MEMRI was cited 16 times in the so-called manifesto of Norwegian terrorist Anders Brevik
On Thursday, the U.S. State Department announced a $200,000 grant to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Middle East media watchdog closely aligned with U.S. neoconservatives and Israel’s hawkish security establishment and rightist Likud Party. The grant was awarded “to conduct a project that documents anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and Holocaust glorification in the Middle East.” The announcement continues:
This grant will enable MEMRI to expand its efforts to monitor the media, translate materials into ten languages, analyze trends in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial and glorification, and increase distribution of materials through its website and other outlets.
Finding examples of anti-Semitism is already a robust MEMRI project and one wonders why exactly they needed the cash: According to publicly available tax filings, MEMRI had nearly $5 million in revenue in 2007 and more than $4.5 million in revenue in 2008.
What’s more troubling, MEMRI has faced accusations of mistranslating items and cherry-picking incendiary sources to portray regional media and attitudes in an overly-negative fashion. One of the most common issues has been with MEMRI’s mistranslations which appear to show anti-Semitism on thin evidence. In 2007, CNN correspondent Atika Shubert checked MEMRI’s translations of a Palestinian children’s program against those provided by the cable news channel’s own interpreters:
Media watchdog MEMRI translates one caller as saying – quote – ‘We will annihilate the Jews.’ But, according to several Arabic speakers used by CNN, the caller actually says ‘The Jews are killing us.’ MEMRI told us it stood by its translation.
In other instances, MEMRI has been accused of twisting translations to portray criticisms of Israel and its driving ideology, Zionism, as anti-Semitic. In 2006, Rima Barakat, a Palestinian and Muslim activist and one-time Republican candidate for the Colorado state assembly, wrote in the Rocky Mountain News:
Halim Barakat (no relation), a professor at Georgetown University, published an article in Al-Hayat Daily of London titled “The wild beast that Zionism created: Self-destruction.” By the time MEMRI “translated” it, the title was distorted to “Jews have lost their humanity.” Barakat objected, “Every time I wrote Zionism, MEMRI replaced the word by Jew or Judaism. They want to give the impression that I’m not criticizing Israeli policy, but that what I’m saying is anti-Semitic.” It seems obvious that MEMRI is adamant on stigmatizing anyone who criticizes Israel and/or Zionism as being anti Jewish.
In a 2002 article, then-Middle East editor of the British Guardian newspaper Brian Whitaker criticized MEMRI for inaccuracies that reflected an agenda:
As far as relations between the west and the Arab world are concerned, language is a barrier that perpetuates ignorance and can easily foster misunderstanding.
All it takes is a small but active group of Israelis to exploit that barrier for their own ends and start changing western perceptions of Arabs for the worse.
The organization was founded as a U.S. tax-exempt non-profit in 1998 by now-Hudson Institute Mideast policy chief Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-American, and current MEMRI president, Israeli Yigal Carmon, a 20-year veteran of the Israel Defense Forces (where he spent five years running Israel’s occupation of the West Bank) and top adviser to two Likud governments. An early archived version of the “about page” of MEMRI’s website lists five staff members, three of whom (including Carmon) have backgrounds in Israeli military intelligence. The same page lists one of MEMRI’s missions as “emphasiz(ing) the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel” — though the line has since disappeared from the website.
In addition to providing journalists and the public with translations, the media watchdog has attracted the attention of burgeoning (and closely linked) European and American anti-Muslim movements. MEMRI was cited 16 times in the so-called manifesto of anti-Muslim right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Brevik, showing up even more when MEMRITV was included.
MEMRI’s board of directors and board of advisers read as a veritable who’s who of right-wing supporters of Israel — including many neoconservative figues and their close allies — such as Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Steve Emerson, Norman Podhoretz and Alan Dershowitz.
August 12, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
The decision of more than 90 U.S. senators to press President Obama for Iraq-style sanctions on Iran flew in the face of what some observers warned could be the beginning of a stress test of the international support for pressuring Iran and another step closer to a potential war with the Islamic Republic.
But a Tuesday press release [PDF] from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) brings to mind eery parallels between the escalation of sanctions against Iran and the slow lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The press release read:
AIPAC applauds today’s bipartisan letter—signed by 92 U.S. Senators—to the administration urging it to sanction the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), or Bank Markazi. The letter, spearheaded by Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), notes that the CBI lies at the center of Iran’s strategy to circumvent international sanctions against its illicit nuclear program.
Sanctioning Bank Markazi might, as mentioned by the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon, be interpreted as an act of war. But that doesn’t seem to bother AIPAC. Indeed, they’ve been down this sanctions road once before before the invasion of Iraq.
In June, Robert Dreyfuss interviewed former AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman who offered details of how AIPAC and its allies in the Bush administration pushed the allegation that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Qaeda. More importantly, Weissman discusses AIPAC’s plans for ultimately bringing regime change in Iran. Dreyfuss writes:
Weissman says that Iran was alarmed at the possibility that the United States might engage in overt and covert efforts to instigate opposition inside Iran. He says that many in AIPAC, especially among its lay leadership and biggest donors, strongly backed regime change in Iran. “That was what Larry [Franklin] and his friends wanted,” he says. “It included lots of different parts, like broadcasts, giving money to groups that would conduct sabotage, it included bringing the Mojahedin[-e Khalgh], bringing them out of Iraq and letting them go back to Iran to carry out missions for the United States. Harold Rhode backed this…. There were all these guys, Michael Ledeen, ‘Next stop Tehran, next stop Damascus.’“
Indeed, as shown in the AIPAC press release, Iran is now the target of similar sanctions and bellicose rhetoric similar to those that targeted Iraq in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Sanctioning Iran’s central bank and imposing a de facto oil embargo on Iranian oil exports would appear to be pages torn from the playbook before the invasion of Iraq. … Full article
August 11, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
By ALISON WEIR | August 11, 2011
You might think that twenty percent of the American Congress going on all-expense-paid, week-long junkets to a foreign country – paid for by a lobby for that country – would be considered newsworthy. Especially when the top Congressional leaders of both parties are leading the trips.
You would be wrong.
81 Congressional representatives from all over the country, led by Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, are traveling to Israel this month. Most are freshmen Congressmen and include half of all the freshmen Republicans voted into office in 2010.
The week-long trips are being paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), which was created in 1990 as a supporting organization of AIPAC, America’s major pro-Israel lobbying organization, and is located in the same building (AIEF, which is only one of numerous organizations pushing pro-Israel policies, has an annual budget of over $24 million with an even larger endowment.
This is an extraordinary situation. No other lobby on behalf of a foreign country comes anywhere near to controlling such wealth or taking so many of America’s elected representatives on a propaganda trip to their favorite country.
Not all those going on these trips are enthusiastic. The wife of one Congressman who made a similar trip some years ago said that she and her husband had never been exposed to such pressure in all their lives. She said that at one point on their trip, her husband – a normally extremely tough man – was curled up in a fetal position.
A staff member of one representative participating in this month’s junkets said the representative had no choice. If the Congressional rep didn’t go on the trip, the rep would be targeted by AIPAC, large quantities of money, including massive out-of-state money, would be raised for the opponent in the next election, and quite likely the representative would be defeated. The staffer said that the Israel Lobby is far too powerful to ignore and that American voters have no knowledge of what’s going on.
It’s no surprise that voters are unaware that their Congress people are being propagandized and pressured by a foreign lobby. Their news media almost never tell them.
The Associated Press, America’s number one news service, has decided not to report on a lobbying group taking 81 representatives to a foreign country in order to influence their votes.
Even though the trips are being reported by news media in Britain, Iran, India, Israel, Lebanon, and elsewhere, AP has decided to give it a pass. When contacted about this, an AP editor in Washington DC said they knew about the trips and were “looking into it.”
Taking a similar tack, the New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, CNN, ABC, et al, failed to inform Americans about the trips. (The Washington Post, after the story was posted throughout the blogosphere, finally covered it belatedly on page 13. The CBS website had a story on the situation, but CBS news made no mention of the junkets on-air.)
The only AP stories on the subject are scattered local stories about individual Congress people. For example, AP’s Chicago bureau reported that Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is taking part, without reporting that he was one of 81 representatives accepting these all-expense-paid junkets, and that his trip was being paid for by the pro-Israel lobby.
A few other American media reported the story in interestingly diverse ways:
Washington DC’s Politico covered it twice; the Atlantic’s AtlanticWire posted a story on people who were “kvetching” about the one-sided nature of the junkets, while emphasizing that some of the reps were also going to meet with some Palestinian leaders, but failed to report that this will apparently account for only a few hours out of the 7-day trip. LA’s Jewish Journal was remarkably forthright, reporting that “the congressional reps will be getting the dog and pony show,” and Commentary gloated at the “astonishing” number of representatives going on the trip, noting that “Congress is the backstop that gives Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu the ability to say ‘no’” to the President of the United States.
While Commentary claims that the willingness of Congressional representatives to go on all-expense-paid trips by one of the country’s most powerful lobbies “is a good reflection of American public opinion on the Middle East,” this is actually not accurate.
Surveys find that an extraordinarily strong majority of Americans – typically between two-thirds to three-quarters – do not wish the U.S. to take sides on Israel-Palestine.* Such widespread desire for neutrality is particularly noteworthy given that U.S. news media across the political spectrum are consistently highly Israeli-centric in their reporting.
It is quite likely that such voters would be unhappy to learn that a foreign lobby has such power over their elected representatives, leading them to give the favored nation, one of the smallest and wealthiest countries on the planet, over $8 million per day of American tax money when the U.S. is in the middle of a financial crisis.
Perhaps that’s why AP and others don’t tell them.
* * *
* Two thirds want the United States to “lean toward neither side” – Brookings: “Attitudes Toward the Middle East Peace Process: Surveys of Arab and Jewish Opinion in Israel and Public Opinion in the United States”.
71 percent favor not taking a side – World Public Opinion: “International Poll: Most Publics–including Americans–Oppose Taking Sides in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”.
65 percent favor not taking either side – CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. May 24-26, 2011. Adults nationwide.
“Although more Americans show sympathy for Israel than for the Palestinians, a strong majority has consistently felt that the US should play an even-handed role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since December 1998, Gallup and other organizations have asked respondents many times whether the US “should take Israel’s side, take the Palestinians’ side, or not take either side.” Strong majorities have consistently said the US should take neither side. In July 2000, 74% endorsed this position. Shortly after September 11th, 2001, this number dropped to 63% (Israel’s side rising to 27%) then recovered to 70% in early November (Israel’s side 20%). Israel’s military actions of April 2002 had little impact on this majority view. CNN/USA Today/Gallup found 71% in April for the US taking neither side” – World Public Opnion: “Israel and Palestine”.
~
Alison Weir is president of the Council for the National Interest and executive director of If Americans Knew. She can be reached at contact@cnionline.org.
Source
August 11, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Eric Cantor, Israel, Steny Hoyer, United States, United States Congress |
Leave a comment
The draft of a strategic deal between Washington and Kabul envisions giving the United States the authority to set up permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
American and Afghan official are set to discuss the deal at Loya Jirga (Traditional Grand Assembly) with tribal elders and political figures.
The recently-released draft shows that the US would be able to establish permanent military bases in Shindand, Shorabak, Kandahar, Bagram, and Khost.
According to the agreement, Washington can set up more military bases in other parts of Afghanistan whenever it deems necessary.
The military bases, which will be run based on US Army regulations, would be in complete control of the US government.
The Afghan airspace will be handed over to American forces after the strategic deal comes into effect.
If an agreement is reached on the permanent bases, US troops will remain on Afghan soil beyond 2014, when they are scheduled to transfer their security responsibilities to Afghan forces.
The draft also states that all US military and civilian personnel must act according to the American constitution at the time of military operations.
August 7, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
Nathan Guttman at Moment discusses “myths” about the Jewish vote and concedes my points: Jews really don’t swing any state except maybe Florida, and the reason politicians pander to Jews is because of the money we bring to the process. Just imagine if evangelical Christians were so important in the process; would we ever hear the end of it in the liberal press? Do evangelicals have political diversity– I bet they do. And speaking of diversity, where is ours? Guttman also says that Jews don’t vote on Israel, but states that it’s a “threshhold” issue, and so long as a politician supports aid to Israel and is against an imposed solution on Israel, he’s fine. I.e., the issue isn’t politicized in our process. Everyone’s for that or they can’t play. Guttman:
• Myth: Jews can tip a swing state.
Rarely. The 2000 elections helped establish the myth that Jewish voters hold the power to decide a tight race. As election officials scrutinized ballots in Florida, some seemed to see an elderly Jewish swing voter behind every hanging chad. Florida remains an important battleground, and given the divided political makeup of the state and its large Jewish population, Jewish sun birds really can make a difference. Ohio is also a state where Jewish voters could play a role in a close race, although so far they haven’t. But the vast majority of Jewish voters vote in states that aren’t really in play, like New York and California, and their vote will hardly be noticed.
• Myth: Jewish money bankrolls election campaigns.
Maybe. It is commonly believed that more than half of political donations to Democratic races and more than a third of those to Republican races come from Jewish donors. Again, there are no hard numbers here, but counting the Cohens and Goldmans on campaign disclosure lists can give a strong impression that Jews are heavily involved in political giving.
August 4, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
“Situation could turn to long, evil American series”
Former Deputy Head of the Phalange party in Lebanon, Lawyer Rashad Salameh, said some armed and financed factions were behind the recent developments in Syria, and noted that the Syrian state has positively dealt with the legal reform demands, “but it turned out that what was happening on ground was actually an organized military operation.”
In an exclusive interview with Al-Manar Website, Salameh said that a true conspiracy was targeting Syria, and that it may undermine the threats launched by some Western leaders to “isolate” the Syrian regime. He recalled that isolation was not new for Syria, and that Syrians were able to overcome this threat throughout all previous stages.
While expressing confidence in the awareness and sincerity of the Syrian people, he revealed that the Americans have offered to their thugs and allies in Lebanon a “promise” that the Syrian regime would collapse. He said that US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has assured his allies, during his latest visit to Beirut, that the Assad regime in Syria would be toppled. He put the latest statement made by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri in this context, and expressed belief that Hariri got a cue of the American aims before issuing his statement in which he condemned the Syrian regime.
Concerning the international tribunal, lawyer Salameh said he was fully convinced of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s statement in this regard, and confirmed that the so-called Special Tribunal for Lebanon was violating all international standards. He found it strange how the indictment could turn into a “long and evil American series,” and stressed that serious investigation starts by questioning false witnesses who misled the investigation and, therefore, concealed the true culprits.
CONSPIRACY AGAINST SYRIA… SERIOUS
Lawyer Rashad Salameh told Al-Manar Website that the latest incidents in Syria were proof that the opposition movement, which started with legal reform demands, turned to something else. He noted that the Syrian regime positively dealt with the reform demands, mainly in relation with the multiplicity of parties, amendment of the constitution, holding elections, reinforcing political life, and increasing freedoms.
But Salameh said that incidents showed that military operations were taking place on ground, and backed the idea by pointing to the huge number of martyrs within the security forces and innocent civilians. “This huge number of martyrs signals that there’s an armed and financed side behind the incidents. It also shows that this side was well-prepared for these acts,” he added.
Salameh regretted that some Western states reject seeing the picture in its real form. He said that these sides were not demanding reform but the collapse of the regime. “This is a conspiracy which is using some tools seeking to create strife in Syria,” he warned. “Although they claim they are an opposition in opinion, everything shows they’re not. In fact, we’re before some armed groups that seek to attack official buildings, manipulate the train line, and explode oil pipelines. The Syrians cannot remain silent before such violations, crimes, threats to the general stability and security.”
While stressing that the Syrian army was still unified alongside the majority of the people in support of the current regime, he criticized the stances made by some Western states in support of the armed groups. “Some Western officials give themselves the right to claim, with an order tone, that this regime should end. Such rhetoric strengthens the international conspiracy theory, where some states that we believed to be democratic take part.”
Salameh recalled, in this context, the stances made earlier by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he said that, as part of the NATO alliance, he would carry out any decision to militarily interfere in Syria in case such decision was issued by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). He also pointed to the statement made by Syrian former Deputy President Abdul Halim Khaddam who called, through an Israeli TV station, for a military operation in Syria. He said that all these signs show the depth of the conspiracy targeting Syria at this stage.
SYRIA HAS SUFFICIENT IMMUNITY TO RESIST
Lawyer Rashad Salameh commented on the latest stance made by US President Barack Obama in which he declared that the United States will continue to increase its pressure on the Syrian regime, and work with others around the world to isolate Al-Assad’s government.
Salameh pointed to the biased media coverage of the Syrian developments. He noted that some Arab and European media panels, including Italian Television, claimed Sunday that the number of victims exceeded 136 in Hamah only and that the total number of victims throughout Syrian districts exceeded 350. “It turned out that these numbers were not accurate, according to the same panels,” he said.
Concerning the American President’s promise to isolate the Syrian President, Salameh said that such threats are baseless. He recalled that Syria has experienced isolation for over five years, when former US President George W. Bush took the decision to isolate Syria. He said that Syria was able to overcome its crisis and restore its natural role, when France was more moderate.
He also said that Syria did not have fears over the Lebanese situation because Lebanon is a strong state. He said that Lebanon was great because of the resistance’s victories, alongside the Resistance-Army-People balance, which reflected Lebanon’s unity. He further pointed out the tense relations between Turkey and Syria.
While concluding that Syria had enough immunity to stand in the face of the conspiracy, he recalled the previous stage during the rule of late President Hafez Assad. “At that time, Syria was under siege from Turkey, Jordan and at the same time Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Yet, it was able to overcome this status through its relation with Lebanon and mainly, through the strategic relation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Therefore, this is not the first time in which Syria is targeted.”
AMERICANS PROMISED THEIR ALLIES
Salameh revealed that the Americans have offered their thugs and allies in Lebanon a “promise” that the Syrian regime would collapse. He said that US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has assured his March 14 allies, during his latest visit to Beirut, that the Assad regime in Syria would be toppled.
Commenting on Feltman’s stance that Syrian President Bachar Assad will not triumph, Salameh noted that it was Feltman who launched such a slogan, not the Syrian nation. “If I was Syrian and I heard such statements, I would have perceived that there was an external danger and that claiming that the issue was purely internal was not true.” He also criticized the American administration’s claims that it refused the interference of anybody in Syria’s affairs “as if it was preventing the whole world, except itself, from interfering in others’ affairs.”
Salameh, who said Feltman’s promise to his allies, over the collapse of the Syrian regime, was not frank, also uncovered that the US diplomat advised his allies to stay silent. “Some of them accepted the advice but others did not,” he said, adding that he did not find strange the latest stance of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri. “Hariri was committed to the advice for a while, but it seemed that he got a dose of American reinforcements, so he issued the delayed statement,” he said. “Hariri must remember that Syria’s stability was an essential condition for Lebanon’s stability, and vice versa. His statement was not useful for Hariri himself, for Lebanon or even for the future of the ties between Lebanon and Syria.”
RADICALS NOT SUITABLE ALTERNATIVE
Salameh said that someone has convinced the American administration and its followers that the fate of the region can be in the hands of specific radicals, given that these radicals could be allies to the US. He warned against such an option, and recalled the dangerous sectarian conflict that recently took place in Egypt. He recalled, in this context, WikiLeaks’ cables that quoted former PM Saad Hariri as advising Jeffrey Feltman to “try Bayanouni (Muslim Brotherhood) and Abdul Halim Khaddam” and telling them that they would find them moderate. “It seemed that the Americans have believed Feltman’s advice and chosen to apply it,” he added.
Salameh, who said he fully trusted the Syrian nation’s originality, expressed belief that Syrians will not accept extremist radicals as an alternative for the current regime. “Under their control, freedom would not get any better. This is the alternative prepared by the ongoing conspiracy against Syria.”
TRIBUNAL… VOID
To conclude, Lawyer Rashad Salameh attacked the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and said he fully agreed with Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah in this context. He said that Sayyed Nasrallah’s vision reflected the truth, whether at the level of the investigation’s measures or the amendments to the internal rules of regulation.
Salameh said the tribunal was unconstitutional, and noted that the process has started at the moment in which the government of Prime Minister Fouad Saniora requested its creation under chapter seven. He pointed to the agreement that was signed between the United Nations and then Justice Minister Khaled Qabbani, which contradicted the constitution. “The Lebanese Republic cannot be the confined to the Justice Minister, as there’s a President who, according to the constitution, is the one eligible to sign external agreements. Add to this the fact that Saniora’s government was not constitutional.”
Salameh also pointed to the suspicious change of accusations according to the political developments. “At the beginning, Syria was the target, and the four officials were the victims. If an indictment was issued at the time, then the main suspect would have been Syria without doubt,” he stressed, adding that it has been proven that this tribunal violated all legal standards.
He also noted that Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has offered solid evidence concerning an Israeli possible role in the assassination of former PM Rafiq Hariri, but that the tribunal chose to reject it. “Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare had declared that the evidence will not change the course of investigation even before receiving them,” he recalled.
“The US and Israel were the first to benefit from the crime. But they will never be among the suspects,” he stressed.
LONG AND EVIL AMERICAN SERIES…
In parallel, Salameh said that Lebanon should be ready for the sanctions some sides are seeking to impose against it. He noted, however, that such sanctions would include all Lebanon, and not a specific political party. He warned that such an option would undermine stability in the country and increase the horizontal division within the Lebanese.
Legally, Salameh also noted that Hariri’s murder was never among the crimes that should be explored by international tribunals. He noted that those concerned have sought to find the best definition of “terrorism” that could correspond to Hariri’s murder, and found it in a “silly” article in the Lebanese law. He noted that only in this law, there’s no reference to a crime against humanity, or annihilation.
According to Salameh, another violation of international law by this tribunal was the release of “various” indictments. “We believe that there’s only one indictment in all causes. With this cause, they’re promising us many. This is unpopular. We’re speaking of an indictment, not of an evil and boring American series.”
To end, Salameh stressed that whoever really wants the truth could not reach it through this tribunal and this investigation. He said that serious investigation must start by questioning the false witnesses who lied, misled the investigation, and hid the real culprit.
August 3, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
The Lone Assassin: A Fascist Superman Travels Faster than a Speeding Bullet Versus the Police Moving Slower than an Arthritic Turtle
“So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists against all cultural Marxists/Multiculturalists”.
Anders Behring Breivik’s Manifesto
“. . . two more cells exist in my organization”. . .
Ander Behring Breivik in police custody (Reuters 7/25/11)
Introduction:
The July 22, 2011, bombing of the office of the Norwegian Prime Minister, Labor Party Jen Stoltenberg, which killed 8 civilians, and the subsequent political assassination of 68 unarmed activists of the Labor Party Youth on Utoeya Island, just 20 minutes from Oslo, by militant neo-fascist Christian-Zionists, raises fundamental questions about the growing links between the legal Far-Right, the ‘mainstream media’, the Norwegian police, Israel and rightwing terrorism.
The Mass Media and the Rise of Rightwing Terrorism:
The leading English language newspapers, The New York Times (NYT), the Washington Post (WP), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the Financial Times (FT), as well as President Obama, blamed “Islamic extremists”, upon the first police reports of the killings, publishing a series of incendiary (and false) headlines and reports, labeling the event as ‘Norway’s 9-11’, in terms, which echoed the ideological motivation and justifications cited by the Norwegian Christian-Zionist political assassin, Anders Behring Breivik himself. The July 23/24 front page of the Financial Times (of London), read “Islamist extremism fears: Worst Europe strike since 2005”. Obama immediately cited the terrorist attack in Norway to further justify his overseas wars against Muslim countries. The FT, NYT, WP and WSJ trotted out their self-styled “experts” who debated over which Arab/Islamic leaders or movements were responsible – despite Norwegian press reports of ‘the arrest of a Nordic man in police uniform’.
Clearly, the US mass media and political elite were eager to use the bombing and assassinations to justify ongoing overseas imperial wars, ignoring the burgeoning domestic extremist rightwing organizations and violent individuals who are the outgrowth of official Islamophobic hate propaganda.
When Anders Breivik, a known neo-fascist extremist, handed his weapons over to Norwegian police without resistance and claimed credit for the bombing and massacre, the second phase of the official cover-up took place: He was immediately described as “a lone wolf assassin”, who “acted alone” (BBC July 24, 2011) or as mentally deranged, downplaying his political networks, his American, European and Israeli ideological mentors and commitments, which led to his acts of terrorism. Even more outrageous, the media and officials ignored the fact that this complex, multiphase terrorist attack was beyond the capacity of one ‘deranged’ person.
Anders Behring Breivik had been a dues-paying member of a Far-Right political party, The Progress Party and a collaborator and contributor to an overtly neo-Nazi web site. He frequently focused his hatred on the ruling Labor Party for its relative tolerance of immigrants. He despised immigrants especially, Muslims, and was an ardent Christian-Zionist supporter of Israeli repression and terror against the Palestinian people. His criminal action was political in essence and embedded in a much wider political network.
The political elite and media have scrambled to deny the overlapping links between ‘legal’ ideological Islamophobes, like the American Zionists Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the Dutch far-right Party of Freedom led by the hate-monger Geert Wilders and their counterparts in the Norwegian Progress Party who rail against the “Muslim threat”. The “direct action” terrorists take their cues from electoral parties, like the Progress Party, who recruit and indoctrinate activists, like Behring Breivik, who then leave the ‘electoral road’ to carry out their bloody carnage, allowing the ‘respectable’ hate-mongers to hypocritically condemn him… after the outrage.
The Lone Assassin: A Fascist Superman Travels Faster than a Speeding Bullet Versus the Police Moving Slower than an Arthritic Turtle:
The case for the “lone wolf terrorist” defies credence. It is a tissue of lies used to cover up state complicity, intelligence malfeasance, and the sharp right-turn in the domestic and foreign policies of NATO countries.
There is no basis to accept Breivik’s initial claim that he acted alone for several outstanding reasons: First, the car bomb, which devastated downtown Oslo, was a highly complex weapon requiring expertise and coordination – the kind available to state or intelligence services, like the Mossad, which specialize in devastating car bombs. Amateurs, like Breivik, with no training in explosives, usually blow themselves up or lack the skill required to connect the electronic timing devices or remote detonators (like the unsuccessful ‘shoe’, ‘underpants’ and ‘Times Square’ bombers have proved). Secondly, the details of (a) moving the bomb, (b) obtaining (stealing) a vehicle, (c) placing the device at the strategic site, (d) successfully detonating it and (e) then gowning up in an elaborate special police uniform with an arsenal of hundreds of rounds of ammunition and driving off in another vehicle to Utoeya Island, (f) waiting patiently while armed to the teeth for a ferry boat, (g) crossing with other passengers in his police uniform, (h) rounding up the Labor youth activists and commencing the massacre of scores of unarmed youth and finally (i) finishing off the wounded and hunting for those trying to hide or swim away – is not the activity of a lone zealot. Even the combination of Superman, Einstein and a world class marksman could not perform those tasks.
The media and NATO leaders must view the public as passive morons to expect them to believe that Anders Behring Breivik “acted alone”. He is willing to take a 20 year prison sentence if it means, as he maintains, that their collective action is the spark that ignites his comrades and advances the agenda of the violent and legal far rightwing parties. Facing a Norwegian judge on July 25, he publically declared the existence of “two more cells in my organization”. According to witness testimony on Utoeya Island shots from two distinct weapons were heard from different directions during the massacre. The police say they are… “investigating”. Needless to say the police have found nothing; instead they put on a “show” to cover their inaction by raiding two houses far from the massacre and quickly released the suspects.
The most serious political implication of the terrorist action, however, is the conspicuous complicity of top police officials. The police took 90 minutes to arrive at Utoeya Island, located less than 20 kilometers from Oslo, 12 minutes by helicopter and 25 to 30 minutes by car and boat. The delay allowed the right wing assassins to use up the ammunition, maximizing the death toll of young, anti-fascist activists and devastating the Labor youth movement. The police chief, Sveinung Sponheim, made the feeblest excuse and cover-up, claiming “problems with transport”. Sponheim argued that a helicopter “wasn’t on standby” and they “could not find a boat” (Associated Press, July 24, 2011). Yet a helicopter was available; it managed to fly to Utoeya and film the ongoing slaughter, and over half of Norwegians, a seafaring people for millennia, own or have access to a boat. A police force, faced with what the Prime Minister calls the ‘worst atrocity since the Nazi occupation’, moving at the pace of an arthritic turtle to rescue youth activists, raises the suspicion of some level of complicity. The obvious question arises as to the degree to which the ideology of right wing extremism – neo-fascism – has penetrated the police and security forces, especially the upper echelons? This level of “inactivity” raises more questions than it answers. What it suggests is that the Social Democrats only control part of the Government – the legislative, while the neo-fascists influence the state apparatus.
The plain fact is that the police did not save a single life. When they finally arrived, Anders Behring Breivik had run out of ammunition and surrendered turning himself over to the police. The police literally did not fire a single shot; they did not even have to hunt or capture the assassin. An almost choreographed scenario: Hundreds wounded, 68 unarmed, peaceful activists killed and the Labor youth movement decimated.
The police can claim “crime solved” while the mass media prattles about a “lone assassin”. The far right has a “martyr” to mask a further advance in their anti-Muslim, pro-Israel crusade. (It is reminiscent of the celebrated Israeli-American fascist mass murderer, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who slaughtered dozens of unarmed Palestinian men and boys at prayer in 1994).
Only two days before the political murders, the head of the Labor Party Youth Movement, Eskil Pederson, gave an interview to the Dagbladet, Norway’s second largest tabloid, in which he announced a “unilateral economic embargo of Israel from the Norwegian side” (Gilad Atzmon, July 24, 2011).
The fact of the matter is that the Norwegian military has no problem promptly dispatching 500 troops to Afghanistan, half way around the world and providing six Norwegian Air Force jets and pilots to bomb and terrorize Libya. And yet they can’t find a helicopter or a row boat to transport their police a couple hundred yards to stop a domestic right wing terrorist – whose murderous rampage was being described second by second by the terrorized young victims on their cell phones to their frantic parents?
The Imperial Roots of Domestic Fascism: Conclusion
Clearly, the decisions of Norway and other Scandinavian nations to participate in the US imperial crusades against Muslim and especially Arab people in the Middle East have aroused and energized the neo-fascist right. They now want to “bring the war home”; they want Norway to go further, to ‘cleanse the nation’ by expelling Muslims. They want to “send a message” to the Labor Party: Either it must accept a full neo-fascist pro-Israeli agenda or expect more massacres, more elected fascists, more followers of Anders Behring Breivik.
The “Progress Party” is now the second largest political party in Norway. If a “conservative” coalition defeats Labor, neo-fascists will probably sit in the Government. Who knows, after a few years of good behavior, they might find an excuse to commute their ex-comrades sentence . . . or proclaim him mentally rehabilitated and freed.
Clearly what is needed is the immediate withdrawal of all troops from imperial wars and a systematic, coherent and organized fight against domestic right-wing terrorists and their intellectual godparents, in America, Israel and Europe. Labor youth must go press on with their demand that the Labor Government, under Prime Minister Jen Stoltenberg, recognize the nation of Palestine and implement a total boycott of Israeli goods and services. A national and international political-educational campaign must be organized to expose the links between respectable electoral fascists and violent terrorists. The Labor Youth martyrs of Utoeya Island should be cherished and their ideals taught in all the schools. Their far-right enemies and supporters whether overt, covert or directly complicit, should be exposed and condemned. The best weapon against the renewed neo-fascist onslaught is a political and educational offensive, taking up the anti-fascist, anti-Quisling (Norway’s notorious Nazi collaborator) fighting traditions of their grandparents’ era. It’s not too late – if the Labor Party, the Norwegian trade unions and the anti-fascist youth act now before the flood of resurgent fascism.
August 1, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) released the following statement today in the wake of last week’s horrific attacks in Norway:
Palestinian civil society, as broadly represented within the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), wishes to express its sincere condolences to and deep solidarity with the people of Norway and to Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking (AUF), the Norwegian labour youth party, in particular after the massacre of last Friday committed by a far right fanatic.
Palestinians stand with the people of Norway as they mourn the victims, and our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who have died.
This horrendous massacre serves as a grave reminder of the dangers posed by racism, hatred and intolerance. We are confident that Norway’s long tradition of peace loving, respecting diversity and upholding human rights anywhere in the world will stand up to this ugly test of fundamentalism and hate; we trust that the Norwegian people’s determination to fight xenophobia and its resultant disregard for equal human rights will be further strengthened.
These violent and horrific attacks cannot be viewed in isolation. There is a growing wave of officially sanctioned Islamophobia in several western countries, driven by misinformation, intolerance and right-wing Zionism, with strong links to Israel. Tragically, this racist and extreme rhetoric has been put into action with many Norwegians paying the price with their lives. The murderer, by his own admission, drew his motivation for this heinous crime from the by now widespread anti-Arab/Muslim discourse that dwells on a perceived “clash of civilizations” and a blind support for Israel and its crimes against the Palestinian people.
Palestinians deeply empathize and stand with Norwegians as fellow humans and as a people that has its own long experience of pain and grief. In Israel’s Gaza massacre alone, more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, lost their lives. Homes, schools, UN shelters, university buildings, civilian infrastructure, hospitals, ambulances, sewage systems, power stations and more were ruthlessly decimated by Israel’s state terrorism in its assault on Gaza 2008-09. The noble humanitarian work and moving testimonies of the prominent Norwegian physician, Dr. Mads Gilbert, attest to the scale of the crime Israel has committed in Gaza and continues to commit on a daily basis with its illegal and immoral siege of 1.5 million Palestinians. It is often in times of great suffering, however, that human compassion and solidarity shine brightest.
We believe that these despicable crimes in Norway will only strengthen the resolve of all people of conscience around the world to pursue freedom, justice and equality and to join hands in combating racism in all forms.
We appreciate greatly the support for Palestinian rights and, specifically, for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, as shown by members of the AUF summer camp. We deeply appreciate the support for a boycott of Israel from LO, the Norwegian labor federation, and from close to half the people of Norway, as shown in polls following Israel’s bloody flotilla attack last summer. We salute the Norwegian pension fund for divesting from three Israeli companies implicated in Israel’s occupation and colonization. We are proud of the brave decision taken by Norway to ban testing submarines destined to Israel and to support a military embargo on Israel. We stand by the friends and families of all victims at this difficult time.
We hope to honour their memory by working more closely together with the AUF and other partners in Norwegian civil society towards a more just world where there is no place for racism and hatred.
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
July 28, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Islamophobia, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
JTA columnist Ron Kampeas has been a lone voice in sounding the alarm to his Jewish readers:
“Pro-Israel leaders in the United States, Britain and Australia are warily watching the unfolding of the phone-hacking scandal that is threatening to engulf the media empire of Rupert Murdoch.”
The Murdoch scandal has been extensively reported as a telephone hacking police story. Only in the JTA, the Global News Service of the Jewish People, has coverage of the Murdoch News Corp story sounded the traditional Jewish mother’s alarm: “uh oh, this will not be good for the Jewish people”.
Kampeas assumes, correctly I am sure, that his readers do have a strong interest in Murdoch’s “sudden massive reversal of fortune”. They have reason to be alarmed.
Without Daddy Murdoch’s formidable pro-Israel presence, that pesky UN September vote could tilt toward the Palestinians. After that, Israel-Palestinian border negotiations might find a disgraced Murdoch-controlled British government eager to prove its independence. Without Murdoch, Fox News will have lost its most reliable news producer.
Thus far, the Murdoch “hacking scandal” has reached ten former staffers and News Corp executives who have been arrested by British police. They are accused of “hacking into the phones of public figures and a murdered schoolgirl, and paying off the police and journalists.”
These allegations threaten to severely weaken Murdoch’s media empire, an empire the Australian built which now includes The Wall Street Journal, the Times of London and The Australian. Murdoch also owns two major tabloids, The Sun in Britain and the New York Post. In the US, Murdoch owns and virtually writes the scripts for the Fox News Channel. Until he recently sold it, Murdoch also owned The Weekly Standard, the neo conservative magazine he created in 1995.
Admirers of Murdoch’s aggressive take-over of news outlets have praised him for revitalizing the news industry. What they overlook is that his “revitalizing” has also lowered the standards of the journalism profession. It is the Murdoch style to view the world through black and white lens, “West good, Muslim East bad”.
For the Murdoch media empire, accuracy is never as important as racist sensationalism. Glenn Greenwald reports in his Salon column this week-end how both the New York Times and the Washington Post incorrectly blamed “Muslim extremists” for the Oslo, Norway, attacks, retaining on line, false racist accusations later shown to be incorrect.
The Post’s Jennifer Rubin cited The Weekly Standard as a source for her false reporting, a dive into the Murdoch pool of sleeze for which the Atlantic’s James Fallows calls her to task.
Before the hacking scandal broke, Murdoch had expanded his empire into the Middle East, choosing, as no surprise, to connect with a Saudi prince Aljazeera recently described as “ the 26th wealthiest person on the planet, as well as the richest man in Saudi Arabia, billionaire Prince Walid bin Talal bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud, a nephew of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia”.
Forbes magazine reports that Prince Walid has a net worth estimated to be at least $19.6bn.
Aljazeera also reports that the Prince is the second largest shareholder (at seven per cent) in News Corp, second only to Murdoch. How close are the two men?
During a recent interview on his yacht with the BBC’s Newsnight, Prince Walid declared himself to be a “good friend” of Rupert Murdoch and his son James, and staunchly defended the men amid the ongoing News Corp scandal.
It is noteworthy that, while Prince Walid is the second largest shareholder in News Corp, Murdoch is also a major shareholder (ten per cent) in Prince Walid’s Rotana Media Group based in the Middle East. As recently as this May, Murdoch’s conglomerate took a significant stake in Prince Walid’s film, TV, and music business, a move that deepened the financial relationship between the two men.
The Saudi connection, however, will be of little help in Murdoch’s dealing with the British and possibly, the American, legal systems.
Kampeas writes that “Jewish leaders” fear that any reduction in Murdoch’s media influence could “mute the strongly pro-Israel voice of many of the publications he owns.” Those “Jewish leaders” rely on Murdoch to reassure them that all is well in the world of political Zionism.
His publications and media have proven to be fairer on the issue of Israel than the rest of the media,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “I hope that won’t be impacted.”
These comments suggests that what happens to Murdoch in the future is significant to supporters of Israel not primarily because of the alleged immoral or illegal violations of the public good, but because of the potential impact on the pro-Israel voice of Murdoch’s media empire.
If there are US media outlets, other than JTA, which have included Murdoch’s Zionist zealotry in their hacking scandal stories, I have been unable to locate them.
The Big Three PEPs, (Progressive Except for Palestine) Maddow, Matthews, and O’Donnell, are progressive voices on MSNBC-TV, but they will absolutely not touch the sins of Israel, the third rail of American politics.
Rachel Maddow, my favorite of the Big Three, appeared uncharacteristically oblivious of what she was saying in her recent interview with Bill Moyers.
Writing on Consortium News, Marquette Theology Professor Daniel C. Maguire offered a list of Israel-related issues where “Rachel Maddow Dares Not Tread”. He began with a gentle priestly admonition:
To MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: On your show of July 14, you spoke of your complete freedom to say what you want on your show and Bill Moyers gently demurred, speaking of restricting forces that hover over journalists. Bill Moyers was correct. I cannot believe you don’t care, but you are not free to address on your show the political influence of the Israeli lobby (which is far broader than AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).
For Maguire’s complete list, click here.
The Big Three constantly feast off the right wing shallowness of Fox news readers and commentators, but they do not venture even close to the linkage between Murdoch’s strong pro-Israel bias, and his threatened downfall.
Kampeas, on the other hand, is quite forthright about the linkage and its potential damage to Israel. Note how eager Kampeas is to cast Murdoch in a favorable light by citing “Jewish leaders”.
Jewish leaders said that Murdoch’s view of Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians and with its Arab neighbors seemed both knowledgeable and sensitive to the Jewish state’s self-perception as beleaguered and isolated.
Murdoch has visited Israel many times, always meeting, of course, with Israeli leaders. He is equally well received by “Jewish leaders” in the US. In 2009 he was honored by the American Jewish Committee.
On October 13, 2010, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League hosted a dinner in Murdoch’s honor. At that dinner, Murdoch said,
My own perspective is simple: We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews,” Murdoch said last October at an Anti-Defamation League dinner in his honor. “When Americans think of anti-Semitism, we tend to think of the vulgar caricatures and attacks of the first part of the 20th century. Now it seems that the most virulent strains come from the left. Often this new anti-Semitism dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel.
Murdoch is popular with conservatives in the US but highly unpopular with the progressive community, as the Nation magazine’s John Nichols was eager to demonstrate in his recent story on the scandal.
Australian-born billionaire Rupert Murdoch has manipulated not just the news but the news landscape of the United States for decades. He has done so by pressuring the Federal Communications Commission and Congress to alter the laws of the land and regulatory standards in order to give his media conglomerate an unfair advantage in “competition” with more locally focused, more engaged and more responsible media.
It’s an old story: while Murdoch’s Fox News hosts prattle on and on about their enthusiasm for the free market, they work for a firm that seeks to game the system so Murdoch’s “properties” are best positioned to monopolize the discourse.
Even with such a strong progressive as Nichols, there is still no mention of Murdoch’s strong Zionist passions in his story of the scandal.
When he testified before the House Judiciary Committee in May of 2003, Murdoch was seeking to secure ownership of the nation’s largest satellite television company. Nichols writes that Murdoch was pressing for FCC rule changes that would allow him to own newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same cities. His goal was to ease controls so that “one corporation could dominate television viewership nationally”.
At that appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Murdoch’s reception, according to reports at the time, were “just short of fawning.”
Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, who was, at the time, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, greeted Murdoch by thanking the media executive for developing the Fox News network. The chairman added: “When my wife doesn’t get a good dose of Fox News every day she gets grumpy. So there are some of us who appreciate what you are doing.”
Progressive writers like Nichols want to make it clear that the right wing Republican party has a deep affection for a strong man like Murdoch whose media empire is dedicated not only to making money but to the promotion of a conservative ideology.
Joe Nocera was equally disdainful of Murdoch in his July 18 New York Times column:
You have to love the fact that when John Yates resigned on Monday as the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London — a k a Scotland Yard — he complained about the “huge amount of inaccurate, ill-informed and, on occasion, downright malicious gossip” that had finally forced his hand. . . .
When the writers and editors of the late, unlamented News of the World were busy bribing Mr. Yates’s police officers, what they wanted in return was — gosh! — malicious gossip. When they were hacking the phones of royal family members and murdered teenagers, they were seeking, you know, malicious gossip.
When the recently arrested Rebekah Brooks called Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, to tell him that Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, which she then edited, was about to reveal that his infant child had cystic fibrosis — information that Brown is convinced came from a hacked phone message — she was telling him the paper was going to print a piece of gossip that a more humane institution would have let pass. She might not have viewed this as malicious, but the Brown family certainly did. . . . .
Laura Barnett‘s recent story in the London Guardian, describes Rupert Murdoch’s 102-year old mother Elisabeth Murdoch (shown at top with her son) as a mother who frequently stands in “firm maternal opposition to Rupert, 80, the second of her four children.”
In her native Australia, “Elisabeth is held in high esteem as one of the country’s most beneficent philanthropists,” a sharp contrast to the “sullied reputations of Rupert, and her grandson James”, both now under intense police scrutiny.
When Elisabeth’s husband Rupert, Senior, died from cancer in 1952, she turned her attention to charity work. She became life governor of the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne and helped to set up the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
Consistently, however, she has expressed strong disagreement with the policies of News Corp. Nine years ago, for example, she told Julie Browning, author of A Winning Streak: The Murdochs, that her son’s purchase of the News of the World, “nearly killed me”.
In the US, Fox News, and more recently, the once highly respected conservative Wall Street Journal, have emerged as “house organs” for right wing Israeli governments.
If Murdoch self destructs, Israel will have lost a major weapon in its hasbara (propaganda) arsenal. Whether that is “good for the Jewish people”, depends entirely on your definition of “good”.
July 26, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
The massacre in Norway brought to mind a past incident in Pakistan with some interesting parallels.
The background-
Quetta, in Baluchistan province, a peaceful pro-Palestinian rally is taking place. A large peaceful pro-Palestinian rally. As in Norway a pro-Palestinian show of solidarity and support for statehood!
An alleged suicide bomber shows up to bomb the area. And gunmen too. Reported gunfire both before and after.
Norway, not just an explosion, gunmen! Gunmen targeting children.
Yes, it does seem there were at least two gunmen in Norway. Minimally. There were numerous reports of there being more then one shooter. One in police uniform and one in a sweater. These reports will go away, so you can be spoon fed the lone nut scenario.
So in Quetta, as in Norway, we are looking at pro-Palestinian support resulting in a bombing, multiple shootings and much death.
Flashback: September 3, 2010
Several hundred Pakistanis, mostly minority Shi’ite Muslims, were attending the rally in the southwestern city of Quetta to support the Palestinian people.
Witnesses say a suicide bomber detonated explosives shortly after the rally arrived at a busy crossing in the center of the city.
This reporter said he heard intense gunfire just before the powerful bomb went off, and there were dust clouds and fire around him.
Police are investigating the incident, and they are also examining television footage to identify armed men who were firing at people in the surrounding area after the bomb blast.
Just before this attack on August 26/2010 –
– Speakers at an International Palestine Conference in Pakistan pledged their support with the people of Palestine . The conference organised by Palestine Foundation Pakistan (PLP), a newly established platform in Quetta this week…
The conference was addressed by the leaders of Palestine and Pakistan and they stressed upon the Muslim world, specially the Pakistanis that it was high time they step up their efforts for mobilizing global support for Palestine’s liberation from Israeli occupation in order to avert Zionists’ plans of razing Al Aqsa mosque.
Representative of the Hamas movement in Lebanon and member of its political bureau, Osama Hamdan, who made a recorded address to the conference, emphasized that defense of Palestine was in fact defense of Pakistan because Zionists believed they could never successfully occupy Palestine without first destroying the ideological Muslim nations like Pakistan.
He stressed that Muslims must work to remove American pressure against Palestinian cause which had been the main stumbling block in resolution of Palestinian problem by ending Israeli occupation.
He underlined the need to observe Youm-al-Quds on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan following the appeal of Imam Khomeini.
And on the day of Youm al Quds… while Pakistanis are showing solidarity with their Palestinian counterparts a big explosion and gunmen.
Eventually a group called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (L-e-J), claimed responsibility. This alleged Sunni group of terrorists is banned in Pakistan, for obvious reasons.
This group is linked to Saudi Arabia and truly appears to be Wahabi extremists, masquerading as Sunni’s to foment religious division
Sipah e Sahaba (Army of the Companions), best described as Sipah e Yazid (Laeen ibn e Laeen) is a Wahabi/Deobandi terrorist organisation which is being funded by Saudi Arabia and supported by the Wahabi ranks in Pakistan Army’s ISI. Lashkar e Jhangavi is the death squad of Sipah e Sahaba.
“The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ), an extremist sectarian Wahabi organization””The Wahabi elements have created so much terror.”
Why would the Wahhabi sect sow division amongst Shiite and Suni? What or whose agenda does that serve? Why do the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia take that position, divide to conquer?
Sheik Safar al-Hawali has denounced Hezbollah even as Hezbollah battles the Jews of Israel
Why do Saudi Wahhabis, arrest supporters of Hezbollah in Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia is a well known western puppet nation, a despotic regime propped up by the US and willing to always support Israel.
It is known Saudi Arabia funnels lots of western money to all kinds of suspect activity. Quite likely to the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. None more infamous than the Afghan “freedom fighters” & Osama Bin Laden funded via Operation Cyclone
The agenda behind the Norway attack seems to be in line with the western colonialist agenda of keeping the Muslim population oppressed. The same can be said of what appears to be the driving force behind the incident in Quetta in 2010.
Funny how one recalls past history when an event comes along to spark the memory?
Who benefits by keeping the Muslim populations divided?
Certainly Israel, the US and the rest of the NATO world army nations.
July 26, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
David Horowitz recently carried an incendiary article by Joseph Klein in his Front Page magazine, entitled The Quislings of Norway, excerpts below:
“The infamous Norwegian Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany as it conquered his own country, must be applauding in his grave…In the latest example of Norwegian collaboration with the enemies of the Jews, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere declared during a press conference this week, alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, that “Norway believes it is perfectly legitimate for the Palestinian president to turn to the United Nations” to seek recognition of an independent Palestinian state.”
“During the Nazi occupation of Norway, nearly all Jews were either deported to death camps or fled to Sweden and beyond. Today, Norway is effectively under the occupation of anti-Semitic leftists and radical Muslims, and appears willing to help enable the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.”
“Norway’s Labor Party lawmaker Anders Mathisen has gone even further and publicly denied the Holocaust. He said that Jews “exaggerated their stories” and “there is no evidence the gas chambers and or mass graves existed.” While the Norwegian political establishment and opinion-maker elite may not have reached that point of lunacy just yet, they do tend to treat Muslims as the victims of Israeli oppression – as if today’s Muslims are filling the shoes of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and today’s Nazis are the Israelis.”
“Socialist leader Kristin Halvorsen has been leading the boycott Israel campaign. While serving as Norway’s finance minister, she was amongst the demonstrators at an anti-Israel protest, in which a poster read (translated): “The greatest axis of evil: USA and Israel.” Among the slogans repeatedly shouted at the demonstration was (as translated) “Death to the Jews!”
“Last year, the Norwegian government decided to divest from two Israeli entities working in the West Bank. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund divested from the Israeli company Elbit, because it has worked on the Israeli security fence that keeps out Palestinian suicide bombers. Israel has also been blocked from bidding for Norwegian defense contracts.”
“Part of the motivation for this anti-Semitism is the influx into Norway in recent decades of masses of Muslims from Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. Multiculturalism has taught Norway’s cultural elite to take an uncritical, even obsequious, posture toward every aspect of Muslim culture and belief. When Muslim leaders rant against Israel and the Jews, the reflexive response of the multiculturalist elite is to join them in their rantings. This is called solidarity.”
H/T – Gilad Atzmon
July 25, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Islamophobia, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
I learned last night from an Israeli online journal, that two days before the Utoya Island massacre, AUF’s (Labour Party’s youth movement) leader Eskil Pedersen gave an interview to the Dagbladet, Norway’s second largest tabloid newspaper, in which he unveiled what he thinks of Israel.
In the course of the interview, Pedersen stated that he “believes the time has come for more drastic measures against Israel, and (that he) wants the Foreign Minister to impose an economic boycott against the country.”
Pederson went on to say, “The peace process goes nowhere, and though the whole world expect Israel to comply, they do not. We in Labour Youth will have a unilateral economic embargo of Israel from the Norwegian side.”
The AUF Labour Party Youth Movement have been devoted promoters of the Israel Boycott campaign, The Dagbladet newspaper reporting that “The AUF has long been a supporter of an international boycott of Israel, but the decision at the last congress, demands that Norway imposes a unilateral economic embargo on the country and it must be stricter than before.”
“I acknowledge that this is a drastic measure”, stated Pedersen, “but I think it gives a clear indication that we are tired of Israel’s behaviour, quite simply”.
Yesterday we also learned that mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik was openly enthusiastic about Israel. According to a variety of internet outlets, Behring Breivik was a regular poster on several Norwegian internet sites, notably the blog document.no, which is run by Hans Rustad, a former left-wing journalist. Hans Rustad is Jewish, extremely pro-Zionist, and warns against ‘Islam-isation’, violence, and other social problems he assumes to be connected with Muslim immigration.
Alongside the UK’s infamously Islamophobic Harry’s Place and other Jewish pro-war Zionist blogs, the observant amongst us are becoming more and more aware of an increasingly pervasive trend of Jerusalemite internet journals that — ostensibly – like to give the impression of ‘rallying for the preservation of Western culture,’ and of ‘standing up for democratic values’. For the most obvious of reasons, these blog pages are almost exclusively focused on ‘the problem of Islam,’ and on Muslim migrants’ ‘troubled and reactionary’ communities and politics, whilst all the while, simultaneously, relentlessly and forcefully propounding a propagandistic Zionist agenda. Interestingly enough, other immigrants are routinely depicted on these blog pages as being ‘harmless’, or as ‘positive contributors to society’ — you won’t find Hans Rustad or Harry Place criticising the Jewish Lobbies, the Lord Levy’s or the Russian Oligarchs’ disastrous impact on ‘Western culture’ or on ‘democratic values’ any time soon. […]
I am not in a position at present to firmly point a finger at Israel, its agents, or its sayanim — but assembling the information together, and considering all possibilities may suggest that Anders Behring Breivik might indeed, have been a Sabbath Goy.
Within its Judaic mundane-societal context, the Sabbath Goy is simply there to accomplish some minor tasks the Jews cannot undertake during the Sabbath. But within the Zion-ised reality we tragically enough live in, the Sabbath Goy kills for the Jewish state. He may even do it voluntarily.
Being an admirer of Israel, Behring Breivik does appear to have treated his fellow countrymen in the same way that the IDF treats Palestinians.
Devastatingly enough, in Israel, Behring Breivik found a few enthusiastic followers who praised his action against the Norwegian youth. In the Hebrew article that reported about the AUF camp being pro Palestinian and supportive of the Israel Boycott Campaign, I found the following comments amongst other supports for the massacre:
24. “Oslo criminals paid”
26. “It’s stupidity and evil not to desire death for those who call to boycott Israel.’
41. “Hitler Youth members killed in the bombing of Germany were also innocent. Let us all cry about the terrible evil bombardment carried out by the Allied…We have a bunch of haters of Israel meeting in a country that hates Israel in a conference that endorses the boycott.. So it’s not okay, not nice, really a tragedy for families, and we condemn the act itself, but to cry about it? Come on. We Jews are not Christians. In the Jewish religion there is no obligation to love or mourn for the enemy.”
The full facts of the Norwegian tragedy are, as yet, unknown, but the message should by now be transparently and urgently clear to all of us: Western intelligence agencies must immediately crack down on Israeli and Zionist operators in our midst, and regarding the terrible events of the weekend, it must be made absolutely clear who it was that spread such hate and promoted such terror, and for what exact reasons.
July 24, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel |
Leave a comment
The draft of a strategic deal between Washington and Kabul envisions giving the United States the authority to set up permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
Aletho News
