US Troops Begin Operations on the Jordan-Syria Border ………..

http://www.veteranstoday.com

Al-Mafraq and the Jordan-Syria border where troops are said to be positioned.

By Sibel Edmonds

 

According to first-hand accounts and reports provided to Boiling Frogs Post by several sources in Jordan, during the last few hours foreign military groups, estimated at hundreds of individuals, began to spread near the villages of the north-Jordan city of “Al-Mafraq”, which is adjacent to the Jordanian and Syrian border.

 

According to one Jordanian military officer who asked to remain anonymous, hundreds of soldiers who speak languages ​other than Arabic were seen during the past two days in those areas moving back and forth in military vehicles between the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq (10 km from the Syrian border), and the vicinity of Jordanian villages adjacent to the Syrian border, such as village Albaej (5 km from the border), the area around the dam of Sarhan, the villages of Zubaydiah and al-Nahdah adjacent to the Syrian border. -

Faux Syria Coverage by Western Media’s Illegitimate Child

By Sibel Edmonds

Yesterday we broke the developing story of US-NATO troop deployment on the Jordanian-Syrian Border. I’ve been monitoring the media for any relevant coverage. So far I have found ‘none.’ Then, today I found a very twisted, one-sided, and completely West-Driven video report on some developments along the Syrian-Jordanian border. The report comes from the long-bought and independent-imposter news agency Al-Jazeera, you know the one who heavily beat the war drums during the Libya development? Okay, please watch the following Faux Video Report by the Al-Jazeera Drummer Boys and Girls, and let me know all the things you find wrong, missing, and ‘influenced’ within it:

Allow me to go first: no comments asked or requested from the Syrian government. No mentioning of the recent developments in Jordan … I think these pretenders have some gene-pool connection to the US media. Maybe a distant cousin? An illegitimate child? Now your turn…

More here at Boiling Frogs

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War on Iran has already begun. Act before it threatens all of us ……..

Escalation of the covert US-Israeli campaign against Tehran risks a global storm. Opposition has to get more serious

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 December 2011 20.59 GMT

Iranians carry honorary coffins and pictures of a Revolutionary Guards commander killed in an explosion at the Alghadir missile base. Photograph: Stringer/Iran/Reuters

They don’t give up. After a decade of blood-drenched failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, violent destabilisation of Pakistan and Yemen, the devastation of Lebanon and slaughter in Libya, you might hope the US and its friends had had their fill of invasion and intervention in the Muslim world.

It seems not. For months the evidence has been growing that a US-Israeli stealth war against Iran has already begun, backed by Britain and France. Covert support for armed opposition groups has spread into a campaign of assassinations of Iranian scientists, cyber warfare, attacks on military and missile installations, and the killing of an Iranian general, among others.

The attacks are not directly acknowledged, but accompanied by intelligence-steered nods and winks as the media are fed a stream of hostile tales – the most outlandish so far being an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US – and the western powers ratchet up pressure for yet more sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme.

The British government’s decision to take the lead in imposing sanctions on all Iranian banks and pressing for an EU boycott of Iranian oil triggered the trashing of its embassy in Tehran by demonstrators last week and subsequent expulsion of Iranian diplomats from London.

It’s a taste of how the conflict can quickly escalate, as was the downing of a US spyplane over Iranian territory at the weekend. What one Israeli official has called a “new kind of war” has the potential to become a much more old-fashioned one that would threaten us all.

Last month the Guardian was told by British defence ministry officials that if the US brought forward plans to attack Iran (as they believed it might), it would “seek, and receive, UK military help”, including sea and air support and permission to use the ethnically cleansed British island colony of Diego Garcia.

Whether the officials’ motive was to soften up public opinion for war or warn against it, this was an extraordinary admission: the Britain military establishment fully expects to take part in an unprovoked US attack on Iran – just as it did against Iraq eight years ago.

What was dismissed by the former foreign secretary Jack Straw as “unthinkable”, and for David Cameron became an option not to be taken “off the table”, now turns out to be as good as a done deal if the US decides to launch a war that no one can seriously doubt would have disastrous consequences. But there has been no debate in parliament and no mainstream political challenge to what Straw’s successor, David Miliband, this week called the danger of “sleepwalking into a war with Iran”. That’s all the more shocking because the case against Iran is so spectacularly flimsy.

There is in fact no reliable evidence that Iran is engaged in a nuclear weapons programme. The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report once again failed to produce a smoking gun, despite the best efforts of its new director general, Yukiya Amano – described in a WikiLeaks cable as “solidly in the US court on every strategic decision”.

As in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, the strongest allegations are based on “secret intelligence” from western governments. But even the US national intelligence director, James Clapper, has accepted that the evidence suggests Iran suspended any weapons programme in 2003 and has not reactivated it.

The whole campaign has an Alice in Wonderland quality about it. Iran, which says it doesn’t want nuclear weapons, is surrounded by nuclear-weapon states: the US – which also has forces in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as military bases across the region – Israel, Russia, Pakistan and India.

Iran is of course an authoritarian state, though not as repressive as western allies such as Saudi Arabia. But it has invaded no one in 200 years. It was itself invaded by Iraq with western support in the 1980s, while the US and Israel have attacked 10 countries or territories between them in the past decade. Britain exploited, occupied and overthrew governments in Iran for over a century. So who threatens who exactly?

As Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, said recently, if he were an Iranian leader he would “probably” want nuclear weapons. Claims that Iran poses an “existential threat” to Israel because President Ahmadinejad said the state “must vanish from the page of time” bear no relation to reality. Even if Iran were to achieve a nuclear threshold, as some suspect is its real ambition, it would be in no position to attack a state with upwards of 300 nuclear warheads, backed to the hilt by the world’s most powerful military force.

The real challenge posed by Iran to the US and Israel has been as an independent regional power, allied to Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas movements. As US troops withdraw from Iraq, Saudi Arabia fans sectarianism, and Syrian opposition leaders promise a break with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the threat of proxy wars is growing across the region.

A US or Israeli attack on Iran would turn that regional maelstrom into a global firestorm. Iran would certainly retaliate directly and through allies against Israel, the US and US Gulf client states, and block the 20% of global oil supplies shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Quite apart from death and destruction, the global economic impact would be incalculable.

All reason and common sense militate against such an act of aggression. Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s Mossad, said last week it would be a “catastrophe”. Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, warned that it could “consume the Middle East in confrontation and conflict that we would regret”.

There seems little doubt that the US administration is deeply wary of a direct attack on Iran. But in Israel, Barak has spoken of having less than a year to act; Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has talked about making the “right decision at the right moment”; and the prospects of drawing the US in behind an Israeli attack have been widely debated in the media.

Maybe it won’t happen. Maybe the war talk is more about destabilisation than a full-scale attack. But there are undoubtedly those in the US, Israel and Britain who think otherwise. And the threat of miscalculation and the logic of escalation could tip the balance decisively. Unless opposition to an attack on Iran gets serious, this could become the most devastating Middle East war of all.

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A world that only understands the language of power ………………

http://www.voltairenet.org

by Wassim Raad

Partners | Beirut (Lebanon) | 27 September 2011

français

Westerners turning international law into a farce.

©UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

International affairs

Editorial : A world that only understands the language of power
The Western position in support of Israel in the face of the Palestinian request in form addressed to the United Nations, constituted yet another proof for the high level of international hypocrisy surrounding the Palestinian cause since 1948.
The recognition of a fictive state at the UN carries a moral and political character to immunize the Palestinian diplomatic position in the face of Israel, the violating state which has been protected by the American veto ever since its establishment, to the point of obstructing all the international resolutions against it and preventing any serious international investigation into the genocide crimes it perpetrated against the Palestinians.
For decades, this American-European protection has prevented any serious discussion at the UN of the racial segregation to which the Palestinians are being subjected in their own land by the last “state” in the world representing an occupation based on racial segregation and discrimination against the original citizens since the liberation of South Africa.
Nicolas Sarkozy spoke at the UN about the European role which was always humiliatingly affiliated with the American policy since the days of Charles de Gaulle. The hypocrite and impostor Sarkozy knows well that a state called Syria –against which he is currently conspiring to serve Israel – did not miss an opportunity to call on Europe to play a role that is independent from the American hegemony policy and the blunt bias in favor of Israel. He knows, like all the impostors among the Western European rulers, that Israel is committing hundreds of crimes against humanity every day, is responsible for the displacement of millions of Palestinians and the occupation of Lebanese and Syrian territories whose water wealth it is pillaging.
The West which is busy thinking of ways to protect Israel before the American fleeing from Iraq and to divide the control over the oil and water in the Arab countries, is conspiring day and night against the resistance’s fort that is supporting the Palestinians, i.e. Syria. This provides yet another proof for the fact that the so-called international community only recognizes the logic of power and that all which is called international law is nothing but a mere lie.

Arab Affairs

News analysis: Commotion, pressures and terrorism in Syria
The retreat is ongoing at the level of the response to the calls made by the Syrian opposition movements to demonstrate, after the unity of the opposition itself turned into a slogan during last Friday’s demonstrations. Its divisions and conflicts have reached the level of a major scandal in the opinion of the opposition’s partisans themselves, as most of them are recognizing that this rift is due to disloyal competition, and connections to the states sponsoring the plans to sabotage Syria.
 Firstly, the scandalous paradoxes in the course of the plan to sabotage Syria increased during this past week, the last of which was launched by Mr. Haitham al-Maleh who is claiming in some media outlets to be the most influential leader in the opposition and who was behind the call for one of the Istanbul meetings with the support of the Muslim Brotherhood Organization and the Turkish intelligence. Quite simply, Haitham al-Maleh demanded NATO’s military interference in Syria on one channel then appeared on another to recant his previous statement following the commotion and embarrassment it raised. This is one example of the political mentality prevailing over the leaders of the Syrian opposition movements and revealing their real intentions.
 Secondly, on the media scene, the oil channels that are targeting Syria resorted to the use of old and falsified tapes to give the impression there were massive and ongoing protests on the ground. Last Friday, Al-Jazeera channel thus aired pictures of a demonstration raising banners about the famine in Somalia, as the fabricators of the sounds that accompanied the footage did not pay attention to the fact that the banners called for donations to the Somali children and not for the toppling of the Syrian regime.
 Thirdly, in parallel to the media determination to give the impression that the protests are ongoing, the facts prove that the number of those responding to the calls has retreated below four thousand throughout Syria, and that the main facet of the opposition’s activities has become armed actions against the state and its institutions through terrorist attacks that targeted the army and the security forces in more than one area in the country and especially in the Homs province.
The remaining months until the end of the year, i.e. the date of the beginning of the American escape from Iraq, will witness numerous escalation campaigns and attempts to engage in negotiations because Syria and Iran are still rejecting any compromise that would grant the American occupation a price in exchange for its exit from Iraq, while the primary price demanded by the Americans at this level is securing Israel’s protection for which they moved the missiles shield inside the Turkish-Syrian border.

The Arab file

Libya
• The violent clashes between the Libyan revolutionaries and the forces loyal to Kaddafi proceeded in Bani Walid, Sert and some other regions in which Kaddafi’s loyalists are present throughout the week, while the fighters of the new regime in Libya were able to impose their control over the city of Sebha.
• The members of the national transitional council announced the postponement of the consensus over the formation of a new national government until further notice. As for the national transitional council, it announced it intended to lead the country for the next eight months until the election of a constituent assembly and the staging of general elections within a period not exceeding one year. But UN Envoy Ian Martin assured that the six-month deadline will not begin until the new authorities announce the full liberation of the country.
• Head of the national transitional council Mustafa Abdul Jalil thanked the international community for helping Libya, pledging that the forces loyal to Kaddafi will benefit from fair trials. In the meantime, Aisha Kaddafi, Colonel Muammar Kaddafi’s daughter, issued her first voice recording in which she assured that her father and brothers were leading the battles against “NATO and its agents”, and assured they will eventually prevail.

Yemen
• Since last Sunday, Yemen has been witnessing violent clashes between those loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the president’s oppositionists. The tribes participated in the clashes and the Yemeni capital Sana’a turned into a guerilla zone that witnessed the fall of a large number of dead and wounded. A ceasefire agreement was reached between Saleh’s forces and the ones supporting the opposition, but the accord soon collapsed.
• Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh returned to the country on Friday, calling a few hours after his arrival on all the political, military and security sides in the authority and the opposition to a full truce and a ceasefire that would allow the various parties to reach agreement and consensus.

Palestine
• The Israeli government mobilized its security apparatuses and proclaimed an emergency plan to face the repercussions of the Palestinian intention to head to the UN and see the proclamation of the state.
• American President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday in New York there were no shortcuts to end the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, at a time when the US threatened to use the veto right at the Security Council to deter any request for the accession of the Palestinian state to the Security Council.
• In this context, the cities of the occupied West Bank and the city of Gaza, along with some Arab countries, witnessed marches and demonstrations in support of the Palestinian effort to earn a membership at the UN. A request for that purpose was presented by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, saying in a speech: “No one with an ounce of conscience would reject the full membership of Palestine at the UN.”

Syria
• The dialogue sessions conducted in the provinces stressed the importance of dialogue to resolve the domestic issues and prevent the foreign interference attempts aiming at undermining Syria’s national unity and at dividing the region. They also stressed the necessity of upholding the resistance and rejectionism.
• And while the disputes escalated between the Syrian opposition forces despite the American, French, Turkish and Qatari efforts to unify them, Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined Barack Obama in calling for the increase of the sanctions.
• Once again it was proven on Friday that the number of people who responded to the demonstration calls has retreated, while the armed attacks against the army and the security forces mounted throughout the Syrian cities and especially in Homs.
• On the other hand, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad praised the “balanced Russian position toward the developments in Syria,” as he was receiving a delegation from the Russian Federation. Al-Assad also warned against the foreign interference attempts in Syrian domestic affairs and the attempts to undermine stability in the country.
• On the field, a number of security elements were killed while others were wounded in armed ambushes set up by terrorist groups.

Qatar
• At a time when the prince of Qatar Hamad Ben Khalifa al-Thani is said to be preparing his succession in light of his illness, director of Al-Jazeera network Wadah Khanfar was forced to present his resignation after eight years during which he managed the Qatari media institution. Khanfar, who was known for being close to the Muslim Brotherhood and even Al-Qaeda organization, had seen his position weakened following the emergence of the Wikileaks documents which revealed the details of meetings he held with CIA officials to tackle the direction of the channel’s coverage.
• It is worth mentioning that media reports had claimed that Khanfar’s ousting was due to his disputes with Azmi Bechara who is considered to be very close to the Emir. Consequently, the latter was forced to choose between the two and sacrificed Khanfar.

Israeli file

• “A dangerous historical moment” is how the ongoing drama at the UN was described by the Israeli papers, reaching its peak with the speeches delivered by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The reactions to Abu Mazen’s speech were very harsh, as it was considered to be a speech of instigation violating all the Israeli-Palestinian pacts and agreements.
• The papers indicated that American President Barack Obama stressed that the positions of the Israeli and Palestinian sides were not that far apart, at a time when Europe has been exerting pressures on Abbas to get him to settle for a symbolic recognition.
• The papers indicated that the Israeli army and police raised their state of alertness to its highest levels in preparation for the eruption of any acts violating public order in the West Bank areas. The papers also shed light on Obama’s speech at the UN, in which he said that Israel was a small state surrounded by enemies.

Lebanese affairs

News analysis: Proportionality and the end of the monopolization of the representation
There is a political debate in Lebanon over the electoral law, ever since the government ratified in its ministerial statement the intention to work on a new law based on the principle of proportional parliamentary representation. We can notice at this level that many reactions and positions emerged in regard to this issue, all of which reflecting the electoral interests of the various powers composing the Lebanese political reality.
 Firstly, it is clear that the Future Movement assigned the Phalange Party and the Lebanese Forces to obstruct any consensus during the Bkerke meeting over the support of proportionality. This measure which was adopted by Saad al-Hariri with his two partners reflected the Future Movement’s fear of losing the monopolization of the Sunni sect’s political representation,, since Al-Hariri’s oppositionists in Beirut, West Bekaa, Sidon, Tripoli and Akkar will be able to get a number of parliamentary seats that could expand with the emergence of the centrist bloc headed by Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
 Secondly, it is clear that Deputy Walid Jumblatt who wishes to maintain his sectarian leadership, is afraid that proportionality would allow his political opponents and especially the Arslan wing to get parliamentary seats from outside his political cloak. There is another concern affecting Jumblatt at the level of the Christian political reality in the Mount Lebanon districts that are traditionally considered to be under his command. One of the reasons behind Jumblatt’s opposition is the creation of a climate allowing the launching of the negotiations over the electoral alliances, especially with the Free Patriotic Movement and its leader General Michel Aoun.
What the Lebanese people need is the expansion of the joint space to draft their national options instead of remaining limited to the specificities of the sects and the denominations.

The Lebanese file

• The electricity draft was ratified after three sessions held by the joint parliamentary committees. The deputies participating in these committees’ meetings listened to the explanations of Minister of Water and Energy Gibran Bassil in regard to the electricity plan presented to the council. The opposition deputies interrupted the minister more than once and inquired time and time again about the conditions book, the monitoring sides and the sources of funding. They also demanded the appointment of a regulating committee within three months and an administration board for EDL within two months. In the third session which was attended by Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Speaker Nabih Berri started by summarizing what went on during the session, reaching the conclusion that everyone agreed over the core and the principles. Hence, he suggested the adoption of a Cabinet decision to be proposed for voting on Thursday and everyone agreed to that.
• On Thursday, parliament unanimously ratified the plan to reform the electricity sector. For his part, General Michel Aoun assured following the meeting of his bloc there was “no project rising up to the level of the electricity project presented to parliament.” He stressed that the electricity plan will be fully monitored, pointing to the fact that the projects carried out by the Council for Development and Reconstruction were never monitored, whether before or after their implementation.
• Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Kassem believed that the government was facing “a political side that is not opposing, rather trying to cause failure at any price.” He considered that this was due to the “frustration they endured in light of their repeated failures at the level of their political performance.” He added: “I do not wish to specify what the March 14 is doing in the context of the conspiracy, but I will settle for saying they are often acting in a way serving the Israeli-American project.”
• This week, developments were witnessed at the level of the kidnappers of the seven Estonians, knowing that kidnapping and release of the latter hostages were surrounded with utter secrecy. In this respect, the two most dangerous elements in the group that kidnapped the Estonians were killed following an ambush which was set up by the Information Branch that is affiliated with the Internal Security Forces. Questions emerged in regard to this development in light of suspicions that they might have been killed to conceal the details of the kidnapping operation. What was noticeable at this level was the position issued by General Michel Aoun who said there was no reason to congratulate the Information Branch on this operation, considering that the latter did not succeed in arresting the kidnappers and in uncovering who had ordered the kidnapping.

Positions of President Suleiman in New York
Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour indicated that Lebanon will deter any resolution condemning Syria, adding that Lebanon wanted Syria to exit its predicament, not see the issuance of resolutions condemning it.
President Michel Suleiman held a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, during which Suleiman stressed Lebanon’s rejection of naturalization and its support of the Palestinian state option.
President Suleiman then delivered Lebanon’s speech before the UN General Assembly, stressing Lebanon’s insistence on its maritime rights and its free exploitation of its resources. He also called for the condemnation of and exertion of pressures on Israel to get it to stop its violation of the Lebanese territories and airspace and implement the international resolutions. He also stressed Lebanon’s support of Palestine’s request to earn membership at the UN, reiterating the rejection of naturalization.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati left Beirut on Saturday on his way to New York while presiding over a prominent delegation. Mikati is expected to head the Lebanese mission at the UN Security Council since Lebanon will be chairing the Council during the month of September.

Wassim Raad

Source
New Orient News (Lebanon)

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Pics of the Day : Cairo (Egypt) ,the Israeli Embassy under fire ……..

The Israeli Flag was taken down by Protesters for the second time in only two month .

Image source : http://www.eluniversal.com (Mexico)

view org. post (in spanish language)  :

Tanques protegen embajada de Israel en el Cairo

ah ,and i found this one on Germanys Der Spiegel:

Demonstranten stürmen israelisches Botschaftsgebäude

here a related Post from The New York Times

Israeli ambassador, family, staff leave for Israel after protesters attack embassy in Cairo…….

Egyptians Tear Down Israel Embassy’s Security Wall

and here’s Al Jazeeras :

Egyptians break into Israeli embassy in Cairo

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Egypt: Anti-govt protests continue ………

http://www.uruknet.info

July 15, 2011

Thousands have started flocking to Tahrir since the morning, as anti-government protests continue in Cairo, Suez and elsewhere.

In Alexandria, mass protests are taking place now in front of the Security Directorate, denouncing the interior ministry, calling for the prosecution of police torturers and demanding impeaching Khaled Gharraba and minister Mansour el-Essawi. Striking workers from several companies have joined the protests.

The protesters in Alexandria have taken down the interior ministry’s flag from the poll in front of the Security Directorate.

Oh, and the call for a million-man protest in Heliopolis to denounce Tahrir and express support to SCAF managed to draw roughly 14 protesters!

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Israel to ask U.S. for $20billion extra in military aid because of Middle East turmoil

Posted by EU Times on Mar 9th, 2011 

Hinting: Ehud Barak, the Israel defence minister, told the Wall Street Journal that his country might ask America for a further $20billion. 

Israel are expected to ask for an additional $20billion in U.S. military aid in order to help the country deal with potential threats arising from the ongoing uprisings in the Middle East.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal defence minister Ehud Barak was reported as saying his country are considering making the request while the Arab world survey the wreckage of the ‘historic earthquake’.

Barak said Israel was worried that its top foes, Iran and Syria ‘might be the last to feel the heat’ of the revolts and that Egypt’s new leaders might, under public pressure, back away from its 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

‘The issue of qualitative military aid for Israel becomes more essential for us, and I believe also more essential for you,’ the U.S. newspaper quoted Barak as saying.

He continued: ‘A strong, responsible Israel can become a stabiliser in such a turbulent region.’

Without making a ‘daring’ peace offer, however, Israel cannot seek additional aid, Barak was quoted as saying.

Israel already receives $3billion in military aid a year from the U.S., but any increase in aid could hinge on the country’s relationship with enemies Palestine.

It is perhaps little surprise, then, that Barak also said that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to offer Palestinians a state within temporary borders, detailing for the first time an emerging Israeli plan for breaking the deadlocked peace negotiations.

State: The Gaza strip separates Israel and Palestinians, but they may be offered their own independent territory. 

Though the Palestinians repeatedly have rejected provisional statehood, Barak said that Israel or the U.S. would have to give assurances that a full-fledged agreement on permanent statehood would follow.

Only afterwards, would the two sides would resolve key issues of the conflict, such as competing claims to Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees, Barak added.

No details of the plan were given, however, but with popular protests shaking up the Middle East, Netanyahu is under fierce international pressure to prove he is serious about getting peacemaking moving again, especially after the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s West Bank settlement construction last month.

The prime minister is said to be planning a speech – possibly to be delivered in Washington – in which he will outline his plans.

Under pressure: The U.S and U.N. want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prove he is serious about getting peacemaking moving again. 

It is not clear that the U.S. would support the idea of an interim accord, given the Palestinians’ categorical rejection of the notion.

A temporary state would not only give the Palestinians less territory than they demand, but Israel would also retain military control of the area.

The Palestinians are also afraid that it they agree to temporary borders, then they will never win a full-fledged, independent state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.

Israel captured all three areas in 1967, then withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Hamas militants overran the territory two years later.

‘If and when Israel offers its own thoughts on how to move the process forward, we will be listening attentively,’ White House spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters in Washington yesterday.

‘We do not know what the prime minister and his government are thinking at the present time.’

U.S.-led peace talks, launched six months ago with the ambitious goal of striking a final deal by September 2011, broke down shortly after they began over Israeli construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians demanded a freeze in both areas, but Israel refused, arguing that previous rounds of talks took place while settlement construction was under way and that the issue should be settled in negotiations.

With peacemaking stalled, the Palestinians have launched a campaign to seek international recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Their tentative plan is to seek U.N. General Assembly recognition in the fall, a move that might not win them an actual state but might isolate Israel.

Last week, Barak predicted a ‘tsunami’ of international pressure on Israel in the autumn and said that to protect its standing, the Israeli government had to take unspecified initiatives.

Source

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Second National day of Rage in Iraq. Western media: deaf, dumb and blind

http://www.globalresearch.ca by Dirk Adriaensens
Global Research, March 5, 2011
BRussells Tribunal
DAY OF THE MARTYR,  04 March 2011 The second day of “National Rage” in Iraq produced again big demonstrations in all major cities in Iraq. The relevance of these protest movements cannot be underestimated. These protest are nationwide, not sectarian. The Iraqi youth, main instigators of this movement, are challenging the sectarian Iraqi Quisling government and counter American and Iranian plans for the country: no partitioning of Iraq, but electricity, jobs, clean water, free healthcare and education. No to corruption, no to summary executions and death squads. No to state-sponsored terror. These Iraqi demonstrators want a unified Iraq and want the money of their oil being used for public services. I’ve been following the events today with great admiration and hope, hope for change, hope that the Iraqi people can reverse – as one nation – the deadly spiral of ethnic cleansing, sectarianism, despair and the culture of death, imported by the US horsemen of the apocalypse. Underneath are a reflection from an Iraqi activist: Asma Al Haidari and an account of our Spanish friends from SCOSI (Spanish Campaign against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq). Once again the Western media are strikingly absent, probably following instructions from His Master’s Voice. ———————————– My dear Dirk, You have been receiving bulletins from me throughout the day which I know full well, you find quite dry and without any feeling or sentiment – well now I am writing to you to let you know what it was really like watching and listening – watching all these thousands of young men and women as well as the old demonstrating peacefully and knowing full well they are going to be attacked, arrested and probably in some cases killed for no reason other than wanting freedom and dignity. I  was also listening to their fervor and anguish which literally brought me to tears and broke my heart probably for the umpteenth millionth time since the invasion and occupation of Iraq asking myself all the time how can the world be so blind and deaf – and for the past two weeks I have felt that the world is not only deaf  and blind but dumb also, with a very few exceptions , of course! We started the Martyr’s Day, for that is what the young people have called it, with the execution of a young married man being taken away in  full sight of his young wife and children by a force called Battalion  24,  formerly known as the infamous, Muthanna Battalion commanded by the very infamous Raheem Risen Al Baythani who has commanded this battalion in Abu Ghraib and has terrorized its citizens since he took over which is around 3 years ago – before that he was in command of Hay Al Jamia’a which he also terrorized – infact, he is famous for terrorizing the areas he has taken command of – I’ve heard that he tells the people that they are all his slaves! The young man, Ahmed Inizie Al Hamdani was found executed a short while later just 50 meters from his home….., in the village of Al Hamdaniya in Abu Ghraib. Of course, last night it was announced that the so called government had imposed a curfew from 12 o’clock midnight, last night, to 6.00 a.m. Saturday morning throughout Iraq.   They had also imposed a curfew on all vehicles in Baghdad and in all Iraq’s cities. The Tahrir Square demonstrators were beaten with electric truncheons and clubs and a chase took place in all the neighbouring side streets , hotels and buildings!   A number of journalists and hoteliers were arrested.   Chased by water cannon and looked on from above by helicopters!   Watched also from the Turkish Restaurant bulding by this weeks new Death Squad – they were the people who gave commands and orders to the security troops to shoot and beatup!   Plaoma will have the details in the attached report. In all the Iraqi cities people were threatened under pain of death and shoot to kill orders were given by police officers to their men in order to stop the demonstrations and yet people still came out and demonstrated in most of the cities – the most important of which were Baghdad, Mosul, Sammarra’a, Basra, Nejef, Deewaniya, Theeqarr.   They all sang about Maliki being a liar – it is amazing how this man is so much without dignity – hundreds and thousands of Iraqis have been singing a special song for him about his being a thief and a liar for the past 2 weeks – anyone else would have resigned and got out but not he. There are a whole spate of songs about him and his regime of crooks and plunderers now – I will be sending you some very soon. Sulaymaniya – yes, I must never forget Sulaymaniya – brave Sulaymaniya who has paid so expensively for its revolt against corruption and oppression and who started all of this …. 3 days ago it gave its youngest – a 12 year old boy. We, too, paid, yes, we too paid. Today a young girl, was shot by a sniper in Sammarra’a – and the snipers are all members of the Iranian Quds Army who were positioned on the top of buildings. Today, the brave men of Mosul have decided to stage a sit in which they will not give up until their demands are met – they are holding it  in the Sports Stadium.   The neighbouring families have started keeping them supplied with food and water. Already Mosul has paid up so many young lives – I will soon be sending you a list of the young people killed by security forces. The press, as usual suffered today – three members of the press were attacked so badly by the security forces in Basra that they ended in hospital and a fourth was also attacked – we saw blood streaming from their heads and faces.   One of them said that he was told that he was an enemy of society! The press also suffered in Tahrir Square and you will be hearing about that in more detail from Pedro.   Pedro was told by one of them that they were in touch with the UN representative in Baghdad and had given him a detailed report – I find the whole idea of the UN very amusing – there is an old proverb in Arabic, Dirk – which more or less says that you may go on calling but there is no life in the person you are calling and a stone would answer you had you called it! The press was barred from cities like Tikreet and Haweeja was totally surrounded by the army and the police. I listened to an old Imam from Kirkuk calling everyone to fight oppression of the Ashawiss in Kirkuk and the oppression of the huge army that has occupied Iraq – he made the tears come to my eyes and broke my heart – I listened to an old resistance fighter reminding the new pontious pilates and Judas Escariots of the 21st century – Dr. Salman Al Jumaili and Dr. Rafi’i Al Essawi who sold thir country, their people and their religion for a  handful of silver and for a chair; he also encouraged the people to continue their fight and told us that we will soon liberate ourselves.   He was marvelous – both these men were marvelous – their voices and words still ring in my ears.   I also heard a young man addressing Maliki and telling him that he really is the most dismal of cowards – he was so frightened of people demonstrating peacefully and felt that it was essential to take such draconious measures and he wondered what he would do had these people been carrying arms; he paused for a minute and then told him we soon will! Women – oh so many women demonstrated and so many women spoke and encouraged the young people of Iraq to go on with their brave fight. – one of these women said that she had lost 3 sons – that no one should be frightened of Maliki and that his days are numbered – yes, it was quite an emotional day – something I don’t like expressing except to the people closest to my heart, as you well know- the people who stood by and suffered with us for our suffering for the slow murder of Iraq. Again I ask, are the American Adminsitration and the European Community blind??? Is the world blind – is it deaf???? Well, just to update you, the Unions in Iraq are demonstrating in Tahrir Square tomorrow and Monday we’ll see demonstrations of Regret.   (Regret for having participated in the general election and they’ve asked people to come with a finger painted in red!). Sallams and Peace. Asma Al Haidari Day of the Martyr: Demonstrators and journalists under attack CEOSI, 4 de marzo de 2011 www.iraqsolidaridad.org Iraqi security forces have shot with live ammunition against demonstrators in different cities in Iraq. Aisha Haitham  A. al Daraji, a young girl has been killed in Samarra after being wounded by bullets, according to Al Rafidain TV.   She was shot by a sniper stationed on top of a building.    (Snipers have been stationed in Samarra on top of all the buildings.   They are members of the Iranian Quds Army). Unfortunately, this is not the only casualty. This morning, in the village of Al Hamdaniya, near Abu Ghraib, Ahmed Inizie al Hamdani one of the organizers of today’s demonstrations, was  pulled away from his home and shot him at point-blank range before his wife and his sons and daughters. Colonel Risen al Baizani  in charge of 24th Brigade,  was responsible for this crime. CEOSI was in contact with a well-known journalist who was in Tahrir Square; in Baghdad [we omit his/her name for security reasons]. This person has informed us that the journalists, especially audiovisual ones, are being harassed and hounded. He/she claimed that tens of demonstrators have been arrested and people are afraid they suffer torture, as they did with the people who were arrested last Friday 25 February in Maliki prisons. UN Rapporteur has been informed of these facts. The direction for the repression was being carried out from the roof of a building in construction near Tahrir Square by Hasan Sunaid, Al Dawa MP and Chairman of the Security Committee, Adnan al Asadi, deputy minister of Internal Affairs, Shiruan al Waili, Advisor to the National Security Commission, and general Ali Musawi, chief of this police operation. In Fallujah and Diyalah two demonstrations have been repressed by the police forces. Some mosques close to the government policies or political parties have tried to convince people to stay at home. It is said that there have been bribery attempts ($ 50.000) trying to convince some sheiks to convince their people to stay home. The army also has threatened to shoot anyone who tried to demonstrate. At 12:15 pm Al Bagdadiya TV interviewed some physicians in Samarra, who were carrying out a sit-in because they were not allowed to treat the wounded people. The same source claimed that in Samarra there were Iranian troops. Media Once again, media has been attacked by the Iraqi security forces. We have to remember that the Occupied Iraq is the country in which more journalists have been killed in History (even more than in Vietnam). In spite of the Media international organizations calls to allow journalists make their job, —even Tareq al Hashemi, deputy minister of Internal Affairs has made a call— a group of journalist has been attacked in Basra while informing about the demonstrations in that city. Three of them are wounded and have been taken to Hospital, according to their statements to Al SharquiyaTV.   Al Rasd wal Maalumat al Wataniya, an Iraqi monitoring organization, has stated that general Kadem Abu al Hil, chancelor of the police at Muthanna province, has ordered to block the satellite cameras and those on the ground [1].   It is also reported that Salah al-Din TV has been closed by security forces. In Tikrit, Iraqi security forces have close Al Rafidain TV offices and journalist are forbidden to enter the city   Next demonstrations (called through social networks): March 7, first anniversary of the elections March 11, Friday of demonstrations.   IraqSolidaridad footnotes: 1.- See in Arabic the full text: http://www.almansore.com/Art.php?id=23109. Dirk Adriaensens is member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee
Dirk Adriaensens is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Dirk Adriaensens .

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters: My Journey to BDS

http://www.voltairenet.org

In a world where, from Palestine to Iraq via Afghanistan, so many innocent people are brutalized by barbarian armies, humiliated, bereft of hope, freedom, and human dignity, the voice of artists with the integrity to lend their talent and signature to say no to savagery, is a beacon of hope. Roger Waters is one such artist. He tells the story of his commitment to the Palestinian cause and his support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

6 March 2011
From London (United Kingdom)

Roger Waters spraying paints graffiti against Israel’s separation barrier surrounding the West Bank town of Bethlehem in 2006.

By Roger Waters

In 1980, a song I wrote, “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2,” was banned by the government of South Africa because it was being used by Black South African children to advocate their right to equal education. That apartheid government imposed a cultural blockade, so-to-speak, on certain songs, including mine.

Twenty-five years later, in 2005, Palestinian children participating in a West Bank festival used the song to protest Israel’s apartheid wall. They sang “We don’t need no occupation! We don’t need no racist wall!” At the time, I hadn’t seen first-hand what they were singing about.

A year later in 2006, I contracted to perform in Tel Aviv.

Palestinians from the movement advocating an academic and cultural boycott of Israel urged me to reconsider. I had already spoken out against the wall, but I was unsure whether a cultural boycott was the right way to go. The Palestinian advocates of a boycott asked that I visit the occupied Palestinian territory, to see the Wall for myself before I made up my mind. I agreed.

Under the protection of the UN I visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The Wall is an appalling edifice to behold. It is policed by young Israeli Soldiers who treated me, a casual observer from another world with disdainful aggression. If it could be like that for me, a foreigner, a visitor, imagine what it must be like for the Palestinians, for the underclass, for the passbook carriers. I knew then that my conscience would not allow me to walk away from that Wall, from the fate of the Palestinians I met, people whose lives are crushed daily in a multitude of ways by Israel’s occupation. In solidarity, and somewhat impotently, I wrote on their wall that day: “We don’t need no thought control.”

Realizing at that point that my presence on a Tel Aviv stage would inadvertently legitimize the oppression I was witnessing, I canceled my gig at the football stadium in Tel Aviv and moved it to Neve Shalom an agricultural community devoted to growing chick peas and also, admirably, to cooperation between people of different faiths, where Muslim, Christian and Jew live and work side by side in harmony.

Against all expectations, it was to become the biggest music event in the short history of Israel. 60,000 fans battled traffic jams to attend. It was extraordinarily moving for me and my band, and at the end of the gig I was moved to exhort the young people gathered there to demand of their government that they attempt to make peace with their neighbors and respect the civil rights of Palestinians living in Israel.

Sadly in the intervening years, the Israeli government has made no attempt to implement legislation that would grant civil rights to Israeli Arabs equal to those enjoyed by Israeli Jews, and The Wall has grown, inexorably, illegally annexing more and more of The West Bank.

I had learned that day in Bethlehem in 2006 something of what it means to live under occupation, imprisoned behind a Wall. It means that a Palestinian farmer must watch olive groves centuries old, uprooted. It means that a Palestinian student cannot get to school because the checkpoint is closed. It means a woman may give birth in a car, because the soldier won’t let her pass to the hospital that’s a ten minute drive away. It means a Palestinian artist cannot travel abroad to exhibit work, or to show a film in an international film festival.

For the people of Gaza, locked in a virtual prison behind the wall of Israel’s illegal blockade, it means another set of injustices. It means that children go to sleep hungry, many chronically malnourished. It means that fathers and mothers, unable to work in a decimated economy, have no means to support their families. It means that university students with scholarships to study abroad must watch the opportunity of a lifetime slip away because they are not allowed travel.

In my view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza, and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance.

Where governments refuse to act, people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For some that meant joining the Gaza Freedom March, for others it meant joining the humanitarian flotilla that tried to bring much needed humanitarian aid to Gaza.

For me it means declaring my intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine, but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their governments racist and colonial policies, by joining a campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, until it satisfies three basic human rights demanded in international law.

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands [occupied since 1967] and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

My conviction is born in the idea that all people deserve basic human rights. My position is not anti Semitic. This is not an attack on the people of Israel. This is, however, a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott.

Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and whites and blacks enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel until the day comes — and it surely will come — when The Wall of occupation falls and Palestinians live alongside Israelis in the peace, freedom, justice and dignity that they all deserve.

Roger Waters on BDS and the walls of division:

English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. He is also known for championing the cause of the Palestinian people for freedom and justice.
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ALLEN L ROLAND: World War III – A Class War between The people and Corpocracy

http://www.veteranstoday.comFebruary 21, 2011 posted by Allen L Roland

World War III has already started. It is not a military war but instead an economic class war by the people against the corporate global elite whose puppet spoke person is President Obama. The economically oppressed masses of people in Egypt realized they could literally shut down the government and that empowering message has reached the United States where the masses of enraged people in Wisconsin are taking to the streets in a revolt against their own corporate welfare state. Obama take note ~ this is the beginning of world wide shift in consciousness which will culminate in 2012 and politically sweep away the Oligarchy in the process: Allen L Roland

 

Wikipedia defines Oligarchy as a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, corporate, or military control. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy. As such, my use of the term corpocracy should be taken in the same context as the Oligarchy and plutocracy ~ rule by the privileged few or global elite.

Our founded Republic is a state under a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, retain supreme control of the government and where most decisions are made with reference to established laws, rather than the discretion of a head of state, a monarch or appointed Czars.

The epicenter of the Middle East people’s revolt is the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel ~ which is a constant and humiliating reminder to the Arab world that they are servants of the global elite who maintain their oppressive regimes through military power and economic control.

The epicenter of the blossoming people’s revolt in the United States is the 9/11 conspiracy where Vice President Dick Cheney created a shadow government committed to corporate welfare and beholden to the global elite. That’s when the Republic began its death throes and the corpocracy emerged from the twin towers ashes ~ where it controlled, and still does control  the masses through fear, demonizing, and fabrications with the ultimate big lie being the 9/11 cover up story.

Fueled by greed, arrogance and false patriotism the Corpocracy, under Cheney’s active direction, went to war with Afghanistan and falsely rationalized another war with Iraq, again under Cheney’s active direction, and virtually imprisoned the Middle East through its control of their oppressive monarchies and its unholy alliance with its ongoing partner in crime, Israel. Obama’s continued support of an illegal war and occupation of Afghanistan was an early indication of his allegiance to the corpocracy ~ much to the continued chagrin of progressives and the majority of Americans.

Corporate welfare is a term describing a government’s bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment on corporations or selected corporations which is precisely what the Cheney/Bush administration did in order to achieve the monetary allegiance and goals of the corpocracy ~ while America’s middle class virtually died as their jobs were either shipped overseas or eliminated by corporate welfare.

President Obama eagerly sensed where the power was and signed on board with the corpocracy leaving his progressive base in shambles. This marriage was recently consummated between President Obama and the financial elite with the appointment of J.P. Morgan’s William Daly as his chief of staff, former Goldman executive Gene Sterling as his economic council chief and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness ( Chuckle ).

The stage was set for economic welfare you can believe in and the people and Republic be damned.

With the corpocracy now financially firmly behind him  ~ it would be clear sailing for Obama’s 2012 reelection ~ that is, until the people of Egypt finally woke up, took to the streets and toppled the Mubarak regime which sent a shock wave through the corpocracy and left Obama reacting like a deer in the headlights.

Whoops, the Middle East and North African masses began to realize they could break the chains of their American sanctioned oppression by taking to the streets, voicing their concerns and not only demanding change but not settling for anything less than true change. The seed was dropped and it rapidly took root throughout the world and eventually America ~ what would happen if the American people, who voted for change in 2008, suddenly demanded change?

A wave of revolt spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa and that wave has now become a Tsunami which has finally reached America and in particular Wisconsin. As David DeGraw,  Amped Status Report, correctly writes; “ We (America) have all the ingredients for a revolution ~ 59 million people without healthcare, 52 million in poverty, 44 million on food stamps, 30 million in need of work, seven million foreclosed upon and five million homes over two months late in their mortgage payments. Meanwhile, all new political policies and proposals on the table, on the state and federal level, are committed to major cuts in social services. In a sign of what’s to come, Obama’s first disclosed spending cut targets the poor… While continuing their attacks on American small businesses and private-sector workers, the global financial elite are now stepping up their attacks on public workers. In this context, the Wisconsin state government attacks against the state teachers’ union doesn’t have anything to do with the old Democrat vs. Republican divide and conquer debates of the past. This is about people fighting back against their economic oppressors. In Egypt, Mubarak was the Neo-Liberal Aristocracy’s local enforcer. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker is the Neo-Liberal Aristocracy’s local enforcer…..This battle in Madison, Wisconsin, between the American people and the global financial elite, represents the opening salvo, the awakening of an American resistance movement and a sign of what’s to come.”  See article ~

By the way, without the tax cuts to big corporations made by Governor Walker and the other Republicans, Wisconsin would have had a surplus, according to the Wisconsin Federal Bureau, a non-partisan group. Just last month, Walker and the Legislature gave away $117 million in tax breaks, mostly for businesses that expand and for private health savings accounts. That’s corporate welfare and a choice lawmakers made. Had it not been for those decisions and a few others, according to the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state would have had a surplus

Oh my, obviously a global shift of consciousness is happening and it’s exhilarating. It’s a bottom up shift beginning with the economically downtrodden masses who are finding their voices, the power of their numbers as well as their ability to stop the corpocracy in its tracks by refusing to play by their oppressive rules. What’s happening now in Wisconsin will soon happen throughout the United States. As DeGraw concludes “The economic top one-tenth of one percent of the global population has launched an economic war on us. They are hoarding $39 Trillion in investible wealth, not counting the vast sums they have hidden in offshore accounts. In the United States, we now have the highest and most severe inequality of wealth in our nation’s history. While there is a record number of American citizens currently living paycheck to paycheck, in debt, unemployed, underemployed, without healthcare, on food stamps and in poverty, as our society is breaking down, global bankers have taken our tax dollars and given themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. The same people who destroyed our economy have been rewarded with trillions of dollars in national wealth. It is now evident that both political parties and all three branches of government, along with the mainstream corporate media, have been bought off by a global economic elite.”

This is not Obama’s shining moment and his true allegiance to the Old World Order as well as the corpocracy and global elite is now being witnessed by the world in the glaring headlights of the bottom-up Egyptian people’s revolution ~ a revolution which most assuredly is now seen as a direct threat to America’s rapidly crumbling empire. Norm Chomsky correctly identifies that threat ~ “ It’s not radical Islam that worries the US, it’s Independence ~ The nature of any regime it backs in the Arab world is secondary to control. Subjects are ignored until they break their chains.”

Well, the nature of the corpocracy is to ignore the people until they break the chains of control by demanding change as is now happening in Wisconsin and throughout the world. For example, Palestinians are now planning a ‘Day of Rage’ after US Vetoed a UN Resolution condemning illegal Israeli Settlements. Anti-US rallies took place in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Jenin this weekend after the 14-1 vote on the resolution, in which the US stood alone against the rest of the security council, including Britain, Germany and France. We actually voted in contradiction of our own stated policy which is the height of hypocrisy and infuriates the masses throughout the Middle East and the world.

World War III has begun and it’s a class battle between the people and the corpocracy but on a larger scale it‘s a battle for our lost Republic, our lost freedoms, our lost soul and our forgotten global evolutionary innate urge to unite and prosper in the spirit of love, altruism and social cooperation instead of survival of the strong or most wealthy. As such, it is a shift in consciousness which will become apparent to all in 2012 and nothing can stop it from evolving.

We cannot deny our destiny and it is divine.

Allen L Roland

About the Author: Allen L Roland is a Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist. Allen L Roland is also available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations. Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website www.allenroland.com . He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

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Two-thirds of Iranians behind Ahmadinejad

http://www.voltairenet.org

20 February 2011 Tools Print Send All the versions of this article: français Countries Iran

The International Peace Institute recently released the results of a telephone survey of Iranians. According to the poll, Iranians are clearly split in a one third/two thirds ratio. The majority came out in favour of continuing the Islamic Revolution under President Ahmadinejad. On its part, the minority wishes to suspend financial support to Hamas and Hezbollah, hopes for closer ties with the United States, and backs opposition leader Moussavi. The International Peace Institute is chaired by Terje Rød-Larsen, a Norwegian politician who served as minister of administration in his country’s government before being forced to resign because of his implication in a tax and corrumption scandal. At that point, he was fished out by the United States which had him appointed UN Special Envoy to Lebanon, a mandate which he used to obstruct Syrian and Iranian influence. ==== Iran : Public Opinion on Foreign, Nuclear and Domestic Issues, a survey carried out by Charney Research on behalf of the International Peace Institute, 8 December 2010 (230 Ko). .

As Egypt Decides Whether To Allow Iran Warships To Pass Suez, Here Is An Update Of US Naval Deployments – Tyler Durden

found on : http://dprogram.net

February 18th, 2011

(ZeroHedge) – While last week the focus of US naval deployment in the Middle East emphasized securing the Suez Canal in the midst of the Egyptian revolution, this week the developing story is the passage of two Iranian warships through this very canal. Not surprisingly, two US naval groups – an aircraft carrier and a big-deck amphibious warfare ship – are now situated at either end of the Red Sea, where the Iranian flotilla is supposedly located. Will the US presence be enough to prevent escalation? Since we believe that Iran has few alternatives to pulling a “wag the dog” scenario with increasing domestic protests, and an increasingly more troubled ruling class, perhaps the increased US presence in the area is geared more toward dissuading a preemptive engagement by Israel. Regardless, expect posturing to increase as Iran is now stuck in a position from which it can only lose face if it does not at least pursue the symbolic passage of the Suez canal. What happens after is unclear.

And here is the formal passage request received by Egypt:

The Egyptian government has received a request from Iran to allow two of its navy ships to pass through the Suez Canal, according to media reports Thursday. “We received a request this afternoon for two Iranian warships to pass through the Suez Canal. We have not yet approved it,” Hossam Zaki, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Wall Street Journal. The decision to permit passage to the ships will be made by the military which currently runs the country in the wake of President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation last week, the reports said. Israel has condemned Iran’s plan to deploy warships to Syria as a “serious provocation.

Source: Zero Hedge

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There has been NO REVOLUTION so far – David Icke

found on : http://dprogram.net

(DavidIcke.com) – A despicable tyrant has gone, but the army that imposed the will of that despicable tyrant for 30 years is now in charge and the Egyptian army is not only controlled by the US, it is funded by massive American military ‘aid’ – second only in scale to Israel.

It is true that the army didn’t fire on the demonstrators as it would have done before, but it did so at the time that its masters in America were calling for Mubarak to step down, in effect, and for the protestors to be left alone. Why did the US government do this after supporting the tyrant for 30 years? Because they want ‘regime change’ in Egypt as part of a domino effect across the whole Middle East to advance a much bigger agenda.

Mubarak’s demise was announced by his vice-president, the US puppet, Omar Suleiman, the head of the vicious and murderous Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate that as well as controlling the population through sheer terror also accepted Muslim detainees arrested by the US to be tortured in Egypt in ways that would have been illegal in America – the so called ‘Extraordinary Rendition’.

And waiting in the wings is America’s (the Illuminati’s) man, Mohamed ElBaradei, who is on the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group of Rothschild front-man, George Soros, and his associate Zbigniew Brzezinski, who specialise in triggering and manipulating ‘peoples’ revolutions’ to change regimes while hiding the force that is really behind it all.

It is wonderful to see the joy of the Egyptian people at the end of Mubarak, but the job is only half done and if it ends here nothing will change. ‘Peoples’ revolutions’ covertly inspired by the money and agencies of George Soros in Georgia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and elsewhere also has their moments of enormous euphoria when a regime fell, but any revolution of the people can only be judged by what replaces that which is removed.

Others have been deeply disappointed and disillusioned in the past and if Egypt is not to go the same way the focus and determination must not be lost – and ElBaradei must not prevail, nor anyone else who represents the forces of control and suppression.

Out of the frying pan into the fryer is not a revolution.

Read More Editorials By David Icke at davidicke.com

Source: Poor Richards Blog

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Egypt’s Revolution: Creative Destruction for a ’Greater Middle East’?

http://www.voltairenet.org   by F. William Engdahl*   Controverting majority opinion, F. William Engdahl maintains there is nothing spontaneous about the mass protest movements in Arab countries and sees them as a replay of the US-orchestrated colour revolutions that triggered regime change in post-Soviet countries. The same script and cast of characters are at hand: local opposition leaders coached by the NED and other US-funded organizations in the art of staging “spontaneous” uprisings. The contours of a US covert strategy for the region have been clear for some time. The question is: will it work?

7 February 2011  From Frankfurt (Germany) Tools Print Send Countries Egypt Themes CentCom: Control of the “Great Middle East”

Game over? Fast on the heels of the regime change in Tunisia came a popular-based protest movement launched on January 25 against the entrenched order of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Contrary to the carefully-cultivated impression that the Obama Administration is trying to retain the present regime of Mubarak, Washington in fact is orchestrating the Egyptian as well as other regional regime changes from Syria to Yemen to Jordan and well beyond in a process some refer to as “creative destruction”. The template for such covert regime change has been developed by the Pentagon, US intelligence agencies and various think-tanks such as RAND Corporation over decades, beginning with the May 1968 destabilization of the De Gaulle presidency in France. This is the first time since the US-backed regime changes in Eastern Europe some two decades back that Washington has initiated simultaneous operations in many countries in a region. It is a strategy born of a certain desperation and one not without significant risk for the Pentagon and for the long-term Wall Street agenda. What the outcome will be for the peoples of the region and for the world is as yet unclear. Yet while the ultimate outcome of defiant street protests in Cairo and across Egypt and the Islamic world remains unclear, the broad outlines of a US covert strategy are already clear. No one can dispute the genuine grievances motivating millions to take to the streets at risk of life. No one can defend atrocities of the Mubarak regime and its torture and repression of dissent. No one can dispute the explosive rise in food prices as Chicago and Wall Street commodity speculators, and the conversion of American farmland to the insane cultivation of corn for ethanol fuel drive grain prices through the roof. Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer, much of it from the USA. Chicago wheat futures rose by a staggering 74% between June and November 2010 leading to an Egyptian food price inflation of some 30% despite government subsidies. What is widely ignored in the CNN and BBC and other Western media coverage of the Egypt events is the fact that whatever his excesses at home, Egypt’s Mubarak represented a major obstacle within the region to the larger US agenda. To say relations between Obama and Mubarak were ice cold from the outset would be no exaggeration. Mubarak was staunchly opposed to Obama policies on Iran and how to deal with its nuclear program, on Obama policies towards the Persian Gulf states, to Syria and to Lebanon as well as to the Palestinians [1]. He was a formidable thorn in the larger Washington agenda for the entire region, Washington’s Greater Middle East Project, more recently redubbed the milder-sounding “New Middle East.” As real as the factors are that are driving millions into the streets across North Africa and the Middle East, what cannot be ignored is the fact that Washington is deciding the timing and as they see it, trying to shape the ultimate outcome of comprehensive regime change destabilizations across the Islamic world. The day of the remarkably well-coordinated popular demonstrations demanding Mubarak step down, key members of the Egyptian military command including Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan were all in Washington as guests of the Pentagon. That conveniently neutralized the decisive force of the Army to stop the anti-Mubarak protests from growing in the critical early days [2]. The strategy had been in various State Department and Pentagon files since at least a decade or longer. After George W. Bush declared a War on Terror in 2001 it was called the Greater Middle East Project. Today it is known as the less threatening-sounding “New Middle East” project. It is a strategy to break open the states of the region from Morocco to Afghanistan, the region defined by David Rockefeller’s friend Samuel Huntington in his infamous Clash of Civilizations essay in Foreign Affairs. Egypt rising? The current Pentagon scenario for Egypt reads like a Cecil B. DeMille Hollywood spectacular, only this one with a cast of millions of Twitter-savvy well-trained youth, networks of Muslim Brotherhood operatives, working with a US-trained military. In the starring role of the new production at the moment is none other than a Nobel Peace Prize winner who conveniently appears to pull all the threads of opposition to the ancient regime into what appears as a seamless transition into a New Egypt under a self-proclaimed liberal democratic revolution. Some background on the actors on the ground is useful before looking at what Washington’s long-term strategic plan might be for the Islamic world from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and ultimately into the Islamic populations of Central Asia, to the borders of China and Russia. Washington ’soft’ revolutions The protests that led to the abrupt firing of the entire Egyptian government by President Mubarak on the heels of the panicked flight of Tunisia’s Ben Ali into a Saudi exile are not at all as “spontaneous” as the Obama White House, Clinton State Department or CNN, BBC and other major media in the West make them to be. Muslim Brotherhood logo They are being organized in a Ukrainian-style high-tech electronic fashion with large internet-linked networks of youth tied to Mohammed ElBaradei and the banned and murky secret Muslim Brotherhood, whose links to British and American intelligence and freemasonry are widely reported [3]. At this point the anti-Mubarak movement looks like anything but a threat to US influence in the region, quite the opposite. It has all the footprints of another US-backed regime change along the model of the 2003-2004 Color Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and the failed Green Revolution against Iran’s Ahmedinejad in 2009. midfdl “January 25 Day of Anger” poster signed by April 6 movement. The call for an Egyptian general strike and a January 25 Day of Anger that sparked the mass protests demanding Mubarak resign was issued by a Facebook-based organization calling itself the April 6 Movement. The protests were so substantial and well-organized that it forced Mubarak to ask his cabinet to resign and appoint a new vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman, former Minister of Intelligence. April 6 is headed by one Ahmed Maher Ibrahim, a 29-year-old civil engineer, who set up the Facebook site to support a workers’ call for a strike on April 6, 2008. According to a New York Times account from 2009, some 800,000 Egyptians, most youth, were already then Facebook or Twitter members. In an interview with the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment, April 6 Movement head Maher stated, “Being the first youth movement in Egypt to use internet-based modes of communication like Facebook and Twitter, we aim to promote democracy by encouraging public involvement in the political process” [4]. Maher also announced that his April 6 Movement backs former UN International Atomic Energy Aagency (IAEA) head and declared Egyptian Presidential candidate, ElBaradei along with ElBaradei’s National Association for Change (NAC) coalition. The NAC includes among others George Ishak, a leader in Kefaya Movement, and Mohamed Saad El-Katatni, president of the parliamentary bloc of the controversial Ikhwan or Muslim Brotherhood. Today Kefaya is at the center of the unfolding Egyptian events. Not far in the background is the more discreet Muslim Brotherhood [5]. Former IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei taking center stage in opposition front to President Hosni Mubarak. ElBaradei at this point is being projected as the central figure in a future Egyptian parliamentary democratic change. Curiously, though he has not lived in Egypt for the past thirty years, he has won the backing of every imaginable part of the Eyptian political spectrum from communists to Muslim Brotherhood to Kefaya and April 6 young activists [6]. Judging from the calm demeanour ElBaradei presents these days to CNN interviewers, he also likely has the backing of leading Egyptian generals opposed to the Mubarak rule for whatever reasons as well as some very influential persons in Washington. Kefaya—Pentagon ’non-violent warfare’ Egyptian woman wearing sticker of the Kefaya (enough) Movement, the main force behind ElBaradei’s candidature. Kefaya is at the heart of mobilizing the Egyptian protest demonstrations that back ElBaradei’s candidacy. The word Kefaya translates to “enough!” Curiously, the planners at the Washington National Endowment for Democracy (NED) [7] and related color revolution NGOs apparently were bereft of creative new catchy names for their Egyptian Color Revolution. In their November 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the US-financed NGOs chose the catch word, Kmara! In order to identify the youth-based regime change movement. Kmara in Georgian also means “enough!” Kmara (enough) in Georgia. The Technique of a Coup d’État, by John Laughland, Voltaire Network, 5 January 2010. Like Kefaya, Kmara in Georgia was also built by the Washington-financed trainers from the NED and other groups such as Gene Sharp’s misleadingly-named Albert Einstein Institution which uses what Sharp once identified as “non-violence as a method of warfare” [8]. The various youth networks in Georgia as in Kefaya were carefully trained as a loose, decentralized network of cells, deliberately avoiding a central organization that could be broken and could have brought the movement to a halt. Training of activists in techniques of non-violent resistance was done at sports facilities, making it appear innocuous. Activists were also given training in political marketing, media relations, mobilization and recruiting skills. The formal name of Kefaya is Egyptian Movement for Change. It was founded in 2004 by select Egyptian intellectuals at the home of Abu ‘l-Ala Madi, leader of the al-Wasat party, a party reportedly created by the Muslim Brotherhood [9] . Kefaya was created as a coalition movement united only by the call for an end Mubarak’s rule. Kefaya as part of the amorphous April 6 Movement capitalized early on new social media and digital technology as its main means of mobilization. In particular, political blogging, posting uncensored youtube shorts and photographic images were skillfully and extremely professionally used. At a rally already back in December 2009 Kefaya had announced support for the candidacy of Mohammed ElBaradei for the 2011 Egyptian elections [10]. RAND and Kefaya No less a US defense establishment think-tank than the RAND Corporation has conducted a detailed study of Kefaya. The Kefaya study as RAND themselves note, was “sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community” [11]. A nicer bunch of democratically-oriented gentlemen and women could hardly be found. In their 2008 report to the Pentagon, the RAND researchers noted the following in relation to Egypt’s Kefaya: “The United States has professed an interest in greater democratization in the Arab world, particularly since the September 2001 attacks by terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon. This interest has been part of an effort to reduce destabilizing political violence and terrorism. As President George W. Bush noted in a 2003 address to the National Endowment for Democracy, ’As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export’ (The White House, 2003). The United States has used varying means to pursue democratization, including a military intervention that, though launched for other reasons, had the installation of a democratic government as one of its end goals. However, indigenous reform movements are best positioned to advance democratization in their own country“ [12]. RAND researchers have spent years perfecting techniques of unconventional regime change under the name “swarming,” the method of deploying mass mobs of digitally-linked youth in hit-and-run protest formations moving like swarms of bees [13]. Washington and the stable of “human rights” and “democracy” and “non-violence” NGOs it oversees, over the past decade or more has increasingly relied on sophisticated “spontaneous” nurturing of local indigenous protest movements to create pro-Washington regime change and to advance the Pentagon agenda of global Full Spectrum Dominance. As the RAND study of Kefaya states in its concluding recommendations to the Pentagon: “The US government already supports reform efforts through organizations such as the US Agency for International Development and the United Nations Development Programme. Given the current negative popular standing of the United States in the region, US support for reform initiatives is best carried out through nongovernmental and non-profit institutions” [14]. The RAND 2008 study was even more concrete about future US Government support for Egyptian and other “reform” movements: “The US government should encourage non-governmental organizations to offer training to reformers, including guidance on coalition building and how to deal with internal differences in pursuit of democratic reform. Academic institutions (or even non-governmental organizations associated with US political parties, such as the International Republican Institute or the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs) could carry out such training, which would equip reform leaders to reconcile their differences peacefully and democratically. Fourth, the United States should help reformers obtain and use information technology, perhaps by offering incentives for US companies to invest in the region’s communications infrastructure and information technology. US information technology companies could also help ensure that the Web sites of reformers can remain in operation and could invest in technologies such as anonymizers that could offer some shelter from government scrutiny. This could also be accomplished by employing technological safegaurds to prevent regimes from sabotaging the Web sites of reformers” [15]. As their Kefaya monograph states, it was prepared in 2008 by the “RAND National Security Research Division’s Alternative Strategy Initiative, sponsored by the Rapid Reaction Technology Office in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics”. The Alternative Strategy Initiative, just to underscore the point, includes “research on creative use of the media, radicalization of youth, civic involvement to stem sectarian violence, the provision of social services to mobilize aggrieved sectors of indigenous populations, and the topic of this volume, alternative movements” [16]. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks with “Egyptian activists promoting freedom and democracy”, prior to meetings at the State Department in Washington, DC, May 28, 2009. In May 2009 just before Obama’s Cairo trip to meet Mubarak, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted a number of the young Egyptian activists in Washington under the auspices of Freedom House, another “human rights” Washington-based NGO with a long history of involvement in US-sponsored regime change from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine and other Color Revolutions. Clinton and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman met the sixteen activists at the end of a two-month “fellowship” organized by Freedom House’s New Generation program [17] Freedom House and Washington’s government-funded regime change NGO, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) are at the heart of the uprisings now sweeping across the Islamic world. They fit the geographic context of what George W. Bush proclaimed after 2001 as his Greater Middle East Project to bring “democracy” and “liberal free market” economic reform to the Islamic countries from Afghanistan to Morocco. When Washington talks about introducing “liberal free market reform” people should watch out. It is little more than code for bringing those economies under the yoke of the dollar system and all that implies. Washington’s NED in a larger agenda If we make a list of the countries in the region which are undergoing mass-based protest movements since the Tunisian and Egyptian events and overlay them onto a map, we find an almost perfect convergence between the protest countries today and the original map of the Washington Greater Middle East Project that was first unveiled during the George W. Bush Presidency after 2001. Washington’s NED has been quietly engaged in preparing a wave of regime destabilizations across North Africa and the Middle East since the 2001-2003 US military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The list of where the NED is active is revealing. Its website lists Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Sudan as well, interestingly, as Israel. Coincidentally these countries are almost all today subject to “spontaneous” popular regime-change uprisings. The International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs mentioned by the RAND document study of Kefaya are subsidiary organizations of the Washington-based and US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy. The NED is the coordinating Washington agency for regime destabilization and change. It is active from Tibet to Ukraine, from Venezuela to Tunisia, from Kuwait to Morocco in reshaping the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union into what George H.W. Bush in a 1991 speech to Congress proclaimed triumphantly as the dawn of a New World Order [18]. As the architect and first head of the NED, Allen Weinstein told the Washington Post in 1991 that, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA” [19]. The NED Board of Directors includes or has included former Defense Secretary and CIA Deputy head Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group; retired General Wesley Clark of NATO; neo-conservative warhawk Zalmay Khalilzad who was architect of George W. Bush’s Afghan invasion and later ambassador to Afghanistan as well as to occupied Iraq. Another NED board member, Vin Weber, co-chaired a major independent task force on US Policy toward Reform in the Arab World with former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and was a founding member of the ultra-hawkish Project for a New American Century think-tank with Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, which advocated forced regime change in Iraq as early as 1998 [20]. The NED is supposedly a private, non-government, non-profit foundation, but it receives a yearly appropriation for its international work from the US Congress. The National Endowment for Democracy is dependent on the US taxpayer for funding, but because NED is not a government agency, it is not subject to normal Congressional oversight. NED money is channelled into target countries through four “core foundations”—the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, linked to the Democratic Party; the International Republican Institute tied to the Republican Party; the American Center for International Labor Solidarity linked to the AFL-CIO US labor federation as well as the US State Department; and the Center for International Private Enterprise linked to the free-market US Chamber of Commerce. The late political analyst Barbara Conry noted that, “NED has taken advantage of its alleged private status to influence foreign elections, an activity that is beyond the scope of AID or USIA and would otherwise be possible only through a CIA covert operation. Such activities, it may also be worth noting, would be illegal for foreign groups operating in the United States“ [21]. Significantly the NED details its various projects today in Islamic countries, including in addition to Egypt, in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. In short, most every country which is presently feeling the earthquake effects of the reform protests sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa is a target of NED [22]. In 2005 US President George W. Bush made a speech to the NED. In a long, rambling discourse which equated “Islamic radicalism” with the evils of communism as the new enemy, and using a deliberately softer term “broader Middle East” for the term Greater Middle East that had aroused much distruct in the Islamic world, Bush stated, “The fifth element of our strategy in the war on terror is to deny the militants future recruits by replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the broader Middle East. This is a difficult and long-term project, yet there’s no alternative to it. Our future and the future of that region are linked. If the broader Middle East is left to grow in bitterness, if countries remain in misery, while radicals stir the resentments of millions, then that part of the world will be a source of endless conflict and mounting danger, and for our generation and the next. If the peoples of that region are permitted to choose their own destiny, and advance by their own energy and by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized, and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow, and eventually end…We’re encouraging our friends in the Middle East, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to take the path of reform, to strengthen their own societies in the fight against terror by respecting the rights and choices of their own people. We’re standing with dissidents and exiles against oppressive regimes, because we know that the dissidents of today will be the democratic leaders of tomorrow… “ [23]. The US Project for a ’Greater Middle East’ The spreading regime change operations from Tunisia to Sudan, from Yemen to Egypt to Syria are best viewed in the context of a long-standing Pentagon and State Department strategy for the entire Islamic world from Kabul in Afghanistan to Rabat in Morocco. The rough outlines of the Washington strategy, based in part on their successful regime change operations in the former Warsaw Pact communist bloc of Eastern Europe, were drawn up by former Pentagon consultant and neo-conservative, Richard Perle and later Bush official Douglas Feith in a white paper they drew up for the then-new Israeli Likud regime of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. That policy recommendation was titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”. It was the first Washington think-tank paper to openly call for removing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, for an aggressive military stance toward the Palestinians, striking Syria and Syrian targets in Lebanon [24]. Reportedly, the Netanyahu government at that time buried the Perle-Feith report, as being far too risky. By the time of the events of September 11, 2001 and the return to Washington of the arch-warhawk neoconservatives around Perle and others, the Bush Administration put highest priority on an expanded version of the Perle-Feith paper, calling it their Greater Middle East Project. Feith was named Bush’s Under Secretary of Defense. Behind the facade of proclaiming democratic reforms of autocratic regimes in the entire region, the Greater Middle East was and is a blueprint to extend US military control and to break open the statist economies in the entire span of states from Morocco to the borders of China and Russia. In May 2009, before the rubble from the US bombing of Baghdad had cleared, George W. Bush, a President not remembered as a great friend of democracy, proclaimed a policy of “spreading democracy” to the entire region and explicitly noted that that meant “the establishment of a US-Middle East free trade area within a decade” [25]. Prior to the June 2004 G8 Summit on Sea Island, Georgia, Washington issued a working paper, “G8-Greater Middle East Partnership”. Under the section titled Economic Opportunities was Washington’s dramatic call for “an economic transformation similar in magnitude to that undertaken by the formerly communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe”. The US paper said that the key to this would be the strengthening of the private sector as the way to prosperity and democracy. It misleadingly claimed it would be done via the miracle of microfinance where as the paper put it, “a mere $100 million a year for five years will lift 1.2 million entrepreneurs (750,000 of them women) out of poverty, through $400 loans to each” [26]. The US plan envisioned takeover of regional banking and financial affairs by new institutions ostensibly international but, like World Bank and IMF, de facto controlled by Washington, including WTO. The goal of Washington’s long-term project is to completely control the oil, to completely control the oil revenue flows, to completely control the entire economies of the region, from Morocco to the borders of China and all in between. It is a project as bold as it is desperate. The G8 Map of Washington’s Greater Middle East extends right to the borders of China and Russia and West to Morocco. Once the G8 US paper was leaked in 2004 in the Arabic Al-Hayat, opposition to it spread widely across the region, with a major protest to the US definition of the Greater Middle East. As an article in the French Le Monde Diplomatique in April 2004 noted, “besides the Arab countries, it covers Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Israel, whose only common denominator is that they lie in the zone where hostility to the US is strongest, in which Islamic fundamentalism in its anti-Western form is most rife” [27]. It should be noted that the NED is also active inside Israel with a number of programs. Notably, in 2004 it was vehement opposition from two Middle East leaders—Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and the King of Saudi Arabia—that forced the ideological zealots of the Bush Administration to temporarily put the Project for the Greater Middle East on a back burner. Will it work? At this writing it is unclear what the ultimate upshot of the latest US-led destabilizations across the Islamic world will bring. It is not clear what will result for Washington and the advocates of a US-dominated New World Order. Their agenda is clearly one of creating a Greater Middle East under firm US grip as a major control of the capital flows and energy flows of a future China, Russia and a European Union that might one day entertain thoughts of drifting away from that American order. It has huge potential implications for the future of Israel as well. As one US commentator put it, “The Israeli calculation today is that if ’Mubarak goes’ (which is usually stated as ’If America lets Mubarak go’), Egypt goes. If Tunisia goes (same elaboration), Morocco and Algeria go. Turkey has already gone (for which the Israelis have only themselves to blame). Syria is gone (in part because Israel wanted to cut it off from Sea of Galilee water access). Gaza has gone to Hamas, and the Palestine Authority might soon be gone too (to Hamas?). That leaves Israel amid the ruins of a policy of military domination of the region” [28]. The Washington strategy of “creative destruction” is clearly causing sleepless nights not only in the Islamic world but also reportedly in Tel Aviv, and ultimately by now also in Beijing and Moscow and across Central Asia. Share this F. William Engdahl A widely discussed U.S. analyst of current political and economic developments whose articles have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines and well-known international websites. F. William Engdahl’s numerous books include Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order has just been reissued in a new edition. He may be contacted via his website. This author’s articles To send a message [1] DEBKA, “Mubarak believes a US-backed Egyptian military faction plotted his ouster“, February 4, 2011. DEBKA is open about its good ties to Israeli intelligence and security agencies. While its writings must be read with that in mind, certain reports they publish often contain interesting leads for further investigation. [2] Ibid. [3] The Center for Grassroots Oversight, “1954-1970: CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood ally to oppose Egyptian President Nasser“. According to the late Miles Copeland, a CIA official stationed in Egypt during the Nasser era, the CIA allied with the Muslim Brotherhood which was opposed to Nasser’s secular regime as well as his nationalist opposition to brotherhood pan-Islamic ideology. [4] Jijo Jacob, “What is Egypt’s April 6 Movement?“, February 1, 2011. [5] Ibid. [6] Janine Zacharia, “Opposition groups rally around Mohamed ElBaradei“, Washington Post, January 31, 2011. [7] National Endowment for Democracy, Middle East and North Africa Program Highlights 2009. [8] Amitabh Pal, “Gene Sharp: The Progressive Interview”, The Progressive, March 1, 2007. [9] Emmanuel Sivan, “Why Radical Muslims Aren’t Taking over Governments“, Middle East Quarterly, December 1997, pp. 3-9 [10] Carnegie Endowment, The Egyptian Movement for Change (Kifaya). [11] Nadia Oweidat, et al, The Kefaya Movement: A Case Study of a Grassroots Reform Initiative, Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Santa Monica, Ca., RAND, 2008, p. iv. [12] Ibid. [13] For a more detailed discussion of the RAND “swarming” techniques see F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, Edition.Engdahl, 2009, pp. 34-41. [14] Nadia Oweidat et al, op. cit., p. 48. [15] Ibid., p. 50 [16] Ibid., p. iii. [17] Michel Chossudovsky, “The Protest Movement in Egypt: ’Dictators’ do not Dictate, They Obey Orders“, January 29, 2011. [18] George Herbert Walker Bush, “State of the Union Address to Congress”, 29 January 1991. In the speech Bush at one point declared in a triumphant air of celebration of the collapse of the Sovoiet Union, “What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea—a new world order…”. [19] Allen Weinstein, quoted in David Ignatius, “Openness is the Secret to Democracy”, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 September 1991, pp. 24-25. [20] National Endowment for Democracy, Board of Directors. [21] Barbara Conry, “Loose Cannon: The National Endowment for Democracy“, Cato Foreign Policy Briefing No. 27, November 8, 1993. [22] National Endowment for Democracy, “2009 Annual Report, Middle East and North Africa“. [23] George W. Bush, “Speech at the National Endowment for Democracy“, Washington, DC, October 6, 2005. [24] Richard Perle, Douglas Feith et al, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm“, 1996, Washington and Tel Aviv, The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. [25] George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President in Commencement Address at the University of South Carolina”, White House, 9 May 2003. [26] Gilbert Achcar, “Fantasy of a Region that Doesn’t Exist: Greater Middle East, the US plan“, Le Monde Diplomatique, April 4, 2004. [27] Ibid. [28] William Pfaff, American-Israel Policy Tested by Arab Uprisings. .

The Road From Zionism to Humanism

http://dprogram.net

(ElectronicIntifada)

– A former captain in the Israeli Air Force, previously an ardent Zionist who lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, has been labeled a psychopath and denounced by many Israelis for the moral stand he has taken against the Israeli occupation.

Yonatan Shapira, 38, was fired from his job, has been verbally abused in public, subjected to death threats in newspaper talk-back comments, called a traitor by many Israelis, falsely charged with assaulting Israeli security forces, and interrogated by Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet.

While Israel often gets a lot of negative publicity for its brutal treatment of Palestinians and the inherent racism within its society, there is a growing core of Israeli human rights activists who are challenging government policy — and paying a high price for their courage.

Shapira made international headlines recently while on board the Irene, a boat sent by Jews for Justice in an effort to break the siege of Gaza but which was intercepted by Israeli commandos. On board the small boat were a number of Israelis and several Holocaust survivors.

“The commandos separated my younger brother Itimar and me away from the other passengers. It was obvious we were being targeted. I was tasered twice on the shoulder and once near the heart area after my life jacket was lifted by the commando to get better access,” Shapira told IPS.

After media equipment was confiscated the passengers were taken to a police station in Ashdod where they were interrogated. Shapira was charged with assaulting a commando, despite eyewitnesses disputing this.

This was the second time the Israeli activist was charged with assaulting a member of the Israeli forces. Earlier this year he was targeted by Israeli soldiers while taking part in a protest against land confiscation in the Palestinian village Nabi Saleh near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Video footage refuted the assault claim.

What really irked Israel’s security establishment was what came to be known as “The Pilot’s Letter” in 2003. Shapira was then a captain in the Israeli Air Force (IAF), a member of Israel’s military elite in a country that hero-worships its military.

Together with thirty other pilots Shapira penned a letter which stated, “We the undersigned are no longer willing to be part of the indiscriminate attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territories. We declare our refusal to participate in what we believe to be illegal and immoral activities.”

“I had heard about so many acts of brutality and unnecessary killing. But what really brought the situation home to me was the then commander of the IAF Dan Halutz’s comments on the indiscriminate bombing of a residential building in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City in 2002,” recalls Shapira.

A one-ton bomb was dropped on a building housing Saleh Shehade, a military commander of the Islamic group Hamas. Fifteen innocent civilians, including many children, were killed, and approximately 150 injured in the attack along with Shehade.

“All I would have felt when the airplane dropped the bomb was a slight tremor of the aircraft,” responded Halutz when asked how he felt about the deaths of so many civilians.

Three months after Shapira signed the “Pilots’ Letter,” his older brother Zohar signed the “Commandos’ Letter” that said much the same as the “Pilots’ Letter.” Zohar was a member of Israel’s elite Sayaret Matkal commando unit. Younger brother Itimar was subsequently imprisoned by the Israeli military during the 2006 Lebanon war for refusing to serve in Lebanon.

“Our opinions changed drastically during the second Palestinian intifada which broke out in 2000 when we witnessed the ongoing criminality and cover-ups by the [Israel army]. My mother became very politically active and now spends a lot of time in the West Bank,” Shapira tells IPS.

Shapira’s family has come a long way from its Zionist roots. “My father was a squadron commander in the IAF and took part in Israel’s wars from 1967-1982. I myself used to regret not being born earlier so I could’ve taken part in the War of Independence in 1948 [the establishment of the State of Israel] too.”

“Now I believe Israel is a racist state that brutalizes the Palestinians in the occupied territories and discriminates against [Palestinians] within Israel. My friends and I have come to the conclusion that the only way to save Israel from itself is through international support of the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign against Israel,” says Shapira.

“The current government is the most extreme and right-wing Israeli government ever. It is no longer enough to try and change Israel from within. Israel has to be pressured in the same way apartheid South Africa was forced to change.”

He believes the reason for Israel’s sharp swing rightwards in the last few years is Israel’s growing difficulty in portraying itself as the victim in the conflict with the Palestinians. “Israel was established on the basis of victimhood and has continued to use this as a political tool in the face of growing criticism but this is increasingly being questioned.

“Israelis have two choices. To either admit to the injustices committed against the Palestinians and take responsibility for this or to continue to play the role of the victim and become more entrenched in racist behavior,” says Shapira.

Source: Electronic Intifada

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The War On Terror is a Fraud

http://www.sott.net

Paul Craig Roberts
Sott.net
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:31 CDT

© Unknown

Does anyone remember the “cakewalk war” that would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues?

Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion?

Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq.

Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the US government knew did not exist?

Are Americans aware that the same neoconservatives who made these fantastic mistakes, or told these fabulous lies, are still in control of the government in Washington?

The “war on terror” is now in its tenth year. What is it really all about?

The bottom line answer is that the “war on terror” is about creating real terrorists. The US government desperately needs real terrorists in order to justify its expansion of its wars against Muslim countries and to keep the American people sufficiently fearful that they continue to accept the police state that provides “security from terrorists,” but not from the government that has discarded civil liberties.

The US government creates terrorists by invading Muslim countries, wrecking infrastructure and killing vast numbers of civilians. The US also creates terrorists by installing puppet governments to rule over Muslims and by using the puppet governments to murder and persecute citizens as is occurring on a vast scale in Pakistan today.

Neoconservatives used 9/11 to launch their plan for US world hegemony. Their plan fit with the interests of America’s ruling oligarchies. Wars are good for the profits of the military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us in vain a half century ago. American hegemony is good for the oil industry’s control over resources and resource flows. The transformation of the Middle East into a vast American puppet state serves well the Israel Lobby’s Zionist aspirations for Israeli territorial expansion.

Most Americans cannot see what is happening because of their conditioning. Most Americans believe that their government is the best on earth, that it is morally motivated to help others and to do good, that it rushes aid to countries where there is famine and natural catastrophes. Most believe that their presidents tell the truth, except about their sexual affairs.

The persistence of these delusions is extraordinary in the face of daily headlines that report US government bullying of, and interference with, virtually every country on earth. The US policy is to buy off, overthrow, or make war on leaders of other countries who represent their peoples’ interests instead of American interests. A recent victim was the president of Honduras who had the wild idea that the Honduran government should serve the Honduran people.

The American government was able to have the Honduran president discarded, because the Honduran military is trained and supplied by the US military. It is the same case in Pakistan, where the US government has the Pakistani government making war on its own people by invading tribal areas that the Americans consider to be friendly to the Taliban, al Qaeda, “militants” and “terrorists.”

Earlier this year a deputy US Treasury secretary ordered Pakistan to raise taxes so that the Pakistani government could more effectively make war on its own citizens for the Americans. On October 14 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered Pakistan to again raise taxes or the US would withhold flood aid. Clinton pressured America’s European puppet states to do the same, expressing in the same breath that the US government was worried by British cuts in the military budget. God forbid that the hard-pressed British, still reeling from American financial fraud, don’t allocate enough money to fight America’s wars.

On Washington’s orders, the Pakistani government launched a military offensive against Pakistani citizens in the Swat Valley that killed large numbers of Pakistanis and drove millions of civilians from their homes. Last July the US instructed Pakistan to send its troops against the Pakistani residents of North Waziristan. On July 6 Jason Ditz reported on antiwar.com that “at America’s behest, Pakistan has launched offensives against [the Pakistani provinces of] Swat Valley, Bajaur, South Waziristan, Orakzai,and Khyber.”

A week later Israel’s US Senator Carl Levin (D,MI) called for escalating the Obama Administration’s policies of US airstrikes against Pakistan’s tribal areas. On September 30, the Pakistani newspaper, The Frontier Post, wrote that the American air strikes “are, plain and simple, a naked aggression against Pakistan.”

The US claims that its forces in Afghanistan have the right to cross into Pakistan in pursuit of “militants.” Recently US helicopter gunships killed three Pakistani soldiers who they mistook for Taliban. Pakistan closed the main US supply route to Afghanistan until the Americans apologized.

Pakistan warned Washington against future attacks. However, US military officials, under pressure from Obama to show progress in the endless Afghan war, responded to Pakistan’s warning by calling for expanding the Afghan war into Pakistan. On October 5 the Canadian journalist Eric Margolis wrote that “the US edges closer to invading Pakistan.”

In his book, Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward reports that America’s puppet president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, believes that terrorist bombing attacks inside Pakistan for which the Taliban are blamed are in fact CIA operations designed to destabilize Pakistan and allow Washington to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

To keep Pakistan in line, the US government changed its position that the “Times Square Bombing” was the work of a “lone wolf.” Attorney General Eric Holder switched the blame to the “Pakistani Taliban,” and Secretary of State Clinton threatened Pakistan with “very serious consequences” for the unsuccessful Times Square bombing, which likely was a false flag operation aimed at Pakistan.

To further heighten tensions, on September 1 the eight members of a high-ranking Pakistani military delegation in route to a meeting in Tampa, Florida, with US Central Command, were rudely treated and detained as terrorist suspects at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport.

For decades the US government has enabled repeated Israeli military aggression against Lebanon and now appears to be getting into gear for another Israeli assault on the former American protectorate of Lebanon. On October 14 the US government expressed its “outrage” that the Lebanese government had permitted a visit by Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who is the focus of Washington’s intense demonization efforts. Israel’s representatives in the US Congress threatened to stop US military aid to Lebanon, forgetting that US Rep. Howard Berman (D,CA) has had aid to Lebanon blocked since last August to punish Lebanon for a border clash with Israel.

Perhaps the most telling headline of all is the October 14 report, “Somalia’s New American Primer Minister.” An American has been installed as the Prime Minister of Somalia, an American puppet government in Mogadishu backed up by thousands of Ugandan troops paid by Washington.

This barely scratches the surface of Washington’s benevolence toward other countries and respect for their rights, borders, and lives of their citizens.

Meanwhile, to silence Wikileaks and to prevent any more revelations of American war crimes, the “freedom and democracy” government in DC has closed down Wikileaks’ donations by placing the organization on its “watch list” and by having the Australian puppet government blacklist Wikileaks.

Wikileaks is now akin to a terrorist organization. The American government’s practice of silencing critics will spread across the Internet.

Remember, they hate us because we have freedom and democracy, First Amendment rights, habeas corpus, respect for human rights, and show justice and mercy to all.

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Can you support the Palestinians when you live on their stolen land?

http://www.sott.net

Joseph Glatzer
Mondoweiss
Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:51 CDT

Every time I would tell my girlfriend (she’s Palestinian) about a famous Israeli activist or writer or she would ask why they still call themselves Israeli. She tells me things like, “See. They still call themselves Israeli. When they use that word they are automatically erasing Palestine.”

I always used to argue with her over that and try to convince her that these Israelis are good people who genuinely care and want to do something. But, for the first time I think she’s right.

If you are an Israeli, even if you disagree with your government’s treatment of the Palestinians, you’re still enjoying the sweet life of privilege. You’ll still be enjoying the privileges Palestinians aren’t able to even though it’s actually their land.

There are so many Israelis who are prominent in the media, who work hard to fight for justice for Palestinians. I don’t need to name them, you all know who they are.

But I have to ask Israelis the question: “If you feel so strongly about what is being done to the Palestinians, how can you continue to live in their stolen country?”

How can you go from a West Bank protest back to your Tel Aviv home, which very well may have belonged to a family member of your friends in the West Bank? Can you really be supporting someone when you live on the land which was violently seized from them?

If these Israeli activists truly believe what they say they should move to the occupied territories and live as a Palestinian. Give up your life of comfort and privilege in the posh neighborhoods of Tel Aviv and live in the Bethlehem ghetto with the people of Aida camp.

Drop out of Ben Gurion University and enroll in Birzeit. Trade Starbucks in Haifa for Stars and Bucks in Ramallah. Now THAT’s solidarity.

Many would say that Israeli dissidents help by staying inside Israel to fight the system from within, and that without them there there would really be no hope for Israeli society. I’ve got news for those people: there is no hope for Israeli society to change from the inside. This is the whole premise of the very popular BDS movement.

The more Israelis of conscience jump ship the quicker the whole Zionist apartheid operation will self-destruct; and the sooner the dispersed Palestinian people of the world can finally be reunited with their land and families.

I’ve been to Gaza and met a teenage boy who watched his brother get blown up in front of his eyes in the first attack of Operation Cast Lead. A year later he was still wetting himself and was unable to sleep at night due to the trauma.

I’ve seen a pregnant woman in Qalandia checkpoint fall to the ground in pain. I’ve met the loving father of a family in Aida Camp who has to beg internationals for money for new glasses. He’s going blind because Israel won’t allow him to get laser eye surgery in Israel, which is just minutes away.

I’ve been inside a home in the old city of Hebron when it was overrun with IDF troops yelling at Palestinian mothers.

I’ve met a family in Sheikh Jarrah who had their house stolen by settlers; and I’ve seen the tent they have to live in.

So, I’m out of patience. I don’t care about the feelings of the morally righteous land thieves anymore.

If you claim to support the Palestinians start calling yourself Palestinian instead of Israeli and permanently live among Palestinians under occupation. This is the definition of solidarity.

Poll: Most Americans Don’t Want War with Iran

Global Research, October 12, 2010

Public News Service – VA

CHARLOTTTESVILLE, Va. – Despite sanctions and harsh rhetoric from the Obama Administration, when it comes to bombing Iran, most Americans say, ‘Take that option right off the table.’ According to a recent 60 Minutes-Vanity Fair poll, just one American in ten would support a U.S.-led attack, even if Iran tested a nuclear bomb or attacked Israel.  David Swanson is a Charlottesville resident and author who attended a meeting last month with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during his visit to the United Nations in New York. The meeting was with dozens of U.S. peace and civil rights groups, and Swanson says the Iranian leader expressed his desire for peace with the United States, which the American said is contrary to most media reports.   “I think he in particular is being demonized as part of a propaganda campaign for the possible launch of a war against his country, but there’s nothing he could possibly be doing that would justify a war or would be grounds not to talk to him about him about the possibility of peace.”   Concerns about Iran building a nuclear bomb have resulted in a series of sanctions against the country. While Swanson is opposed to any country possessing the weapon, he says the claims sound all too familiar.   “We don’t have any evidence that they have developed or are in the process of developing nuclear weapons; we only have evidence, which they openly admit to, that they’re developing nuclear power. Iraq did not develop any weapons, and we pretended it did, and attacked.”   The telephone poll suggests that most Americans seem to be weary of war: 25 percent of respondents would support war with Iran only if there were an attack on American soil, or on a U.S. fleet overseas.   The telephone poll results are at www.cbsnews.com This poll was conducted at the CBS News interviewing facility among a random sample of 906 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone September 6-8, 2010.

FLASHBACK 2007 :Beyond Annapolis – What Model? by W. Fisher

http://atlanticfreepress.com

by William Fisher

In the aftermath of the Annapolis peace conference, foreign policy analysts and human rights advocates are finding considerable irony in Israel’s Arab neighbors pressing for freedom for Palestinians while their own citizens continue carry a heavy burden of unrelenting political repression.

Most of those representing Middle East and North African nations at the conference appear to endorse the idea of a “two-state solution” to the decades-old conflict: a separate and contiguous Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel.

But Arab delegates to Annapolis — including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen – have had little to say about the nature of the state that may emerge from negotiations set to begin soon between Israel and the Palestinians.

Critics of Israel’s neighbors point out that, with a few exceptions, the governments of these countries are unelected, authoritarian, often corrupt, and willing to use any means to stifle dissent. In most of these countries, a free press has been silenced, journalists and bloggers jailed, peaceful demonstrations disrupted by police and participants beaten and arrested, political parties effectively banned, elections rigged or non-existent, and citizens detained by security authorities without charges or lawyers and often tortured or simply “disappeared.”

Many of these observers see the absence of press freedom as emblematic of a broader freedom deficit in most of the Arab countries represented at Annapolis. In most Middle East and North African states, both the media and its messages are state-controlled. Many are state-owned. All have extensive and expensive programs designed to block satellite television and a wide range of Internet websites.

Critics point to Egypt and Saudi Arabia as among the worst offenders. Both countries are seen as close allies of the U.S. The Saudi Kingdom is the source of much of the oil consumed by Americans. And Egypt is second only to Israel in the amount of U.S. aid it receives each year – its reward for making peace with Israel in 1979.

In Egypt – which has lived under draconian “emergency laws” for more than 25 years – President Hosni Mubarak promised in 2006 a long-delayed press law reform designed to give journalists more freedom by decriminalizing media offences. But, according to Reporters Without Borders (FWB), a journalism advocacy organization, the new law “turned out to be just a show.” It says, “The media were quickly disillusioned by the many restrictions on their activities contained in the amendments to it. At least seven journalists were arrested during the year and dozens threatened or physically attacked.”

The group says Egyptian journalists “can now be jailed for up to five years for ‘publishing false news’, defaming the president or foreign heads of state or ‘undermining national institutions’ such as parliament and the armed forces.” TV and print journalists attempting to cover public events are routinely harassed, arrested, threatened or beaten.

The Mubarak regime also continues its crackdown on Internet freedom. Hundreds of websites have been blocked, and at least seven cyber-dissidents jailed. The courts ruled that authorities could block, suspend or shut down websites considered a threat to “national security.” A number of bloggers have been jailed. One was detained for posting criticism of Islam and is still in prison. Another was jailed for four years after he used his weblog to criticize the country’s top Islamic institution, al-Azhar university, and President Mubarak, whom he called a dictator.

Saudi Arabia also remains high on the list of countries that have aggressively cracked down on press freedom. The Saudi regime maintains very tight control of all news and self-censorship is pervasive. According to RWB, “Enterprising journalists pay dearly for the slightest criticism of the authorities or the policies of ‘brother Arab’ countries. The tame local media content means most Saudis get their news and information from foreign TV stations and the Internet.”

The Al-Jazeera TV channel is banned and was not allowed to cover the annual pilgrimage to Mecca for the fifth consecutive year. Like Egypt, Saudi Arabia also blocks more than a thousand Internet websites.

Two journalists were dismissed for going beyond the limits set by the dominant ultra-conservative religious authorities. A writer for a government daily, Arab News, was dismissed for writing about the atrocities perpetrated by Indonesia,a Muslim country, during its 1975-99 occupation of East Timor. The editor of another government daily, Al Watan, was forced to resign as the paper’s editor after reporting that US troops were using the country’s military bases. The privately-owned daily Shams was closed for a month and its editor dismissed for reprinting some of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed first carried by a Danish paper in 2005.

Blogs are also becoming a growing problem for Saudi censors, who maintain a “blacklist” said to contain hundreds of personal websites. In 2005, authorities tried to completely bar access to the country’s main blog-tool, blogger.com, but gave up after only a few days because of the ubiquity of the blogosphere. Today, government censors blogs they object to.

In the Reporters Without Borders annual survey of press freedom, Egypt ranked 146th and Saudi Arabia 147th, out of a total of 169 countries worldwide. Israel, including the occupied territories, ranked 44th.

Human rights groups have also been highly critical of Middle Eastern and North African governments for imposing press restrictions, as well as for other numerous and widespread human rights abuses.

Looking forward to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations emerging from the Annapolis conference, Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA is urging both sides to respect the basic human rights of the other. She told us, “The parties should agree to the deployment of international human rights monitors in Israel and the Occupied Territories, with a mandate to monitor and report publicly on compliance and on violations by either party of their commitments under international human rights and humanitarian law.”

But given the consistently flawed human rights records of Israel’s neighbors, critics wonder how eager any of the Annapolis delegates will be to endorse this proposal.

This is the question raised by the Egyptian-born journalist and lecturer Mona Eltahawi, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo,who has lived in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

She told us, “When I was a Jerusalem-based Reuters correspondent in 1998, many Palestinians would tell me they wanted a future Palestinian state to be like Israel. They meant an open and democratic country. I thought it was ironic that their ‘role model’ state was the one occupying them.”

Ms. Eltahawy, who is a contributor to the Washington Post’s “On Faith” series, charged that the late Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian officials “modeled a nascent Palestinian state on Egypt, Jordan and other repressive Arab neighbors. Arafat introduced military trials and Palestinians were horrified to discover that the Palestinian Authority, and not just Israel, also detained and tortured Palestinians with often little reason. I would hear from Palestinians that it was worse for them when their fellow Palestinians were the ones doing the torture.”

She added, “After years of struggle and sacrifice for Palestine, Palestinians deserve a free and democratic state. I hope they insist it be nothing like the Arab states that have fought several wars with Israel ostensibly in the name of such a Palestinian state.”

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Israeli blackmail: You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will

from :       http://mondoweiss.net

by Paul Woodward on August 11, 2010 · 12 comments

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There are those who would have us believe that:

[O]ne day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran — possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft.

Worried about an Israeli attack on Iran? That’s the idea.

You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will.

This is how some Israelis are trying to twist Washington’s arm to get the US to attack Iran.

A more honest way of making the argument would be to say this: If the US won’t attack Iran, then Israel will — even though it won’t accomplish its military objectives and it will open Pandora’s box. Desperate nations sometimes do desperate things. You have been warned.

Another name for this: blackmail.

It’s hard to counter an irrational argument when the irrationality is intentional. Such are the means by which someone like erstwhile Israeli army corporal and current Atlantic commentator, Jeffrey Goldberg, attempts to persuade his readers — not through cogent reasoning based on clear evidence, but by an insidious form of argument that has the clarity of slime.

Consider the way he tries to close his case for an attack on Iran — even while avoiding saying straight out that he supports such a course of action.

The United States must not take the risk of letting Israel attack Iran because if President Obama orders US forces to attack instead, this would be the most patriotic thing to do. Obama would not be serving Israel’s interests; he would be defending Western civilization.

Based on months of interviews, I have come to believe that the administration knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program; and Obama knows — as his aides, and others in the State and Defense departments made clear to me — that a nuclear-armed Iran is a serious threat to the interests of the United States, which include his dream of a world without nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, I agreed with those, including many Israelis, Arabs — and Iranians — who believe there is no chance that Obama would ever resort to force to stop Iran; I still don’t believe there is a great chance he will take military action in the near future — for one thing, the Pentagon is notably unenthusiastic about the idea. But Obama is clearly seized by the issue. And understanding that perhaps the best way to obviate a military strike on Iran is to make the threat of a strike by the Americans seem real, the Obama administration seems to be purposefully raising the stakes. A few weeks ago, Denis McDonough, the chief of staff of the National Security Council, told me, “What you see in Iran is the intersection of a number of leading priorities of the president, who sees a serious threat to the global nonproliferation regime, a threat of cascading nuclear activities in a volatile region, and a threat to a close friend of the United States, Israel. I think you see the several streams coming together, which accounts for why it is so important to us.”

When I asked Peres what he thought of Netanyahu’s effort to make Israel’s case to the Obama administration, he responded, characteristically, with a parable, one that suggested his country should know its place, and that it was up to the American president, and only the American president, to decide in the end how best to safeguard the future of the West. The story was about his mentor, David Ben-Gurion.

“Shortly after John F. Kennedy was elected president, Ben-Gurion met him at the Waldorf-Astoria” in New York, Peres told me. “After the meeting, Kennedy accompanied Ben-Gurion to the elevator and said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I want to tell you, I was elected because of your people, so what can I do for you in return?’ Ben-Gurion was insulted by the question. He said, ‘What you can do is be a great president of the United States. You must understand that to have a great president of the United States is a great event.’”

Peres went on to explain what he saw as Israel’s true interest. “We don’t want to win over the president,” he said. “We want the president to win.”

Israel only wants what’s good for America — and we’re supposed to believe that, even while few if any Israelis could be persuaded that America only wants what’s good for Israel.

The truth is that everyone gets to define their own interests so let’s ignore the obsequious crap from Peres and consider Goldberg’s core claim: that Israel is gearing up to strike Iran.

Even if Goldberg is participating in a neocon game of bluff, the only kind of bluff worth engaging in is one that has credibility. To make a credible argument that Israel has the intention of going it alone, Goldberg would have to present the outline of a credible plan of attack. He doesn’t even try.

Israeli planes would fly low over Saudi Arabia, bomb their targets in Iran, and return to Israel by flying again over Saudi territory, possibly even landing in the Saudi desert for refueling—perhaps, if speculation rife in intelligence circles is to be believed, with secret Saudi cooperation.

And he prefaces this “plan” by saying Israel only gets one try. That’s not even a back-of-an-envelope war plan. It’s more like a Twitter war plan.

Five years ago Kenneth Pollack dismissed the idea that Israel could attack Iran on its own. I don’t see any reason to doubt that his analysis on the military logistics of an attack still remains sound. Indeed, there seem to be plenty of Israeli analysts who concede that Israel simply does not have the option of going it alone. Even Goldberg quotes an unnamed Israeli general who says: “This is too big for us.”

In The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, Pollack wrote:

[T]he United States … should not count on Israel to conduct a counterproliferation strike for us. It is almost certainly the case that Israel would be willing to absorb the diplomatic costs of a strike, would be prepared to deal with Iran’s retaliation in the form of either terrorist attacks or missile strikes on Israel, and probably is not overly concerned about Iranian behavior in Iraq. The problem for Israel is much simpler: Iran is too far away. Most of the known Iranian nuclear facilities are around 1,000 miles away from Israel. Its Jericho II ballistic missiles could reach these targets, but they lack the payload, accuracy, and numbers to be able to significantly damage (let alone destroy) more than one or two of the large Iranian nuclear facilities, which leaves the matter to the Israeli Air Force. Even assuming that Israeli aircraft were to fly directly to Iran, overflying Jordan and Iraq, the only aircraft in its inventory that could reach Iran’s known nuclear sites are its 25 F-151 strike fighters. (Israel would need to set up aerial refueling stations at three to five locations between Israel and the Iranian targets for its roughly 350 F-16s to be able to participate, which would be practically impossible.) Because the F-151s would have to carry a considerable amount of fuel, they could not carry a great deal of ordinance. Given the size of the various Iranian nuclear facilities, it would not be possible for Israel to destroy all of them in a single raid as it did Osiraq. Nor would it be politically, militarily, or logistically possible for Israel to sustain multiple such strikes over the many days, if not weeks, it would take for all its F-151s to accomplish the job. [My emphasis.]

The neocon game of bluff will only box in the Obama administration if the Israeli “threats” are treated seriously. A more appropriate response would seem to be to focus on the limits of Israeli military action — unless that is one imagines that Israel would launch a nuclear attack on Iran, which to my mind is wildly implausible. (If Israel wants to permanently seal its global pariah status, the first offensive use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki is a sure way.)

Goldberg reports, but apparently didn’t take seriously, the observations of some Israelis who given their positions of military command seem to merit close attention:

Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli army chief of staff, is said by numerous sources to doubt the usefulness of an attack, and other generals I spoke with worry that talk of an “existential threat” is itself a kind of existential threat to the Zionist project, which was meant to preclude such threats against the Jewish people. “We don’t want politicians to put us in a bad position because of the word Shoah [Holocaust],” one general said. “We don’t want our neighbors to think that we are helpless against an Iran with a nuclear bomb, because Iran might have the bomb one day. There is no guarantee that Israel will do this, or that America will do this.”

The message Netanyahu, Goldberg and other panic-stricken Zionists are unintentionally sending out is that come the day Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, Israelis may as well back their bags and abandon the Jewish state.

That probably won’t happen because in such an event Israel will “discover” what many Israelis no doubt already think: that retired General John Abizaid was right when he said that the United States and its allies can “live with” a nuclear-armed Iran. “Let’s face it — we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we’ve lived with a nuclear China, and we’re living with nuclear powers as well,” Abizaid told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That was true in 2007 and it’s true now. It’s also true that spineless politicians remain the playthings of fear-mongers who are addicted to war.

This article is cross-posted at Woodward’s site, War in Context.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

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