love it enough to rebuild your understanding to conform to a reality that doesn’t fit your current beliefs, and doesn’t feel 120% happy? Do you love truth enough to continue seeking even when it hurts, when it reveals aspects of yourself (or human society, or the universe) that are shocking, complex and disturbing, or humbling, glorious and amazing – or even, when truth is far beyond human mind itself? Just how much do we love truth? It’s a good question to ask ourselves, I think.
– Scott MandelekerOne does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
– Carl G. Jung
Here’s a good start:
Left-Leaning Despisers of the 9/11 Truth Movement: Do You Really Believe in Miracles?
The Source of America’s Wars – Kristol Clear
By Maidhc Ó Cathail – My Catbird Seat – September 11, 2010
Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note of those who welcomed yet another “surge.” It might help them to identify the source of their seemingly endless wars.
For instance, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, William Kristol described Obama’s West Point speech as “encouraging.” It was “a good thing,” he said, that Obama was finally speaking as “a war president.”
But if the comments on the Post website are anything to go by, few ordinary Americans take Kristol’s armchair warmongering seriously anymore. After all, as one poster quizzically asked, “A column by William Kristol the neocon that was wrong about everything from 2000-2008?”
Although Kristol, like the rest of the neocons, “erred” about Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda and 9/11, it would be a fatal error indeed to dismiss him as a fool.
In order to understand what motivates Bill Kristol’s professed hyper-patriotism, with its consistently disastrous prescriptions, it’s worth recalling how his father, Irving Kristol, reacted to Vietnam War critic Senator George McGovern. The presidential contender’s proposed cut in U.S. military expenditure would, according to the “godfather” of neoconservatism, “drive a knife in the heart of Israel.”
“Jews don’t like big military budgets,” the elder Kristol explained in a Jewish publication in 1973. “But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States … American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”
American Greatness
Following his father’s advice, William Kristol has been a fervent supporter of massive U.S. military spending. In 1996, he co-authored with Robert Kagan an influential neocon manifesto titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.” It recommended that “America should pursue a vision of benevolent hegemony as bold as Reagan’s in the 1970s and wield its authority unabashedly.
“The defense budget should be increased dramatically, citizens should be educated to appreciate the military’s vital work abroad, and moral clarity should direct a foreign policy that puts the heat on dictators and authoritarian regimes.”
In response, another influential opinion-maker, Charles Krauthammer, hailed Kristol and Kagan as “the main proponents of what you might call the American greatness school.” It is hardly a coincidence, however, that all three advocates of “American greatness” care passionately about what Irving Kristol euphemistically referred to as “the survival of the state of Israel.” Or that many of those “dictators and authoritarian regimes” just happened to stand in the way of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
The following year, Kristol and Kagan co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a pressure group which sought to advance their “neo-Reaganite” vision. In the late 1990s, they did this mainly by writing letters to Bill Clinton, urging him to oust Saddam Hussein.
In September 2000, PNAC published “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” in which they famously acknowledged that “the process of transformation … is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”
One year later, they got their wished for “new Pearl Harbor” on September 11. The mass murder of almost 3,000 Americans was, as Benjamin Netanyahu indelicately put it, “very good” for Israel.
Kristol’s War
Immediately, Kristol’s Weekly Standard began linking Iraq to the attacks. Writing in The American Conservative, Scott McConnell explained the strategy: “Their rhetoric — which laid down a line from which the magazine would not waver over the next 18 months — was to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers.”
The “Saddam must go” campaign, begun in a Kristol and Kagan editorial as far back as 1997, became so relentless that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen dubbed it “Kristol’s War.”
The Iraq War has, of course, also been called “Wolfowitz’s War.” But it could just as aptly have been named after Perle, Feith, Libby, Zelikow, Lieberman, or any of the other pro-Israeli insiders who took America to war by way of deception.
In “Irving Kristol RIP,” Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo described Kristol’s legacy as “war, war, and yet more war, as far as the eye can see.”
Unless Americans soon realize that they’ve been deceived by those for whom “American greatness” is merely a means to advance “the survival of the state of Israel,” that legacy promises to be an enduring one.
Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan. To read more of his writing, go to Maidhc Ó Cathail: Writing and Analysis.
The Neoconservative Echo Chamber 2.0
Ali Gharib & Eli Clifton | IPS | September 09, 2010
One of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, was once quoted as saying: “If there’s a problem you want to solve, start a magazine.”[1] His words were taken to heart by the most recent generation of neoconservative leaders—including his son, William, who founded the Weekly Standard. The strategy was simple: With the right audience of elites, and a targeted message that captures their imagination, the limits of what you can do are nearly boundless. “With a circulation of a few hundred,” the elder Kristol once remarked, “you could change the world.”[2]
The embodiment of this neoconservative modus operandi, however, has not been small-circulation magazines, but the proliferation of so-called “letterhead organizations”—committees of eminent persons who, though they never actually meet to discuss issues, sign their names to letters addressed to the powers that be, often sitting U.S. presidents. That such letters could make splashes in the elite media is a reflection of the way neoconservatives have embedded themselves in the Washington establishment—their opinions mattered and, most importantly, sometimes ended up becoming policy.
Indeed, one of the best-known neocon letterhead groups, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), led by Bill Kristol, helped launch the campaign for militarily removing Saddam Hussein from power with a 1998 letter to then-President Bill Clinton. The letter garnered only 18 signatories,[3] but within five years, and under a new president, it had achieved its goal.
But neoconservatives’ methodology in the new millennium has undergone a transformation. As much of their rhetoric has been discounted or rejected—including touting the Iraq War as a success; defending a territorially-maximalist Israel; and lobbying for a strike on Iran—neoconservatives are broadening the movement’s horizons. They seem determined to expand beyond a strictly elite audience and appeal directly to the masses. The magazines with a circulation of a few hundred have given way to appearances on Fox News, CNN, newspaper editorial pages, and, most recently, the internet. The new neocon mantra might be: “If there is a problem you want to solve, start a YouTube channel.”
The new expansion of neoconservatives’ messaging reflects shifts in both the personnel and personalities of neocon groups and publications—younger neocons tend to be bloggers or public relations specialists, not intellectuals (or pseudo-intellectuals)—as well as the changing landscape of U.S. political support for policies that neocons espouse, most notably, a far-right Likudnik take on Israel and its relationship to the United States.
Support for right-wing Israeli policies is slipping from its demographic foundation, the otherwise-liberal American Jewish Zionists. This development was highlighted by Peter Beinart in a June 2010 essay for the New York Review of Books, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment.” The provocatively titled article questioned whether unstinting support for figures like Israel’s über-nationalist foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman turn off rank-and-file liberal American Jews from the Zionist project and, therefore, Israel.[4]
The trend appears to be especially prevalent among young American Jews[5]—a point that surely has set off alarms in the “Israel Lobby” as attendees at conferences grow grayer year after year. As a result, neocons and other Likudniks in the United States are increasingly turning to those who will uncritically support their policies. Disdain for Palestinian aspirations (and, apparently, Muslims in general) coupled with the aging of the old guard has spurred neocons to turn to the country’s ever-swelling ranks of Christian Zionists, who represent tens of millions of voters.[6]
The Emergency Committee
This past July, Bill Kristol, Christian Zionist heavyweight Gary Bauer, a handful of right-wing luminaries and up-and-comers formed the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI).[7] Rather than drafting letters in policy-speak to advocate directly to the president (as Kristol had done with PNAC), ECI produces ad campaigns in local congressional races, publishing fear-mongering adverts on YouTube and local TV slots, which are quickly disseminated through right-wing channels. But like their predecessors, these new groups have little or no grassroots support—meaningful participation is limited to board members, a few advisers, and staff—qualifying them as archetypal astroturf organizations.
ECI launched with a 30-second television commercial targeting Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), a Senate candidate, for being insufficiently pro-Israel. The commercial—which began to air on July 13 in the Philadelphia area on CNN, FOX, and during two baseball games[8]—claimed that Sestak helped fundraise for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a charge he has denied,[9] and signed a letter accusing Israel of participating in “collective punishment” in its blockade of Gaza.
Ironically, Sestak is far from being anti-Israel. He has described Israel as a “vital ally of the U.S.” on many occasions. Katharine Seelye pointed out in the New York Times that the ECI spot was misleading and factually inaccurate. Sestak never fundraised for CAIR. Further, the congressional letter mentioned was signed by numerous liberal pro-Israel groups and did not call the Gaza blockade “collective punishment.” Rather it said that humanitarian concerns “must be addressed without resulting in the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.”[10] Seelye also pointed out that, “in fact, Mr. Sestak supported the blockade.”[11]
It seems that ECI was attacking Sestak for being too supportive of the Barack Obama administration’s Middle East policy and for receiving campaign contributions from a progressive Zionist group—the self-proclaimed “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” organization J Street PAC. Indeed, the attacks were so aggressive and baseless that many observers questioned whether the commercial was even targeted at Jewish voters in Pennsylvania.
“The target audience is not really Jewish voters in Philadelphia and its suburbs—they tend to be a reliable Democratic constituency and an important source of campaign donations. Rather, the ad is aimed more at mobilizing the right and evangelicals in support of Mr. Sestak’s Republican opponent, former Representative Pat Toomey,” wrote Seelye.[12]
The cyber battle ground
The television ads certainly played a role in calling attention to ECI and its attack on Sestak. But the ad’s launch on YouTube, on the same day that ECI’s website went live and their doors opened for business, also says a lot about how neoconservative letterhead organizations operate in the age of the internet.
Sestak unsuccessfully tried to keep the ad off television because of its errors and exaggerations.[13] But once these genies are out of the bottle on the internet, their momentum is difficult to undo. Some news organizations reported ECI’s claim about the congressional letter as fact. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, for example, described the letter Sestak had signed as “calling the Jewish state’s maritime blockade ‘collective punishment’.”[14]
The cyber battle ground has been a major recent focus of neocons and other groups affiliated with the Israel Lobby, possibly because of the gains of J Street, which promotes more robust U.S. pressure in the peace process. J Street has a strong presence on the internet, with a sleek website that seems aimed at young American Jews disillusioned with the rightward stance of many of the groups that comprise the lobby. Indeed, all the candidates attacked by ECI have either been endorsed by J Street’s political action committee or signed letters along with J Street. Kristol even took a thinly veiled swipe at J Street when discussing the launch of ECI with Politico’s Ben Smith, describing his new group as “the pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community,”[15] a play on J Street’s “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” slogan.
By premiering its commercials on YouTube, ECI enables right-wing blogs and mainstream news outlets to embed the short clip on their websites and discuss the emergence of the new group and its mission to attack insufficiently pro-Israel candidates. In a very noticeable trend, ECI’s videos—there have been four to date, attacking Sestak, Ohio Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, Virginia Rep. Glenn Nye, and, most recently, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes—have all been publicly announced and received early promotion on the blog of the Weekly Standard.
Tactical shift
With their long track record of elite-focused organizing—a trend dating back to the 1970s-era Committee on the Present Danger—the neoconservatives’ shift to more tech-savvy public relations campaigns seems to be a calculated decision. Nowhere has this new approach been more evident than in Kristol and Bauer’s decision to select an up-and-coming neoconservative, Noah Pollak, to be the group’s executive director.
Pollak was a surprising choice given that former political appointees or other high profile individuals with established credentials and connections to policymakers have headed up other recent neoconservative letterhead groups, such as the Foreign Policy Initiative or PNAC. Pollak represented a sharp change in direction: Rather than being an intellectual or eminent D.C. character making a foray into journalism and advocacy, Pollack is a journalist-turned-activist who has no intellectual or high-profile government accomplishments to speak of.
Other neocons seemed to appreciate the shift: Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum said, of ECI, that “the real news is the group’s director: Noah Pollak, a friend of mine, and a brilliant advocate for rethinking Israel’s self-defense in a new media era.” It’s notable that Frum did not tout any book by Pollak (he has none, while many of his elder ideological comrades are prolific authors) or even any grand strategic idea beyond a public relations scheme based on updating nineteenth century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s clichéd assertion that war is “political relations… by other means.” Frum cited Pollak’s contribution to the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) effort in Gaza in the winter of 2008 and 2009, crediting Pollack with the initial idea behind the IDF YouTube channel.[16] The channel was a vital tool for Israeli public diplomacy after the May 2010 Israeli naval raid on the Mavi Marmara.
After graduating from the University of Vermont in 2003, Pollak launched a career working for numerous neoconservative publications, including Azure, an Israeli magazine published by the Likudist Shalem Center (which also launched a think tank funded by rightwing billionaire Sheldon Adelson); Commentary, a flagship of the neocon movement where Pollak wrote both for the print edition and the “Contentions” blog; and Middle East Quarterly, the journal of Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum, where Pollak was an assistant editor.
Pollak’s resume hints at another characteristic of these cyber-savvy versions of letterhead organizations: Their staffs are not much different from their earlier incarnations. Indeed, as Frum says, the significant point is not that Kristol and Bauer hired Pollak, who is obviously a dyed-in-the-wool neoconservative, but that they made him director of the group. Neoconservatives are relatively few in numbers, so the pool of potential employees was never large—it’s Pollak’s position that’s news. In an earlier era, the blogger among the book authors would have a less celebrated position in the letterhead group—former Weekly Standard blogger and online editor Michael Goldfarb was a mere research assistant during his early-career stint with PNAC.
These days, as a senior vice president of Orion Strategies, Goldfarb is advising ECI as well as other new-school letterhead groups, such as the Kristol-Liz Cheney founded Keep America Safe. Like ECI, Keep America Safe makes short internet videos and television commercials attacking Obama’s policies in the Middle East and in the so-called “war on terror,” drawing on familiar supporters like Mel Sembler, a Republican party donor and financial benefactor of the American Enterprise Institute and the Adelson-funded Freedom’s Watch.
But the web of neoconservative connections at ECI doesn’t stop there: in addition to Bauer and Kristol, the third member of the group’s board is Rachel Abrams[17], daughter of Midge Decter, step-daughter of neocon patriarch Norman Podhoretz (therefore step-brother of Commentary editor John Podhoretz), and wife of arch-neoconservative hardliner and former George W. Bush administration official Elliott Abrams.
Also, ECI initially shared a physical office address (918 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington, D.C. 20003) with a letterhead organization that played a key role promoting the invasion of Iraq, the Committee to Liberate Iraq (CLI).[18] In an e-mail exchange with Salon’s Justin Elliot, Goldfarb dismissed the shared address: “I’m on the record as an adviser to ECI and its no secret that I work at Orion, where the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq sign is still proudly displayed on the front of the building.”
But the revelation does demonstrate, as Elliot pointed out, “just how small a world the still-influential neocon foreign policy community occupies.”[19] Goldfarb’s employer Orion, for instance, is the lobbying outfit of Randy Scheunemann, a top foreign policy adviser to Bob Dole’s and both of John McCain’s presidential runs, and the former director of both PNAC and CLI.
Letterhead proliferation
Gary Bauer is a perennial link between neocons and the Christian right: Bauer was a founding member of PNAC and sits on the boards of Cliff May’s Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Christians United for Israel. The onetime religious right presidential hopeful and his family even take an annual beach vacation with Bill Kristol’s family. (At a Christians United for Israel confab, Kristol once jokingly refused to comment on whether Bauer removed his trademark dark business-suit to go into the ocean.[20])
Most recently, Bauer launched his own letterhead/attack-ad organization, Keep Israel Safe, with Weekly Standard contributing editor Tom Rose. They modeled the group on Cheney’s Keep America Safe (right down to the name) and, as one might expect, the Weekly Standard was instrumental in the group’s launch, getting an exclusive by “obtain[ing] an advance copy” of the first attack ad on Obama even before the group’s website was up.[21]
Keep Israel Safe has since released two more videos distorting Obama’s record and condemning his approach to Middle East peace.[22] Keep Israel Safe’s namesake—Cheney’s Keep America Safe—also focuses on internet videos, creating four original videos since its launch last year.[23] 2009 tax filings from Keep America Safe reveal just how cheap it is to produce these internet videos: while the group raised nearly half a million dollars and spent only a quarter of that, the four videos cost only $12,154 to produce – that’s just over $3,000 per video.
No wonder, then, with the price tag of these videos so low and distribution costs at zero, that the YouTube advertisement has proliferated among advocates of hardline militarist policies.
Another group that has produced a short internet video is Stop Iran Now, which focuses less on Israel and more on the other neocon obsession du jour—promoting the idea of a military attack on Iran.[24] Naturally, this ad, too, was run on the Weekly Standard’s blog.[25] Like Keep Israel Safe, Stop Iran Now’s website is only a video portal and a space to sign a petition against Obama.
ECI also seems to be keeping costs low while producing lots of videos. The three videos targeted at House races all follow the same template and, indeed, run through the same introductions. The voice-overs are amended to mention the specific member of Congress, and that member’s signature is highlighted on a copy of the “collective punishment” letter, then a picture of the specific member pops up on screen just before the end of the spot. The cost of editing these videos to fit the different races is likely minuscule. (Because the group is so new, tax filings for ECI are not yet available.)
As Salon’s Elliot noted, making internet videos updates perfectly the old model of letterhead organizations with a “low-budget, high-impact model that was used so successfully by the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. It’s a model that involves a very small staff and physical footprint coupled with the ability to get lots of free coverage from a hungry political media.”[26] Indeed, whenever a member of one of the groups behind the videos shows up on a cable news show, the short clips tend to be aired in full.[27]
Desperate times?
The zeal with which the right-wing promotes the videos may point to growing desperation. While neoconservatives have made gains—for instance, in their campaign for escalating measures against Iran—the operative consensus in Washington seems to be that Obama is not yet ready to carry out the hawks’ ultimate goal of bombing the Islamic Republic.[28]
Their efforts to keep the U.S. public uncritically supportive of Israel is in even more dire straights. Beinart’s article is emblematic of a rising consciousness about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. While the Weekly Standard predictably takes a hard line, a growing number of outlets and blogs have arrived at more nuanced editorial positions about the transgressions of the Jewish State.
Take Andrew Sullivan who, like Beinart, is a one-time editor of the New Republic, a liberal magazine with a neoconservative foreign policy. Sullivan’s popular Daily Dish blog now routinely runs items critical of Israel’s expansionist streak (a prominent feature of the Likud party),[29] policies in the Occupied Territories,[30] and—most notably—Israeli intransigence in the peace process[31] (not to mention neoconservative promotion and complicity in these[32] and other hardline notions[33]).
Even the New York Times, which since the early 1970s has espoused what many critics charge is an Israel-centric bias, runs items critical of Israel both occasionally in the newspaper and more regularly on its blogs, such as Robert Mackey’s the Lede blog.[34]
Recent shifts in both public discourse and the political leanings of the country have made positions taken by neoconservatives increasingly untenable. The invasion of Iraq has become something of an albatross around the necks of those who lobbied for it, and the failure to find the promised weapons of mass destruction has seriously tainted those hawks who promised that Saddam Hussein was developing stockpiles of chemical, biological, and possible nuclear weapons. The neocons, while retaining their perches in the media and some think tanks, are largely discredited—especially given the current occupant of the White House.
The Obama challenge
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 has left the neoconservative community in Washington increasingly isolated from policy elites. Obama’s stated willingness to meet with leaders like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,[35] his emphasis on repairing the U.S. image in the Middle East, and his preferences for dialogue over bombastic rhetoric have put neocons and their allies on the defensive. Where Democrats are concerned, Bill Clinton’s liberal interventionist foreign policy was more susceptible to the overtures of moralistic pleas from neocons than is Obama’s calculating realist-heavy approach.
Thus, it was logical that neoconservative activists would turn to a populist strategy of engaging congressional races, promoting “security” issues in local political campaigns, and reaffirming their movement’s ties with the Christian right—a far larger voting bloc than the Jewish, right-wing pro-Israel constituency. But while the lowering costs of technology have given Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer, Liz Cheney, and their fellow travelers an ability to speak directly to the U.S. public, serious questions should be asked about how successful their movement can be as they shift from elite-centered advocacy to populist messaging focused on Christian Zionists and the Tea Party Movement—a movement which Bill Kristol has suggested is comprised of the “pro-American wing” of the U.S. public.[36] While neoconservative influence on the young Tea Party movement is up for debate, it’s clear that the new outraged populists do owe something to neocons—it was Kristol, after all, who discovered Tea Party darling Sarah Palin during a Weekly Standard Alaskan cruise in 2007.[37]
But perhaps more telling are the sagging public approval numbers for the ongoing war in Afghanistan. According to a recent Gallup/USA Today poll, 43 percent of respondents thought it was a mistake to go to war in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.[38] This marks a dramatic drop from the 93 percent of Americans who supported U.S. military action in Afghanistan in November 2001.[39] The public’s taste for war and a militarized foreign policy is quickly fading.
War fatigue, the changing demographics of the Israel Lobby, and new political realities in the United States are forcing hawks to reinvent their advocacy methods. The movement has fallen far, but with allies on the populist fringe of U.S. politics, the neoconservatives seem to have found fertile ground for their fear-mongering messages, which could have profound repercussions in the months and years to come.
While the switch from elites to grassroots represents a sort of demotion for those men and women who used to have the ears of diplomats, presidents, and cabinet members, they are nonetheless achieving a level of recognition and acceptance in the mainstream which the elder generation—not the least of them Irving Kristol—would have found hard to imagine.
To see William Kristol make his weekly appearances on Fox News or Noah Pollak head up the ECI’s ad campaign in congressional races, it’s hard to miss the obvious irony. While suffering losses in their influence over policy elites in Washington, the neoconservatives have become an ingrained and accepted component of the American right-wing. And while Clinton was easier to pressure, it took the unstinting support of President Bush for the neoconservatives to see their goals in Iraq fulfilled. In the post-Obama era, which may arrive sooner than many expect, it is frightening to contemplate what sort of policies the next president—propped up by Christian Zionist zealots—will pursue vis-à-vis the United States’ engagement with the world.
Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton are independent journalists who write for the Inter Press Service blog Lobelog (http://www.lobelog.com/) and are contributors to Right Web (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/).
[1] Chester E. Finn Jr., “Remembering Irving Kristol,” Education Next, September 21, 2009, http://educationnext.org/remembering-irving-kristol/
[2] Barry Gewen, “Irving Kristol, Godfather of Modern Consveratism, Dies at 89,” The New York Times, September 18, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/us/politics/19kristol.html
[3] http://web.archive.org/web/20070810113947/www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
[4] Peter Beinart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” The New York Review of Books, June 10, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/
[5] Alex Magnet, “Support of Israel Declining Among Young Jewish Americans, Poll Says,” The New York Sun, December 2, 2005, http://www.nysun.com/national/support-of-israel-declining-among-young-jewish/23870/
[6] Ron Kampeas, “Religious Passion Combines with Politics at CUFI Parley,” The Jewish Telegraph Agency, July 25, 2010, http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/07/25/2740190/religious-passion-combines-with-politics-at-cufi-parley
[7] Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib, “Familiar Neocons and Christian Zionist Head up New Emergency Committee for Israeli”,” LobeLog,July 13, 2010 http://www.lobelog.com/familiar-neocons-and-christian-zionist-head-up-new-emergency-committee-for-israel/
[8] Katharine Q. Seelye, “A Punch and a Counterpunch in Pennsylvania Senate Race, The New York Times, July 21, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/us/politics/21adbox.html
[9] Greg Sargent, “War Escalates Between Joe Sestak and Right-Wing Pro-Israel Group,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2010 http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/war_escalates_between_right-wi.html
[10] Nathan Guttman, “Congressional Letter to End Gaza Blockade Splits Activists,” The Forward, February 3, 2010, http://www.forward.com/articles/124917/
[11] Katharine Q. Seelye, “A Punch and a Counterpunch in Pennsylvania Senate Race, The New York Times, July 21, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/us/politics/21adbox.html
[12] Katharine Q. Seelye, “A Punch and a Counterpunch in Pennsylvania Senate Race, The New York Times, July 21, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/us/politics/21adbox.html
[13] Ben Smith, “Lawyer: Sestak ‘Willing to Put His Life on the Line to Defend Israel’,” Politico, July 15, 2010, http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0710/Lawyer_Sestak_put_his_life_on_the_line_to_defend_Israel.html
[14] Ron Kampeas, “Pa. Senate Race Turning into Israel Proxy Fight,” The Jewish Telegraph Service, July 20, 2010, http://jta.org/news/article/2010/07/20/2740128/pa-senate-race-seen-as-national-test-for-j-street
[15] Ben Smith, “Group to Oppose President Obama’s Mideast Policy,” Politico, July 12, 2010, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39613.html
[16] David Frum, “Emergency Committee for Israel,” The Daily Dish, July 13, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/07/emergency-committee-for-israel.html
[17] Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib, “Familiar Neocons and Christian Zionist Head up New “Emergency Committee for Israel”,” LobeLog, July 13th, 2010, http://www.lobelog.com/familiar-neocons-and-christian-zionist-head-up-new-emergency-committee-for-israel/
[18] Eli Clifton and Jim Lobe, “Emergency Committee Based at Old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,” Lobelog, July 15th, 2010, http://www.lobelog.com/emergency-committee-based-at-old-committee-for-the-liberation-of-iraq/
[19] Justin Elliot, “Bill Kristol’s New Israel Group Using Officees of Old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,” The War Room, July 16, 2010, http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/07/16/liberation_of_iraq_and_committee_for_israel/index.html
[20] Ali Gharib, “Going Undercover at Mad Pastor Hagee’s Christians United for Israel Summit,” AlterNet, July 26, 2008, http://www.alternet.org/rights/92860/going_undercover_at_mad_pastor_hagee%27s_christians_united_for_israel_summit/
[21] John McCormack, “New Group, Keep Israel Safe, Launches with Hard-Hitting Ad,” The Weekly Standard, April 29, 2010, http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/exclusive-keep-israel-safe-launch-hard-hitting-ad
[22] Keep Israel Safe, Accessed: August 14, 2010, http://www.keepisraelsafe.com/
[23] “Video Archive”, Keep Israel Safe, Accessed: August 14, 2010, http://www.keepamericasafe.com/?page_id=1347
[24] Stop Iran Now, Accessed: August 14, 2010, http://www.stopirannow.com/
[25] Daniel Halper, “Stop Iran Now Debuts New Ad,” The Weekly Standard, July 6, 2010, http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/stop-iran-now-debuts-new-ad
[26] Justin Elliot, “Bill Kristol’s New Israel Group Using Offices of Old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,” War Room, July 16, 2010, http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/07/16/liberation_of_iraq_and_committee_for_israel/index.html
[27] MSNBC, “Morning Joe”, July 13, 2010, as posted to YouTube by the Emergency Committee for Israel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIv_wfGyD4w
[28] Steve Clemons, “Stop Hyperventilating: Obama Will Not Choose War with Iran,” The Huffington Post, July 23, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/stop-hyperventilating-oba_b_657096.html
[29] Andrew Sullivan, “Did Netanyahu Know?” The Daily Dish, March 11, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/did-netanyahu-know.html#more
[30] Andrew Sullivan, “Israel’s Long Campaign to Punish Gazans,” The Daily Dish, June 25, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/06/gazas-economy.html
[31] Andrew Sullivan, “Petraeus on Israel,” The Daily Dish, March 14, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/petraeus-vs-netanyahu.html
[32] Andrew Sullivan, “The Real Neocon Line: Disproportion as Policy,” The Daily Dish, June 1, 2010, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/06/the-real-neocon-line-disproportion-as-policy.html
{33] Andrew Sullivan, “Neocons for Ahmadinejad,” The Daily Dish, June 17, 2009, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/neocons-for-ahmadinejad.html
[34] Alex Kane, “These ‘Times’ Demand Robert Mackey,” Mondoweiss, June 11, 2010, http://mondoweiss.net/2010/06/these-times-demand-robert-mackey.html
[35] Caren Bohan, “Obama Qualifies Position on Talking to Enemies,” Reuters, May 27, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2635405920080527
[36] William Kristol, “Collapse: The Left is Unpopular, Undisciplined, and Ill-Tempered,” The Weekly Standard, August 23, 2010, http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/collapse
[37] Jane Mayer, “The Insiders: How John McCain Came to Pick Sarah Palin,” The New Yorker, October 27, 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/27/081027fa_fact_mayer
[38] Richard Wolf, “Poll: Waning Support for Obama on Wars,” USA Today, August 3, 2010, http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-08-02-afghan-poll_N.htm
[39] “America and the War on Terrorism,” p. 57, The American Enterprise Institute, July 24, 2008, http://www.aei.org/docLib/20050805_terror0805.pdf
Zionist False Flag Terror and Deceptions
Timeline
1946: July 22. Menachem Begin’s Irgun Jewish terrorists dress as Arabs and bomb the King David Hotel, killing 92 people. The Irgun also plot to assassinate British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin; fortunately, this conspiracy is foiled by MI6.
1948: May 14. David Ben-Gurion declares the independence of the new Zionist State of Israel, born from deception and from the blood of victims of Jewish terrorism hours before the British Mandate is due to expire. It takes effect at midnight, Tel Aviv time. May 15. Eleven minutes after midnight, U.S. President Harry Truman officially recognises the proclaimed Jewish state in Palestine.
1954: July. An Israeli spy ring is arrested in Egypt. These Israeli secret service agents have been assigned to attack U.S. and British interests in Egypt. “Operation Susannah” is a typical example of false-flag terrorism in which the perpetrators pin the blame on another party – in this case, Egypt and “the Arabs” – for political gain. The operation is unsuccessful, the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon is forced to resign as a result of the scandal, and the incident becomes known as the Lavon Affair.
1967: June 8. Israel carries out a sustained air and naval attack on the USS Liberty for over an hour, employing torpedoes, machine guns and napalm rockets, even to the extent of machine-gunning lifeboats launched to save the most seriously wounded. 34 men are killed and more than 170 wounded.
1987: Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer, is convicted of spying for Israel. It is not the only case.
1991: Israeli security officials inspect the garage of Zim American Israeli Shipping in the WTC, and conclude that the WTC garage is vulnerable to a car bomb.
1993: February 26. The WTC garage is hit by a car bomb. The FBI has been aware of the plot via their informant Emad Salem yet let it go ahead, killing six and injuring more than a thousand in the resulting fires after a plan to substitute harmless powder for the explosives was called off by an FBI supervisor. According to Israeli intelligence sources, Ahmad Ajaj, involved in the early stages of the plot, was a Mossad mole. There now exists a pretext for subsequent “fireproofing upgrades”.
1995: Benjamin Netanyahu, former unit team leader in the IDF’s elite special forces unit Sayeret Matkal and future Israeli Premier (1996-9 and 2009-), writes about “militant Islam” bringing down the World Trade Center. Benjamin’s father Benzion was secretary and pallbearer to Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky who founded the Revisionist Zionist Alliance, a militant faction within Zionism. Benzion Netanyahu’s mentor was Abba Ahimeir, Jabotinsky’s lieutenant, who wrote a column in the Revisionist Zionist magazine Doar Hayom. Under the title “From the Notebook of a Fascist”, Ahimeir would praise Mussolini and refer to Jabotinsky as “our Duce”, and said that Hitler is on the right track but for his “excessive anti-Semitism”. The Irgun Zvai Leumi was one of several Jewish terrorist organizations inspired by Jabotinsky’s movement. Menachem Begin was, like Benzion Netanyahu, another close disciple of Jabotinsky. Begin was the final commander of the Irgun in 1946 when its Jewish terrorists dressed as Arabs and blew up the King David Hotel.
1996: After Netanyahu is “unexpectedly” elected Israeli Prime Minister in the wake of a wave of so-called “suicide bombings”, the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies publishes a paper for him entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.
1997: September 24/25. Members of the Mossad’s Kidon (bayonet) unit arrive in Jordan. Two of them travelling with fake Canadian passports have been assigned to execute Hamas leader Khaled Mashal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chaired the Israeli “Committee X” that decided on the assassination. As in Operation Susannah, the plan goes badly wrong. The attempt to poison Mashal with nerve gas is interrupted before he is killed outright, the two Mossad assassins are arrested, and four of their teammates end up trapped in the Israeli Embassy in Amman. Israel has to bargain for their release by providing an antidote to save Mashal and by freeing another Hamas leader and other prisoners. Netanyahu only agrees to provide the antidote after pressure from Bill Clinton. Efraim Halevy is sent in to defuse the situation and get the Israelis out. For his handling of the affair, Halevy is awarded the job of Director of the Mossad.
1998: January 17. News breaks via the Drudge Report of a sexual relationship between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, who is of Russian Jewish descent. Clinton would have been vulnerable to blackmail by, for example, a “foreign embassy” that was tapping his telephones. January 20. Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is in a weak position domestically but who has a few more aces up his sleeve, arrives in Washington for talks with Bill Clinton. November / December. Philip Zelikow, a Jewish American writer and historian, co-authors an article which describes a “transforming event” rather like “Pearl Harbor”, which would “divide our past and future into a before and after”. In another few years, Zelikow will be the executive director of the “9/11 Commission”.
1999: May 28. The website domain emperors-clothes.com is created by Jared Israel. September 16. Jared Israel posts a fairly lengthy article at the Emperor’s Clothes website, taking a position that is critical of the U.S. government and of the New York Times‘ bias towards U.S. government policy. The article Credible Deceptions has no less than 35 references to “bin Laden”, and is rightly skeptical of the notion that “CIA employees” Osama bin Laden et al would have suddenly transformed from employee to enemy. Israel suggests that bin Laden is “an enemy in fiction”. Credible Deceptions is said to have been written as early as August 28, 1998, revised September 16, 1999, and reposted February 18, 2001. October 31. Rabbi Dov Zakheim is CEO of SPC International – a world leader in aircraft remote control technology incorporating a “Flight Termination System” capable of simultaneously taking over a number of in-flight aircraft and issuing commands via a “Command Transmitter System“. EgyptAir Flight 990 (a Boeing 767) plunges into the Atlantic, killing all 217 on board including 33 Egyptian army officers. No mechanical cause for the crash is ever found, and it is blamed on a “suicidal Muslim” co-pilot, a claim that is publicised by the New York Times, which has been under Jewish ownership since 1896. A few weeks later, bioterrorism “expert” Jerome Hauer announces he will step down from his position as Director of the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management early in 2000, having successfully conducted an emergency operation from the OEM, based on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building Seven (WTC7), in response to the outbreak of West Nile Fever in the city which occurred the year after he persuaded Mayor Giuliani to develop a vaccine against it. As of 1999 – 2000, the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head, MD (NSWC-IH), is the “only reliable source of aluminum nanopowders in the United States“.
2000: January. More than a hundred Israelis pose as “art students” (January 2000 – September 2001) and attempt to penetrate U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) offices and other federal buildings including 36 sensitive Department of Defense (DoD) sites. September. Rabbi Zakheim of SPC is amongst the signatories to Rebuilding America’s Defenses, a report published by The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which wrote of the advantages of a “new Pearl Harbor“.
2001: Fireproofing “upgrades” are being carried out at the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, as also occurred over several years pre-2001. The contract holder is Turner Construction, whose CEO is Tom Leppert. WTC tenants have been completing various modifications throughout the leased spaces. January 20. George W. Bush is sworn in as president, and says, “We will confront weapons of mass destruction…”. A clique of warmongers with strong attachments to Israel and PNAC are to achieve power in the Bush administration. February 15. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV network broadcasts a documentary entitled “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?” This weak conspiracy theory has plenty of evidence against it, and very little to support it. The broadcast would help to deflect attention from any actual major criminal conspiracy that might be imminent, by branding those who exposed the crime as “conspiracy theorists” – particularly if someone were to conflate the “Apollo hoax” theory with the real conspiracy. March 4. Fox TV, owned by Rupert Murdoch, a long-time friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, broadcasts the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen TV series, an episode about a plot by a secret cabal within the U.S. government to electronically hijack by remote control a Boeing heading for Boston and divert it to crash into the World Trade Center. The broadcast would help to deflect attention from any imminent false-flag attack by Israel by: (i) Diverting suspicion to the Bush administration. (ii) Reinforcing the concept of an attack based on remote-controlled planes as “fiction” or “conspiracy theory”. March 19. Fox TV rebroadcasts its “Moon hoax” conspiracy theory. April. Real estate developer Larry A. Silverstein is still in the running as one of three bidders for the 99-year lease on the World Trade Center, after having been viewed as a “dark horse” who was unlikely to win the deal. However, Port Authority chairman Lewis M. Eisenberg is in charge of negotiations. Eisenberg was a partner of Goldman Sachs for many years, and is on the planning Board of the UJA / United Jewish Federation “charity”. Silverstein served as Chairman of the Board of the United Jewish Appeal. July. Six weeks before the WTC is destroyed in terror attacks involving Boeings that, evidence suggests, are electronically hijacked by remote control, Benjamin Netanyahu’s friend Larry Silverstein, in partnership with billionaire Australian Frank Lowy who fought “in the Jewish underground”, takes control of the WTC lease, and insures the buildings against terror attacks for billions of dollars, with a clause stating that in the event of a terrorist attack, the partners could not only collect the insured value of the property, but would also be released from all of their obligations under the 99-year lease. August 26. New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik leaves for a four-day trip to Israel, where he is to meet government officials to discuss terrorism. The trip has been approved by Mayor Giuliani, with New York taxpayers picking up the tab. August 29. In Jerusalem, Bernard Kerik assures Israeli leaders that the NYPD is “on top of” all potential terrorist threats. See September 16, 2001 and November 8, 2007 for more on Kerik. September 4. The Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co. moves out of the WTC, transferring their HQ to Norfolk, Virginia. September 6. In the U.S. stock options market, an extraordinary proportion of trades are betting that the United Airlines price will fall. The put / call ratio is 25, i.e., “puts” are about 96.154 percent of the volume, and “calls” only 3.846 percent, as opposed to a typical 50:50 ratio. September 10. The Washington Times publishes details of a study by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), which has this to say of Israel’s Mossad: “Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.” San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown is warned not to fly the next day. An internal memo is sent around Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, advising all employees of a possible terrorist attack against American buildings. Goldman Sachs is a Jewish investment banking firm, with headquarters in Lower Manhattan close to the World Trade Center. In the U.S. stock options market, an extraordinary proportion of trades are betting that the American Airlines stock price will fall. The proportion of “put” options, at more than 80 percent, (85.79 percent at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, according to this source) far exceeds the proportion of “call” options. September 11. Benjamin Netanyahu and Rudy Giuliani are in New York. Odigo, an Israeli instant messaging company with offices in Herzliya, Israel, provides two hours’ advance warning of an attack on the World Trade Center. At 9:00 a.m., officials at the National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, VA, start to run an exercise involving a plane crashing into a tower. Another drill is scheduled at the 97th floor of the WTC South Tower where Fiduciary Trust has offices, and numerous other war games and exercises distract NORAD so that any truly hijacked (electronically or otherwise) planes cannot be intercepted in time. A group of Israelis, some of whom are Mossad agents, park their van and set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers. Uncharacteristically, Larry Silverstein does not breakfast at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower that day since he has a “dermatologist’s appointment”, and another consequence is that his two children, who work at Silverstein Properties, are running late. Silverstein’s lucky streak is compounded when each Tower of the WTC complex – which he insured for $billions against terror attacks a mere six weeks ago – is struck by an aircraft in synchronized terror attacks. A group of Israelis dance and celebrate with high fives and cries of joy and mockery, even prior to the second impact as most onlookers still believe it has been a terrible accident rather than terrorism. George W. Bush is informed by Andrew Card that a second plane has hit the WTC, and continues to read a story about a pet goat to schoolchildren as if nothing has happened. Each Tower completely collapses, mostly into its footprint. There is a remarkable correlation between the impact floors of each Tower that supposedly failed due to “fires”, and those floors that had received fireproofing “upgrades”, particularly in the case of the North Tower (WTC1). The steel was certified to ASTM E119 by Universal Laboratories. In subsequent tests to be sponsored by NIST on corresponding floor assemblies subjected to greater heat exposure and protected with less fireproofing than at the WTC on 9/11, it will be found that the test specimens “were able to sustain the maximum design load” without collapsing for as long as the tests were run: 2 to 3 1/2 hours). Within hours, Jerome Hauer goes on TV to tell everyone that “It… certainly has the fingerprints of somebody like bin Laden”, and that the World Trade Center collapsed because of “the velocity of the plane” and “intense heat probably weakened the structure as well”. Hauer reportedly advises the White House to start taking Cipro, an effective antibiotic against anthrax. Five Israelis are arrested that afternoon after tie-ins to the 9/11 attacks are found in their van, such as maps of the city with certain places highlighted. Bomb-sniffing dogs react as if the van has traces of explosives. Another team is caught attempting to blow up the George Washington Bridge with a truck packed with tons of explosives. A “panel truck with a painting of a plane flying into the World Trade Center” is stopped, and found to contain yet another team of “ethnic Middle Eastern people” – i.e., Israelis. There is evidence to suggest that this van exploded. Bush is whisked away to the United States Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, where Warren Buffett is hosting his annual golf charity event. Ann Tatlock, the CEO of Fiduciary Trust Co. International, having been invited to this charity event, is, like the Silversteins, spared a fiery fate as a plane smashes into her company’s offices right where 650 of her employees work, killing 87 of them. Building 7, which was never struck by a plane, completely collapses into its footprint despite the fact that any structural damage or weakening from fires would have been asymmetric. The initial WTC7 collapse is very close to free-fall speed. There are many, many more “coincidences and oddities“.
Running in parallel with the above timeline going up to the WTC demolitions is another, shorter timeline relating to the Pentagon attack:
2000: March 3. It is reported that the Pentagon’s finances are “in disarray”, and that in 1999 the Defense Department’s accountants had to make almost $7 trillion in “adjustments” to try to reconcile bookkeeping discrepancies. They cannot show receipts for $2.3 trillion of those corrections. There are hundreds of computer systems running various military accounts, but these are not integrated, and the financial records are not up to accounting standards or capable of even facing an audit. It follows that the Pentagon would be vulnerable to a “terror attack” that destroyed the relevant computers and documents, also killing dozens of accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts. A percentage of $2.3 trillion is still an inordinate amount of cash, and if a proportion went missing, the Pentagon Comptroller would be able to say, “We tried our best, but sadly, due to the terror attacks, we will never know exactly how much money is missing – or where it went”.
2001: February. George W. Bush nominates Rabbi Zakheim to serve as Comptroller at the Pentagon and Under Secretary of Defense. May 4. Dov Zakheim is sworn in as Pentagon Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Defense. May 31. Thomas E. White – who went on JINSA trips to Israel and who as former CEO at Enron is linked to the massive fraud there – is sworn in as Secretary of the Army, thirty days after being nominated by George W. Bush. September 10. A group of top Pentagon officials are warned not to fly the next day. Donald Rumsfeld confirms that $2.3 trillion of transactions cannot be accounted for. September 11. Thomas White, Paul Wolfowitz, Randy “Duke” Cunningham and others are at a breakfast meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, in which the latter predicts that some kind of “shocking” world event will occur in the near future. The meeting is about to break up as the first plane slams into the North Tower. As the alleged Flight 77 is ten miles out from the Pentagon, a young man asks Vice President Cheney, “Do the orders still stand?” Cheney turns and whips his neck around and replies, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” Since there are no shoot down orders in effect at 9:37:45 – the time of the Pentagon strike – or earlier, “the orders” seem to be stand down rather than shoot down. Thomas White is at the Army Navy Country Club when, as he says, “the plane that hit the Pentagon came right over the top of the Army Navy Club and bounced down the hill and hit the side of the Pentagon”. Steve Riskus allegedly sees a Boeing 757 featuring an “AA” logo with the eagle in the middle on the tail crash into the Pentagon after screaming overhead at 530 mph and knocking over a few light poles on the way. The domain criticalthrash.com subsequently carries Riskus’ photos and other reports consistent with an AA jetliner, although most of these witnesses are employed in defense or in the media. In the afternoon, Donald Rumsfeld says, “My interest is to hit Saddam Hussein“, and orders his aides to plan for striking Iraq.
Looking beyond 9/11/2001, events unfolded like this:
2001: September 12. U.S. officials say they have identified “all of the hijackers“, who very obligingly are found to have left numerous clues such as a copy of the Koran, a flight training video and a fuel consumption calculator in luggage that supposedly failed to make the connection to the alleged Flight AA11, and Arabic language flight training manuals in a rented white Mitsubishi Mirage found at Boston’s Logan airport late Tuesday the 11th. It is estimated that the conspiracy must have involved hundreds if not thousands, and, in an attempt to explain why Western intelligence was “oblivious” to the plot, it is suggested that Osama bin Laden planted agents inside the U.S. military and intelligence services. September 13. U.S. officials say they have identified “most of the hijackers“, believed to number eighteen. Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari, originally thought to be brothers, were suspected, but Adnan was found to be alive and living in Florida, and Ameer died in a small plane crash on September 11, 2000. Yet if those identities were stolen and were on the flight manifests, it would be remarkable if the authorities were able to trace the real identities of the individuals involved within, say, three days. For anyone in need of “Saudi suicide pilots” to frame as patsies, the deceased pilot Ameer Bukhari, a Saudi Arabian national of Vero Beach, Florida, would be an ideal choice provided they could keep the lid on the fact that he had died in the “wrong” year. It is reported that the Bukhari “brothers” rented a silver-blue Nissan Altima and drove from Boston to Portland, bizarrely only to fly back to Boston. Atta rented the Mitsubishi sedan found at Logan airport, and also had a red Pontiac registered in his name. There is a general ban on flights, which must be approved on a case-by-case basis. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to the U.S., meets George W. Bush. The authorities give permission for a private jet to fly around the U.S. picking up members of the bin Laden family, which has business ties with the Bush family through the Carlyle Group. About 140 top Saudi officials are on the plane. The Emperor’s Clothes website runs a couple of articles skeptical of the official 9/11 story, including an interview between editor Jared Israel and Rudi Dekkers of Huffman Aviation. Don Radlauer, of the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya, Israel (and formerly – until 1997 – of Weybridge, Surrey, UK and of New York), publishes a report detailing the flight paths of the alleged four hijacked planes. The report attempts to lend credibility to the official story with suggestions that hijacking and steering the planes would be an easy task – even though a rather diminutive non-pilot was said to have wrestled control of Flight 77 from the tough, highly trained, weightlifting former Navy fighter pilot Charles Burlingame and steered a Boeing 757 to hit the Pentagon at 530 mph as its engines cleared the lawn by a couple of feet. Radlauer’s “take off” times correspond to the “pushed back from the gate” times, with Flight 93 for example being delayed for 41 minutes due to congestion. The 41-minute delay could explain why Flight 93 failed to hit its intended target, as the Air Force stand down could not be maintained indefinitely. September 14. U.S. officials say they have identified nineteen “hijackers“, with Hani Hanjour now included. Evidently the scriptwriters had pilots and Saudis available for the frame-up, but were short of credible “Saudi pilots”. Dominick Suter of “Urban Moving Systems Incorporated” or urban MOving SyStems incorporAteD, the Mossad front that the joking, celebrating, dancing Israelis ostensibly worked for, flees the U.S. for Israel. September 16. Osama bin Laden denies responsibility for the attacks, but according to Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, the passport of “hijacker” Satam al Suqami has been discovered several blocks from the WTC crash site. Kerik’s claim is not credible since, given the physical characteristics such as mass, cross-section and drag coefficient of a passport, even if it had survived the fireball, flying over rooftops for several blocks would be in contravention of the laws of aerodynamics. In another attempt, the passport is said to have been found “in the vicinity of Vesey Street”, to the north of the Twin Towers. Unfortunately, the scriptwriter forgot that Suqami was supposed to be on Flight 11, said to have approached from the north. The “Bukharis drove the rented Nissan Altima to Portland” story has evolved into “Mohamed Atta and Abdul Alomari drove the rented Nissan Altima to Portland”, which necessitated abandoning the previous claim of “Atta rented the Mitsubishi found at Logan” since that would make even less sense. However, the “Abdul Alomari hijacker” was originally Abdul Rahman Alomari, a pilot, friend and neighbor of Adnan Bukhari. When Alomari was found to be alive, as was Adnan Bukhari, the hijacker was said to be Abdulaziz Alomari. Problem is, he is alive too. And he’s a non-pilot. September 18. Terrorists launch an anthrax letters campaign targeting Democratic U.S. Senators and news media offices, seven days after the 9/11 attacks, and seven days after Jerome Hauer had advised the White House to begin taking Cipro. For an excellent timeline of the anthrax attacks and a subsequent spate of deaths amongst microbiologists, see here. September 19. Don Radlauer, of the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya, Israel, publishes a report on pre-9/11 insider trading involving surges in volume of put options for American Airlines, United Airlines, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch over the trading days before the attacks. He confirms that there was no news at that time to justify such an imbalance of trades, calculates the potential profit for the insiders at over $15 million, suggests that “Osama bin Laden” was behind it, and says, “we are dealing with an expert in masking ownership of corporations and making covert deals”. See here for some more clues as to the identity of those skilled in masking ownership of corporations. September 25. Rudy Giuliani bans photography at the World Trade Center ruins. September 28. Osama bin Laden again denies having anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, but suggests some possible suspects: Those within the American system who rebel against it and work for some other system, those who want to stir up conflict between Islam and Christianity, American Jews, or U.S. intelligence agencies. Before the month is up, nearly half of the alleged “suicide hijackers” have turned up alive and well. And that’s from the new, improved list, excluding Abdul Rahman Alomari and the Bukharis. No less than three of the alleged “suicide pilots” – Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad al-Jarrah – had reported their passports stolen in late 1999. Jarrah’s uncle Jamal explains in a five-minute interview that his nephew was not a radical, had no interest in politics, and did not change his appearance or behavior. Within a month of 9/11 it is quite evident that the alleged hijackers’ drinking, cocaine snorting, gambling, trysts with hookers and frequenting of strip joints does not square with religious extremists with such hatred of Western culture that they are prepared to kill themselves and thousands of others. October 8. Edward A. Coburn, 31, of Fresno, California, is arrested after bursting into the cockpit of an American Airlines jetliner bound for O’Hare airport, screaming, “We’re going to crash into the Sears Tower” and that terrorists are “steering” the plane towards the Sears Tower. Coburn, who works for a Silicon Valley company, is described as “intelligent, decent and immaculate”, “polite”, a “mellow type” who was “very kind and very nice”, a “real good guy”, etc. October 10. Three days after the launch of the war in Afghanistan, Mossad agent Salvador Guersson Smecke and Israeli illegal immigrant Saur Ben Zvi are caught and arrested inside the Mexican Congress chamber in possession of guns, grenades, dynamite, detonators and wiring while posing as “press photographers”. October 11 (assuming the Thursday prior to October 17). Moshe Elmakias, 30 and Ron Katar, 23, described as “Middle Eastern”, are arrested by Plymouth Police in Pennsylvania after being found with a Sony video camera and tape with detailed video footage of Chicago’s Sears Tower, days after a bizarre incident in the cockpit of a jetliner bound for Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Elmakias’ tractor-trailer, which has a Florida registration and a sign posted on the side reading “Moving Systems Incorporated”, was seen by a Pizzeria Uno manager backed up to the Dumpster at the rear of the restaurant with a freshly dumped pile of furniture adjacent to the Dumpster. Also observed with Elmakias is a female, Ayelet Reisler, 23. Elmakias is a Jewish name, as is Katar, Reisler and the forenames Moshe, Ron and Ayelet. Although Elmakias claims to be in Plymouth to make a pick up, he cannot provide a name or telephone number of the customer. The President of Moving Systems Inc. is Simo Elbaz of Florida, aka Simon Elbaz aka Simon Miller aka Jonathan Miller, as subsequently shown in a February 2003 indictment naming Elbaz, Elmakias and several others on charges of wire fraud, extortion, and making a false bill of lading. October 26. A mere 45 days after the 9/11 terror attacks, George W. Bush signs the “Patriot Act” into law. The US government has awarded itself additional powers, e.g. the power to break into its citizens’ homes and conduct secret searches without telling them for months or indefinitely, and to spy on people’s choice of books. These powers are subsequently exploited so that the government can eavesdrop on private communications even when there is no evidence of involvement with a foreign country or a terror group. October 27/28 (last weekend in October). Six men with Israeli passports are stopped by police in the Midwest and found to have photos and descriptions of a nuclear power plant in Florida and the Trans-Alaska pipeline. They also have “box cutters and other equipment”. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller are said to be “furious” that the Immigration and Naturalization Service let them go without consulting the FBI. The incident is later reported in the Israeli press, although Ashcroft denies that he and Mueller were “furious”. November 14. The Emperor’s Clothes website, which was so quick to recognize that the “bin Laden turned from employee to archenemy” story was bogus, posts an article Guilty For 9-11: Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers. Unfortunately, it studiously ignores all the evidence of Israeli involvement. November 23. The Washington Post runs an article entitled “60 Israelis on Tourist Visas Detained Since Sept. 11“, saying that employees of Quality Sales, Inc. in Toledo, Ohio and other Israelis in the U.S. have been detained. The Israelis worked at malls selling trinkets and toys such as rubber band-propelled helicopters. Israeli mall kiosks are suspected Israeli intelligence fronts. The Post reports that this week, the authorities began to release the five detained “moving company” Israelis, young Israeli army veterans, who were observed celebrating with cries of joy and mockery as they trained their cameras on the burning WTC. They are being returned to their homes in Israel. December 13. An “Osama confession video” is conveniently “found”, out of all the buildings in Jalalabad (population estimated at roughly 250,000 as of 1999) in occupied Afghanistan within 5 weeks of it allegedly having been made, in which the only similarities between the “confessor” and OBL are that both of them wear a turban and have a beard. Before the year is out, it is evident that the weapons-grade Ames strain of anthrax found in letters sent to media outlets and senators in September and October originated at a U.S. government lab, despite a feeble attempt to frame Arab Muslims for the crime. Structural engineers say that the decision to rapidly recycle the WTC steel was a “serious mistake” that is handicapping the investigation. Dr. Frederick W. Mowrer, an associate professor in the fire protection engineering department at the University of Maryland, says, “I find the speed with which potentially important evidence has been removed and recycled to be appalling.” Mayor Rudy Giuliani is suspected of being behind the decision, but officials in the mayor’s office do not reply to written and oral questions about who decided to recycle the steel.
2002: January 11. The first prisoners arrive at “Camp X-Ray“, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Detainees arrive shackled in orange jumpsuits with blacked-out goggles and earplugs, and are made to kneel in a “holding area”. They are housed in 8 feet square wire cages and have a mattress, a sheet, a blanket, two towels, soap, shampoo, a copy of the Koran and two buckets. Jamal al Harith is just one example of an unfortunate who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time: a country that was invaded and occupied under a false prospectus, a person who was seized and transported thousands of miles to be imprisoned and abused without trial simply to maintain the fiction that the invasion of Afghanistan was to save the world from “terrorists“. March 11. Rabbi Dov Zakheim delivers a commemorative sermon on the Pentagon lawn to hundreds of co-religionists from 40 countries. Chabad Lubavitch rabbis have gathered ostensibly to launch the centenary commemoration of their spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, yet the rabbis sing “Oseh Shalom” at 9:38 a.m. at the crash site, exactly six months after the extremely lucrative Pentagon attack. March 25. Sixteen microbiologists have died, in a mysterious spate of deaths that started less than five months ago. Back in the 1980s, a series of “suicides” amongst scientists working in the defense industry had prompted Doug Hoyle to raise the issue in Britain’s Parliament with a question to the Under-Secretary of State for Defence. April 28-29. Guantanamo Bay prisoners are transferred from the temporary Camp X-Ray to the larger Camp Delta, construction of which officially began on February 27. May 7. A group of Israelis are caught with a rental truck that tested positive for TNT and RDX plastic explosives shortly after midnight, very close to the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Oak Harbor, Wash., where the Navy conducts explosive ordnance training for bomb disposal mobile units. September 10. Philip Zelikow admits that Iraq poses a threat to Israel, but not to the USA. October 12. In the deadliest terrorist atrocity to hit Indonesia, bombs are detonated on the island of Bali. 202 are killed, none of whom are Israelis. Australia suffers the highest number of casualties at 88, consistent with a goal of inducing Australia to increase its contribution to the “war on terror” and bring in “anti-terror” legislation. The second bomb, in a Mitsubishi van, causes much more damage than the bombers expect. The official story is initially that the Mitsubishi bomb consisted of the high explosive C-4, and this is subsequently revised to a low explosive improvised potassium chlorate, aluminum powder and sulfur composition which is inconsistent with the damage. The ringleader of the bombers suggests that an intelligence agency – “the CIA or KGB or Mossad” – had tampered with the bomb. In the February 1993 WTC bombing, the FBI’s plan to substitute a harmless powder for the real explosives was called off by an FBI supervisor; in the Bali 2002 bombing, intelligence operatives could have substituted a more powerful explosive.
2003: February. Sixteen moving companies and 74 operators, owners and employees are indicted on charges of fraud and extortion. Many of the names involved are Jewish names. Included is Moshe Elmakias aka Moses Makias of Moving Systems Incorporated, who was caught in October 2001 with detailed video footage of the Sears Tower. March 16. Three heads of state – George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Spanish Premier Jose Maria Aznar – travel to an American airbase in the Azores for a “summit”, i.e., an hour-long meeting where deals can be done behind closed doors without the risk of hacked phones, days in advance of the impending “shock and awe” campaign to bring “democracy” to Iraq and rid it of its “WMDs”. March 27. The Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures is approved for immediate implementation. For example, if a prisoner is escaping beyond the perimeter fence and there is no other means to prevent escape, then the guard should “fire to make the person(s) unable to continue…” without warning shots. In a list of “offenses”, tampering with restraints is listed as “category III”. June. Biological weapons experts working for the British government prove the Iraqis are right and the British government is wrong, in that the trailers that Tony Blair, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell claim are “mobile biological weapons labs” are in fact hydrogen generators for inflating artillery balloons. July 18. Dr David Kelly, a biological weapons specialist and expert on Iraq’s weapons who knew that the claims about “WMDs” are a pack of lies, is found dead after failing to return from one of his regular walks in the woods yesterday. Officially, the death is ruled to be a “suicide”. However, no fingerprints have been found on the knife he allegedly used to kill himself, he was not wearing gloves and none were found at the scene, a full transection of a single ulnar artery – which will quickly retract and close down thereby promoting clotting – is highly unlikely to kill, as is ingestion of one-third of a lethal dose of the painkiller co-proxamol, very little blood was found at the scene, and it would have been very difficult for Kelly to cut through the tendons of his left wrist since his right hand was very weak due to an elbow injury and he favored his left hand for any task requiring strength. All the evidence points to murder. Other scientists have died in various circumstances, some suspicious and others not suspicious. October. In a speech before retiring as Malaysia’s prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad shrewdly observes that Jews rule the world by proxy, and get others to fight and die for them.
2004: April 9. Eddie Guigui Shalev, an Israeli national who served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the paratroops regiment, says that based on his observations, Hani Hanjour was a “good” pilot, contrary to all available evidence. May 8. Shmuel Dahan, 22 and Almaliach Naor, 19, both Israelis, are arrested in Tennessee following a three-mile high-speed chase after their rental truck is seen speeding and they refuse to stop. Dahan, an Israeli military veteran, is found to have a “Learn to Fly in Florida” business card in his wallet. Florida flight instructor Nissan Giat says that he met Naor at a moving company where the Israeli man works and gave him one of his cards. The Israelis’ ID is fake, and a brown bottle which they threw from the truck whilst being pursued is found to contain a thick liquid like drain cleaner. Tests indicate the liquid is a mixture of Astromid 18 – a latex stripper/cleaner, gluconic acid and water. No explanation is provided as to why these were mixed. The nearby Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin is “the nation’s sole provider of fuel for the Navy’s nuclear subs“. Although the Israelis claim to be moving furniture, the Sheriff is skeptical, saying that the furniture is so old that it’s hard to see why anyone would want to move it. May 19. Rudy Giuliani says that officials never imagined that planes would be used as missiles, although they prepared for anthrax, smallpox and “dirty bombs”. May 21. Tamir D. Sason, 24 and Daniel Levy, 23, both of Metar, Israel, are caught attempting to get into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, Georgia, without proper identification, prompting a nearly 3-hour lockdown. They have supposedly been contracted by a moving company. Bomb-sniffing search dogs react positively to a briefcase in the cab of the truck, although no explosives are found. Submarines at Kings Bay are armed with nuclear ballistic missiles. July 15. Mossad agents Uriel Kelman, 30, and Eli Cara, 50, are convicted and jailed for six months for fraudulently attempting to obtain a New Zealand passport in the name of a tetraplegic man in order to create a false identity for Zev Barkan. July 22. The 9/11 Commission publishes its final report, the 9/11 Commission Report, which would more accurately be called the “9/11 Omission Report”. September 2. The FBI has a file of documents compiled in July and August showing that the Bureau is aware of various torture tactics at Guantanamo Bay that go back to 2002. Prisoners are shackled to the floor in the fetal position for 18 hours or more so that they urinate and defecate on themselves, subjected to extremes of temperature, threatened with dogs made to bark and growl, have their hair and beard wrapped in duct tape, deprived of sleep by the use of strobe lights and loud music, made to stand in stress positions, etc. One FBI agent heard banging sounds like thunder, but was perplexed by the fact that the weather was fine. On going to investigate, a prisoner was seen in an interview room kneeling on the floor with his forehead on the ground, holding his nose which appeared to be bleeding. The interviewers claimed that he “threw himself to the floor“. Another agent traveled to interview a prisoner, and found he had “a black eye, facial cuts around the nose, and his fingers on both hands were taped up”. October. A “close friend” of George W. Bush – identified as Tom Bernstein who, along with Bush and other businessmen, was a former owner of the Texas Rangers baseball club, a deal which netted Bush millions of dollars – sends him a copy of Natan Sharansky’s new book The Case for Democracy with a note urging him to read it. Bush does so – and so does Condoleezza Rice. Tom Bernstein is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, was appointed by Bush in 2002 to serve as a Council Member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and from 2002 to 2005 has been Co-Founder and Chairman of the International Freedom Center, a cultural institution developed for the World Trade Center Site. He is connected to Natan Sharansky through the International Freedom Center, to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger through the Fresh Air Fund, and Elie Wiesel through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. November 2. President Bush ‘wins’ a second term with the aid of Diebold electronic voting machines. Where a paper trail exists, the divergence between exit polls and results is within the expected statistical margin of error. In contrast, results from the voting machines have almost consistently swung towards Bush. The National Election Data Archive demonstrates that, for Ohio, the probability of these discrepancies occurring due to chance ranged from 1 in 17,800 down to 1 in 867,205,500. Dr Stephen Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania calculates the odds at 250 million to one against for just three of the major swing states – Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania – to swing as far as they did from their exit polls. November 11. Bush meets with Natan Sharansky for more than an hour. He invites him into the Oval Office for a discussion of Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy and how it applies to the “war on terror”.
2005: January. One possible motive for the Iraq war becomes apparent when it is reported that $8.8 billion of Iraqi money has gone “missing” between October 2003 and June 2004 from the former UN Oil-for-Food fund, oil sales and seized assets. In a lengthy interview with the Washington Times, George W. Bush says, “If you want a glimpse of how I think about foreign policy read Natan Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy.” July 7. Benjamin Netanyahu and Rudy Giuliani – who were in New York on 9/11 – are located in London on the morning of the 7/7 bombings. Netanyahu and the Mossad receive advance warning and, ironically, in a futile attempt to deflect from Israeli foreknowledge, former Mossad head Efraim Halevy demonstrates inside knowledge by revealing that he already knows the bombings were simultaneous when the authorities spend the next two days claiming that the three Tube explosions were spread over a period of 26 minutes from 08:51 to 09:17. The Israeli company Verint Systems, a subsidiary of Israel’s Comverse Technology, handles video security at the London Underground. In a CCTV-rich environment such as London, there ought to be numerous time-stamped images to prove that the alleged bombers were in London on 7/7, yet the authorities never release any such images. Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, a former Israeli intelligence officer, is listed on Verint documents as Chairman of the Board of Directors, e.g. as of April 2003. Dan Bodner, current CEO of Verint, was an Israeli Army officer. The official tale of “Muslim suicide bombers” is physically impossible, given the actual train times of the day, and the official scenario of exploding backpacks is contradicted by eyewitnesses and photos indicating the explosions originated underneath the carriages. Rudy Giuliani, friend of Bernard Kerik who announced the “discovery” of an alleged 9/11 suicide hijacker’s passport claimed to have survived the jet fuel fireball, was in Yorkshire the previous day. Miraculously, a till receipt obtained from a garden center at Tulip Retail Park in Leeds, Yorkshire is “found” to have survived one of the deadly Tube train blasts, and cited as ‘evidence’ for the official version of events. November 9 (9/11 by Israeli or European calendars). Israeli Jews staying at the Radisson hotel, Amman, Jordan, are evacuated in advance of terror attacks. According to the official story, “suicide bombers” are responsible, and even though the blast at the Radisson was caused by a bomb hidden in a false ceiling, it is still claimed to be the work of “suicide bombers“. There were no Jewish casualties, most of the dead were Jordanian Sunni Muslims, two Israeli casualties were both Arabs, and five Palestinians died including Major-General Bashir Nafeh, the head of military intelligence in the West Bank.
2006: July 31. Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, the Israeli-born founder and former CEO of Comverse Technology, is charged by U.S. authorities with multiple counts of fraud and related offenses. He was on vacation in Israel, but instead of returning to the U.S. to face indictment, travels to Germany and subsequently flees to Namibia. August 15. September 18. Benjamin Netanyahu, Warren Buffett, and Stef and Eitan Wertheimer attend a party at the King David Hotel, Jerusalem, to celebrate Buffett’s $5 billion acquisition of an 80% stake in the Wertheimer family’s Iscar Metalworking Company. The Israeli government also receives $1 billion in taxes from the deal. Stef Wertheimer, founder of Iscar, is considered the wealthiest Israeli living in Israel. Eitan Wertheimer and Netanyahu are residents of Caesarea, the only town in Israel that is managed by a business, the Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Caesarea Development Corporation that has donated over 100 million shekels in recent years to organizations such as the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. September 27. Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, ex-CEO of Comverse Technology, is arrested in Namibia after an international manhunt. He is wanted by the U.S. authorities to face multiple charges including conspiracy, securities fraud, and money laundering. September 30. It is revealed that, whilst preparing to flee fraud charges in the U.S., Kobi Alexander transferred $57 million from his Citigroup account to bank accounts in Israel: Bank Leumi account 603401/78 and Bank Hapoalim account 131883. He was caught when it was found that tens of millions of dollars had gone into his Namibian accounts. October 7. October 11. Kobi Alexander is charged with offering millions of dollars as a bribe to David Kreinberg, former Chief Financial Officer at Comverse, in an attempt to induce him to take sole responsibility for the fraud scheme. Alexander first offered $2 million, then $5 million, and finally “name your price”, pleading that there was no reason why both of them “should go down”.
2007: January 2. As part of a lawsuit involving the American Civil Liberties Union, the FBI releases its July/August 2004 documents detailing the mistreatment and torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. February. Video footage is published demonstrating that the BBC reported WTC 7 had collapsed, some 20 minutes before it actually did so at 5:20 EDT. The BBC’s Jane Standley, on location in New York, said that the building had collapsed when it was clearly visible through the window behind her head. Times are confirmed by a timestamp, and the footage is subsequently confirmed as genuine by the BBC’s Director of Collections at its Internet Archive. February 7. Melbourne scientist Dr Gideon Polya calculates post-invasion excess deaths in occupied Iraq at one million. This compares with an October 2006 estimate of 655,000 from a survey overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Both of these figures exclude up to 1.7 million pre-invasion deaths, including half a million children under 5 by 2000, killed as a result of depleted uranium and 1990 – 2003 sanctions. March 6. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is convicted on four felony counts including obstruction of justice, giving false statements to the FBI, and perjury in relation to the Bush administration’s leaking of the name of a CIA agent to the press. The agent, Valerie Plame, is married to Joseph Wilson, a diplomat who served in Iraq and Africa. Wilson correctly reported in March 2002 that an Italian intelligence report that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium was based on bogus documents, yet George Bush repeated the yellowcake claim in January 2003 when making the case for war. The leaking of Plame’s name was in retaliation for Wilson’s honesty, and part of an attempt to deter any further critics – part of the vast body of proof that the administration’s invasion of Iraq was not simply a mistake based on “faulty intelligence”. March 10. The U.S. military conducts a tribunal at Guantanamo Bay ostensibly to determine if one of their prisoners, alleged to be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is an “enemy combatant”. KSM was reportedly killed in a Pakistan Rangers paramilitary raid on his apartment in September 2002 and his identity confirmed by his wife and children. However, the “KSM” prisoner makes a statement at the tribunal admitting to being responsible for the “9/11 Operation, from A to Z”, the “1993 World Trade Center Operation”, the “Shoe Bomber Operation”, the “bombing of a nightclub in Bali”, “planning, training, surveying and financing the New (or Second) Wave attacks” against skyscrapers including the “Plaza Bank, Washington state” and the “Sears Tower, Chicago”, being in charge of the “Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and others”, and responsible for many other plots and operations. Whoever fabricated this ‘confession’ overlooked the fact that “KSM” was supposedly captured on March 1, 2003 but the Plaza Bank wasn’t founded until early 2006. And it isn’t a skyscraper. If they meant the Columbia Center, that isn’t referred to as “Plaza”; Bank of America Fifth Avenue Plaza is only the 9th tallest building in Seattle, and 1001 Fourth Avenue Plaza was down to 5th tallest by 1990. And the anthrax strain was traced to the US military, and it was Israeli “movers” who were caught with a video camera and detailed video footage of the Sears Tower. It was reported back in November 2005 that KSM’s interrogators said he’d held out for more than two minutes against the waterboarding, and use of waterboarding was subsequently confirmed by Dick Cheney. November 8. Bernard Kerik – who announced Sunday September 16, 2001, that a hijacker’s passport had been “discovered” – is indicted on 16 counts including lying, conspiracy, fraud, and taking and failing to report a $250,000 loan that originated with Israeli billionaire industrialist Eitan Wertheimer, with Brooklyn marble and stone merchant Shimon Cohen serving as intermediary in the transaction. Kerik and Wertheimer spent time together during Kerik’s trip to Israel at the end of August 2001. The Wertheimer family’s vast holdings include companies with United States Defense Department contracts.
2008: April. The Pentagon’s accounting process is said to be “so obsolete and error prone that it’s virtually impossible to tell where much of this money ends up“. July 29. FBI “suspect” for the 2001 anthrax attacks, Bruce E. Ivins, is found dead. Officially, it is alleged that he committed suicide after learning that the FBI was going to charge him and prosecutors would be seeking the death penalty. Ivins became the new scapegoat, after the FBI gave up attempting to pin the blame on Steven Hatfill because there was not a scintilla of evidence against him. However, Ivins had no reason to target media and opposition politicians in order to deter them from questioning the official 9/11 story. Embarrassingly for the FBI, they were forced to play the role of “idiots” who were “baffled” as to Ivins’ motive. August 19. Barry Jennings, an eyewitness whose explicit testimony of early explosions in WTC7 prior to collapse of either Tower contradicts the official version of events, mysteriously dies. August 21. NIST publishes the findings of its three-year ‘study’ into the collapse of WTC7. Not surprisingly, the conclusion that “fires” and “thermal expansion” of some fireproofed steel beams caused the total collapse of this 47-story building is based on political considerations rather than the empirical evidence – evidence that was studiously ignored when it did not support the desired conclusion. Also ignored was the testimony of eyewitness Barry Jennings, who died two days previously. NIST, whose top scientists and engineers have extensive knowledge of nano-thermites, say they have found “no evidence” of explosives at the WTC, but later admit that they did not bother to look for any. December. The bill for Bush’s “war on terror” is estimated to be approaching $1 trillion, excluding long-term health care for veterans and interest on federal borrowing.
Excerpted from Take Our World Back
WSJ-Asia Cheers Tightening Iran Sanctions
According to The Wall Street Journal Asia’s editorial board, newly announced cooperation from Japan and South Korea on enforcing UN sanctions against Iran “is worth cheering.”
The editorial board attributed South Korea’s cooperation on sanctions to its “growing up as a democracy,” and Japan’s acquiescence on the issue as a much needed about-face from its “needless tiff with the White House over a troop relocation agreement in Okinawa.”
While glossing over the complexities of both Seoul and Tokyo’s relationships with Washington — which, I think it’s fair to say, amount to a lot more than South Korea “growing up” and Japan’s mea culpa for a “needless tiff” — the seeming tightening of the sanctions regime on Tehran should be put in context.
Reports do seem to confirm that sanctions have had a measurable and noticeable effect on Iran’s trading relationships, but sanctions have also resulted in Iran expanding trading relationships in Latin America and Africa, and looking towards expanding trade with much bigger economies, such as China.
According to All Headline News:
Chinese Transport Minister Liu Zhijun is expected to visit Iran Sunday to sign a $2 billion contract to build a 360-mile-long railway linking key Iranian destinations that could later join to existing Iraq and Syrian railway networks and extending to the Mediterranean Sea.
Experts on U.S.-Iran relations Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett responded to the little-reported news item on China’s expanding trade relationship with Iran on their blog, The Race for Iran, writing:
None of the initiatives discussed in the news report cited above violate UN sanctions against Iran. In fact, we cannot see how these efforts would even violate U.S. or other unilaterally-defined national sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Nevertheless, there have been other indications in recent weeks that China is not going to let a U.S.-led push to maximize Iran’s international economic isolation get in the way of Sino-Iranian economic ties. India has taken a similar position, see here, and may, like China, be acting to strengthen its economic and strategic ties to Iran.
Indeed, a look at Iran’s trading partners clearly shows the importance of China’s huge economy to Tehran.
According to the CIA World Fact Book, Iran’s Export economy breaks down as follows:
China 16.58%, Japan 11.9%, India 10.54%, South Korea 7.54%, Turkey 4.36% (2009)
And its import economy is also worth examining.
UAE 15.14%, China 13.48%, Germany 9.66%, South Korea 7.16%, Italy 5.27%, Russia 4.81%, India 4.12% (2009)
No doubt Japan and South Korea’s implementation of sanctions will change those statistics, but China and India’s growing regional and global clout would indicate that Tehran’s trading relationships with these regional powerhouses will become an increasingly important component of the Islamic Republic’s foreign trade. As sanctions tighten on Iran’s economy, no one should be surprised to see Tehran turn to alternative, non-western aligned economies to fill the gaps.
The Misnomer of the Peace Talks
By John Chuckman | Palestine Chronicle | September 7, 2010
I don’t know how anyone given the task could draw a map of Israel: it is likely the only country in the world with no defined borders, and it actually has worked very hard over many decades to achieve this peculiar state.
It once had borders, but the 1967 war took care of those. It has no intention of ever returning to them because it could have done so at any time in the last forty-three years (an act which would have been the clearest possible declaration of a desire for genuine peace with justice and which would have saved the immense human misery of occupation), but doing so would negate the entire costly effort of the Six Day War whose true purpose was to achieve what we see now in the Palestinian territories.
As far as peace, in the limited sense of the absence of war, Israel already has achieved a kind of rough, de facto peace without any help from the Palestinians. The Palestinians have nothing to offer in the matter of peace if you judge peace by the standards Israel apparently does.
Israel has the peace that comes of infinitely greater power, systematic and ruthless use of that power, the reduction of the people it regards as opponents to squatters on their own land, and a world too intimidated to take any effective action for justice or fairness.
Genuine peace anywhere, as Canadian physicist and Holocaust survivor Ursula Franklin has observed, is best defined by justice prevailing. But you can have many other circumstances inaccurately called peace; for example, the internal peace of a police state or of a brutally-operated colony.
Israel appears to have no interest or need for the kind of peace that the Palestinians can offer. What then can the Palestinians give Israel in any negotiation?
There are many “technical” issues to be settled between the Israelis and Palestinians, such as the right of return, compensation for property taken, the continued unwarranted expulsions from East Jerusalem, the Wall and its location largely on Palestinian land, but in a profound sense these are all grounded in the larger concept of genuine peace as Ursula Franklin defined it, something we have no basis for believing Israel is, or ever has been, interested in.
Israel wants recognition, not just as a country like any other, but as “the Jewish state,” whatever that ambiguous term may mean, given the facts both of Israel’s rubbery borders and the definition of Jewish, something which Israelis themselves constantly fight over – reformed, orthodox, ultra-orthodox, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, North African, observant, non-observant, and still other factions and divisions in what is quite a small population.
I very much think that the reasons Israel wants that particular form of recognition are not benevolent: it is the kind of term once put into a contract which opens the future interpretation of the contract to pretty much anything. After all, recognition of Israel as a state is something Arab states have long offered Israel in return for a just settlement, but Israel has never shown the slightest interest.
If recognition of Israel as “the Jewish state” were granted, what would be the status of any non-Jewish person in Israel? I think we can guess, given the awful words of Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, or the even more terrible words of Ovadia Yosef, founder of the Shas Party, a Netanyahu ally, and Israel’s former Chief Rabbi.
After all, about nineteen percent of Israeli citizens are non-Jews, mainly the descendants of Palestinians who refused to run from the terrors of the Irgun and Stern gangs in1948. They carry Israeli passports, but are not regarded as citizens in the same sense as Jewish citizens, and there are even laws and restrictions in place creating the kind of deadly distinction George Orwell wrote of in Animal Farm, “Some animals are more equal than others.”
The new talks do not include even the most basic requirement of a legitimate voice to represent the Palestinians, a desirable situation perhaps from Israel’s point of view, one Israel’s secret services have long worked towards with dark ops and assassinations. How do you negotiate with opponents you allow no voice?
Mahmoud Abbas, an almost pitifully shuffling character who is the man supposedly representing Palestinian interests, is now approaching two years of playing president without an election: he has zero legitimacy with the Palestinians and the outside world. Even at that, his assumed authority extends only to parts of the West Bank of the territories.
Hamas, despite the shortcomings found in any leadership of a heavily oppressed population is nevertheless the elected government of Gaza territory, but Israel has pressured the United States – and through it, effectively the world – to regard Hamas as a coven of witches, ready to unleash dark powers if only once Israel relaxes its stranglehold.
It would be far more accurate to talk of a settlement or an accommodation with the Palestinians than peace, but any reasonable agreement requires intense pressure on Israel, which holds all the cards, pressure which can only come from Washington. Accommodation involves all the difficult “technical” issues Israel has no interest in negotiating – right of return, compensation, the Wall, and East Jerusalem. Israel’s position on all of them is simply “no.”
But we know that Washington is contemptibly weak when it comes to Israel. The Israel Lobby is expert at working the phones and the opinion columns and the campaign donations. It even gets Washington to fight wars for it, as it did in Iraq, and as it now is attempting to do in Iran – surely, the acid test of inordinate influence on policy.
Most American Congressmen live in the same kind of quiet fear of the Israel Lobby as they once did of J.Edgar Hoover’s special files of political and personal secrets. Hoover never even had to openly threaten a Congressman or Cabinet Secretary who was “out of line.” He merely had a brief chat, dropping some ambiguous reference to let the politician know the danger he faced. It was enough to keep Hoover’s influence going for decades.
You never heard a thing in the press about the quiet power Hoover exercised in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s, but it was there. Just so, the Israel Lobby today.
So where does the impetus for a fair accommodation come from?
Nowhere. Israel goes right on with its calculatedly-unfair laws taking the homes and farms of others, slowly but surely pushing out the people with whom it does not want to share space.
Anywhere else, this process would be called ethnic-cleansing, but not here, not unless you want to be called a bigot or an anti-Semite.
One says this about the impossibility of a settlement with a reservation. It is possible that the weak Abbas, locked in a room in Washington, could well be browbeaten and bribed into signing some kind of bastard agreement, giving Israel every concession it wants in return for a nominal rump Palestinian state composed of parcels Israel doesn’t want or hasn’t yet absorbed. It wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on, but Israel would then undoubtedly assume its perpetual validity and in future interpret it as it wished.
After all, the history of modern Israel involves agreements divvying up the land of others without their consent, but even those historical divisions – look at the maps attending the Peel Commission (1937) or the UN decision on partition (1947), and you see roughly equally divided territory – today are ignored by Israel or given some very tortured interpretation. So what will have changed?
There simply can be no genuine peace with justice where there is no will for it.
– John Chuckman lives in Canada and is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company.
Blair Reveals Cheney’s War Agenda
By Robert Parry | September 6, 2010
Ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s new memoir offers the expected rationalizations for his joining in an illegal, aggressive war against Iraq, even to the point of quibbling about the death toll. But Blair does reveal how much more war was favored by Vice President Dick Cheney and the neocons.
In A Journey: My Political Life, Blair depicts Cheney as believing the United States was at war not only with Islamic terrorists but with “rogue states that supported them” and that “the only way of defeating [this threat] was head-on, with maximum American strength.”
Cheney wanted forcible “regime change” in all Middle Eastern countries that he considered hostile to U.S. interests, according to Blair.
“He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it – Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.,” Blair wrote. “In other words, he [Cheney] thought the world had to be made anew, and that after 11 September, it had to be done by force and with urgency. So he was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.”
Over the years, there have been indications of this larger neoconservative strategy to attack America’s – and Israel’s – “enemies” starting with Iraq and then moving on to Syria and Iran, but rarely has this more expansive plan for regional war been shared explicitly with the American public.
Usually, the scheme could be found only in obscure neocon policy papers or as part of Washington scuttlebutt. After the Iraq invasion, a favorite neocon joke was whether to next head west toward Damascus or east to Tehran with the punch line, “real men go to Tehran.”
Under this neocon plan, once “regime change” was achieved in Syria and Iran, then Israel’s front-line adversaries, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, would be left impoverished and isolated. Israel could dictate settlement terms to the Palestinians and incorporate the Jewish settlements on prime West Bank land into a Greater Israel.
A Clean Break
The early outlines of this aggressive concept for remaking the Middle East predated the 9/11 attacks by half a decade, when a group of American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, went to work for Israeli Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu during his 1996 campaign for prime minister.
The neocon strategy paper, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” advanced the idea that only regime change in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary “clean break” from the diplomatic standoff that had followed inconclusive peace negotiations.
Under the “clean break,” Israel would no longer seek peace through mutual understanding and compromise, but rather through confrontation, including the violent removal of leaders such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
The plan called Hussein’s ouster “an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right,” but also one that would destabilize the Assad dynasty in Syria and thus topple the power dominoes into Lebanon, where Hezbollah might soon find itself without its key Syrian ally. Iran also could find itself in the cross-hairs of “regime change.”
But what the “clean break” needed was the military might of the United States, since some of the targets like Iraq were too far away and too powerful to be defeated even by Israel’s highly efficient military. The cost in Israeli lives and to Israel’s economy from such overreach would have been staggering.
In 1998, the U.S. neocon brain trust pushed the “clean break” plan another step forward with the creation of the Project for the New American Century, which urged President Bill Clinton to seek the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
However, Clinton would only go so far, maintaining a harsh embargo on Iraq and enforcing a “no-fly zone” which involved U.S. aircraft conducting periodic bombing raids. Still, with Clinton or his heir apparent, Al Gore, in the White House, a full-scale invasion appeared out of the question.
The first key political obstacle was removed when the neocons helped engineer George W. Bush’s ascension to the presidency in Election 2000. However, the path was not fully cleared until al-Qaeda terrorists attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind a political climate across America for war and revenge.
Though Hussein had no hand in 9/11 and rejected al-Qaeda’s religious extremism, Bush and Blair clambered onboard for an invasion of Iraq. Their differences were mostly tactical, such as whether to present the WMD case to the United Nations or to simply act unilaterally with the so-called “coalition of the willing.”
According to Blair’s memoir, hardliner Cheney opposed going to the UN at all, but Blair argued that the move was politically necessary and won over Bush during a visit to Camp David on Sept. 7, 2002.
“Once George declared he was in favour of going the UN route, the visit relaxed,” Blair wrote. “Dick Cheney had been there for part of the time, and made it clear he was not for going down the UN route. He was unremittingly hard line.”
Common Ground
But Blair explained that Cheney’s aggressive attitude differed from the Bush-Blair approach only by degree, not fundamentally. In that regard, Blair said he considered Cheney as unfairly maligned by progressives and many centrists.
“To those on the left, he is, of course, an uncomplicated figure of loathing,” Blair wrote. “Even for the middle ground, they tend to reach for the garlic and crucifixes. You have to go pretty far right to find Dick’s natural constituency.
“My take on him was different from that of most people. I thought he had one central insight which was at least worth taking seriously. He believed, in essence, that the U.S. was genuinely at war. … [And his response was] we’re coming after you, so change or be changed.”
Though acknowledging that Cheney’s “attitude terrified and repelled people,” Blair expressed a degree of solidarity with the former vice president, saying:
“I did not think [Cheney’s position] was as fantastical as conventional wisdom opined. It is one struggle. Our enemy has an ideology. It does threaten us. The ultimate answer is in the spread of democracy and freedom. It is even possible to conceive of this, in different language, as being a progressive position, certainly where removing someone like Saddam was concerned.
“My problem with the way he put it and wanted to do it was that the manner of doing it was incomplete. Precisely because the war was based loosely around an ideology, the fight had to be waged and won at the level of ideas and in a way that would appeal not to us, but to those who had fallen or might fall prey to that ideology.
“In other words, it couldn’t be a hard-power strategy alone. It had to encompass more than military might. It had to engage the people out in the Middle East, in the Muslim world, and had to build alliances within that world.
“This wasn’t some namby-pamby peacenikery; it was a critical part of winning.”
In other words, Blair saw Cheney’s determination to overthrow U.S.-disliked leaders in the Middle East as more a problem of PR tactics than core strategy.
Despite the widespread impression that Cheney’s grandiose neocon scheme for remaking the Middle East through warfare represented an extreme vision, Blair indicated that he and other supposed moderates shared Cheney’s broader determination to replace anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli governments across the Middle East with more compliant regimes under the banner of “democracy.”
That, in turn, suggests the danger of a wider regional war has not fully abated.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com
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Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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