Israeli official to Clinton: Declare Turkey a terror-supporting state
TODAYSZAMAN – 02 September 2011
A hawkish Israeli politician reportedly wrote a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday, asking the US to declare Turkey a terror-supporting state, the Jerusalem Post reported early on Friday.
Danny Danon, who is also deputy Knesset speaker, wrote a letter to Clinton after Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu warned Israel to apologize until the UN releases its report in which he called on Washington to impose sanctions on Turkey and call it a terror-supporting state.
“Turkey has gotten closer to Iran and constitutes a direct continuation of the axis of evil. The government in Washington must answer the Turkish problem before it is too late,” Danon wrote, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The Israeli official called for economic and diplomatic sanctions against Turkey until Ankara changes its ways and abandons what he said “the way of terror.”
“The Turks have crossed the line. They supported the flotilla, they support terror and they dare to ask Israel to apologize to them,” Danon said.
Israeli official delegation in South Sudan
Palestine Information Center – 31/08/2011
JUBA — An Israeli delegation led by deputy Knesset speaker Danny Danon (Likud) paid an official visit to the republic of South Sudan on Monday during which Juba declared the establishment of full diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv, the Hebrew radio said on Tuesday.
South Sudan’s Foreign Minister Deng Alor said that his government would name its ambassador to Israel within the few coming days and would open an embassy in Tel Aviv. The radio said that Danon asked Alor to vote against recognizing a Palestinian state at the UN next month.
For his part, Danon said that Israel would help South Sudan to build its economy, adding that Tel Aviv was ready to develop bilateral relations with Juba in all spheres.
He said after meeting with president Salva Kiir that he invited the head of state and all South Sudanese people to visit the “holy land”.
The Israeli radio quoted Kiir as telling Danon that he resisted pressure by Hamas leaders not to establish relations with Israel.
It said that the new African country’s deputy parliament speaker Daniel Akot said after meeting with Danon that “Israel is like a big brother to South Sudan.”
Interventionists Versus Non-Interventionists
Two distinct camps are forming to battle over Syria policy in Washington
Joshua Landis | Syria Comment | August 24th, 2011
The first is made up of the neocons, who are busy fitting the Arab Spring into US strategic interests as they see them. Bolton, Doran, and Abrams have been leading the charge in articulating this argument. (Bolton and Doran articles are copied below)
The second group are the “realists,” with a liberal coating. Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies has articulated a “don’t get involved” argument in the article copied below.
The first want to take down Assad’s Syria and the second do not. The first see it as a vital US strategic goal, the second do not. The first see it as part of a broader effort to help your friends and hurt your enemies. They see Israel and Saudi Arabia as America’s main friends in the region and want to build them up. They want to crush, Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas. Syria is important because of Iran, America’s number one enemy. They tend to depict the battle in the Middle East as a struggle between good and evil, and freedom versus tyranny. The second see shades of gray. They see an ugly civil war lurking behind the surface of democracy promotion and are not sure Washington would be wise to get sucked into further expensive commitments that have more to do with messy emerging national identities and less to do with US interests.
The neocons have a number of strengths. Clarity is first. Second is the nature of the Assad regime, which is oppressive and run by a family surrounded by a narrow elite, dominated by Alawis, who are a minority themselves and unpopular among a broad section of the Sunni population. The regime has failed to deliver sufficient economic growth to reverse the growing pool of unemployed youth and to raise the standard of living for most Syrians. The country is suffering from all the ills of a growing income gap, drought and bad policies. Reform has been too slow and many believe it will never come because of the vested interests of the narrow and highly corrupt elite at the top. A growing number of Syrians argue that the entire system must be destroyed and Syria must rebuild itself. Increasingly, leaders of the Syrian uprising are beginning to embrace the ideas being put forward by the neocons. In order to win full US backing, they are pushing for acceptance of a complete strategic reversal of Syria’s foreign policy goals.
The neocons are not advocating direct US military involvement in Syria today. They understand this is not politically feasible. But they are preparing the grounds for a much higher level of military commitment in the future. They understand full well that in order to take down the Assad regime and counter the force of the Syrian military, the Syrian opposition will need to develop a full military option. To do so, it will need major US and NATO backing. This will not be a fight for the feint of heart.
Their strategy for angling the US toward making such a commitment in the future is economic sanctions. Broad economic sanctions imposed on Syria by the EU would have major moral implications down the road. Should Syrians start to starve, as they surely would if real sanctions are imposed, the moral argument for intervention and military escalation would improve. Should the poorest and most vulnerable Syrians begin to expire, as happened in Iraq in the 1990s, military intervention would become necessary to end the suffering and starvation. Liberals would have to support the military option in such a case. Today, most do not. Sanctions imposed now will make military intervention in the future imperative. Liberals embraced the invasion of Iraq in large part because of the moral argument. Saddam was starving his people. It would be hard to resist such an argument.
European governments have so far resisted imposing blanket trade sanctions on Syria for this exact reason. Once we see European governments impose devastating sanctions on Damascus, we may safely assume that they have accepted the notion of greater military involvement down the line in order to solve the humanitarian problem that sanctions will create. Perhaps they will not support a ground invasion as was done in Iraq, but they could support establishing a no-fly-zone and arming and training a proper Syrian insurgency, as was done in Libya. Of course, in Syria it will be a much bigger and more expensive operation as Syria has no frozen assets that can be diverted to fund the opposition. The Syrian army is much tougher than Libya’s was.
The realists argue that the US should not get militarily involved. They argue that Assad is too strong. The US is trying to prune its military commitments not grow them. The Assad regime still has the support of important sections of the population. It is not a clear good versus evil battle but something reflecting deeper civil and sectarian divisions in Syria. The Syrian opposition is hopelessly divided. Perhaps it will develop a leadership, but that will take time and must be left to emerge organically for the time being. The US should not tie its cart so closely to Israel and Saudi Arabia because both countries are pursuing policies which are not good for US interests in the long run. What is more, the realists do not believe that the US should take sides on the broader religious war being fought between Shiites and Sunnis in the Middle East. The US wants to check Iranian power and dissuade it from going nuclear, but it does not want to enter into the religious war. Most importantly, the US has too many military commitments in the Middle East, a region that has sucked up far too much of Washington’s time and money over the last decade. Greater involvement in Syria is not popular. In the end, this is a Syrian battle and the US should not be trying to decide it.
News Round Up
US, allies all but rule out Syria military intervention
News agencies
The Nexus and the Olive Tree
BY MICHAEL DORAN | AUGUST 22, 2011Only 12% Americans Think U.S. Should Step Up Involvement in Syria
August 22, 2011New York Post: Facing facts on O’s Syria miscues
2011-08-24 | John Bolton
Moscow urges world community to bolster all-Syrian dialogue
August 23 – RIA Novosti
Syrian opposition moves towards setting up national council
The Guardian
US threatens to cut Egypt aid over Israel
Press TV – August 23, 2011
US Congresswoman Kay Granger has threatened that if Egypt withdraws from its peace treaty with Israel, Washington would cut its USD 2-billion annual aid to Cairo.
“The United States aid to Egypt is predicated on the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and so the relationship between Egypt and Israel is extremely important,” Granger said in an interview with Jerusalem Post on Monday.
The remark came as tension between Cairo and Tel Aviv increased after Israeli forces killed five Egyptian border guards on Thursday at Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Minister for military Affairs Ehud Barak on Saturday said “Israel deeply regrets the deaths of the Egyptian officers” after Egypt announced it would withdraw its ambassador the Tel Aviv if no official apology was made.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, but the situation has changed drastically since the overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in February; and a number of Egyptian political parties have been calling for changes in the peace treaty.
The United States’ annual aid has been provided to Egypt since the Cairo-Tel Aviv peace treaty was signed.
Granger also warned that the US would cut the USD 500-million aid it provides to the Palestinian Authority if it would seek to win a UN recognition for a statehood at the UN General Assembly meeting in September.
Granger is the chairwoman of the US House appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, which is the institution in charge if setting the US foreign aid bill.
Venezuela Says U.S. Lacks “Moral Authority” to Judge Antiterrorism Efforts
By Franklin Rosales – Venezuelanalysis.com – August 19th 2011
Caracas – This Friday the Venezuelan government formally “rejected” a U.S. State Department antiterrorism report issued a day earlier, describing the document as “plagued with false affirmations, political preconceptions, and veiled threats.”
In a press release issued today, Venezuela’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the U.S. government seeks “to impose, by way of intimidation, its international policy of disregard and domination” and that the ongoing “refuge and protection” provided by the United Stated to confessed terrorist Luis Posada Carriles negated all “moral authority” in the U.S.’s so-called War on Terrorism.
The U.S. Country Reports on Terrorism 2010, issued on 18 August 2011, states that the U.S. State Department is “concerned about Hezballah’s fundraising activities in Venezuela,” and declares that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is continuing “to strengthen Venezuela’s relationship with state sponsor of terrorism Iran”. The report also claims that 2010 was another year in which Venezuela “was not cooperating fully with U.S. antiterrorism efforts.”
“Throughout the year,” the U.S. report asserts, “President Chavez rejected allegations that he or his government supported terrorism and instead accused the United States of sponsoring terrorism.”
In response to yesterday’s report, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said it rejected, “in the most vehement manner, the accusations of the U.S. State Department” and that by issuing its report the U.S. government had “ratified its policy of permanent aggression against independent and sovereign governments such as that of Venezuela.”
According to the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry response, “the U.S. State Department tends to classify as ‘terrorists’ or ‘complacent with terrorism’ those governments and political organizations that do not bow down in the face of its imperial intentions.”
The Venezuelan government also affirmed that the United States “does not have the moral authority” to judge each country’s antiterrorism efforts, having given “refuge and protection to Luis Posada Carriles, an international criminal charged for terrorism.”
Luis Posada Carriles is wanted in both Venezuela and Cuba for his involvement in the 1976 downing of a Cubana de Aviacion airplane, killing all 73 people on board.
Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry also pointed out that “civilian massacres” committed and “undercover operations” carried out by U.S. forces abroad were “illegal operations” that only added to international skepticism towards U.S. antiterrorism efforts.
In recent years, right-wing U.S. Congressman Connie Mack and others have attempted to place Venezuela on the State Department’s list of “state sponsor of terrorism.” Unable to provide concrete evidence linking the Venezuelan government to U.S.-classified “terrorist” organizations such as Colombia’s Armed Revolutionary Forces (FARC) or Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Mack in recent months has sought to portray joint Venezuela-Iran economic development projects as Venezuelan support for Iran’s “desire for nuclear weapons.”
In response to a June 2011 hearing held by the U.S. Congress Western Hemisphere Subcommittee in which Mack called Venezuela a “hub” for international terrorism, the Venezuelan National Assembly responded by defining “true terrorism” as “that which has been carried out by the U.S. government through its military invasions,” referring specifically to the U.S. invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, among others.
Egypt’s Secret Minister
By THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN | CounterPunch | August 17, 2011
Just exactly what influence Omar “The Secret Minister” Suleiman retains over the military junta that rules Egypt is a question of utmost importance for those who live on the banks of the Nile River. With a resume including 20 years as head of Egyptian Intelligence he is not someone anyone of those who helped bring about the downfall of Mubarak can afford to ignore.
He was the CIA’s go to man when it came to doing the Agencies dirty work in the Middle East as well as being the liaison with Israel and was reported to be in contact with Mossad on an almost daily basis.
Suleiman is infamous for enforcing the blockade of Gaza, saying he wanted the Palestinians there to “be hungry but not starving” in punishment for supporting Hamas. Hungry as in a 40% level of malnutrition related disability rates amongst Gaza’s children.
Mubarak as Egypt’s Godfather was as lacking in charisma as any leader in the Arab world and ruled by brute force alone. Omar Suleiman was his consigliere and enforcer combined, and was reputed to having a hands on approach to how his torturers carried out their interrogations.
While Mubarak and Sons lived a very publicly ostentatious lifestyle and were well known for their corrupt and decadent ways, Suleiman “The Secret Minister” always preferred to remain behind the scenes, at least until those last desperate days of the Mubarak regime and his “appointment” to the new position of Vice President of Egypt. It was he who announced to the world that a military coup had been carried out and that Mubarak was officially “retired”.
Of course, every member of the Egyptian military junta that overthrew Mubarak had arrived on the Supreme Military Council with his appointment stamped “Approved by Suleiman”. While they may hate “The Secret Minister” one could expect that the junta leaders know that if they want to avoid ending their careers standing in a cage in an Egyptian court “they had better hang together or they will all hang separately”.
Suleiman put them where they are and who better to keep matters from really disintegrating? And who better to keep them informed about what the CIA will and will not approve of.
Today the whereabouts of Suleiman the Secret remains just that, a secret. The last time he was allegedly heard from was via a letter to Al-Ahram newspaper in which he disavowed any desire to be elected President of Egypt. No, all he wanted to do was “live a quiet life with his family”.
Trial by military courts, torture and disappearances, all the hallmarks of Suleiman the Secret are still a part of today’s Egypt and those who partied in the streets after the Coup against Mubarak had better be warned. Behind the scene and still pulling the strings, Suleiman the Secret remains a danger whose continued influence will be ignored at the peril of those who rejoiced at Mubarak’s downfall.
Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006.
Israel to deploy drones in north Iraq
Press TV – August 13, 2011
The Israeli army has stepped up its military activities in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region and is planning to station a number of unmanned aerial vehicles in the area in northern Iraq.
Israel plans to deploy new equipment, including six drones, in the region in cooperation with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, a Press TV correspondent in northern Iraq reported on Saturday.
Four of the aircraft will be stationed at the Khalidiyah airbase in the northern oil city of Kirkuk and two others will go to the airport in the city of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh governorate.
Israeli intelligence agents and military advisers, equipped with special transmission devices, are also being sent to Mosul to train security forces in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani has reportedly agreed to the concession in return for the admission of a number of Iraqi Kurd students to Israeli universities.
Barzani gave Israel the green light to deploy military drones in northern Iraq without gaining the approval of the Iraqi central government in Baghdad, which has no diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv.
Robbing Peter to Pay Israel
Jesse Jackson, Jr. shaking hands with former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on a 2003 trip to Israel
Nearly 20 percent of the constituents of Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) live under the poverty line, and nearly 15 percent are unemployed. Jackson’s congressional district, covering parts of the south side of Chicago and its southern suburbs, has been hit harder than many others by the crises plaguing the economy. Many of his constituents are looking at even more cutbacks in social services, higher prices for food and fuel, and ever scarcer jobs.
During this August congressional recess, Rep. Jackson, Jr. should be at home, meeting with constituents and proposing to them how he will help them cope with their difficult circumstances. Instead, the politician is proudly gallivanting around Israel, in one of three separate congressional delegations heading there this month on all-expense-paid junkets organized by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a so-called charitable affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential of the myriad pro-Israel lobbying outfits.In total, 81 representatives, nearly one-fifth of the entire House, will participate in these jaunts, which, according to The Washington Post, include “a round-trip flight in business class for lawmakers and their spouses (that alone is worth about $8,000), fine hotels and meals, side trips, and transportation and guides.”
Of course, these congressional delegations are not all fun and games. Members of Congress will be expected to sing for their lavish dinners by honoring President Bush’s 2007 pledge to provide the Israeli military with $30 billion of tax-payer-funded weapons between 2009 and 2018. So far, proposed increases in military aid to Israel have been spared from the budgetary chopping block by President Obama and a compliant Congress that treats Israeli militarism as more sacrosanct than medical care for seniors. This despite the fact that Israel misuses the funds, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians living under its illegal 44-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.
According to aidtoisrael.org, constituents in Illinois’ 2nd congressional district will be asked to cough up an astonishing $53 million in federal taxes as their pound of flesh for the Israeli military during this 10-year period. With this same amount of money, each year the federal government instead could give 650 low-income families housing vouchers, or retrain nearly 900 unemployed workers for green jobs, or fund early reading programs for nearly 1,600 at-risk children, or provide primary health care to more than 43,000 uninsured people in Rep. Jackson’s congressional district.
Yali Amit, an Israeli-American constituent of Rep. Jackson, Jr. called his office to oppose his participation in the trip to Israel. He was told that Rep. Jackson, Jr. wants to learn what is happening there because of his position on the appropriations subcommittee that approves military aid to Israel. Amit retorted that “you can’t learn what goes on there on a paid trip of a propaganda arm of the Israeli government.” And you certainly can’t learn about the devastating impact that these U.S. weapons have on unarmed Palestinian civilians, nearly 3,000 of whom were killed by the Israeli military over the last decade.
The House Committee on Ethics should open an investigation to determine if it is even legal for Members of Congress to be participating in junkets organized by AIEF. The guidelines of the committee are as bright and clear as the midday sun on a Tel Aviv beach in August. “The travel provisions of the gift rule severely limit the ability of Members and staff to accept travel from an entity that employs or retains a registered lobbyist or a registered agent of a foreign principal.” (Emphasis in original.)
Legistorm, which tracks congressional travel, explains that “even though AIPAC’s primary purpose is lobbying, its nonprofit arm [AIEF] appears to provide a loophole for sponsored travel.” However, this eureka loophole that AIPAC uses does not withstand scrutiny. According to the latest publicly available tax return of AIEF, the organization has no paid employees — an astounding feat in itself for an organization that raked in more than $26 million in 2009 and a mind-blowing accomplishment for an organization running three huge congressional delegations in one month.
An examination of AIPAC’s latest publicly available tax return reveals the sleight of hand. AIPAC reports that in 2009, it very generously contributed more than $3.2 million of employee salaries to cover the staff costs of AIEF. In other words, a 501(c)(4) organization with registered lobbyists is paying for the staff of a 501(c)(3) organization to run congressional delegations that cannot be funded by an organization that employs registered lobbyists.
Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen who helped draft the new post-Abramoff federal lobbying and ethics reform legislation signed into law in 2007, agrees that something is rotten in state of AIPAC. According to Holman, “The House ethics rules do not provide an exemption for 501(c)(3)s that are controlled and directed by a lobbying entity to pay for travel junkets for members of Congress. When the ethics rules were written in 2007 as part of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), an exemption for 501(c)(3)s was written into the Senate rules – which I called the ‘AIPAC’ loophole – but the House under Speaker Pelosi stuck to strict travel rules for its members and declined to poke a comparable loophole into its ethics rules.
“Even if there were such a loophole in House rules,” Holman continues, “which there isn’t, it appears that the 501(c)(3) wing of AIPAC is little more than a front group designed to extend its lobbying activities beyond Capitol Hill. From 2000 to 2006, lobbyist Richard Kessler similarly attempted to evade the ethics rule prohibiting lobbyist- sponsored travel junkets by setting up a 501(c)(3) that he directly controlled to pay for the trips. HLOGA was passed in 2007 to end these types of evasions.”
Constituents should be irate that members of Congress accept fancy trips from AIPAC-affiliates and contributions from AIPAC-inspired political action committee (PACs) that result in the United States prioritizing weapons to Israel above our basic economic rights. And the Committee on Ethics must investigate AIPAC’s skirting of travel regulations and shut down these trips that it has until now allowed.
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MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) – Vaccine Risk Statement
MMR Vaccine (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) Is It Safer Than Measles, Mumps and Rubella?
Physicians for Informed Consent | December 2024
… It has not been proven that the MMR vaccine is safer than measles, mumps, and rubella. The vaccine package insert raises questions about safety testing for cancer, genetic mutations, and impaired fertility. Although VAERS tracks some adverse events, it is too inaccurate to measure against the risk of measles, mumps, and rubella. Clinical trials do not have the ability to detect less common adverse reactions, and epidemiological studies are limited by the effects of chance and possible confounders. Safety studies of the MMR vaccine are particularly lacking in statistical power. A review of more than 60 MMR vaccine studies conducted for the Cochrane Library states, “The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate.”19 Because permanent sequelae (aftereffects) from measles, mumps, and rubella are so rare (especially in children with normal levels of vitamin A and infected after birth),6,15-17 the level of accuracy of the research studies available is insufficient to rule out the possibility that the MMR vaccine causes greater death or permanent disability than measles, mumps, and rubella. – Read full article
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