Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Thanks.Max
Corrected:<<Who is it CG???? That link doesn't lead to THAT story, just a lot of stories, and not one disclosing "Another Jewish voice against the massacre"| Max
Who is it CG???? That link doesn't lead to THAT story, just a lot of stories, and not one disclosing "Another Jewish voice against dissent|" Max
The West Bank: We're all Hamas now - supporters of Fatah unite behind enemy
Mahmoud Abbas's popularity has been caught in the crossfire of the Gaza invasion
By Ben Lynfield in Ramallah
Friday, 9 January 2009
(edit: it is my hope that the populace of the West Bank revolts against the quislings, Abbas and al Fatah. Max)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-west-bank-were-all-hamas-now-supporters-of-fatah-unite-behind-enemy-1242606.html
Even if Israel wins on the battlefield or in the diplomatic corridors it is already paying the price of its Gaza onslaught in intensified hatred in the hearts of its Palestinian neighbours in the West Bank. The campaign also appears to be increasing public scepticism about the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's chosen path of negotiations as the way to establish an independent state alongside Israel.
The diplomacy championed by Mr Abbas has for years been difficult to sell to Palestinians because it has brought little or no relief from occupation or improvement in their daily lives, only the expansion of Israeli settlements. This existing frustration –which helped Hamas defeat Mr Abbas's Fatah movement in the 2006 elections – is now combined with popular anger and dismay at the carnage among fellow Palestinians in Gaza.
Palestinian Authority security forces are keeping a tight lid on protests, preventing confrontations with Israeli troops and arresting anyone raising Hamas banners at rallies. [b[But displays of identification with the beleaguered Gazans are everywhere. Nine-year-old green-kerchiefed girl Scouts, their foreheads marked with the word Gaza in red ink, were among those who marched through the main al-Manara square in a protest. They held up pictures of bandaged toddlers, and dozens of demonstrators chanted, "With blood and spirit, we will redeem you, O Gaza".
Leaders of Fatah, which lost control of Gaza to Hamas fighters in June 2007, are torn between their own hopes that Hamas, which they view as a usurper and agent of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, is defeated, and the people's anger over the Israeli campaign. There is a great deal at stake for them. "If Hamas is victorious and the Israelis raise the white flag there will be a problem in the West Bank, more people will support Hamas, and the Arab regimes will have problems too," said Ziad Abu Ein, the deputy minister of prisoner affairs and a veteran of 13 years in Israeli prisons.
Bassem Khoury, the president of the Palestinian Federation of Industries, launched the PA-supported National Palestinian Campaign to Relieve Gaza by holding up a picture from the al-Ayyam daily newspaper showing the head of a Palestinian girl buried in the rubble of an Israeli attack. "This is unbelievable," he said. "How will this help the Israelis? It only generates more recruits for Hamas."
Unlike the people, who seem less concerned as yet with apportioning Palestinian blame, some Fatah leaders couple calls for national unity with accusing Hamas of causing the suffering in Gaza. Tawfik al-Tirawi, an adviser to Mr Abbas and a former security chief, said: "The political leadership that miscalculated has brought catastrophe on itself and its people."
Palestinians in the West Bank have their own long-standing grievances against Israel: the ongoing occupation, checkpoints Israel says are needed for security but that hamper their movement, often humiliate them and paralyse economic life, the expropriation of Palestinian land, and the threat of Israeli army incursion or arrest. The images from Gaza are being layered onto a collective memory of being expelled at Israel's creation in 1948.
A teacher in a PA school talked of the Israeli attack on a UN school in Gaza that killed at least 40 people and other killings of civilians. "The feeling is of severe anger," he said. "We are angry at the Jews and the hatred of them inside of us has increased. This is more than people can bear. We are mad at the Palestinian Authority and we are mad at the Arab regimes. When there is a call to convene an Arab meeting it looks like they are giving Israel a free hand to do whatever it wants"
Another PA employee, from the northern West Bank city of Nablus, said: "I want to educate my kids to hate Israel. If I can't do something maybe my kids can. I will educate them to fight the Israelis."
Truth in one graphic.
RedCross: Israeli Behavior in Gaza Shocking
Officials Spell Out "Unacceptable" Israeli Conduct
Posted January 8, 2009
In what Red Cross chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories Pierre Wettlach described as “a shocking incident,” relief workers found four starving children next to their mothers and other corpses in a neighborhood of Gaza City which Israel had denied them access to for days.
“The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation,” Wettlach added, “but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded.” The action appears, according to the agency, to have violated international humanitarian law.
The young children were too weak to stand, and the Israeli army erected large earthen barriers and denied ambulances access to the neighborhood for four days. After discovering yet more bodies in another house in the neighborhood, the Israeli military ordered the rescue team to leave the area immediately.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the specifics of the latest atrocities, but insists that it “in no way intentionally targets civilians and has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives.” The claim carries considerably less weight after the Israeli military intentionally attacked a UN-run school full of civilians on Tuesday and unsuccessfully tried to blame Hamas.
excellent article that, Here i post an item showing what a slippery smoothy shallow worthless politician Obama is .
i like to see how all those stooges that hailed Obama in messianic terms react now.
Will they wake up?????????????
Will Bruce Springsteen ever apologize for making Obama out for something he never was?????????
Will Bruce Springsteen be one of the BrainDead and be a performing lackey to our new leader at the Inaugral Party???
Enough time has passed since the election to reveal the real Obama, Bruce doesn't get it by now he is just one more of the just to damn dim to recognize Democracy is Dead, it is now , as i wrote earlier but a one party system in the U.S., the NCNLU Party(made of both right leaning, to very far right, republicans and democrats.)
The NeoConsNeoLibsUnited Party.
News Item:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090107/ap_on_go_pr_wh/the_presidents__club
Obama hails 'extraordinary' moment with presidents
By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer Ben Feller, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jan 7, 5:56 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Confronting a grim economy and a Middle East on fire, Barack Obama turned Wednesday to perhaps the only people on the planet who understand what he's in for: the four living members of the U.S. presidents' club. In an image bound to go down in history, every living U.S. president came together at the White House on Wednesday to hash over the world's challenges with the president-elect. There they stood, shoulder-to-shoulder in the Oval Office: George H.W. Bush, Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
"This is an extraordinary gathering," Obama said, looking plenty at ease in the humbling office that will soon be his.
"All the gentlemen here understand both the pressures and possibilities of this office," Obama said. "And for me to have the opportunity to get advice, good counsel and fellowship with these individuals is extraordinary. And I'm very grateful to all of them."(edit:beyond sickening, and the only one of them i would note is a decent human being, is likely Jimmy Carter.Otraque)
Bush, blistered without mercy by Obama during the campaign season, played the role of gracious host.(edit: he was just playing the Shallow Politics Game, Obama has no strong feelings against the evil Bush, Obama is just another Bourgeois Plastic Man to take "The Crown" of state, and is just another devout member of America is next to Gawd, an American Exceptionalism propagandist.Max
<< am doing my best to support the lobster industry.>>Thanks:)Max
Nope, he didn't but i think Einstein had it right though as to who wins.
He said if we had WWWIII "i guarantee the the next war after would be fought with sticks and stones" So no one wins, and it's back to "sticks and stones". Max
It also happens when no one has anything, all just get PISSED-OFF, and the rule becomes let's kick ass. Like the world is rational????????:) Max
Flip a coin?:) Max(eom)
FWIW: Dr.Marc Faber stated yesterday that there is an extreme likelihood we are heading directly towards WWWIII, and regards the U.S. stockmarket, said while the likelihhod is probable of market rally into March 2009, it will then FALL OFF A CLIFF.
The Spear Report, are going along the same lines regards StockMarket(they do not, themselves see WWWIII as Faber does) and see rally highs then going into severe reversal down and smashing through lows of November 2008. They target DOW at 4000 area and SPX at 450 area.
******************
The Maxer as ever always spreading happiness and sunshine(VBG:)
Save your candles – the Dark Ages are coming
by Justin Raimondo 1/7/2008
(Edit; on this note i will say Dr.Marc.Faber on Bloomberg TV yesterday stated there is an EXTREME likelihood we are heading directly towards WWWIII--max/otraque)
A new year, and a new president – plenty of grist for my prediction mill, or, at least, for the obligatory January "predictions" column. Not that there's anything special, really, about it: all punditry is prediction, in an important sense. Every time a writer advocates a particular policy or decries another, the author is predicting a certain outcome, good or bad. The question is, which policies will win out in the battle of ideas? As we look at the incoming administration, especially in the context of trends that have been building over time, a certain scenario begins to emerge, with the first act unfolding on the domestic stage:
Hyperinflation and the collapse of the dollar. The trillions President-elect Obama plans on spending to "cure" [.pdf] our economic malaise will prove poisonous to the dollar, with hyperinflation an inevitability. Whether this reaches Weimar levels remains to be seen, but one can easily imagine all sorts of unpleasant, Weimar-like consequences.
A barrage of legislation that aims to stop capital flight, including draconian economic controls on the movement of money across borders and the erection of a steep tariff wall in the name of "national economic security." By the end of the year, we will have so many economic czars, each in charge of their own economic fiefdom, that Obama will have to appoint a czar-of-czars.
More Israeli aggression. The Israeli offensive in Gaza is but a prelude to a series of IDF military actions, possibly including a third Lebanon blitz and an attack on Syria, the weakest link in the chain of pro-Palestinian regional actors. The whole point of this extended exercise is to involve the U.S. militarily. This will lead logically to the fourth not-so-great expectation.
The return of military Keynesianism. To hear Paul Krugman and the other left-liberal economic gurus tell it, all we have to do is spend our way out of the doldrums, and that will do the trick. It doesn't matter what we spend it on – it could be pyramid-building, for all they care – just as long as we "jump-start" the economy with a "stimulus" of freshly-printed greenbacks. That's the ticket! And in the meantime, there will be plenty of jobs in Washington for ambitious young "planners" and other disciples of Saint Keynes, whose purview will be devising imaginative methods of expanding the ranks of government workers. As Pat Buchanan pointed out, this is the dreaded "earmarks" raised to a way of life. Inevitably, this orgy of spending will include – and perhaps even come to be dominated by – increased military appropriations. After all, there are only so many bridges one can build across the same river, and the accompanying rash of corruption sure to ensue is going to put a cap on this kind of spending. One can always cloak cronyism and $200 wrenches under the general rubric of economic collateral damage, a regrettable but necessary byproduct of ensuring the national security.
War. Preparations for war usually result in war, and there are several candidates for 2009. The first is Iran, which will undergo a prolonged diplomatic, political, and economic assault before facing the prospect of American bombs falling on its cities. This, however, may not turn out to be the main theater of American aggression in the coming year: Afghanistan and Pakistan will see major efforts by the U.S. to complete a mission that has already failed and that no one is quite clear about any longer. The U.S.-Indian relationship will grow, perhaps formalized by a pact and, in all likelihood, a visit by Hillary Clinton – not Obama – to the region.
What the situation requires, however – the economic situation, that is – is the invention of another Major Threat. Whether that turns out to be Russia, as the neocons would like; China, as the labor unions would prefer; or al-Qaeda, again, pulling off some spectacular 9/11-like operation, is an open question. Throw in the prospect of another non-state actor usurping al-Qaeda's role as global villain, and the possibilities are manifold – and frighteningly plausible. As for me, I'd place my bets on Russia. As in the Clinton era, expect large-scale U.S. government-sponsored efforts to penetrate Central Asia.
An increasingly antagonistic relationship with China is also in our future, especially after the Chinese government orders state-owned enterprises to call in their American debt and offload all those T-bills. If and when it comes, that is the conflict that will see the AFL-CIO, the neocons, both major political parties, and a good proportion of the paleoconservatives in the ranks of the War Party. The Taiwan lobby, an old mainstay of the Cold War conservative movement, will make a comeback, as the Republican Party "mainstream" makes a completely implausible and unsuccessful effort to win over "working class" voters.
By the end of the year, plans for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will be put on indefinite hold, as it's "discovered" that Iran has infiltrated the Iraqi government at the highest levels, and U.S. soldiers are called in to halt an alleged coup attempt by pro-Iranian officers and militiamen. Iraq will increasingly become a battlefield in an ongoing proxy war between the U.S. (and Israel, operating in Kurdistan) and Iran. Allegations of Iranian interference in Pakistan and even Afghanistan will be raised by the Clinton State Department, and we'll be subjected to another long campaign by the War Party to target Tehran for destruction.
All in all, the prospects for liberty and peace in 2009 might be charitably described as dim, although bleak seems more precise. My advice to my readers: save your candles. The Dark Ages are coming. But, hey, I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.
As I sit here, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the cities, gazing up at a redwood whose tip is lost in swirling mist, the illusion of my own exemption from the onrushing disaster persists. Perhaps it's just a defense mechanism imposed by the structure of the human mind, the same safety valve that blocks out the certainty of death and the ultimate tragedy of human existence. In any case, whatever it is, it feels right – and that's all I can ask for the moment. So, in spite of my rather grim prognosis of the future we face, I can say, with equanimity, Happy New Year, Antiwar.com readers! May the gods protect you from the coming dark age, as they have so far – thank Fortuna! – spared me.
~ Justin Raimondo
i quote Mike Leigh a Pro-Palestinian Jew from Manchester England of the Socialist Party , and one the best movie directors in the world. His last movie is expected to be of the 5 pictures to be nominated for Best Picture by the Academy(named "Happy Go Lucky").
i don't have the interview right here.
But i paraphrase accurately,
He was asked about his jewishness.
Said he was raised in the Manchester Jewish "hood", that has a long history in England so naturally he has a lot jewishness just like someone that would be raised in dense Italian "hood", they got a lot of Italianess, that is a part of being human, you absorb the culture your born into.
And then he was asked did he consider people anti-Israel as anti-semitic and said NO as Israel's fate is Israel's fate, their actions will judged on their behavior, jews need realize they have to know they do NOT have an obligation to be supportive of Israel simply because it is Israel.
**********************************************
The last polls i could get were what i would place at about 80% hawks among Israeli Jews.
i find this to be the common precentage among all nations when they get in a war frenzy.
i will continue highlight the brave dissenters.
Ace/CG, i have chosen to scan and highlight jews that are now stepping out and taking a stand against Israel.
i feel this published by Wallce Shawn in The Nation statement one of the best made coming out the NYC theatre world.(and i am sure he is now getting calls saying "You will never work in NYC again!!!")
So i post again to highlight.
Also from end of this article " Certainly nothing our new president could do would be of greater value to the world--and greater value to the Jews--than to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing habit of supporting an irrationality which was born in tragedy and will end in more tragedy."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090112/shawn
This i OF COURSE what Obama SHOULD do!!!!!! But he isn't, and we know bloody hell why!!!!
And that is a bloody disgrace on the the head of Obama.
But Wallace Shawn has put in a nutshell all that need be done "to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing" pof Israel, pull the rug of the U.S. that they walk over, from under their criminal feet, and say, NO MORE SUPPORT!!, or on your own.
It would right and so simple and would be a huge step towards a major and FAIR PEACE for the palestinians.
i remain in DISGUST the U.S. Government, i have thus far noted only one member of Congress to actually attend a protest against Israel, only one.
That was Dennis Kucinic. Max
i , on MySpace Blog site i created a new acronym for the One Party that now RULES the U.S.
It is The NCNLU Party that has taken OVER the United States.
It stands for NeoConsNeoLibsUnited Party, now headed by Barack Obama.
Pat Buchanan has been attacked for calling The U.S. as an Occupied Territoty of Israel.
Well , it only happens to be true, as Israel has had control of the U.S Congress and the White House for a long time.
And that is all they need to control the U.S. Max
One thing positive i am noting The Nation is more and increasingly slanting articles critical to quite critical of Israel
i post this one as it is written by Wallace Shawn, a fine playwrite and actor whose biggest success in the movies was the production of his "Dinner With Andre" play in which he, Wallace Shawn played the person having dinner with Andre.
This is bit convoluted but it in the end proves true to its title, Israel is Irrational, they have going bokers in other words.
Of note, Wallace Shawn, who is jewish, has been a fixture for decades now in the NYC theatre community.
Wallace Shawn: "It is not rational to believe that the Palestinians in the occupied territories will be terrorized by force and violence, by cruelty, by starvation or by slaughter into a docile acceptance of the Israeli occupation."
Fragments From a Diary George W. Bush Administration
Wallace Shawn: "Soothed by calm words, we are about to be driven into the flames of hell."
From the The Dangerous Restaurant
Also from end of this article " Certainly nothing our new president could do would be of greater value to the world--and greater value to the Jews--than to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing habit of supporting an irrationality which was born in tragedy and will end in more tragedy."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090112/shawn
***********************************************
Israel in Gaza: Irrationality
By Wallace Shawn
December 29, 2008
Jews, historically, have been irrationally feared, hated and killed. Given that background, it's not surprising that the irrationality which surrounded them for so long, the fire of irrationality in which they were almost extinguished, has jumped across and taken hold of the soul of many Jews and indeed dominates the thinking of today's Israeli leaders and their American supporters.
Israel in Gaza: Irrationality Israel
Wallace Shawn: It is not rational to believe that the Palestinians in the occupied territories will be terrorized by force and violence, by cruelty, by starvation or by slaughter into a docile acceptance of the Israeli occupation.
Fragments From a Diary George W. Bush Administration
Wallace Shawn: Soothed by calm words, we are about to be driven into the flames of hell.
The Dangerous Restaurant George W. Bush Administration
Wallace Shawn
Recent history shows that the Jews, as a people, have found few friends who are honest and true. During World War II, when Hitler's anti-Semitism was responsible for the murdering of the millions of Jews, the world and the United States expressed their own anti-Semitism by refusing to house and welcome the tortured race, preferring instead to let it be exterminated if need be. After the war, the world felt it owed the Jews something--but then showed its lack of true regard for the tormented group by "giving" them a piece of land populated and surrounded by another people--an act of European imperialism carried out exactly at the moment when non-European peoples all over the world were finally concluding that European imperialism was completely unacceptable and had to be resisted. And now we have the spectacle of American politicians encouraging and financing Israeli policies which will ultimately lead to more disaster and destruction for Jews.
It is not rational to believe that the Palestinians in the occupied territories will be terrorized by force and violence, by cruelty, by starvation or by slaughter into a docile acceptance of the Israeli occupation. There is no evidence that that could possibly happen and mountains of evidence to the contrary.
Many right-wing Israelis and American Jews clearly believe that Jews have always had enemies and always will have enemies--and who can be shocked that certain Jews might think that? To these individuals, a Palestinian throwing stones at an Israeli soldier, even if his life has perhaps been destroyed by the Israeli occupation, is simply part of an eternal mob of anti-Semites, a mob made up principally of people to whom the Jews have done no harm at all, as they did no harm to Hitler. The logical consequence of this view of the world is that in the face of such massive and eternal opposition, Jews are morally justified in taking any measures they can think of to protect themselves. They are involved in one long eternal war, and a few hundred Palestinians killed today must be measured against many millions of Jews who were killed in the past. The agony the Israelis might inflict on a Palestinian family today must be seen in the perspective of Jewish families in agony all over the world in the past.
It is irrational for the Israeli leaders to imagine that the Palestinians will understand this particular point of view--will understand why Jews might find it appropriate, let us say, to retaliate for the death of one Jew by killing a hundred Palestinians. If a Palestinian killed a hundred Jews to retaliate for the killing of one Palestinian--for that matter, if a Thai killed a hundred Cambodians to retaliate for the killing of one Thai--which, from the point of view of the Israeli leaders, would of course be unjust, that would be racist, as if one Palestinian or one Thai were worth a hundred Israelis or a hundred Cambodians. But if a Jew does it, it's not unjust and it's not racist, because it's part of an eternal struggle in which the Jews have lost and lost and lost--they've already lost more people than there are Palestinians. Well, it's not surprising that certain Jews would feel this way, but no Palestinian will ever share that feeling or be willing to accept it. What the Palestinians see is an implacable and heartless enemy, one that considers itself un-bound by any rules or principles, an enemy that can't be reasoned with but can only be feared, hated and, if possible, killed.
As poor and oppressed people around the world are very well aware of the events in the occupied territories, and as they strongly identify with the Palestinian struggle and point of view, the future of the Jews looks increasingly dim.
Consequently it is disgraceful and vile and no favor to the Jews for American politicians--for narrow, short-term political advantage, for narrow, short-term global-strategic reasons and, yes, also in expiation of the residual guilt they feel over what happened to the Jews in the past--to pander to the irrationality of the most irrational Jews.
Actions based on irrational premises inevitably fail in their purposes--they fail, and if the premises don't change, then the actions are inevitably repeated, in forms which are more and more grotesque. It is unbearable to think that the new American administration would begin with more American dollars being poured into what is unjustifiable. It is also unbearable to think that among the first words we would hear from our new, clearly rational president would be preposterous sentences trying to persuade us that Israeli policies which seem to be appalling are actually quite normal and acceptable. Certainly nothing our new president could do would be of greater value to the world--and greater value to the Jews--than to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing habit of supporting an irrationality which was born in tragedy and will end in more tragedy.
Yes all this Petras writes should be done, but it can't be as long as the media and are politicians march in goosestep to the Israeli Hawks drumbeat , and i just don't see how that can be changed--who will do it??? Where is this leading??? This is a dark time
Petras writes, in part <<US religious institutions should forcefully denounce Israel’s crimes against humanity, including its demolition of 5 mosques, uniting all faiths (Christian, Moslem, Buddhist) and especially reaching out to the tiny minority of rabbis and observant Jews willing to forthrightly denounce the totalitarian practices of the Israeli state.
Port and long shore workers, sailors and other maritime workers and officials should boycott the handling of all trade with Israel and denounce its Navy’s violent illegal assault, in international waters, of civilian fishing boats and vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. No ships carrying Israeli products should be loaded or unloaded as long as Israel maintains its criminal military blockade of the port facilities of Gaza.
Tens of millions of US citizens subject to the one-sided pro-Israel bias of the electronic and print media, the lop-sided presentations of Zionist ‘op-ed’ writers, ‘news’ reports and the self-styled Middle East experts, should demand equal time, coverage and reportage for non-Zionist specialists, analysts and commentators. We should demand the end of euphemisms and fabrications, which convert victims into aggressors and exterminators into victims.>>
deleted
Robert Fisk: The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act
Thursday, 1 January 2009
There was a day when we worried about the "Arab masses" – the millions of "ordinary" Arabs on the streets of Cairo, Kuwait, Amman, Beirut – and their reaction to the constant bloodbaths in the Middle East. Could Anwar Sadat restrain the anger of his people? And now – after three decades of Hosni Mubarak – can Mubarak (or "La Vache Qui Rit", as he is still called in Cairo) restrain the anger of his people? The answer, of course, is that Egyptians and Kuwaitis and Jordanians will be allowed to shout in the streets of their capitals – but then they will be shut down, with the help of the tens of thousands of secret policemen and government militiamen who serve the princes and kings and elderly rulers of the Arab world.
Egyptians demand that Mubarak open the Rafah crossing-point into Gaza, break off diplomatic relations with Israel, even send weapons to Hamas. And there is a kind of perverse beauty in listening to the response of the Egyptian government: why not complain about the three gates which the Israelis refuse to open? And anyway, the Rafah crossing-point is politically controlled by the four powers that produced the "road map" for peace, including Britain and the US. Why blame Mubarak?
To admit that Egypt can't even open its sovereign border without permission from Washington tells you all you need to know about the powerlessness of the satraps that run the Middle East for us.
Open the Rafah gate – or break off relations with Israel – and Egypt's economic foundations crumble. Any Arab leader who took that kind of step will find that the West's economic and military support is withdrawn. Without subventions, Egypt is bankrupt. Of course, it works both ways. Individual Arab leaders are no longer going to make emotional gestures for anyone. When Sadat flew to Jerusalem – "I am tired of the dwarves," he said of his fellow Arab leaders – he paid the price with his own blood at the Cairo reviewing-stand where one of his own soldiers called him a "Pharaoh" before shooting him dead.
The true disgrace of Egypt, however, is not in its response to the slaughter in Gaza. It is the corruption that has become embedded in an Egyptian society where the idea of service – health, education, genuine security for ordinary people – has simply ceased to exist. It's a land where the first duty of the police is to protect the regime, where protesters are beaten up by the security police, where young women objecting to Mubarak's endless regime – likely to be passed on caliph-like to his son Gamal, whatever we may be told – are sexually molested by plain-clothes agents, where prisoners in the Tora-Tora complex are forced to rape each other by their guards.
There has developed in Egypt a kind of religious facade in which the meaning of Islam has become effaced by its physical representation. Egyptian civil "servants" and government officials are often scrupulous in their religious observances – yet they tolerate and connive in rigged elections, violations of the law and prison torture. A young American doctor described to me recently how in a Cairo hospital busy doctors merely blocked doors with plastic chairs to prevent access to patients. In November, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm reported how doctors abandoned their patients to attend prayers during Ramadan.
And amid all this, Egyptians have to live amid daily slaughter by their own shabby infrastructure. Alaa al-Aswani wrote eloquently in the Cairo paper Al-Dastour that the regime's "martyrs" outnumber all the dead of Egypt's wars against Israel – victims of railway accidents, ferry sinkings, the collapse of city buildings, sickness, cancers and pesticide poisonings – all victims, as Aswani says, "of the corruption and abuse of power". Opening the Rafah border-crossing for wounded Palestinians – the Palestinian medical staff being pushed back into their Gaza prison once the bloodied survivors of air raids have been dumped on Egyptian territory – is not going to change the midden in which Egyptians themselves live.
Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah secretary general in Lebanon, felt able to call on Egyptians to "rise in their millions" to open the border with Gaza, but they will not do so. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the feeble Egyptian Foreign Minister, could only taunt the Hizbollah leaders by accusing them of trying to provoke "an anarchy similar to the one they created in their own country."
But he is well-protected. So is President Mubarak.
Egypt's malaise is in many ways as dark as that of the Palestinians. Its impotence in the face of Gaza's suffering is a symbol of its own political sickness.
Israel Invades the Gaza Strip
January 3rd, 2009
(edit: The cowards, blockade them for 6 months,, cut of power and supplies and bring them to being weakened by malnutrition, then bomb them for two weeks and THEN send in the the "brave troops"---Warsaw Ghetto, slow motion, step by sinister step.Utterly diabolical. Well the jews of Warsaw fled to the underground sewers and fought. Well by G-d i will not weep one fucking tear for any IDF soldier that gets killed, not one damned tear. No Tears!!!!!Max
Updated 1/3/09 3:15 PM EST
After an initial salvo of artillery fire and increased air strikes earlier this morning, the Israeli military has begun its long-promised invasion of the Gaza Strip. The initial strikes included the destruction of another mosque in the strip, in which at least 10 worshippers were killed and scores were wounded.
As the invasion commences, Israeli planes continued to drop leaflets ordeing the civilians to flee the area. But with both the Israeli border and Egyptian border closed to them, the strip’s 1.5 million residents don’t really have anyplace to go.
The tanks and ground troops poured into the tiny strip, and there are already reports of them engaging in firefights with Hamas gunmen, who claim to have killed a number of Israeli soldiers.
The invasion had been expected since the attacks began a week ago, and the military’s press unit has promised “incredible footage” of the ground assault will be made available at some point. Reuters quotes the Israeli military as saying the attack will last “many long days.” Updates will be made as they are available.
"They are only doing their job, as the saying goes, only following orders like bombing machines"
GIDEON LEVY / The IAF, bullies of the clear blue skies
By Gideon Levy
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051317.html
Our finest young men are attacking Gaza now. Good boys from good homes are doing bad things. Most of them are eloquent, impressive, self-confident, often even highly principled in their own eyes, and on Black Saturday dozens of them set out to bomb some of the targets in our "target bank" for the Gaza Strip.
They set out to bomb the graduation ceremony for young police officers who had found that rare Gaza commodity, a job, massacring them by the dozen. They bombed a mosque, killing five sisters of the Balousha family, the youngest of whom was 4. They bombed a police station, hitting a doctor nearby; she lies in a vegetative state in Shifa Hospital, which is bursting with wounded and dead. They bombed a university that we in Israel call the Palestinian Rafael, the equivalent of Israel's weapons developer, and destroyed student dormitories. They dropped hundreds of bombs out of blue skies free of all resistance.
In four days they killed 375 people. They did not, and could not, distinguish between a Hamas official and his children, between a traffic cop and a Qassam launch operator, between a weapons cache and a health clinic, between the first and second floors of a densely populated apartment building with dozens of children inside. According to reports, about half of the people killed were innocent civilians. We're not complaining about the pilots' accuracy, it cannot be otherwise when the weapon is a plane and the objective is a tiny, crowded strip of land. Our excellent pilots are effectively bullies now. As in training flights, they bomb undisturbed, facing neither an air force nor defense system.
It is hard to judge what they are thinking, how they feel. It's unlikely to be relevant, anyway. They are measured by their actions. In any event, from an altitude of thousands of feet the picture looks as sterile as a Rorschach inkblot. Lock onto the target, press the button and then a black column of smoke. Another "successful hit." None see the effects on the ground of their actions. Their heads must surely be filled with Gaza horror stories - they themselves have never been there - as if there aren't a million and a half people living there who only want to live with a minimum of honor, some of them young like themselves, with dreams of studying, working, raising a family but who have no chance to fulfill their dreams with or without the bombing.
Do the pilots think about them, the children of refugees whose parents and grandparents have already been driven from their lives? Do they think about the thousands of people they have left permanently disabled in a place without a single hospital worthy of the name and no rehabilitation centers at all? Do they think about the burning hatred they are planting not only in Gaza but in other corners of the world amid the horrific images on television?
It was not the pilots who decided to go to war, but they are the subcontractors. The real accounting must be with the decision makers, but the pilots are their partners. When they return home they will be welcomed with all the respect and honor we reserve for them. It appears that not only will no one try to provoke moral questioning among them, but that they are considered the real heroes of this cursed war. The Israel Defense Forces spokesman is already going over the top with praise in his daily briefings for the "wonderful work" they are doing. He too, of course, completely ignores the images from Gaza. After all, these are not sadistic Border Police officers beating up Arabs in the alleys of Nablus and the center of Hebron, or cruel undercover soldiers who shoot their targets point-blank in cold blood. These, as we have said, are our finest young men.
Maybe if they were to confront the results of their "wonderful work" even once they would regret their decisions, they would reconsider the effects of their actions. If they were to go just once to Jerusalem's Alyn Hospital Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Center, where for nearly three years Marya Aman, 7, has been hospitalized - she is a quadriplegic who runs her wheelchair, and her life, with her chin - they would be shocked. This adorable little girl was hit by a missile in Gaza that killed almost her entire family, the handiwork of our pilots.
But all of this is well hidden from the pilots' eyes. They are only doing their job, as the saying goes, only following orders like bombing machines. In the past few days they have excelled at this, and the results are there for the entire world to see. Gaza is licking its wounds, just like Lebanon before it, and almost no one pauses for a moment to ask whether all this is necessary, or unavoidable, or whether it contributes to Israel's security and moral image. Is it really the case that our pilots return safely to base, or are they in fact returning to them as callous, cruel and blind people?
The Huffington Post: Israeli-Occupied Territory
Why is the Huffington Post carrying water for the IDF? Follow the money …
by Justin Raimondo
Pat Buchanan was widely vilified by the neocons and the politically correct left when he famously described the Congress of the United States as "Israeli-occupied territory." Oh, what a conniption the liberals and the Commentary crowd had! That was during the countdown to the first Gulf War, when almost no one rose to object – and those who did, like Pat, were smeared for their trouble. Today, such an observation is hardly considered controversial: it is simply a known fact.
There is more discussion in the Knesset over the pros and cons of US intervention in the Middle East on Israel's behalf than there is in on Capitol Hill. There's a sense in which this sort of uniformity must be a little embarrassing for the Lobby, in that it underscores their fear that a real debate will suddenly break out. The regularity with which the American Congress endorses every fresh Israeli atrocity has a certain deadening metronomic quality about it – and, while we're on the subject of monotony, the American media, too, plays an identical role as advocate and staunch defender of the Israeli case, as a matter of course. The "mainstream" televised and dead-tree-media has historically been a reliable "reporter" of the merits of the Israeli case. Now, the wannabe "alternative" online media is following suit, with an alacrity that is none too surprising.
It is especially unsurprising in the case of the Huffington Post, which founder Arianna Huffington touts as a "people's media" in which "truth" is the highest value. As she put it to the San Francisco Bay Guardian:
"Our highest responsibility is to the truth. The truth is not about splitting the difference between one side and the other. Sometimes one side is speaking the truth ... The central mission of journalism is the search for the truth."
Taking Ms. Huffington at her word, one can only conclude that, when it comes to Israel's rape of Gaza, the Huffington Post is siding with the rapist. Their "news" coverage of the ongoing devastation is heavily slanted toward the Israelis, with those journalistically unique paragraph-long lead-story headlines never mentioning Palestinian casualties (a number would suffice). When a genuinely antiwar voice is allowed on the site, it is prefaced by an apologia, as our own Jeremy Sapienza reports:
"Huffington Post was so very kind this week to give space to almost frustratingly moderate Palestinian intellectual Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi. In his well-reasoned article, ‘Palestine's Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood,' he supplied all the basic facts behind the problems in Palestine. … But what gives with the long disclaimer marring the top of Barghouthi's article?
"HuffPo runs all kinds of commentary from all over the political spectrum (or at least its leftish side), but only those who dare speak against the sainted Israelis seem to require an editorial explanation that resembles an apology.
"Shame on Huffington Post for its disgusting lack of integrity."
Shame? Jeremy is a fine lad, and very smart, but perhaps a bit naïve in believing these people even accept the concept of shame, applied to themselves: indeed, they oppose it as a matter of high principle. There's a ready explanation of why, as the Israelis pound Gaza, the formerly antiwar Huffington Post has become a cheerleader for the IDF: it is due entirely to this.
When Arianna nabbed $25 million from Oak Investment Partners, of Palo Alto, California, she was acquired by a financial network that also has significant investments in the Israeli arms industry – an industry, I might add, directly subsidized and controlled by the Israeli government. For example, Oak Investment has invested in IET/Intelligent Electronics, now morphed into Clickservice Software, an Israeli-based company that makes sophisticated weapons systems and sells them to clients such as "an unnamed Far Eastern country." Oak Investment partner Fred Harman now sits on the Huffington Post's board.
Case closed. Mystery solved.
Since Arianna is so into "truth," how about a little when it comes to how she's financing a $25 million media gig that still refuses to pay bloggers! Not only that, but they were recently forced to apologize to a Chicago media outlet for brazenly stealing content. Whatever her contributions to the journalistic profession, let alone the pursuit of "truth," Arianna is sure giving tackiness a bad name.
What's so galling is that the Huffington Post poses as an "alternative" media outlet, the virtual embodiment of the new online populism that gave rise to the blogosphere. The nerve it takes to pose as an opponent of "corporate greed," and war, while taking a $25 million "investment" from an exemplar of both is simply breathtaking – but about par for the course for Arianna. In her odyssey from the Newt Gingrich right to the Obama-ite left, the founder of the Huffington Post personifies the utter vacuity of our age, the emptiness that has nothing at its core but an ideological vacuum waiting to be filled by the dictates of fashion and commerce.
From her days as the high priestess of the "John Roger" cult in California – a New Age outfit grouped around a charismatic and controversial leader "John Roger" – Ms. Huffington has always been an ideological weathervane, taking on the colors of whatever ideological craze is in season. As a kind of Greek sibyl interpreting the divine zeitgeist, her style has lately become even more magisterial, now that she's getting closer to real power. "I only text three people," she boasted at a London dinner, "my two teenage children and Barack Obama."
God help us if that woman has the President's ear, if only because we'll have to endure four long years of relentless name-dropping.
More seriously, though, the Huffington Post's disgraceful performance on the Gaza issue is really just a reflection of the laughable uniformity of Western coverage of Middle Eastern issues, and this is especially true when it comes to Israel and its interests in the region. It's a widely-noted irony that the nature and extent of the "special relationship" is never discussed as openly in the US as it is in the Israeli media. How and why this came about is well-documented by professors John Mearshemier and Stephen Walt, in their book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy [short version here], but a new riff on their theme is the extent to which the online media have been co-opted by the Lobby – in this case, bought outright.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I've gotten a couple of letters noting that, this very morning, the editors of Antiwar.com have chosen to link to an informative piece by Yale University professor David Bromwich on the Huffington Post that contradicts the above. Yet that does little to undermine my main point, which is that Ms. Huffington's alleged devotion to “truth” – as expressed in her declaration “the truth is not about splitting the difference between one side and the other” because “sometimes one side is speaking the truth” – is deemed as somehow not applicable to the Gaza massacre. In any case, please don't anyone try to tell me that the presence of a major investor in the rather extensive (and profitable) Israeli military-industrial complex doesn't have a major effect on the Huffington Post's editorial decisions. Of course it does, and the Bromwich piece doesn't change this – it is merely “splitting the difference between one side and the other,” as Arianna put it to the Bay Guardian – the difference between truth and lies.
Another point: by running the Bromwich piece – which didn't have the embarrassing and unnecessary editorial note attached to the Mustafa Barghouthi blog – we at Antiwar.com are hoping to encourage whatever advocates of editorial sanity remain on the Huffington Post staff. For the inside scoop on what those poor wretches have to endure, go here, here, and here.
~ Justin Raimondo
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 16 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
Please find below Stephen Lendman’s view on the Obama economic
dream team (I do not share his views on Paul Volcker). Also make sure
you read Madhav Napalat’s very disturbing report on Pakistan.
Stephen Lendman (lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net)Marc Faber
**********************
Obama's Economic "Dream Team"?
Dream on if you believe it, and something must be up if Karl Rove says
it. In a November 28 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he called it "a first-rate
economic team" while at the same time objecting to possible (not yet
announced) stimulus package elements not entirely to be the kinds
"conservatives" prefer like tax cuts for the rich. He nonetheless called
Obama's team "reassuring" and hopes it will leave a "market-oriented
imprint."
Not to worry, as that's what it's there for - the privileged elite and not the
other 90% or more who at best will be very stingerly aided, and as
economist Michael Hudson points out to let them repay their bank debts.
On November 24, Obama made his long-awaited announcement - his
economic team to lead the nation out of its worst ever economic crisis, a
task perhaps more than even Houdini could handle according to
economist and author F. William Engdahl.
Nonetheless and with fanfare, the major media highlighted them with
commentaries ranging from cautious to enthusiastic. The Wall Street
Journal for example as follows:
"The advisors Mr. Obama named on Monday hail from the centrist part of
the Democratic Party. During the Clinton years they played an important
role in turning a budget deficit into a surplus. Now they argue the
worsening economy requires steep deficit spending."
The New York Times stressed the ailing economy, prospective measures
to help jump-start it, and efforts to "inject confidence into the trembling
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 17 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
financial markets" that for the moment at least were reassured, or so it
seemed.
Not for long according to Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg in a
recent commentary. In January, he was the first Wall Street economist to
predict recession, called it an "epic event," and said it will be long and
painful as a result of at least three major shocks - credit, housing and oil.
He now sees the S & P 500 bottoming at around 660 or a 61.8% reversal
from its high. Others see it even lower given a policy response "to get
people to (spend more,) add to their debt burdens," and exacerbate the
very problem that created the crisis. Rosenberg says it's "like giving an
alcoholic another drink for his cure. We have a situation where Congress
(and the Obama administration) want more credit created, even though it
was excess (debt and) leverage that got us into this mess." In other words,
the cure may be worse than the disease if the Obama team continues the
same failed Bush administration policies, and it looks like they will.
In earlier comments, Rosenberg offered a different prescription in saying
for the US economy to expand, savings must rise to the pre-bubble 8%
level, housing stocks must come way down, and the household interest
coverage ratio must fall to 10.5%. The future he sees is "frugality" with
households having to make very different sorts of spending decisions than
the kinds they've been used to for years. Those days are over.
So is world stability according to UK Telegraph writer Ambrose Evans-
Pritchard in his latest November 30 commentary. He sees the "political
bubble bursting (with) spreads on geo-strategic risk now widening as
dramatically as the spreads on financial risk at the onset of the credit
crunch."
From Mumbai to worker unrest in China to Eastern Europe and Russia at
a time when it's "too early in this crisis to conclude whether Europe's
monetary union is a source of stability, or is itself a doomsday machine"
given the growing rift between "North and South" countries and
Germany's reluctance "to unpin the system with a fiscal blitz."
He compares today to the 1930s. After the crash, stocks rallied sharply
for months as though the worst was over. It was just beginning but who
could know at the time. "The crisis came in pulses, each followed by
months of normality - like today. The global system did not snap until
September 1931," after which one event led to another and they were all
bad, both political and economic. Who knows what's ahead today at a
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 18 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
time debt excesses are far greater than then, and this is what Obama's
team will confront.
According to Paul Krugman on December 1:
-- Today's economic indicators are worse than at any point during Japan's
1990s contraction;
-- All conventional policy tools aren't working;
-- Consumer spending is in free fall;
-- Investment spending is plunging;
-- Unemployment may top 10%; and
-- Recovery won't occur before 2011.
According to Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney, US credit
card lenders may withdraw over $2 trillion of lines (or about 45%) over
the next 18 months because of regulatory changes and to minimize risk.
She calls credit cards the key source of consumer liquidity after jobs. As a
result, she expects sharp consumer spending declines.
Millions of accounts will be closed, credit lines cut, and interest rates
raised to minimize a tsunami of expected defaults. Whitney also said that
"the entire mortgage market hit a wall, and we believe it will, for the first
time ever, show actual shrinkage over the next few months." The credit
card market is 18 months behind mortgages and will begin contracting in
2010. She also expects a further 20% drop in home prices, earlier called
Citigroup a goner, said it can't remain in its current form, and believes it's
in such a mess that even (distinguished mathematician and physicist)
"Stephen Hawking couldn't turn this company around."
She didn't say but may feel the same about most other major banks. In
early November she called the economy and financials "so far off the
tracks it's hard to see anything helping right now." Securitization isn't
coming back, the entire mortgage market is contracting, banks aren't
lending, loan balances are getting smaller, and bank earnings going
forward will be up to 70% less than consensus forecasts, and she calls this
conservative. Banks are in big trouble, and none are immune.
"Dream Team" Selections
Timothy Geithner
Currently the New York Federal Reserve Bank president and vicechairman
of the Fed Open Market Committee (FOMC), he'll head the
team as Treasury Secretary along with current Fed chairman Bernanke
whose term runs until January 31, 2010.
After his education, he joined (international consultants) Kissinger
Associates for three years and then the US Treasury's International
Affairs division in 1988. He remained at Treasury in various posts until
2002 when he left for the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior
Fellow in the international economics department. He also served at the
International Monetary Fund as director of Policy Development and
Review from 2001 - 2003 after which he was named New York Fed
president.
With these credentials, he's an insider's insider and hardly a surprising
pick. Wall Street approved with a sharp rally that continued through
Thanksgiving week as others on the economic team were also praised.
And why not, elitists all and assembled for a common purpose that hardly
needs explaining.
Geithner's been partnered with Paulson and Bernanke in their Treasurylooting
scheme. His appointment signals more of the same which is why
Wall Street approves. It's also reported that he was the principal architect
behind the Bear Stearns bailout, and various other deals, including Fannie
and Freddie, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, the demise
of Lehman Bros., Citigroup, and AIG.
It's gotten $150 billion so far (and counting) to buy some of its
collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to clean out its credit default swap
(CDS) insurance on them. But the effort only deals with a small part of
AIG's CDSs, and its woes are similar to what ails all of Wall Street. If
Geithner won't address them any differently, he's the wrong man at the
wrong time for a vital task to cure a very sick economy.
Take the $55 trillion CDS problem alone. If enough of them default in the
coming months, no amount of bailing will save things. Yet Paulson and
Geithner believe these levered bets should be paid in full.
With what, short of reckless amounts of currency debasing? The
alternative apparently is off the table - the fiscal sanity of letting
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 20 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
bankruptcy be the price for financial imprudence. In other words, take the
pain upfront and not let this monster of a problem drag out for a decade or
longer, leave much greater wreckage in its wake, and threaten world
economies with it. Geithner will apparently risk it, and even by Las
Vegas standards it's a very bad bet.
It affects the entire financial industry as well as companies with high-risk
debt like the auto giants. Even Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway
who's warned repeatedly about the problem, and this is only one among
others that would challenge the most dedicated and talented of policy
makers. Based on what he'll likely do, Geithner isn't one of them, but try
hearing that through the din of praise for him.
It remains to be seen but he'll likely continue the same failed bailout
policies, pile more debt on the current unsustainable amount, and add lots
of (real estate) infrastructure fiscal stimulus for the rich. As economist
Michael Hudson explains:
"To a mortgage banker, a commercial developer or real estate company is
a prime customer, the bulwark of bank balance sheets. It is hard to
imagine a new American infrastructure program not turning into a new
well of real estate gains for the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate)
sector. Real estate owners on favorably situated sites will sell out to
buyers-on-credit, creating a vast new profitable loan market for banks.
The debt spiral will continue upward" and make a monster of a problem
even greater.
Given how strapped state and city budgets are, "privatiz(ation) from the
outset" is planned and Geithner got the job to do it. He's not for "change
you can believe in" or what people voted for from Obama.
Hudson again: "The change that Mr. Obama is talking about is largely
marginal to (the top 1%'s) wealth, not touching its economic substance -
or its direction." He may give wage earners some relief (to pay off their
bank debts), but top earners "prefer not to earn income" and rely heavily
on capital gains. They try to avoid losses and when can't get the
government to bail them out. Obama supports it, so expect billions more
for the rich, crumbs for the many, and torrents of high-sounding
platitudes to soothe them.
Hudson compares Obama to Boris Yeltsin - a giver who kept on giving
"for the kleptocrats to whom the public domain and decades of wealth
were given with no quid pro quo." And he's assembled the same ("anti-
labor, pro-financial team") that empowered Russia's kleptocrats, let them
loot the country, and for the most part keep it.
His key economic advisor, Robert Rubin, was Clinton's Treasury
Secretary. After leaving, he helped manage Citigroup close to collapse
where it may end up anyway since its problems are so huge perhaps no
amount of billions may save it. Now he's manipulated his protege team
into top posts (including Geithner) with the rest of them profiled below.
Even the Wall Street Journal criticizes Rubin for defending his role and
taking no responsibility for Citigroup’s problems. The Journal asks:
"Why are Robert Rubin and other directors still employed? Another
Sunday night, another ad hoc bank rescue" with taxpayers footing the bill.
"Such a record of persistent failure suggests a larger, (perhaps) systemic
management problem. If taxpayers have to risk so much to save
Citigroup, then regulators should at least exert the discipline to break up
this behemoth so it is never again too big to succeed, much less fail."
What the Journal didn't say is that any bank or business too big to fail is
too big to exist, and anti-trust laws should never let them get this big in
the first place.
As for Rubin, are his choices right for high Obama administration posts?
Might they not wreck the economy the way Rubin & company hurt Citi.
Worse still, were picked to do it - to suck all possible trillions out of it,
then leave behind an empty hulk and mass human wreckage when they're
done. Under Bush, we're well along toward it, so maybe Wall Street
chose Obama to finish the job.
Lawrence Summers
Seeing how Wall Street loves him is reason enough to worry as he's
slated to be Obama's chief economic advisor as head of the National
Economic Council (NEC). This writer's November 10 Obama Mania
article said this about him:
"From 1982 - 1983, he served on the Reagan administration's Council of
Economic Advisors. Then he served in 1993 in the Clinton administration
as Under-Treasury secretary for International Affairs and as Treasury
Secretary from 1999 - 2001. Earlier from 1991 - 1993, he was chief
economist for the World Bank where he authored a controversial memo
stating that "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in
the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."
"Summers became later president of Harvard University from 2001 -
2006 where controversy again dogged him. For his contentious relations
with faculty members and for suggesting that the presence of few women
in upper-level science and math positions was because of innate
differences between men and women. The combination led to his 2006
resignation."
"He now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and is a
consultant to Goldman Sachs, and is a managing director of the DE Shaw
& Company hedge fund. His name is being floated as the leading
candidate for Treasury secretary, and as Michel Chossudovsky states:
"Putting a Hedge Fund manager (with links to the Wall Street financial
establishment) in charge of the Treasury is tantamount to putting the fox
in charge of the chicken coup," and more evidence that Obama plans the
kind of business as usual that he pledged to get rid of."
Treasury no, NEC yes where along with Geithner and Bernanke he'll be
foxy indeed, and look at his record. In the 1990s, he helped deregulate
financial markets with among other measures the 1999 Gramm-Leach-
Bliley Act that repealed (1933 enacted) Glass-Steagall. It let commercial
and investment banks and insurance companies combine and opened the
door to the kinds of rampant speculation, fraud and abuse that created
today's mess.
In 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) came next.
It was so odious it had to be tucked undebated into an appropriations bill
near the end of Clinton's tenure. It legitimized "swap agreement" and
other "hybrid instruments" at the core of today's problems. It prevented
regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging and turned Wall Street
sharks loose on unsuspecting investors.
It also contained the "Enron Loophole" for its "Enron On-Line" - the first
internet-based commodities transaction system, unregulated to let Enron
do as it pleased, and the rest, as they say, is history.
After his World Bank tenure, Summers joined the Clinton administration
in 1993 where he served as Treasury Under-Secretary for International
Affairs and later as Secretary. As a result, he played a major role in a
decade Professor James Petras calls "the golden age of pillage." Summers
was involved in all economic policy decisions ranging from fiscal ones to
NAFTA, WTO, and various neoliberal responses to the decade's financial
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
crises:
-- In 1995, the destruction of Mexico's economy by raising interest rates
to unmanageable levels and all of NAFTA's wreckage ;
-- Pillaging Russia that began before his tenure, continued throughout the
decade, and exploded during the country's 1998 financial crisis; and
-- The 1997 Asian crisis; manufactured in Washington; debt bondage and
open markets became the solution, and human wreckage the price for
resolution.
At the end of his tenure, Summers was awarded the Alexander Hamilton
Medal, the Treasury department's highest honor.
Bill Richardson
He'll become Commerce Secretary, is currently New Mexico's governor,
and served earlier in the Clinton administration as Energy Secretary and
UN Ambassador. He's a former congressman, was Democratic National
Convention chairman in 2004, and Democratic Governors Association
chairman in 2005 and 2006. He also earlier worked for Kissinger
Associates and sat on various energy company boards of directors.
Peter Orszag
Another Rubin protege, he'll become Office of Management and Budget
director. He earlier was on the Council of Economics Advisors under
Clinton and has been Congressional Budget Office director since 2007. In
2004, he co-authored a book titled "Saving Social Security" in which he
predicts its insolvency and advocates a revamping by a combination of
payroll and "benefits adjustments" - meaning slow destruction by cutting
retiree payouts.
Jason Furman
Reportedly to become a senior economic adviser, he also wants Social
Security benefits cut and the System privatized for Wall Street. Under the
Clinton administration, he served as a special assistant to the President for
Economic Policy and on the Council of Economic Advisors staff. He also
headed the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, a Robert Rubinfounded
economic think tank advocating the policies he supported as
Treasury Secretary that left human wreckage everywhere.
Christina Romer
A University of California Berkeley economist, she's been a career
academic thus far and will become Council of Economic Advisors (CEA)
chairperson. She's a student of the Great Depression, a monetarist,
reportedly centrist, and according to UC Berkeley Professor Brad
DeLong she's receptive to short-run fiscal stimulus but believes that large
deficits are harmful.
Paul Volker
Now age 81, he's a Trilateralist, corporatist, former (Rockefeller) Chase
Manhattan Bank executive, and ideologically far to the right of center. He
earlier served as Fed chairman from 1979 under Jimmy Carter and
Ronald Reagan until Alan Greenspan replaced him in 1987. He's been a
key Obama economic advisor and will head a special Economic Recovery
Advisory Board to oversea financial markets stabilization policies.
He's no friend of working people and proved it during his tenure as Fed
chairman. In fighting high 1970s inflation, he engineered the 1981 - 82
recession by raising the Fed funds rate to 20% in June 1981 (compared to
1% currently and nominally near zero).
In fact, his role was far more than fighting inflation. It was to destroy
family farms, crush labor, reduce wages, lower living standards, send
unemployment soaring, rev up deindustrialization, and supercharge the
early years of financialization and casino capitalism. In August 1981, he
openly praised Reagan's firing of 11,000 striking PATCO air traffic
controllers, an act that told business that the day of worker demands was
over and corporate
interests above all others would be served.
Volker's been out of Washington for a while, and as one observer puts it:
He's "like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime." He'll continue
bailing out bankers, the auto giants as well, aggressively serve business
interests overall, and do it at the expense of working people who'll end up
worse off than ever under him and the entire Obama economic team. It's
not "change to believe in" unless you're a Wall Street banker assured of
getting no other kind.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on
Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 25 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The
Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from
11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with
distinguished guests on world and national issues.
Mumbai Aftermath
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=268&page=7
Building war hysteria to cover up failure on home front
By Madhav D Nalapat
That an attack on Mumbai was being planned within the highest echelons
of the Pakistan military was no secret to the US, Saudi Arabian and
Chinese secret services. The Saudi state has traditionally valued the
interests of the Pakistan army above those of the 156 million Muslims of
India, while the PLA has since 1958 been in favour of any action by any
source that it sees as weakening India.
Indeed, even these days, it is mainly affluent Saudis who fund the opulent
lifestyles of jehadi terrorists such as those belonging to the LeT. Even in
the case of Mumbai, the Chinese and the Saudi secret services kept this
information of an impending attack on India to themselves. As for the
US, it acted in a half-hearted manner, passing on not the full situation
report but a confusing and non-actionable collage of bits and pieces of
intelligence on what its sources within Pakistan had learnt about the
impending attack.
As in the past, the prime consideration of the CIA was not the saving of
Indian lives, but the protection of their friends in Pakistan from exposure
as terrorist supporters. However, this time around, the CIA made a
mistake that cost several American lives. It assumed that the attacks
would once again be carried out in locations frequented only by Indian
vegetable sellers, unemployed youth and junior staff in nearby offices.
The ISI-friendly intelligence agency of the US did not forecast that the
Pakistan army's targets would this time be the business elite of India, the
very societal group that has driven forward the India-US alliance forged
during the latter phase of the Bush presidency. That in the process of
killing large numbers of the Indian elite, the Pakistani terrorists would
also identify, isolate and kill nationals of the US, the UK and Israel, for
the first time in India (outside Kashmir).
Why did the Pakistan army make its terrorist ancillaries go this far?
Clearly, the generals were determined to punish Washington for
continously prodding the Pakistan army to take action against its ally, the
Taliban. Angered by the constant US pressure to act in less than the
present deliberately ineffective way in FATA, senior generals within the
Pakistan services led by (the US-approved) Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
decided to take revenge on the US and its closest European ally, the UK,
by choosing locations where nationals of both countries congregated, the
Taj and Trident hotels on Mumbai's waterfront. The training of the "terror
commandos", their equipping and the entire logistics of the operation was
handled by the Pakistan army, acting through officers "on leave".
The expectation within the Pakistan military was that such a show of
vulnerability of their own nations would divert the attention of the US
away from its focus on the western border of Pakistan to fight the Taliban
towards the traditional Pakistan army project of creating a Talibanised
state in Kashmir with US-EU help. In other words, towards a repeat of
Kosovo. The Mumbai attacks would be used by the Pakistan
establishment to illustrate "the cost of not solving the Kashmir issue" to
the advantage of the Pakistan army, and would thus assist policymakers
in the US receptive to the Pakistan army in making President-elect Barack
Obama keep his promise of pressuring India to change the status quo in
Kashmir.
A statement that must rank as one of the most unwise ever made by this
otherwise brilliant and charismatic leader, in the context of stability in
South Asia. Indeed, a plausible case can be made out that Obama's
Kashmir-centric musings on India-Pakistan relations may have served as
a strand in the matrix of reasons for launching such a direct attack on the
West and friends of the West in India.
Unfortunately for the future trajectory of the battle against terrorism in
the region, President-elect Obama (with inputs from Pakistan Army
backer Shirin Taher-Kheli and pro-army academics such as Stephen
Cohen and Teresita Shaffer) injected himself into the Kashmir cauldron
to the satisfaction of the backers of jehad. Neither he nor his principal
foreign policy advisor Susan Rice seems to have studied the purport of
the numerous and consistent statements and literature of those active in
what is clearly a pan-Indian jehad. The jehadi groups operating within
Kashmir and now within the whole of India are transparent and consistent
in conveying their message: that Kashmir is but the appetizer. The main
course will be the rest of India, the population of which will have the
option of either converting to Wahabbism or surviving as serfs, as they
did during the reign of kings as enlightened and secular as Aurangzeb
Alamgir.
As part of their objective of diverting international attention away from
their own refusal to take on and help defeat the Taliban, the Pakistan
army expected that the Mumbai strike would ensure that Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh go the emotional way of Atal Behari Vajpayee in 2002
by responding to the November 26-28 Mumbai attack by another sham
mobilisation of troops on India's western frontier. Not only did the 2002
military mobilisation by India have zero impact on the Pakistan army's
determination to bleed India to extinction by multiple terrorist cuts, it
created an excuse for Robert Blackwill (the US envoy to Delhi at the
time) to demonise the country before the international business
community as an unsafe investment destination. Although he, as did most
other diplomats, were aware that Shri Vajpayee was bluffing and that war
was never an option, Blackwill engineered a pell-mell evacutation of tens
of thousands of US nationals from India, a step that was duplicated even
by the otherwise cool Israelis. By this single act of advertising India as a
likely theatre of nuclear conflict, Blackwill did yet another favour to his
friends in Beijing, through substantially weakening India's case as a
stable alternative investment destination to the PRC. Yet another war
scare this time around would have put the finishing touches to the
destruction of India's economic capability since 2005 that has been
carried out by Sonia Maino's men in the Finance Ministry, SEBI and the
RBI.
Fortunately for the country, Manmohan Singh's pacifist nature (which
renders him unable to respond with force even if faced with a nuclear
attack) for once proved to the correct medicine, as his spokespersons
made it repeatedly known that war was not on the table. A mobilisation of
troops towards the Pakistan border would have played into the hands of
the Pakistan army, which is eager for an excuse to move away from the
Afghan to the India border, aware that its policy of talking tough against
the Taliban while secretly helping them prevail in the field has become
visible even to the most moonstruck admirers in the US and the EU-and
these are many-of "Jehad" Kayani and his merry men. Given the
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
www.gloomboomdoom.com Page 28 of 29
© Copyright 2009 by Marc Faber Limited - All rights reserved
propensity of these self-proclaimed "pious Muslims" towards the
hedonistic lifestyle, had the US made the UN impose sanctions on the
pro-jehad generals in the Pakistan army, most would have abandoned the
path of terror rather than forsake the comforts of London and New York.
Sadly, rather than be reviled and shunned, "Jehad" Kayani and his team
are feted by their very victims.
Kayani wanted an Indian mobilisation. He should not get it. War is not
the option, at least for the present. And it is surprising that Senator John
McCain sought to generate the sort of hysteria that the Pakistan army was
seeking by claiming that the Manmohan Singh government was very
close to such a course, when no such impression was conveyed to him.
On the contrary, India needs to give upto 36 months (or 24, depending on
the frequency and scale of future attacks) to Washington in that ally's
efforts to steer the Pakistan military away from its policy of helping
jehadis attack India. Should the US fail to achieve such a result during
this timeframe, India should launch a war against the Pakistan army. This
can be initially confined to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the first
instance, and against military targets only, including of course terrorist
infrastructure. Should Pakistan respond by retaliating against India
beyond military targets in Kashmir, our counter-attack should be
expanded to cover the whole country, again initially with only military
targets being selected. Should the Pakistan military at any stage respond
with an attack on civilian areas, an all-out offensive should be launched,
designed to ensure the shutting down of rail, road, sea and air traffic in
Pakistan, to demonstrate the costs of nurturing terrorists. In the unlikely
event that a nuclear device will be deployed against an Indian target, the
top 10 cities in Pakistan should be automatically and repeatedly bombed
with nuclear weapons. Massive nuclear retaliation is the only sane
response to such an escalation of aggression by the generals in Pakistan.
While India needs to hold its military fire now, the entire country must
begin preparations immediately for war with Pakistan within 36 months,
should US effiorts fail.
Should Washington fail to defang the jehadi beast that it still believes to
be its ally rather than the single biggest present threat to international
security, there would be no other option other than war for India, if the
country is to avoid the deadly bleed caused by jehadist violence that has
been the country's fate since the 1980s, and which has accelerated since
Sonia Maino took over its fortunes (in some senses, literally) in 2004.
The public in India needs to be prepared for the prospect of a war that
could see the end of Pakistan, possibly at the cost of significant
destruction in India. However painful this may be, it is nevertheless
Dr. Marc Faber Market Commentary January 1, 2009
preferable to suffering jehadi terror indefinitely, and this time, the war
needs to end only with the dismantling of the terror camps (in the
scenario where the Pakistan army responds rationally to the limited
Indian offensive and conducts only a limited response) or the destruction
of Pakistan as a viable country (in the event that a nuclear device get used
by Pakistan). This has to be the final India-Pakistan war.
BREATHE, BREATHE you mother f--ker, BREATHE! This is your world, it isn't working .This world is INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!MINISTRY 150k views 8plus minutes/5star rated
i am always careful, plus i still trade by phone.
i am SLOWMOTION personified compared to you guys:)
i am a SLOTH-SPEED-TRADER.
Maybe i should have a thread 'Trading for Sloths'(VBG:)Max
Got in too early here but holding 4kshares at 3.30.
May be time to add, but would like to catch a dip point trough now on what has been volatile action.
Need get my eye on the bouncing ball:) Max
As War Ravages Gaza, Silent Barack Works on Golf Game
20 Days Ahead of Inauguration, President-elect Seems Distant From Growing Crisis
Posted December 30, 2008
With the death toll in the Gaza Strip still rapidly rising, incoming President-elect Barack Obama’s initial reaction of “no immediate comment” has seamlessly segued into an official policy of no comment, period. As Obama and family continue to enjoy a luxurious vacation in Hawaii, his attention seems far more focused on his golf game than the foreign policy crisis he is poised to inherit.
The silence from Hawaii is almost deafening, with Obama’s staff using the oft-repeated excuse that the US “has only one president at a time” to justify his lack of commentary. The silence, combined with his cabinet choices, has punctuated what many already believe: that when the Obama Administration takes the White House next month, little will have really changed.
A small group of protesters at his rented vacation home hope to ensure that the President-elect is at least aware of what is going on. But if Obama saw the protesters as his motorcade took him to play a game of basketball, he didn’t show it. There was no word of how many points Obama scored, but it is unlikely to have rivaled the number of casualties in the Gaza Strip during the game. And the silence continues.
http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/30/as-war-ravages-gaza-silent-barack-works-on-golf-game/
Obama's Gaza silence condemned
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/12/2008123101532604810.html
Despite growing pressure on Barack Obama to speak out on the crisis in Gaza, the US president-elect has remained silent on the issue.
Obama, holidaying in Hawaii, has made no public remarks on Israel's unrelenting military assault on the Palestinian territory, which has left more than 380 people there dead.
The former Illinois senator spoke out after last month's attacks in Mumbai and has made detailed statements on the US economic crisis.
But some fear that the US president-elect's reluctance to speak out on the Gaza raids could be sending its own message.
"Silence sounds like complicity," Mark Perry, the Washington Director of the Conflicts Forum group, told Al Jazeera.
"Obama has said that Israel has the right to defend itself from rocket attacks but my question to him is 'does he believe that Palestinians also have the right of self-defence?'"
Support for Israel
Israel says the operation is necessary to prevent Palestinian rocket attacks on the south of the country.
And Obama repeatedly spoke out in support for Israel during his election campaign, describing the country as one of the US' greatest allies and has vowed to ensure its security.
He caused anger in the Arab world when he told a pro-Israel lobby group in June that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel.
He also visited Sderot, the Israeli town close to Gaza regularly targeted by Palestinian rocket fire, in July, to show his support for residents.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, has cited comments Obama made during that visit in his own justification for launching the assault.
"Obama said that if rockets were being fired at his home while his two daughters were sleeping, he would do everything he could to prevent it," Barak was reported as saying on Monday.
Obama's aides have repeatedly said he is monitoring the situation and continues to receive intelligence briefings but that he is not yet US president.
But George Bush, the current US leader, has also remained silent on Israel's attacks although the White House has offered its support to Israel.
Arabs pessimistic
Many Arabs were cautiously optimistic about Obama's election victory in November, in the belief that a fresh face in the White House would be better than Bush, who invaded Iraq and gave strong support to Israel.
But his choice of a foreign policy team, especially Hillary Clinton as US secretary of state and Rahm Emanuel as his White House chief-of-staff, have raised doubts that much will change.
But some see his see his silence as symptomatic of caution over his own position and the power of the Israel lobby.
"He wants to be cautious and I think he will remain cautious because the Arab-Israeli conflict is not one of his priorities," Hassan Nafaa, an Egyptian political scientist and secretary-general of the Arab Thought Forum in Amman, told Reuters.
"Obama's position is very precarious. The Jewish lobby warned against his election, so he has chosen to remain silent (on Gaza)," added Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut.
Protests demand change
However many in the US have called on Obama to speak out personally on events in Gaza.
Protesters gathered at Obama's transition office in Washington DC on Monday, and outside his holiday residence in Hawaii on Tuesday, to demand he do more.
"The Obama administration is working hand in glove with the Bush administration and...there is no reason that they can't work together to get something done," Mike Reitz, a federal government worker, told Al Jazeera at the transition office protest.
At another protest against Israel's actions in Gaza outside the White House on Tuesday, some were sceptical about Barack Obama's commitment to Middle East peace-making.
"Is this the change that you were talking about?," said Reza Aboosaiedi, a computer specialist from Iran.
"If this is the change, you have a very, very deep problem, because if you add them up with the other economic problems and other problems in America, having this kind of problem in the Middle East, I don't think he can manage it."
But others at the protest still saw some hope that the former Illinois senator could make a difference.
"I would like to think that he would be more active than Bush in trying to push an agenda to bring Israel and Palestine together to have peace talks, but I don't know," said Bob Malone, a lawyer.
"But I'm an optimist, so I hope so."
Who's Afraid of US-Iran Détente?
Why Arab governments fight rapprochement
by Muhammad Sahimi
Diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States were broken off by President Jimmy Carter in April 1980, after the American embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian students in November 1979 and 53 Americans were taken hostage. The Reagan administration tried to secretly establish working relations with Iran, but that led to the infamous Iran-Contra scandal. President George H. W. Bush was so interested in reestablishing diplomatic relations with Iran that, in his inauguration speech in January 1989, he declared that "good will [on Iran's part] begets good will" on America's part.
After the Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988 and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, passed away in June 1989, the Iranian government began to gradually distance itself from his revolutionary policies. Hence, in response to the first President Bush's call, Iran helped the U.S. to free the American hostages in Lebanon and provided support to the U.S.-led coalition forces that expelled Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait in 1991. But Bush lost his reelection bid to Bill Clinton, and the Clinton administration quickly let it be known that it was not interested in rapprochement with Iran. In a gesture of willingness to reopen relations with Washington, the government of the pragmatic Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani granted a large contract to Conoco to work on an offshore Iranian oil field in 1995, even though another oil company had won the bidding. Rafsanjani went so far as to declare publicly that "the era of Ayatollah Khomeini is over." But Clinton not only prevented Conoco from doing the work, he also imposed tough sanctions on Iran.
The government of moderate Iranian president Mohammad Khatami was also interested in reestablishing relations with the U.S. Khatami suggested the "dialogue of civilizations" as an opening, but the Clinton administration did not take it seriously until it was too late. At that time, Iranian hardliners were opposed to rapprochement between Tehran and Washington, because Iranian reformists were in power.
Khatami's government did provide crucial help to the U.S. when it attacked Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 by opening Iran's airspace to U.S. aircraft and providing vital intelligence on Taliban forces. The forces of the Northern Alliance that Iran had supported for years against the Taliban were the first to reach Kabul and overthrow the Taliban government. Then, during the United Nations talks on the future of Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany, in December 2001, Iranian representative Mohammad Javad Zarif met daily with the U.S. envoy James Dobbins, who praised Zarif for preventing the conference from collapsing. Iran also pledged the largest investment and aid to Afghanistan after the U.S. Two months later, however, President Bush rewarded Iran by making it a charter member of his "axis of evil."
In May 2003, Khatami's government made a comprehensive proposal to the U.S., offering to negotiate all the important issues, including recognizing Israel within its pre-1967 war borders and cutting off material support to Hamas and Hezbollah. The proposal was rejected. That was, of course, when Bush's "mission accomplished" banner was the toast of Washington.
Contrary to popular belief, the Iranian hardliners are not opposed to reestablishing diplomatic relations with the U.S. They are fully aware that the Iranian people favor rapprochement. Therefore, the hardliners considered reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the U.S. a "grand prize" that Khatami and his reformist camp could not be allowed to receive. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2005, right before Iran's presidential elections, Shirin Ebadi and I predicted [.pdf] that the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would suppress internal dissent but still try to start negotiations with the U.S. That is exactly what has happened. While cracking down hard on opposing voices and committing gross violations of human rights of Iranians, Ahmadinejad has tried to bring the U.S. to the negotiation table. He sent a long letter to President Bush but did not receive any response. Every September he has participated in the gathering of world leaders at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, and he has met with many influential American political thinkers. In an unprecedented move, he congratulated Barack Obama upon his election on Nov. 4. The collapse of oil prices, a deteriorating economy, and the UN-mandated sanctions imposed on Iran because of its nuclear program have provided additional impetus for Iranian leaders to seek out better relations with the U.S. President-elect Obama has also said that his administration will be willing to negotiate with Tehran without any preconditions.
Therefore, the conditions seem to be ripe for U.S.-Iran negotiations and rapprochement to begin, provided that Obama's foreign policy team takes the right approach. One would think that such a step would be greeted with a great sigh of relief by the other governments of the Middle East. Not so. Two powerful lobby groups are opposed to any rapprochement between Iran the U.S. One is the well-known Israel lobby. I will discuss Israel's opposition in a separate article, only pausing to point out that it has nothing to do with the "existential threats" Israel claims Iran poses to it.
The second group that opposes détente between the U.S. and Iran consists of the Middle East's Arab governments. Their fears are rooted in their total dependence on the U.S. for the survival of their regimes, the fierce anti-Americanism of their populations, and the historical resentments that Arab governments have had toward Iran. Let me explain.
In the 1960s, the Labor government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson recognized that Britain could no longer afford to act as an imperial power. Thus, he announced in January 1968 that by December 1971 all the British forces to the east of the Suez Canal would be withdrawn, and he began setting up the United Arab Emirates in the southern part of the Persian Gulf as a way of transferring power to the Arab sheiks who had worked closely with Britain. But both the British and U.S. governments were worried about the designs that the Soviet Union had on the Persian Gulf.
Since 1928, successive Iranian governments had declared sovereignty over Bahrain (which currently houses the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet), and so did the shah, a close U.S. ally. At the same time, three strategic islands near the Strait of Hormuz – the Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb Islands – that historically belonged to Iran were protected by the British Navy and claimed by the emerging UAE, but the shah wanted them back under Iran's sovereignty.
The shah and Britain reached a secret compromise. In return for Iran's acceptance of a UN report in 1970 that indicated that the Bahraini people wanted independence, Iran sent its military to the three islands but agreed to share the Abu Musa Island economically with the UAE. That happened on Nov. 30, 1971, one day before the end of the official presence of British forces east of Suez Canal.
That made Iran the undisputed power in the Persian Gulf, which was also what the Nixon administration wanted. The Nixon doctrine, announced by President Richard M. Nixon in July 1969, had declared that U.S. allies had to take care of the defense of their own regions. Nixon and Henry Kissinger had conceived the idea of supporting local "gendarmes" that would protect U.S. interests around the world, and Iran and the shah were the designated gendarme for the Persian Gulf. Thus, they told the shah that he could purchase any U.S. weapon, and helped him begin Iran's nuclear program.
The shah started throwing around Iran's weight. Iranian forces intervened against a leftist insurgency in Oman. He forced Iraq and Saddam Hussein to accept the Algiers Agreement of 1975 that settled a border dispute on terms favorable to Iran. These events revived the resentment and historical fears that the Arab governments of the Persian Gulf had toward Iran, even though Arabs invaded Iran in the 7th century and converted Iranians to Islam.
The shah also had good relations with Israel, which was helping him with Iran's internal security. Although he never hid his dislike of many Arab governments, his plans for the revival of Iran's power did include close relationships with some of them, whom he played off against other Arab nations, e.g., Egypt and Sudan against Libya and Muammar Gadhafi, who was fiercely opposed to the shah.
Thus, after the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom the shah despised (to the point that the Iranian press was not allowed to print Nasser's picture), passed away in 1970, the shah developed close relations with his successor, Anwar El Sadat. He also provided Jaafar Nimeiri, Sudan's president, a $150 million loan after Nimeiri expelled Soviet advisers and reestablished diplomatic relations with the U.S. in 1971. The shah had close relations with King Hussein of Jordan, and in the mid 1970s he began paying at least lip service to the rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories. In a 1976 interview with Mike Wallace of CBS' 60 Minutes, he even complained about the influence of the Israel lobby in the U.S.
These developments were not to Israel's liking. Nor were Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Syria happy with such developments. The shah's weapon purchases from the U.S. and Britain had created a powerful military, and Iran's oil wealth, strategic location, and control of the Persian Gulf had made it indispensable to the U.S. Israel tried to dissociate the shah from the Arab world, but to no avail. The Islamic Revolution of 1979, however, disrupted all of that. In particular, Iran's diplomatic relations with Egypt were severed, and they have never been restored.
The same dynamics drive the present Arab governments' fear of Iran, which is why they are covertly opposed to the U.S.-Iran rapprochement. Iran's strong influence on Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories, and the Shi'ite groups that are in power in Iraq; the large Shi'ite populations of Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE; and the fact that Saudi Arabia's Shi'ites (who make up about 10 percent of the population) reside in the oil region of the country all worry the Arab nations of the Middle East.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak recently told his ruling party that "the Persians are trying to devour the Arab states." He has also said that "most of the Shi'ites are loyal to Iran, not to the countries they are living in." King Abdullah II of Jordan has warned about a coming "Shi'ite crescent" from Iran to Lebanon. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia accused Iran of trying to convert the Sunnis to Shi'ites.
The Arab governments of the Middle East profess worries about Iran's alleged attempts to spread its Islamic revolution to the entire Middle East. But this fear has no basis in reality. As mentioned above, when it comes to foreign policy, Iranian leaders long ago set aside their ideological fervor. The only exception to this is Israel. In fact, Iran's foreign policy has been very pragmatic for the past two decades. To give an example, in the dispute between Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan, Iran has sided with Christian Armenia, not Shi'ite Azerbaijan. Iran's support of Hezbollah and Hamas are meant to give it strategic depth against Israel and the U.S., since its armed forces are relatively weak.
The Arab governments of the Middle East are also supposedly afraid of Iran becoming a nuclear power and threatening them. Again, such fears are baseless. It was the Arab governments that supported Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran, providing him with $50 billion in aid to keep fighting. Even then, Iran threatened almost none of the Middle East's Arab governments. Moreover, Iran has no territorial claims against any nation.
But even if Iran were to develop a small nuclear arsenal – and there is no evidence that it aims to do so – it would only be a deterrent against repeated Israeli and American threats. The aforementioned Arab governments have been buying tens of billions of dollars' worth of American, British, and French weapons, while Iran, under an arms embargo by the West, has had to rely mostly on its own domestic arms industry, which does not produce top-of-the-line weapons.
The fears of Iran expressed by the Middle East's Arab governments are simply smoke screens. The real reason for their fears is threefold.
First, the Arab governments of the Middle East have proven impotent at stopping Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip, which is nothing short of a crime against humanity, or working with Israel on a reasonable solution to its conflict with the Palestinians. On the other hand, thanks to Iran's support of the Palestinians and Hezbollah's victory over Israel in the summer 2006 war, Iran's leadership is very popular among the Arab masses (certainly much more popular than among the Iranian people). So the prospect of Iran negotiating with the U.S. while also supporting the Palestinians frightens unpopular Arab leaders.
Second, Arab leaders are worried that if the U.S. and Iran can begin to resolve their differences, then it will demonstrate to the Arab masses that it is possible to resist U.S. pressure, negotiate with the U.S. from a position of strength, and preserve political independence from the U.S. instead of being totally dependent on the U.S., as most governments in the Middle East are, which has generated deep anger in their populations.
Third, the Arab governments believe that as long as Iran is under strong U.S. pressure, the U.S. will not bother with them. While they say they support U.S.-Iran negotiations, they do not wish such negotiations to resolve the differences between the two nations. They do not want the U.S. to attack Iran, because they will be forced to get involved, but they also do not want normalization of relations between the two nations.
It's not just the Israel lobby that is frightened by the possibility of a thaw between Washington and Tehran.
On the other hand, Iran is ripe for fundamental changes. Its democratic movement will be greatly aided if negotiations do begin and result in a lessening of tension between the two nations. Once the threat of U.S. attacks on Iran is removed, Iran's hardliners will find themselves at a crossroads. They will either have to address the aspirations – economic, political, and social – of the Iranian people, or they will be removed from power one way or another. That will be in the interest of the entire Middle East, including the Arab nations.
From my MySpace site.
i want the COMPLEXITY of Einstein understood and let be known i am 100% certain he would have denounced Israel long ago as they have become everything he feared might happen in his worst nightmares.
*********************************************************
Einstein’s idealism and Zionism
This bit gets to, in few words, Einstein essential aversion to Nationalist Zionism.
<< He appealed to Weizmann to cooperate peacefully with the Arabs and suggested the creation of a secret council of four Jews and four Arabs to reconcile their differing views, an idealistic goal that was never achieved. In 1947, when the United Nations debated the future of Palestine, Einstein argued against the partition plan that would divide the land into two states, Arab and Jewish. As an alternative, he advocated a military-free zone for both peoples.>> (i noted he said ZONE and NOT zones--here we have the One State Solution)
In 1940 and 1946 and 1947 he expressed his aversion to militarized nationalim and bemoaned that a State of Israel could become that which destroyed jews.
But in 1948, after he had denounced fiercely in the extreme Menachim Begin, he nonethelees post fait accompli, recognized Israel.
However just before he died he was working on a speech for Israel's Independence Day.
His opening line was " I speak to you today NOT as an american citizen, not as a jew, but as a Human Being"
i know this much that the speech was setting up a test arguing that Israel will be a moral success or failure based on their treatment of the the arabs.
i can see he was already seeing what Yeshayahu Leibowitz was to state in 1967, when he,Leibowitz, said if the occupation continues, Israel would LOSE its SOUL.
His fear,Leibowitz'es fear, proved to be correct, the Nation of Israel has lost its soul.
It was Yeshayahu Leibowitz that was the first prominent Israeli to use the term "Nazi-Jews", saying certain elements of the jewish people i see as "Nazi-Jews", he said that a long long time ago.
A note, Einstein himself said on reading the Torah and such he was revolted by the religion of Judaism but said a snail can remove itself from its shell, but it still is a snail, so i can remove from myself from Judaism but i am still a jew.
In the days moving to his death(which he knew was imminent) he started to play a recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.
A friend asked "Why he was playing that, your are an unbeliever."
Einstein, ever being Einstein, said "I am a devoutly religious unbeliever. I think i will create a new religion"
His very last writing, hours before he died, was an equation. Max
i copy and paste "Jewish Terrorism" CG/Ace
Jewish Terrorism
By Ghali Hassan
30 December, 2008
Countercurrents.org
“It is our duty to back the State of Israel”. A common phrase used by major Jewish organisations.
At least 400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were deliberately murdered and thousands are maimed and wounded when Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache attack helicopters began premeditated massive aerial bombing attacks on the densely populated and Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip on Saturday 27 December 2008. It was a classic act of Jewish (State) terrorism.
In order to inflict terror and maximum civilian casualties, the Israeli attacks begun during traffic police graduation ceremony and just as thousands of Palestinian school children were coming home from schools. Vital civilian infrastructures, including hospitals, mosques, houses, schools and universities, including women dormitories have been destroyed.
According to an independent eyewitness in Gaza, five innocent girls were killed in their sleep when Israeli helicopter attacked a mosque. “There is no such thing as precision strike in a densely populated Gaza”, said the eyewitness. Let’s be honest, the attacks against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians (mostly refugees), 750,000 of them are children, have nothing to do with “self-defence”. Israel is not “defending itself"; Israel is committing deliberate war crimes in violation of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Convention. The concentration camp has been under two-year-long total blockade. The blockade designed as a collective punishment (not peace) of the 1.5 million Palestinians and had already caused a humanitarian catastrophe before the anticipated Israel’s terror blitz.
The Israeli blockade policy in Gaza has effectively destroyed the economy and the living condition of the Palestinians. It had impoverished and starved the whole civilian population of Gaza. While this policy is illegal under International Humanitarian Law and a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the U.S. and its European allies have encouraged Israel and Egypt to continue enforcing the blockade. The policy constitutes an indiscriminate collective punishment, a war crime and genocide. As a result, hundreds of innocent civilians have died in what Israeli leaders call “truce” (ceasefire) in which Israel practises violence and acts of terrorism with impunity. Israel broke the ceasefire in order to flex its muscle before Israel’s coming elections and to derail any prospect of peace. It was only after the Jewish State murdered 23 Palestinians that HAMAS fired the ineffective home-made Qassam rocket towards Israeli positions. Israeli Jewish leaders use HAMAS – the only democratically-elected people’s movement in the Arab World – as a pretext to justify terrorising the entire Palestinian population.
It is important to note that Israeli leaders would not have committed such heinous acts of terrorism without the full complicity and backing of the U.S. administration, the European governments, and the dictatorial regime of Egypt and Mahmoud Abbas' thuggery. Palestinian leaders in Gaza have rightly accused the Egyptian brutal dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak and collaborators in the Palestinian Authority of colluding with Israel against the Palestinian in Gaza. Indeed, the treacherous Egyptian regime – propped-up and financed by the U.S. – has been a willing complicit in the Gaza blockade. Just before the massacre took place, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was in Cairo to consult with the dictator of Egypt.
This is not the first time the Jews have committed acts of terrorism in Palestine. Historically, the Palestinian people have suffering under Jewish terrorism for more that sixty years. The Jewish State was founded by heinous aggression and war crimes in 1984. It is just that Jewish terrorism is deliberately covered-up and justified as “self-defence” by Western media. With the exception of a few honourable voices, condemning the subject of Jewish terrorism remains taboo.
Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law Professor at Princeton University was recently denied entry into Israel. He was accused of comparing the policies of the Jewish State with that of Nazi Germany. It is ironic, because comparisons of Israel with Nazi Germany are very common in Israel itself.
However, Professor Falk chose his words carefully when he described Israel’s policies towards Palestinians as a “crime against humanity” that should be stopped by international action. Falk urged the UN to invoke “the agreed norm of a responsibility to protect a civilian population being collectively punished.” He also called for an International Criminal Court investigation of Israeli military and civilian officials for potential prosecution. “The recent developments [the two-year-old blockade and other war crimes] in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy." Falk was lucky. Other Americans who dared to criticise the Jewish State were destroyed by a single shot of “ant-Semitism” and lost their jobs before they have committed political suicide.
While the parallels between the Jewish State of Israel and Nazi Germany are frightening, they are not surprising. Zionism grew out of German National Socialisms (Nazism). There are few important differences: (1) Unlike Nazi Germany, Israeli war is entirely against defenceless innocent civilians population resisting the illegal occupation of their homeland; (2) Unlike Nazi Germany, in addition to its superb propaganda system, Israel is supported by a global propaganda campaign led by the like of the BBC, CNN, Fox News, the Murdoch Press, and other Western media outlets which works tirelessly to portray Israel as a victim and propagate Israel’s Zionfascist ideology; and (3) Unlike Nazi Germany, Israel – in addition to possessing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons – is unconditionally supported (financially, militarily and politically) by major Western powers, including the U.S. and Britain. In short, Israel is untouchable. Moreover, like Nazi Germany, the Jewish State of Israel is committing war crimes by a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing and extermination of a particular ethnic-religious group of people, the Palestinian people.
As Jean Ziegler, Professor of Sociology at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and a Member of UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee said recently; "Behind the headlines of military conflict and escalating [Israeli] violence, there is a continuing physical, social and psychological destruction of a whole and very ancient [Palestinian] society". The West’s “never again” rhetoric that followed the Second World War seems to be applicable to Jews only. Isn’t it time for the “international Community” to implement its solemn rhetoric?
We know that unlike other peoples, Jews have repeatedly cited the “Jewish holocaust” to gain sympathy and to raise it as a tool to extort money and weapons and political support from Europeans. They have no sympathy for Palestinian victims and Palestinian suffering. Every time Israel commits mass murder of Palestinian women and children, Jews (with a few exceptions) around the world remain silent. In order to deflect attention from Israel’s terror, Israeli Jews and major Jewish organisations have been promoting and “exploiting the wave of Islamophobia [particularly] in the U.S. and Europe, to engage them in this war on the Palestinians, doing their part in suffocating, starving, and weakening the Palestinian people, as Israel caries its mission of destruction”, wrote the late Israeli scholar Tina Reinhart. They are complicit in the Jewish State’s crime against humanity.
A report published in July 2008 by the National and International Relations Department of Palestine in Ramallah revealed that the Israeli military killed 466 Palestinian citizens during military operations carried out in the Palestinian territories during the first half of 2008, including 75 children under the age of 18 and 23 women. At least 200 Palestinians have died as a result of the unjust collective punishment and blockade imposed on Gaza, preventing Palestinians from leaving to receive adequate treatment abroad. “A genocide is taking place in Gaza … an average of eight Palestinians die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip. Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed”, wrote the Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe.
Furthermore, in the illegally Occupied Territories, Jewish settlers have unleashed new waves of terror attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron. On Thursday, settlers shot at Palestinians, set fire to homes and olive groves, and defaced mosques and graves after Israeli troops evicted a group of settlers from a disputed Palestinian-owned home near a biblical site. Persistent acts of terrorism by Israeli occupation soldiers and illegal Jewish settlers against the Palestinian farmers have destroyed millions of olive trees and farms decimating the livelihoods of Palestinians. “As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at innocent Arabs in Hebron. There is no other definition than the term 'pogrom' to describe what I have seen," said the now discredited Israeli PM Ehud Olmert whose government is not only behind the policy of house demolishing but also behind the Jewish settlers’ terror against the Palestinians. In fact the Jewish settles are an effective weapon of the Jewish State to terrorise the Palestinians. The aim is to terrorise the Palestinian and forced them to leave their land.
As Palestinian houses are demolished, the illegal Jewish settlers’ population in the West Bank has grown three times higher than that of the rest of Israel during the past 12 years. An Israeli annual report shows that the illegal Jewish population in the West Bank more than doubled during that time, with a growth of 107 percent. The report also shows that the settler population has surged from 130,000 in 2005 to 270,000 by the end of 2007. Other illegal settlements in the West Bank have witnessed expansion between 50 per cent and 100 per cent of their areas in 1996.
Since 2007, more than 8,000 homes have been built in the West Bank and in the heart of annexed East Jerusalem, the capital of “future” Palestinian state, which is being intensively "Judaised". Jewish extremist settlers are literally taking over Palestinian homes with impunity. A report by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) described the situation in the Israeli occupied West Bank as “reminiscent, in many and increasing ways, of the apartheid regime in South Africa”. The report also revealed that many of the 430 Palestinians killed and 1,150 wounded in the West Bank alone by Israeli soldiers and death squads in 2008 were innocent by standards.
A study published by the Applied Research Institute- Jerusalem (ARIJ) said that the Israeli occupation increased the area of Jewish settlements in the West Bank by 85per cent between 1996 and 2007. The study added that Jewish settlements are the cornerstone of the Israeli policy of Judaizing the occupied Palestinian lands. According to the study the process building the Jewish settlements in various parts of the West Bank and in particular in the Jerusalem district started immediately after the occupation in June 1967 to impose changes on the ground in an attempt to get control of most of the occupied Palestinian lands.
The study concludes that the Israeli occupation seems to have no intention to stop the settlement activity as these settlements doubled since the Oslo accords. This is in addition to the thousands of Dunums of Palestinian lands being confiscated to build the Apartheid Wall and Jewish-only roads to serve the settlements and further isolating Palestinian communities from one another and limiting the expansion of Palestinian towns and villages.
The illegal expropriation of Palestinian lands and the building of Jewish-only settlements have continue thanks to massive injection of fund and investment by wealthy individual Jews and Jewish organisations in the US, Australia and Europe. For example, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a global corporation, had illegally expropriated most of the land of 372 Palestinian villages, which had been ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948, to build exclusively Jewish settlements. Like many wealthy Jews, Joseph Gutnick, an Australian wealthy Jew has poured millions into building Jewish settlements on expropriated Palestinian land with Israel’s blessing. Of course, Israel continues to use all kinds of terrorist acts to dispossess the Palestinian people of their lands.
Instead of being sanctioned to stop violating of international law and the Geneva Convention, Israel is being rewarded by the U.S. and Europe with closer economic, academic, trade and defence links and privileges. “All we hear is a hollow laugh coming from behind the Apartheid Wall and the seething and starving prison camps for Palestinians under siege in Gaza and the West Bank”, writes Abe Hayeem of Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine. On the other hand, Israel remains an extremist, right-wing, nationalistic and corrupt society which have rejected every step to live in peace and coexistence with its neighbours.
The ongoing massacre of innocent Palestinian civilians is not the first Jewish-perpetuated massacre and certainly won’t be the last. Israel follows a Nazi-like racist policy based on physical extermination and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population.
Like Nazi Germany, Jewish Israel should be condemned, forced to renounce terrorism and end the occupation of Palestinian lands. The deliberate murder of innocent Palestinians is a classic act of Jewish State terrorism. There is no terrorism like the State of Israel terrorism. It remains to be seen if the world community needs a third world war to stop Jewish State terrorism.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
i see where even Daniel Barenboim is unliked in Israel, wonder if AIPAC has called him an "anti-semite" yet!!!
<<Conductor Barenboim denounces military action
Conductor Daniel Barenboim says the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be resolved militarily. Barenboim grew up in Israel and formed an orchestra along with the late Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said that brings together young Israeli and Arab musicians. He says there are still far too many people who are convinced that military action is the answer and calls recent developments in the region "terrible events." Three days of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have killed more than 300 Palestinians. Barenboim is a contentious figure in Israel for championing Palestinians' rights.>>
Fascinating. <<10:30 am : Stocks spike higher to their best levels of the session after receiving dismal consumer confidence data.
The December Consumer Confidence Index came in at 38.0, which is well short of the reading of 45.0 that was widely expected. The prior reading was revised slightly lower to 44.7. The latest reading marks a new record low for the index.>> Via In Play
GIDEON LEVY: First of all, I feel horrible as an Israeli when I hear all those reports, when I watch all those horrible pictures. But unlike me, I am afraid that most of the Israelis are quite indifferent. They think that there was a legitimate reason. The attacks on the southern part of Israel was a legitimate reason. Israel has the right to do everything. Unlike them, I think that Israel crossed any line of humanity or morality or even legality. And I think what Israel is doing right now there is horrible and has no justification.
Nir Rosen, one of the best speaks out:
Gaza: the logic of colonial power.
As so often, the term 'terrorism' has proved a rhetorical smokescreen under cover of which the strong crush the weak.
Nir Rosen
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 December 2008 08.00 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/gaza-hamas-israel
I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.
Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.
The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.
I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes. An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.
Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.
Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.
Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.
Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.
Not long ago, 19-year-old Qassem al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection. "The terrorist", as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him, was shot and killed. In two separate incidents last July, Palestinians from Jerusalem also used vehicles to attack Israelis. The attackers were not part of an organisation. Although those Palestinian men were also killed, senior Israeli officials called for their homes to be demolished. In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid n his face. "The terrorist was arrested by security forces," the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?
In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.
Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits.
It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.
I could argue that all Americans are benefiting from their country's exploits without having to pay the price, and that, in today's world, the imperial machine is not merely the military but a military-civilian network. And I could also say that Americans elected the Bush administration twice and elected representatives who did nothing to stop the war, and the American people themselves did nothing. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli, or other powerful aggressors, if you are strong, everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It's merely a question of what side you choose: the side of the strong or the side of the weak.
Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first – a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands. An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already.
The democratically elected Hamas government was targeted for destruction from the day it won the elections in 2006. The world told the Palestinians that they cannot have democracy, as if the goal was to radicalise them further and as if that would not have a consequence. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas's military forces. This is not true. It is targeting Palestinian police forces and killing them, including some such as the chief of police, Tawfiq Jaber, who was actually a former Fatah official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. What will happen to a society with no security forces? What do the Israelis expect to happen when forces more radical than Hamas gain power?
A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with two options. Will they peacefully transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians are given the same rights, à la post-apartheid South Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the world want to further radicalise them?
Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America.
A failed American administration departs, the promise of a Palestinian state a lie, as more Palestinians are murdered. A new president comes to power, but the people of the Middle East have too much bitter experience of US administrations to have any hope for change. President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton have not demonstrated that their view of the Middle East is at all different from previous administrations. As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, how long before it is once again made to feel the pain of those whose oppression it either ignores or supports?
i want to link you to the site where that graphic came from as the site is run by an american jew that immigrated to Israel 23 years ago and lives in Jerusalem.
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/toon-of-the-day-the-gaza-ghetto/
brief profile:
Name: Desert Peace
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
From my very first post….
I am originally from the United States. I have been living in Jerusalem, Israel for 23 years and have dedicated all of those years to try and create an atmosphere that will lead to a just and permanent peace in this area. Israelis and Palestinians have more in common that the outsider might see… I will attempt on this blog to show those similarities and show why I am so confident that one day we will live in peace together.
I know it can be done!
About…
Active Peace/Civil Rights Worker.. Aiming to establish a just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine, while at the same time continue the struggle against racism and for peace throughout the world. Email me at.. manopeace@gmail.com
DesertPeace originally started out at Blogspot in October 2005. Because of continual technical difficulties it was moved to WordPress in January of 2008…. all archives were moved as well.
************************************************************
and i copy and paste one of the comments to the "toon"
lucy butler said,
November 27, 2008 at 7:03 pm
i am sorry. i am ashamed. i have been since i can remember, growing up in new york, saying ‘mom, aren’t the israelis doing to the palestinians the same thing that the n–” and getting elbowed and shut up. i shut up — around my mom. i never believed there was a basis for exemption. if warsaw was bad, it was bad. for anyone. as it is with so many other aspects of this sick civilization, i am so angry i just want to scream and scream and scream, running, until i collapse. because evil is stupid. because my people can be so evil - because i am jewish, because i am american, because i am human. i am sorry, and i hope i can be useful, i hope we can overcome this bullshit. let these words be as a petition unto my Creator: may i be as effective in bringing about peace and justice and joy and love as ever i was sorry. may all those who read this be so moved also. because life is a beautiful gift, and i would be thankful.
Gaza Ghetto-a graphic
i am focusing on thinking big trouble if 851 is lost and your lower low does deserve CAUTION as there is now a trending to test that 851.
i feel SPX needs get above its 200ema to be declared being healthy,imHo:) Max
A look at and annotation of SPX500 60-min with my babbling added to the chart.:)Max
The Royal Family of Saud, about 800 in all, excepting the unknown renegades that exist among them, are the single most evil and parasitic family, as a whole, that exist in the world today.
And it is this family that we, the U.S. Oligarchy, have fed and armed and given sophisticated counciling on torture techniques and brute strategies of repression to keep their populace buried under. i ask when will the majority of americans awaken to the U.S. Foreign Policy is itself evil--probably never.Max
p.s. Mubarak himself is a monster. Another U.S. agent that enables Israel's beastly behavior.
agreed:) Max