DR ALAN SABROSKY, FORMER DIRECTOR OF STUDIES AT THE US ARMY WAR COLLEGE

“ISRAEL DID IT”

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Meet Dr. Alan Sabrosky, a brave man, a USMC Vietnam vet, an American of Jewish religion and ancestry and someone devoted to the security of the United States at any cost.   Ask any Jew what it takes to stand up against the most powerful and ruthless group in the world, the Israeli lobby inside the United States.

VIEW COMPLETE VIDEO INTERVIEW AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE 

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Sabrosky has been calling for a new 9/11 investigation for some time.  What makes him unique is that we have a Jew who can hardly be called “self-hating” or “anti-Semitic” or against Israel.  He is consistent in everything he says.  His point is that you are an American or you are an Israeli but you can’t be both, especially now with Zionism turning Israeli foreign policy into a “runaway train.”  9/11, as Sabrosky sees it was the watershed in a relationship between America and Israel that has gone from bad to unsurviveable, especially for America.  He contents that AIPAC exercises near total control over the electoral process in America through the ability to outspend any other group and destroy anyone who stands against them.

The unwillingness of the US to stand with the international community on humanitarian and war crime issues where Israel is found in continual violation is, to Sabrosky, a critial issue.  In discussion the US and her lack of support for the Goldstone Report, Sabrosky says:

US criticism of the HRC resolution should be disregarded, as Washington only parrots Israel’s wishes here…

… it might have been better to have included Goldstone’s condemnation of Hamas offenses as well, but it is legitimate as it stands for five reasons: (1) Israel committed the great majority of the violations; (2) Israel had an overwhelming preponderance of military power; (3) Palestinians suffered almost all of the death and destruction; (4) Israel has a long, sordid history of ignoring UN commissions and resolutions, and of attacking UN facilities and killing UN staff, as when the clearly marked UNRWA facility in Gaza was bombed; and (5) the HRC focus is properly on the actions of the oppressor (Israel) and not on those of the oppressed (the Palestinians).

Another is that it did not accord Israel the right of self-defense. But Israel’s claim to self-defense in its savaging of Gaza is specious, because Israel — like all occupiers and oppressors — has no inherent right of self-defense against its victims. Who, for instance, would have accepted Nazi Germany’s assertion that its brutal reprisals against the Czechs for their assassination of a Nazi commander named Reinhard Heydrich was an exercise in self-defense? No one, and no one should accept Israel’s claim, either.

A third is that holding Israel accountable for its actions will somehow endanger the Middle East peace process. But there is no peace process, simply meaningless discussions to the dead end (for Palestinians and the rest of the region) of Israeli hegemony, and under Netanyahu or any electable government in Israel, there is not and cannot be one. There will be an enforced peace imposed from outside of the Middle East, over the objections and obstruction of Israel, or there will be none at all.

ZIONISM AND ISRAELI NATIONALISM

This is how Sabrosky describes the nature of Jewish nationalism as described within the term we call “Zionism”: 

The differences between Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and that of other countries and cultures here I think are fourfold:

1. Zionism is a real witches’ brew of xenophobia, racism, ultra-nationalism and militarism that places it way outside of a “mere” nationalist context — for example, when I was in Ireland (both parts) I saw no indication whatsoever that the Provisional Irish Republican Army or anyone else pressing for a united Ireland had a shred of design on shoving Protestants into camps or out of the country, although there may well have been a handful who thought that way — and goes far beyond the misery for others professed by the Nazis;

2. Zionism undermines civic loyalty among its adherents in other countries in a way that other nationalist movements (and even ultra-nationalist movements like Nazism) did not — e.g. a large majority of American Jews, including those who are not openly dual citizens, espouse a form of political bigamy called “dual loyalty” (to Israel and the US) that is every bit as dishonest as marital bigamy, attempts to finesse the precedence they give to Israel over the US (lots of Rahm Emanuels out there who served in the Israeli army but NOT in the US armed forces), and has absolutely no parallel in the sense of national or cultural identity espoused by any other definable ethnic or racial group in America — even the Nazi Bund in the US disappeared once Germany and the US went to war, with almost all of its members volunteering for the US armed forces;

3. The “enemy” of normal nationalist movements is the occupying power and perhaps its allies, and once independence is achieved, normal relations with the occupying power are truly the norm, but for Zionism almost everyone out there is an actual or potential enemy, differing only in proximity and placement on its very long list of enemies (which is now America’s target list); and

4. Almost all nationalist movements (including the irredentist and secessionist variants) intend to create an independent state from a population in place or to reunite a separated people (like the Sudeten Germans in the 1930s) — it is very rare for it to include the wholesale displacement of another indigenous population, which is far more common of successful colonialist movements as in the US — and perhaps a reason why most Americans wouldn’t care too much about what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians even if they DID know about it, is because that is no different than what Europeans in North America did to the Indians/Native Americans here in a longer and more low-tech fashion.

Sabrosky is one of the few Americans who sees the nuclear threat of Israel as it is, blackmailing the United States, not only in how it could be used to draw America into an unwanted war, but how it could actually be used at some point to attack the United States itself.  Only recently, Israel put Western Europe on notice that it would be attacked if its actions threatened Israel, attacked by nuclear weaons from Israel without warning.  Martin van Creveld’s threat combined with Sabrosky’s analysis of Israeli intentions and culpability for 9/11 brings to mind something Sabrosky had once written.

He has always seen Moshe Dyan as a hero.  Dyan saw Israel’s military role as that of a “junk yard dog,” ready to bite without warning, attack anything and anyone.  Sabrosky notes that, eventually such an animal is always put down or as he puts it,  ”the preferred response of everyone else is to kill that mad dog before it can decide to go berserk and bite.”

9/11

Sabrosky makes a case, not just for a coverup of 9/11 but goes much further.  He points out as do so many that the physics of the attack are unworkable.  He, however, is one of the few to point to a conclusion many find obvious but few have the nerve to admit, that it would have been impossible to stage 9/11 without the full resources of both the CIA and Mossad and that 9/11 served the interests of both agencies quite well.

There was nothing they could have wished for more.

Sabrosky also makes a point involving media coverage of 9/11:

Finally, we need to take a hard look at why the mainstream media (MSM) have paid more attention to Sarah Palin’s wardrobe than they have to dissecting blatant falsehoods, discrepancies and inconsistencies in the US Government’s treatment of 9/11 and its aftermath.

ZIONISM AND TREASON

The inescapable point isnt the 60,000 Americans killed or wounded in a war started out of treason or the world it threatens to destroy.  Americans have been looking away from these glaring realities the way they looked away from Vietnam.  Sabrosky leaves Israel and her American Jewish supporters who he sees as traitors with a warning:

If these Americans and those like them ever fully understand just how much of their suffering — and the suffering we have inflicted on others — is properly laid on the doorsteps of Israel and its advocates in America, they will sweep aside those in politics, the press and the pulpits alike whose lies and disloyalty brought this about and concealed it from them. They may well leave Israel looking like Carthage after the Romans finished with it. It will be Israel’s own great fault.

Do we take Sabrosky seriously because he is a Marine or a Jew?  Do we wonder why the things he says reach so few?  Is American in a shooting war where our biggest enemy sits behind us, killing us off, robbing us blind and whispering gently in our ears how much they love us?

It would seem so.

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American Naifs Bringing Ruin to Other Lands

By Paul Craig Roberts for Prison Planet.com

According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

 The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran.”

 The next step will be a staged “terrorist attack,” a “false flag” operation as per Operation Northwoods, for which Iran will be blamed. As Iran and its leadership have already been demonized, the “false flag” attack will suffice to obtain US and European public support for bombing Iran. The bombing will include more than the nuclear facilities and will continue until the Iranians agree to regime change and the installation of a puppet government. The corrupt American media will present the new puppet as “freedom and democracy.”

 If the past is a guide, Americans will fall for the deception. In the February issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, a scholarly journal, Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith writes that state crimes against democracy (SCAD) involve government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities in order to implement an agenda. Examples include McCarthyism or the fabrication of evidence of communist infiltration, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on false claims of President Johnson and Pentagon chief McNamara that North Vietnam attacked a U.S. naval vessel, the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in order to discredit Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers) as “disturbed,” and the falsified “intelligence” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

 There are many other examples. I have always regarded the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City as a SCAD. Allegedly, a disturbed Tim McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb in a truck parked outside the building. More likely, McVeigh was a patsy, whose fertilizer bomb was a cover for explosives planted inside the building.

A number of experts dismissed the possibility of McVeigh’s bomb producing such structural damage. For example, General Benton K. Partin, who was in charge of U.S. Air Force munitions design and testing, produced a thick report on the Murrah building bombing which concluded that the building blew up from the inside out. Gen. Partin concluded that “the pattern of damage would have been technically impossible without supplementary demolition charges at some of the reinforced concrete bases inside the building, a standard demolition technique. For a simplistic blast truck bomb, of the size and composition reported, to be able to reach out on the order of 60 feet and collapse a reinforced column base the size of column A7 is beyond credulity.”

 Gen. Partin dismissed the official report as “a massive cover-up of immense proportions.”

 Of course, the general’s unquestionable expertise had no bearing on the outcome. One reason is that his and other expert voices were drowned out by media pumping the official story. Another reason is that public beliefs in a democracy run counter to suspicion of government as a terrorist agent. Professor Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph says that “false flag” operations have the advantage over truth: “research shows that people are far less willing to examine information that disputes, rather than confirms, their beliefs.” Professor Steven Hoffman agrees: “Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the most part people completely ignore contrary information.” Even when hard evidence turns up, it can be discredited as a “conspiracy theory.”

 All that is necessary for success of “false flag” or “black ops” events is for the government to have its story ready and to have a reliable and compliant media. Once an official story is in place, thought and investigation are precluded. Any formal inquiry that is convened serves to buttress the already provided explanation.

 An explanation ready-at-hand is almost a give-away that an incident is a “black ops” event. Notice how quickly the U.S. government, allegedly so totally deceived by al Qaida, provided the explanation for 9/11. When President Kennedy was assassinated, the government produced the culprit immediately. The alleged culprit was conveniently shot inside a jail by a civilian before he could be questioned. But the official story was ready, and it held.

 Professors Manwell and Hoffman’s research resonates with me. I remember reading in my graduate studies that the Czarist secret police set off bombs in order to create excuses to arrest their targets. My inclination was to dismiss the accounts as anti-Czarist propaganda by pro-communist historians. It was only later when Robert Conquest confirmed to me that this was indeed the practice of the Czarist secret police that the scales fell from my eyes.

 Former CIA official Philip Giraldi in his article, “The Rogue Nation,” makes it clear that the U.S. government has a hegemonic agenda that it is pursuing without congressional or public awareness. The agenda unfolds piecemeal as a response to “terrorism,” and the big picture is not understood by the public or by most in Congress. Giraldi protests that the agenda is illegal under both U.S. and international law, but that the illegality of the agenda does not serve as a barrier. Only a naif could believe that such a government would not employ “false flag” operations that advance the agenda.

 The U.S. population, it seems, is comprised of naifs whose lack of comprehension is bringing ruin to other lands.

TIME FOR THOSE WHO KNOW BETTER TO AIR SOME REALITY

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Jews in America are being played, some at least.  Frankly, I don’t know one Jew that buys in on any of the extremist idiocy that has driven Israel to acting so terribly.  Maybe only half my friends and co-workers are Jews.  I am in that kind of world.  Jews, people with Jewish families, make up, not only friends but half my own family.  Fights go on continually about holidays and mostly food.  There simply aren’t any discussions about Israel.  What has happened there and what has happened here, in the US, were never meant to happen.  None of us, for years, had an accurate history.  Now we can believe almost nothing at all. 

We weren’t around in 1947, not most of us anyway.  We were never told how things went and what was done against the Palestinians, not an honest version.  It was easy to see how the Muslim/Arabs had created governments that would eventually turn the entire region over to the Communists, out of their greed and stupidity.  Frankly, about a third of the Jews that went to Palestine initially were Communists also.  This was a time of political upheaval around the world with everyone fighting for a place at the table.  It left us with a world we are still paying for now.  Mistakes were made but adding to them is inexcusable.  We should all have learned that buy now.

The history of that time, mostly from the movie Exodus, is a total lie.  I get mine straight from Irgun guys.  They tell a very different story, a true story.  Unless you talk to one of them, one who will be honest with you, consider everything you know to be propaganda.  The truth isn’t simple.  The good aren’t always good and the bad are seldom that different from the good.  Facing this truth is inconvenient for a generation raised on propaganda and myth.  There is dishonor in choosing to believe lies.

The offical version of the 1947-48 war is a farce.  You can also say the same about the 6 Day war and the Suez Crisis.  This is the root of all terrorism and world conflict.  Problem is, Israel is now a massive arms producer and exporter.  I was just in Pakistan.  You don’t think I was approached by Israel to sell them weapons while I was there?  Business has its own ethics, none at all.  Israeli equipment is all over the Middle East, from Iran to Jordan to Iraq to Egypt.  We buy it, they buy it.  This idiocy about Israel and security is simply that.  Israel has very cordial relations with Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf States. It has some issues with Syria, a country whose military is decades behind Israel.

Israel has “not so public” relationships with the Saudis, Yemen and Iran.  Frankly, there are no longer any significant enemies for Israel to arm against.  They don’t exist.  Israel now has such advanced weapons that the crazy elements in Israel are now threatening western Europe with nuclear attack.  No, it has gone that far, all extremism is the same, Zionist, Islamic or Christian.  Dumb is dumb. Check this out:

Noted Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld stated that Israel could find itself one day forced to exterminate the European continent using all kinds of weapons including its nuclear arsenal if it felt its demise neared, stressing that Israel also considers Europe a hostile target.

This came in a press interview broadcast by the seventh Hebrew radio and was translated on Wednesday into Arabic by the press information analysis and study center.

“We have hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach different targets in the heart of the European continent, including beyond the borders of Rome, the Italian capital,”  Creveld said, adding that most of the European capitals would become preferred targets for the Israeli air force.

The Israeli historian reiterated Israel’s ability to destroy the whole world whenever it felt its existence would be doomed to extinction.

Creveld isn’t a dumb guy, far from it, but he is obviously playing games with people.  How many people in Israel are saying things like this?  Too many, way too many, talking not only about attacking Europe but about building hundreds of nuclear rockets with India and attacking the United States.  Israel’s nuclear missiles already can reach most of the United States with hundreds of warheads.  With those being built by India, 10 nukes per missile, range 18,500 kilometers, with many to be kept in Israeli silos, the entire United States is easily in range.

If Israel’s best know historian, Creveld is correct, then this capability being developed is to be used against the United States.  This is total insanity but everything here is public record, listed, not only with Global Security but Jane’s also.  You couldn’t even think about getting missiles of this range to hit Iran.  They couldn’t be launched for such a short range.

CHRISTINE RUBIN AND WOLFGANG BLITZER OF CNN

CHILDISH GAMES

The only enemy Israel is talking about now is Iran.  Friends who know nuclear weapons tell me there is no reasonable proof Iran is developing weapons at all and that the news stories we see are “plants,” misrepresentations of fact just like all the Bush era terror alerts and the phony bin Laden tapes.  Those of us who remember Iran/Contra learned that there is a secret relationship between Israel and Iran where alot of money is made and business done while threats go back and forth.

Both countries are poor liars.  Iran makes noise to pretend to be “Islamic” and Israel makes noise to get more money from the US and take the focus off their ethnic cleansing.  No American, especially no American Jew should get involved.  This is a game for suckers.

JEW OR AMERICAN, WHY IS THERE NOW A DIFFERENCE?

Jews were blocked from full participation in American society until 30 years ago.  They may have had money and massive power, especially through control of key industries and shared control of organized crime with their Italian partners but real Jews, everyday people, were not treated well.  Real Jews are doctors, lawyers, teachers and even still drive cabs.  The gang that talks about Israel or tries to run the US government aren’t real Jews.  They are something different, but what?

First of all, nobody knows the truth.  What do you do when someone comes to you and tells you Israel is going to be destroyed, the Jewish homeland?  You give money and try to help.  How do you know that the people coming to you are liars and cheats?  When you hear, all day, every day, about how violent the Palestinians are and how they tried to wipe out the Jewish settlers, you can’t help but hate them.  Problem is, what you are told isn’t true.  Really, nothing is true.  Things are complicated and it takes intelligence and humanity to solve problems. 

There is more money in ethnic cleansing and lying about it, keeping up world tensions, causing wars and selling both sides weapons.  Israel is not the first country to do this, it is just better at it than most.

I just got back from 10 days in Af/Pak.  I met alot of wonderful people.  Not one of them said they hated Jews.  I didn’t meet a single person who wouldn’t invite a Jew into his home.  I also talked to many officials, not at a minor level, who I know talk to their Israeli counterparts and have good relationships but don’t talk of it openly.  Yes, it is true, many people in Afghanistan and Pakistan openly hate Jews and hold extreme views.

This has to be stopped through education, through understanding and through developing real societies that work to end all extremism.  However, Israel and the United States have become as extremist as some of the areas of the Islamic world.  Extremism is the problem, not people, not even religion.  The biggest cause of extremism is lack of education.  A huge problem is that the highly educated countries, both Israel and the United States are now fostering a “Taliban type” extremism through, not lack of education but misinformation and propaganda.  When tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, economically minimized and with little or public education and health turn to religious extremists, we see a problem we can solve with social programs.  When advanced cultures sink into extremism, we can only be reminded of the disasters of the last century, war, holocaust and the massive suffering brought on when a marriage of power, technology and insane nationalism nearly destroyed the entire world.  This is the same mistake we need to fear now.

WHAT CAN AMERICAN JEWS DO?

Taking a careful look at the propaganda is a start.  Honest discussions about a solution in Israel that involves human values, not ethnic cleansing, needs to be addressed.  Dishonesty about the real history of the region and how so many lies have been told about the roots of terrorism, roots all are responsible for, need to be addressed.  This is a human problem, not one for bumper sticker intellectualizing, the level of intellectual interchange we are currently enjoying.  It should be insulting to any righteous Jew. 

Being tough is one thing.  Being human is another.  The inability to know when to be either because belief systems are built on lies and propaganda destroys, not just credibility, but the moral basis of our lives.  Strong people make moral decisions based on truth.  For decades, we have all learned to feed on lies.  It has made us children, malicious children, no better than those we oppose.

gpd

A POSTSCRIPT FROM JIM W. DEAN

HERITAGE TV

ATLANTA

Some might call this having a ’spirited discussion’. But the Israeli Knesset passed a resolution years ago banning certain words from being used on the floor when members were addressing each other. I apologize for not being able to present it today as it is buried deep in the files somewhere. But it generally was a list of the nastiest names you can think of…and it was a very very long list I promise to try to find it and forward along. It is a gem.

She had been nonviolently demonstrating against Palestinian home demolitions with fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct action methods and principles.

An Israeli military police investigator, who was part of the team that investigated Rachel’s killing, testified today. In his testimony he stated that:

• He never inspected the site where the killing occurred; nor did he ever sit inside the D9 bulldozer to see for himself the view the driver had and what the field of vision was.
• He admitted that the Israeli military’s D9 bulldozer regulations state that the D9s should not be operated with civilians in close proximity. He failed to question the bulldozer driver about these regulations or make them part of the military police investigation file.
• He received a court order authorizing Rachel’s autopsy under the condition that an official from the U.S. Embassy be present, and at the time informed the court that the condition would be upheld. Subsequently, he made no effort to ensure that this condition was upheld, nor does he know if anyone else did, stating he did not consider the follow-up his responsibility. He also failed to forward the final autopsy report to the court, even though this was required, stating that his commander did not require him to do so and that he simply did not pay attention to the court order. Dr. Hiss ultimately performed the autopsy without an American Embassy official present.
• To his knowledge, no ISM member was arrested the afternoon of March 16 for interfering with Israeli military activities.

American eyewitness Gregory Schnabel, the fourth and last eye-witness called to testify, also testified today, providing his account of the killing of Ms. Corrie. Gregory testified that he saw Rachel climb to the top of the pile of dirt being pushed by the bulldozer and that she was visible to the driver.

He also testified that a bulldozer had come close to himself and another ISM member that afternoon, stopping just short of hitting them, which led him to believe that the demonstrators were visible to the driver.

The trial will resume on Sunday, March 21, 2010, at 9 a.m. at the district court in Haifa.

For more information, visit: http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/trial

ISRAELI BIN LADEN

SAYS BIN LADEN “WON’T” BE TAKEN ALIVE…DOES HE MEAN “CAN’T?”

HOLDER SEEN AS SOFTENING PUBLIC TO ACCEPT BIN LADEN’S DEATH IN 2001

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

The scandals from the Bush era seem endless, endless and never dealt with.  One of the biggest is the hunt for Osama, a hunt that cost hundreds of lives and, literally, billions of dollars, a hunt that unofficially ended with Osama bin Laden’s death on December 15, 2001.  We knew it, Pakistan knew it and Benezir Bhutto even announced it long ago.  For years, America has been chastising her allies and even her own military for their failures, especially the failure to catch Osama bin Laden.  Now we are warned it will be impossible.  No kidding.

Last month I was briefed by the highest sources of the Pakistani military.  One of our more private discussions was on bin Laden.  I know, we know and they know he is dead.  Nobody has seen nor heard from bin Laden since he announced HE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11.  However, a series of sadly phony videos and audio tapes have been released, all tracked down to sources tied directly to Israeli intelligence services, have been presented by the media without any verification, a media, frankly, also tied directly as with FOX, ABC, NBC and CBS or as with CNN, through Wolf Blitzer, also to Israeli intelligence services.

Now, Attorney General Eric Holder has announced, in his own sly way that “bin Laden won’t face trial.”  Holder knows something.  He knows what they know in Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, France, Britain, Germany, Canada, Iran, India and so many other countries, something America has been afraid to admit.

Why?

How do you lie for years, a fraudulent lie, not only lying about bin Laden’s death but lying about his involvement in terrorist acts.  In fact, we have no idea who was responsible for 9/11, not really.  We saw planes, we also tracked down some suspicious payments and have clear evidence of a highly complex conspiracy, one that goes much further than 19 hijackers whose remains have never been found. 

So many lies, Barb Olson’s phone call to her husband about “box cutters” never happened, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and General Myer lied under oath as did many who testified before the commission and now we find much of the evidence was falsified or many issues, like Building 7, the one that was “pulled down” with no engineer or preparation, were never allowed to be investigated.  In fact, the Commission was a fraud.  Here is how they put it:

• 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue .  
• Commission Chair Tom Kean and co-chair Lee Hamilton authored  Stonewalled by the C.I.A., outlining how the 9/11 Commission was crippled by lies and destroyed evidence at the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency.
• 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”  
• 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”  
• 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”  
• And the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – recently said ”At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened”.
• He also said ”I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

WHY DIDN’T I HEAR OF THIS BEFORE?

Funny thing, whenever a “news cycle” with one of these stories came around, so did a new bin Laden tape or terror alert.  If not that, it was a new operation announced in Iraq or something else.  As time went on, the Commission moved on with life, realizing that we were sunk so deeply into a quagmire of lies that they felt nothing could be done.   For every question, a new lie, a new terror alert, a new invasion, a new enemy, a new “evil doer” came into view, torture, rendition, Soviet style “show trials” or military tribunals pushed a real search for the truth out and away.

TWO WARS, FALSE PRETENSES AND A DEAD BIN LADEN TO FIGHT

When President Bush did a stand-up routine joking about looking for missing WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) he thought his “cover story” for Afghanistan would stay intact.  Anything can seem funny, not matter how inappropriate when you are a class clown who has never had to meet an obligation of any kind, personal, professional, military or otherwise.  A joke or two and, if challenged, the tantrum of the typical narcissist put on as a show.  For 8 long years Bush thru hundreds of tantrums, dozens of them public.  A review of the very few news conferences from the Bush era show continual deception and a total lack of understanding, not only of geopolitics or military operations but of the moral questions involved in going to war under false pretenses.

People can be killed, Amerians, Iraqis, soldiers, children and in numbers uncountable.  Death and suffering became so common place that Americans said nothing when the sacrifice and suffering of their own troops became subjects of humor and derision by a President, Cabinet and Congressional leadership conveniently short of real military experience though nearly all were “of age” during the Vietnam War.

HOLDER, TRUTH’S “BACKDOOR MAN”

Holder’s carefully crafted warning that bin Laden would never be taken alive is to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, the announcement so many should fear, fear if they know what it is really saying.  He is not saying that he has done a psychological profile on bin Laden, he isn’t even saying bin Laden was probably killed recently.  America is being softened up by President Obama’s “backdoor man.”

Holder is telling us, those of us who were briefed long ago, that bin Laden has been dead for many years but brought out from the grave at election time, “bilking Congress for money” time and “scaring the folks during their morning coffee time,” all done for profit, for show and at a cost in money and lives uncounted.

Everything said about Osama bin Laden has been deception.  Think of every time bin Laden’s name has been used by a public official who had been briefed in December 2001 that Osama bin Laden was dead.

Every word they uttered on bin Laden, perhaps every word uttered on anything else has been a lie.  Line them up, they number in the hundreds, so many names, so many liars.  None of them died in a gully in Afghanistan while on a George W. Bush “Where’s Waldo” hunt.

THE “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP” IS DEAD

LEARN SOME OF THE “WHY” BEING KEPT FROM YOU

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Clinton and Joint Chief’s Chairman Mike Mullen have all recently visited Israel on two issues, reliable information that Israel was planning an attack on Iran, a plan designed to push America into a war our leaders believe is both wrong and likely to risk a global nuclear confrontation with Russia and the building of a massive housing project on the Arab side of Jerusalem in violation of numerous agreements, a project that is likely to cause a spike in world terrorism and send thousands of new fighters to Afghanistan to face American forces there.

This is the worst point in the history of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel since the founding of that nation in 1948 but these are not the only reasons, not these and the arrogant and intractable attitude of Israel’s leaders nor being caught in lie after lie, lies told to their financial backer and closest ally, the United States.  Here is some background on CENTOM Commander, General Petraeus’ shocking briefing:

On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region…

 “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.” But Petraeus wasn’t finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command — or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations.  The Mullen briefing and Petraeus’s request hit the White House like a bombshell… pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with the chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. … Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.

Israel didn’t. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister:

 “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: “The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.” The message couldn’t be plainer: Israel’s intransigence could cost American  lives.

The deterioration started long before this and can be tracked by changing perceptions in the Obama administration whose leaders are heavily “pro-Israel” but lack the extremist convictions of the Zionist/extremist group that surrounded President Bush.  When Obama took office, even Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, one of the most prominent Israeli proponents in the country, had become aware of the extent of Israeli involvement in areas that had taken the “special relationship” into an area of disaster for the United States.  This is what was discovered:

• The military and intelligence organizations in the United States had been penetrated by Israel, not only through our normal broad partnership but the planting of “moles,” many from the Christian Zionist community who were taking direction from Israel and not the United States.  The result wasn’t just limited to falsification of intelligence, both leading to endless phony terror alerts and non-existent enemies but to skewing operations in a manner to guarantee their failure with significant American cost in both lives and money.
• The massive spy network uncovered by Sibel Edmonds had been tracked, almost entirely to Israel.  Edmonds had been silenced by National Security Letters issued by John Ashcroft, leading Christian Zionist in the Bush Administration and constant “private” visitor to Israel.  After 6 years of spying at the highest levels of the White House, Department of State, Congress and the Pentagon, the network grew even more, accessing nearly all top US intelligence and selling it on the open market. 
• Most disastrous of the stolen intelligence was the data on the new JSF, the F35 Joint Strike Fighter.  All data on this new $300 billion dollar project fell into Israeli hands in 2008, information that may have turned the air superiority fighter meant to rule the skies for the next 30 years into a “target sled.”  This is the biggest intelligence attack on the US since the Pollard/Israeli scandal.  Pollard, an American Jew reputedly associated with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, stole America’s battle plans for the defense of NATO, our entire spy/surveillance network plans and full ultra-top secret detailed plans that could have negated America’s nuclear deterrent during the most dangerous times of the Cold War.  Pollard’s information was sold to the Soviets by Israel, information that could have let Russia win World War III.
• The Israeli attack on Gaza was timed to an American change of administration and done without consultation.  Broad intelligence sources indicate that the attacks were not in relatiation to any terrorist activity but are spoken of “behind closed doors” by top US officials as ethnic cleansing not unlike the issues that brought NATO into conflict with Serbia.  The systematic nature of the attack, destroying water-treatment, schools, hospitals, food storage, power generation and the massive loss of life, especially among children, has soured many in the Obama camp on Israel
• Israel’s use of the Jewish lobby in the US to hold up President Obama’s domestic agenda and their use of Jewish controlled media to embarrass the President has caused more bitterness.  With Jewish controlled/owned Fox, CNN (Wolf Blitzer, formerly of the Jerusalem Post), ABC, CBS, NBC networks and other major news sources all working in concert against, particularly President Obama’s health care initiative, Israel is seen as “flexing its muscle” even more.  The believed rationale is the removal of all non-Jews from Israel, dead or alive, with a powerless US government paying the bills and fighting the massive terrorist backlash for generations.
• The Israeli agenda of working with India to destabilize Pakistan, organize terror attacks there and, less publicly known, in Afghanistan and Iraq, some against American targets, can no longer be ignored by the current administration, Secretary Gates, General’s Mullen and Petraeus.  Israeli’s “dynamic duo,” Senators McCain and Lieberman, though still holding important committee assignments on the hill, are being held increasingly in disrepute in the United States.  When Israel sends these two on errands, it no longer carries the weight and power of the United States as it had during the Bush administation.
• Re-examination of a number of terrorist attacks during the Bush administation, particularly in Europe, show a clear “Mossad footprint,” something adding credence to the hypothesis that the “war on terror” and intelligence failures in Iraq had been heavily influenced by Israeli sources, many of the same individuals tied to the Edmonds spy affair, many close to, not only Israel but President Bush and Vice President Cheney.  Recently a secret El Al/Israel flight from JFK in New York has been discovered, a flight authorized by top Bush officials, one previously kept secret and now being tied covering up 9/11 intelligence failures.  The El Al Boeing 747 left only hours after the 9/11 attack, at a time all air traffic in the United States was grounded.

With nearly all Arab/Muslim governments aligned behind the US, including a softening of tensions with Iran, Israel feels it must act quickly.  However, the US no longer has any strategic requirement for a relationship with Israel.  What had been seen as a potential ally, perhaps now wrongly so, in the region is now generally perceived as a “runaway train” that the United States can no longer go to the United Nations time after time to protect from sanctions, 32 times thus far.  Israel clearly feels it has the United States “over a barrel” with control of media, a massive AIPAC lobby working against American policy and huge new financial influence over the upcoming Congressional elections handed over to them by the highly controversial 5/4 Supreme Court “free speech” election funding decision  clearly meant to aid Israel further in her ability to intimidate Congress.

Unofficially, Israel has moved to the top of America’s “terrorist watch list” and is now drifting toward “evildoer” status, not only by the White House but, more broadly, through top defense officials who now perceive Israel as a threat to the United States.

THE ABOMINATION OF “FAITH BASED ” WARFARE

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

The “war on terror” has been like no other.  America has kidnapped and tortured dozens, hundreds, even thousands of innocent civilians, bombed poor villages off the map and turned on its own citizens.  We hold mock trials, hire mercenaries and have covered up so many crimes, from rape to murder to massive corruption and even treason that we have become unrecognizable as the country we were even in 2000.  America moved from “faith based initiatives” as a way of expanding public charities to “faith based” foreign policy which has become the greatest tragedy in our history since the Civil War.

How did the “faithful,” our rural and southern Evangelical Christian community, long known to Americans as the most generous and kind of her people allow themselves to be led into the abyss of sin?  The answer is tied to belief, trust and vulnerability in an age where the science of psychology has created a massive industry using the tools of mass communication to vilify, deceive and debauch.  How can a community whose history is steeped in financing missions around the world, China, Africa, South America, building hospitals, schools, orphanages, training generations, building trade unions and developing democratic principles become an instrument of fear and hate?

It didn’t happen by accident, there was a plan, well conceived, well executed and driven by only one thing, something very close to the heart of Christ himself, money.  Christ knew about money and man’s love of it.  He spoke of that love often as Christians and Muslims both know very well, as Christ the savior and son of God to Christians is also one of the most important prophets of Islam.  What were the weaknesses in the Evangelical Christian community that allowed Christian Zionists, a fringe group with the “moral flexibility” to allow a culture of greed, sexual perversion and unrighteousness to lead the “flock” into what will prove inevitably to be a generation not unlike Benjamites, who embraced sin.

A LOOK AT OUR PAST

America has always had divisions.  The first settlers resented those who came after.  The North exerted financial control over the South leading to war, a war few knew had little to do with the issue of slavery but more economic exploitation to the point of colonialism.  There was strife between urban and rural populations and regular upheavals caused by periodic economic collapses driven by manipulations of hard currency vs paper.  Later, control of the nation’s new rail system subjected rural America, that and predatory banking practices, to an economic assault that brought on generations of poverty.

During the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century, the face of the nation changed drastically with massive immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.  Jews and Catholics flooded into the United States, with them came political traditions inconsistent with American values.  Jews were often Socialists, vocal and radical proponents of economic equality thru the destruction of the “Robber Baron” system that had taken financial control of America.

Catholics were thought to be allied with a Church in Rome that taught that living in a democracy was a sin and that only nations with Kings were answerable to Rome.  Our history books have erased this and so much else.  That same fear was a major issue as late as 1960, when John F. Kennedy ran for president.  It was spoken of continually and was a critical apect of the campaign.

CHARLATANISM

Two films, long forgotten, frame the concept of the “country hick” charlatan, the sociopathic manipulator, using charisma, charm and wile to enrich himself, even when it means disaster for those around him.  Burt Lancaster as Elmer Gantry and Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd are the films.  We have forgotten their lessons.  Every time I see or hear John Hagee, I think of Elmer Gantry.  Rural America is famous for its fear of outsiders, its trust, often blind trust of “its own,” a trust so often used with malevolence.  Hagee is an artist at this as have been so many behind him.  Hagee is different, though, he, unlike his predecessors like Gerald L. K. Smith who warned of Zionism and Israel as the downfall of America, has embraced Zionism and, in the process, grown rich and fat at their coffers.

Since the late 1870s, fear of Zionism, seen as a plot by Jews who controlled, and still do to a large extent, the world’s banking system, to destroy Christianity was a primary component of Evangelical Christianity.  Backed, in the 20th century by Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker, Thomas Edison, Charles Lindbergh and hundreds of other prominent Americans who openly advocated policies warning of the dangers of Zionism, spread even thru the Catholic community thru the broadcasts of Father Charles Coghlin, the “Rush Limbaugh” of his time, Evangelical Christianity held much different views than today.

As late as 1940, 80% of Evangelical Christians and over 50% of Americans, when polled, thought Hitler’s policies toward the Jews were justified.  However, a powerful German propaganda machine presented a much different view of the extent of persecution than we learned of later.  Most Americans, fearful of ” Zionism,” a concept held in wide disrepute as the antithesis of Christianity, supported Germany’s exclusionistic policies as consistent with their faith.

However, during this same period of strong feeling and political activism, much during the economic disaster of the Great Depression, faith healers, revivalists and “snake oil” preachers roamed the land, bilking trusting locals out of their savings, sexually abusing unsuspecting believers and creating a “softened” moral climate that opened the door for later transgressors like Jimmie Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, Tom Delay, John Hagee and John Ashcroft.

FROM AMERICANISM TO ZIONISM AND THE “ROAD TO SIN”

The marriage of convenience called “neo-conservatism” that melded Zionism to Christian Evangelists and Catholic abortion foes out of a cynical desire for political power would never have been possible without the twisted theology of the “Apocalypse/Rapture cults” and the growth of their heresy.  Building off obscure scriptural references and wildly misconstrued interpretations, mythical religious cults sprung up, heavily backed by supporters of Israel and America’s media giants, now almost all under control of pro-Zionist elements. 

With the initial stated goal as the protection of Israel, the program quickly became more than obvious.  America’s Evangelical Christian community had fallen into a trap and were now supporting war against the world’s Islamic community, openly supported suspension of Constitutional guarantees, backed pre-emptive aggressive war, torture and eventually found themselves supporting a corrupt administration widely discredited for lying to the public and sacrificing hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives for personal gain.

Duped by a combination of a radical and extremist government in Israel seemingly adhering to policies warned of over a century ago, a policy designed to bring about the downfall of the Christian West and short sighted political groups in the US bent on creating a neo-feudal oligarchy and defacto totalitarian state,  Christian Evangelists have been faced with seemingly endless series of betrayals, failures and deceptions.

BELIEF, IMMODERATION AND IRRATIONALITY

Today we find ourselves embroiled in a decade long war in Afghanistan and a “victory” in Iraq quickly slipping between our fingers.  Without the willingness on the part of American Christians to both follow a path suggested as one meant to bring on global holocaust, a path based on heretical doctrine, and a desire for a return to a militaristic and expansionistic religious politic as that enacted by the Greco-Roman hierarchical church of the Middle Ages, the “flavor” of today’s “crusader” wars would be different.

Though an examination of the global economic and political ramifications of our current wars leads inexorably to the conclusion they are wars for profit, colonial expansion and control of resources, wars meant to destabilize the world economy and centralize power beyond unseen malevolent forces, we still send our children to fight under a rationale we know in our hearts to be false, killing for corruption, debasement of human values and domination by extremist forces and oligarchies.

THE MARRIAGE LEADING TO THE GATES OF HELL

When politics, Zionism and the defense and oil interests in the US combined with the unschooled religious community disaster was the only potential result.  With information management from a controlled press at levels never before seen in any modern nation joined with extremist religious doctrine tied to a mythic heresy of rapture and the apocalypse, the door was left open for forces of nearly demonic evil to exploit the flaws in man’s character exposed in this “marriage” of pure evil with fear and weakness.

Was it all planned, the economic collapse, the loss of faith, the feeling of exploitation and distrust?  Was the end goal always the humiliation of America’s Christian Evangelist community and the weakening of Americas moral base?  If so, was this done only for profit or some darker agenda?

Major Jim Gant in Afghanistan

By Khalil Nouri STAFF WRITER
VETERANS TODAY

Major Jim Gant, an Army silver star Green Beret hero, considered the best field grade officer for the “AfPak Hands” program. He is also the author of “One Tribe at a Time” and an outspoken advocate of Afghan tribal engagement strategy (TES), who lived and breathed the notion for years, and outstandingly, he has the ears and attention of the brass in his chain of command.

Gant’s proposal centers on the idea that, “it’s insignificant as how many troops are deployed; it’s how they can be best utilized.” He is promoting; the field American “tribal engagement teams” (TET) to live with — and fight alongside — Pashtun tribesmen, who dominate Southern and Eastern Afghanistan with little faith in, or loyalty to, the central government. His advocacy is to use the centuries-old tribal code of honor, justice and revenge, called “Pashtunwali” system (the only system of governance) to defeat the Taliban.

But the question remains: would the tribal strategy that perceived magically to charm Afghanistan’s future be achievable?

Major Gant’s outstanding and enthusiastic presentation not only reflects the correct itinerary but also in close vicinity of integrating the real aspects of centuries old Afghan tribal structure into a practical model that could eventually change the entire dynamics of the war in Afghanistan.

Moreover, if this is a chance for succeeding and bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan, it will mean; learning from our mistakes and more importantly, recognizing the obstacle in terms of culture, norms, geopolitics, and religion, thus, not to deny them and not to ignore them.

Mission Hurdles

Taming “Yaghistan” (the land of the unruly) — as the Afghans traditionally labeled Afghanistan — is the most burdensome and complex mission since WWII; first and foremost, nothing fundamentally will change in the region until the issue with the Durand line is resolved. The creation of the border line since inception, its failure then — to regularize the position, and its continued failure, should be a justifiable reason for a thorough UN evaluation and revision.

As a clear reminder that, ever since the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been adversaries, with the tribal areas and the Northwest frontier territories being at the center of the dispute.

As Emir Abdul Rahman, ruler of Afghanistan when the Durand mission did its work in (1893) writes to the Viceroy of India, warning him of the dangers of splitting the peoples of the tribal areas. “If you should cut them out of my dominions,” he said, “they will neither be of any use to you nor to me: you will always be engaged in fighting and troubles with them, and they will always go on plundering.”

Within seven years, the Emir was to be proven right, with the British having to put down major uprisings, dealing with — North West Frontier Agencies (NWFA) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) — Chitral, Bajaur, Malakand, Waziri and Afridi wars, and now, history is repeating itself except with vast span of the Pashtun belt gearing for a state of chaos.

The Irony is that, with the current coalition policy of expanding the Afghan Army, the Emir was arguing back in 1893 that the “brave warriors” of the tribal regions would “make a very strong force” and that only a ruler of Afghanistan could “make them peaceful subjects”. Divorced from Afghanistan, they are the problem— within Afghanistan, they could be part of the solution. Hence, broadening Major Gant’s policy to the Pakistan’s neglected areas of FATA and NWFP without resolving the Durand line will be hopeless.

Aside from the above obscurity, many Afghans and Afghan-Americans believe that no matter how well-trained or Afghan-culture sensitive U.S. Special Forces are, they will never know enough about a specific local area and its indigenous norms to carry out their daily counterinsurgency campaign effectively; because the people will never trust them enough to share everything. Perhaps one bonanza by TET was effectively struck with the Mangal tribal elder Malik Noor Afzhal — as Major Gant calls him “Sitting Bull” — and apparently no other tribal elders were put to attest for the workability of such doctrine.

In fact, this is also Major Gant’s main challenge as he states in his paper; “The situation at each tribe will be complex and will vary with each tribe.”

True, tribal structures are not uniform across Afghanistan, they are very complex, and there is no standardized or “one size fits all” setting. Unlike the Paktia tribes— the traditional political authorities are in fact village and or tribal elders and or local Mullahs or Maulavis; who do not share power equally and do not exist in a “traditional” sense of the word, and very much will not invigorate the social and moral fabric of the society— However, the Durrani and Ghilzai tribes in Southern Afghanistan have no tradition of raising volunteer forces (Arbaki in Pashto language) to maintain local Security. This is why Taliban managed to emerge and successfully (but deceitfully) sell themselves as neighborhood Gladiator figures, protecting regular folks from marauding warlords.

But the tribal leaders among the tribes still command considerable respect and exert influence in their communities. The fact is that, tribal leaders with deep roots in local communities can make a difference, and therefore, the tribal mindset differs tribe to tribe throughout Afghanistan.

The costs

In fact, as a roadmap to success for Afghanistan, TES will require a complete paradigm shift in Pentagon’s operational culture— from conventional risk-averse micromanagement to unconventional decision making, Command and Control and Rules of Engagement. This is a significant cost in addition to financially prospering the tribes.

The risks

For this — One Tribe at a Time — model to bear fruit; the deploying courageous volunteers TET must be “sincere and devoted volunteers” for popular resistances against oppressive forces. Whenever such agile and courageously committed fighters are introduced to live in local tribal communities and even when they are personally driven to help the society fight against local oppressors. They still could be viewed in the eyes of indigenous that they are actually working for a larger, but hidden, oppressive Empire,— United States — as was the case with the “best and brightest” in Vietnam, then the results can be disastrous— because the real motive is viewed as fabrication, a sham, and at heart, a lie.

The gravest concern is, the U.S. may eventually again abandon Afghanistan — as foreign powers come and go — and the tribes to whom coalition forces have promised long-term support will be left to be massacred by a vengefulTalibn.

If Obama’s recent call to start bringing the troops home in 18 months, and also with fragile NATO alliance that the Dutch to depart first and then the Canadians, will likely to create an alliance of worrisome tribal chieftains whether to continue trusting the U.S. and NATO further. This could tip the balance into a state of confusion and may cause reluctance to prop up tranquility in Afghanistan.

Despite the fact that the code of (Pashtunwali) amongst some tribes is considered primary than the religion of Islam, but still If TET does not have the same devotion towards Islam as the inhabitants do, then they are considered outsiders. The mosque remains the clandestine decision place for a quick close-door Jirgah (Grand Assembly) where one cannot even infiltrate as what was discussed amongst the tribal members. At the end of the day, the final decision will network itself in agility to other mosques where public awareness could multiply exponentially.

Needles to say that the Afghan society is a barely penetrable jungle— with its more than fifty ethnic groups, 400 plus tribes and vast sub tribes and clans, religious groups, mystical brotherhoods, mafia networks, village communities and nomads’ camps, with the clienteles of political actors, the militias of the warlords, bands of robbers and urban neighborhoods, plus marriage alliances, professional guilds and internationally networked trade and bazaar structures. In such a jungle, even the gutsiest gladiator with all his might is quickly lost.

Alternate Solution

Day by day a growing chorus of voices is heard saying that the tribes are the solution in Afghanistan. This very powerful grassroots movement is blossoming; and it can give the Afghan people new hope, self-esteem and a sense of belonging. But, to make sure that there is success to this notion, an effective bottom-up approach tool is required to match the existing top-down approach so that jointly both approaches can rescue the nation.

One must bear in mind that, the importance of understanding the strength and degree of tribe and clan-based loyalties and what happens when foreign occupiers interfere in the traditional order of balance and stability that took thousands of years to set in place; foreign displacement of Pashtun authority will always result in resentment exponentially within layers of tribal hierarchy.

After decades of wars, famine and all around instability; dire sociological stresses, severe ethnic tensions, imbalance of societal structure, and downward native vibrancy (depression) has resulted; but, all could be overturned if a robust and well intended bottom-up approach can be introduced.

But, to overcome chronic national symptoms and restore the nation’s cultural, social, political and economic health; a practical blueprint should be defined as a framework in terms of “accessible resources.” The very necessary and indispensable resources that Afghanistan desperately needs today are Expatriate Afghans as well as the underutilized Afghans inside Afghanistan.

The current U.S. military operation in Afghanistan is just beginning to realize the importance of the tribes. That is why; the Community Defense Initiative (CDI) is now being enthusiastically backed by General Stanley McChrystal. This is a huge transition for the U.S. and NATO operations that can be valued more deeply by engaging a framework for an Afghan-American to tribal Afghan cause.

Unlike Iraq, the degree of tribal complexity in Afghanistan is much higher. We believe, enlisting tribes against militants not only carries risks in terms of promoting warlord strategy, but also could undermine the hard work which was done previously disarming proscribed militias. Therefore, in contrary to Major Jim Gant’s doctrine, our approach is – a clear Afghan solution to an Afghan cause – considered a nonmilitary one.

According to the Census Bureau, there are between 200,000 plus Expatriate Afghan-Americans. Their ethnic backgrounds reflect ethnicities of all Afghan origins, and most have preserved their close ties with their tribes and clans inside Afghanistan. Culturally, their family bond and social intimacy is as strong as ever. Furthermore, the strength and degree of tribe and clan-based loyalties is the solid foundation that has knitted the tribal constituents for centuries.

Placing the above circumstances into perspective; the question arises as to how a thriving bottom-up approach can be implemented?

The real method

Initially the formula can be an empowerment of face to face interaction between; an Afghan in the U.S. (a tribal representative) and an Afghan in Afghanistan (a tribal leader), whose tribal roots are connected and are in acquaintanceship to each other. In regards to a tribal representative, he is not only loyal to his tribe but also to his adopted counrty the United States. Therefore, a genuine connection with “strings-attached” can be achieved. On the contrary, in the perception of top-down approach, trustworthiness and tribal interlink is unachievable, and evidently has resulted in failure and disappointment.

Major Jim Gant meeting with tribal elders

Furthermore, the tribal leader and tribal representative will be implementing the said mutual interaction exclusively in a business tribal council framework we call “business-Jirgah to business-Jirgah” –- or “Biz Jirgah to Biz Jirgah”— which should be applicable within local responsibilities and local structure, with cost effectiveness in mind, and free of foreign bureaucracies.

In addition, “Biz Jirgah to Biz Jirgah” involves establishing business relationships, and actual business initiatives on a people to people (rather than a nation to nation) basis, where each Afghan tribe is invited and encouraged to establish a business that can work closely with its Afghan-American business counterpoint and eventually grow from micro to macro.

These standardized and fixed priced businesses — specialized assets — can reflect basic human necessities such as potable water, cold storages, fish farms, chicken farms, and so forth; while they can be built in areas that are in compliance with individual tribal approval.

In addition, by using this concept which is in phase with thousands of years of customary Afghan culture, the stigma of foreign intervention is diminished and real dialogue and trust can be developed. As the result, the seeds of trust between Afghan and American business interests are firmly planted, and needed infrastructure projects can be completed within acceptable time-frames and maintained for generations.

This indigenous interaction can not only strike a successful agreement between the tribal players, but it can also be cost effective in terms of non obligation of force protection, since no American Military Civil Affairs or International Development personnel are engaged.

Major Gant’s “One Tribe at a Time” initiative—minus to live with and fight alongside the tribes—can easily be persevered and switched for a genuine and convincing dialogue within the Afghan tribal communities in the United States, Europe and Elsewhere in the world. It is a doable prospect but has to be an Afghan instigation only.

Once the communities inside Afghanistan start ascending towards prosperity, self fortification against intruders and area insurgency will be weakened, and at the end of day, flourishing and self esteemed communities likely to join together and thrive economically with domino effects.

In the initial stages, this program requires full U.S. financial support, so that the average person’s day-to-day necessities come from income he generates; and he can turn away from insurgency recruitment for hire to feed his family.

And finally, no central agency in Kabul can ever know the priority needs of people in every Afghan village, and unity cannot be delivered from the top. But when local leaders, engaged — for an Afghan solution — in the nitty-gritty of local policymaking, practice fairness and inclusion, the people will follow. A weak state cannot be made strong overnight. But it can set up the systems that catalyze strong local communities by adopting village by village “Biz Jirgah to Biz Jirgah” initiatives.

In hindsight, Major Jim Gant does not need to take the risk fighting alongside the tribes to protect them against the militants. With this flourishing economical opportunity, they will do anything to protect themselves and their communities against any obstacle.

Khalil Nouri is the cofounders of New World Strategies Coalition Inc., a native think tank for nonmilitary solution studies for Afghanistan. www.nwscinc.org

What is the cost of rendering a terrorist harmless once and for all by killing him? During the course of 14 months, the CIA used unmanned and heavily armed small aircraft known as drones to stage 15 strikes against the presumed locations of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. On Aug. 5, 2009, on the 16th try, the drones finally managed to kill Baitullah Mehsud.

On that day, a Predator drone was hovering about three kilometers (2 miles) above the house of Mehsud’s father-in-law, somewhere in the Pakistani province of South Waziristan. The drone’s infrared camera sent remarkably sharp images in real time to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The images showed the Taliban leader sitting on the roof of his house, in the company of his wife, his uncle and a doctor.

At that very moment, thousands of miles away in the United States, someone pressed a button, and two Hellfire missiles shot from the drone. Mehsud and 11 others were killed.

This incident is so well documented because it was reconstructed for an article in The New Yorker. But the hunt for Mehsud cost the lives of far more than 11 people. According to estimates, between 207 and 321 people died in the course of the 16 attempts to eliminate Mehsud — and it is certain that not all of them were Taliban fighters.

Obama, Prince of Peace and King of the Drones

So what is the value of eliminating a terrorist? The US’s drone war has been expanded dramatically in the last year and a half, an escalation that began under former President George W. Bush. But his successor, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama, has not just continued the program. He has elevated it to the preferred method for killing al-Qaida and its allies.

Read more at Spiegel Online

THE EXTINCTION OF PALESTINE

Today, Israel, again sealed off the West Bank amid rising tensions after U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden condemned Israel for announcing more settlements on Palestinian land in Jerusalem putting in play this current round in the battle for Holy Land conquest.

Yes, here we go again with another chapter in the over 100 years of conquest and war put forward by the Euro-Zionist visonaries.  So get ready for more imprisonments laced with blood and the dying strewn in the ugly un-holy streets as this march towards the extinction of the indigneous peoples continues.

Look, like the American Indian, I am afraid that Palestine and it’s cultural identity is on it’s final leg to extinction unless something dramatic arises; like a massive invasion of Israel or a policy about-face here in the foggy bottom of the beltway.

While most all recent U.S. Presidents have been quietly empathetic towards the plight of the indigenous peoples of the Holy Land, publically they have had to stand up and pay hommage to the European invaders for fear of losing support in the U.S. Congress where the majority are forced to support the Zionist agenda.

Given the overwhelmingly and substantial Zionist money flow lining the pockets of most in the U.S. Congress married with the massive threats of defeat in political elections waged on them, there can be no logical reason to be believe the US. Congress will turn and support humanity and embrace justice for the occupied and displaced peoples of the region.

Furthermore, within Israel itself, I don’t think the Israeli governors will allow the internal demographic to continue forward unchallenged; meaning I don’t’ think they will allow the Israeli Non-Jews who have many more kids per couple than Israeli Jews to become a majority which is predicted within 25 years.

No no, they will never allow a democratic Israel to be run by an Israeli non-jew Prime Minister or a non-jewish Knesset.  No way!  It’s democracy yes, but only for their people, not all the people.

So Israel must be asking itself how must they move forward with their game plan and keep Israel a growing zionist state against all the prevailing demograhphic changes coming along with that little problem of those millions of people living in sqaulored proverbial concentration camps behind fences that many zealous settlers say “don’t really exist”. 

Should they exterminate Israeli non-jews?  How’s bout a nice massive deportation program for these non-people within Israel? 

As for the occupied peoples, how’s bout a slow methodical push back step by step over time taking lands and pushing the indigeneous peoples further back into the hinter desert lands of Jordan, south into the land of the pharoahs, and/ or north pushing towards Asyria?  A good plan?

The wild cards are the greater Arab states and the X-Factor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Will they take action and stand for humanity?

I say NO for it appears that the USA has got the greater Middle East by the self-interest balls and so I am not sure a 3rd Intifada  uprising supported by Arab states will be in the future. 

It’s more likely that self-interest will continue to be the name of the Arab game and they will continue to be part of the greater globalization agenda where standing for a poor indigenous people simply has no value to them except some alruistic PR brownie points which bascially means nothing! 

As for Iran, do they really want war with Israel and the USA?  Or does Israel secretly want to engage in a war with Iran to light the evolutionary fire and let it fly?  Time will reveal the truth behind the rhetoric so stay tuned to your Tele for it could be a raw steak and lavish baked potato TV dinner night.  How’s bout a Bloody Red Chilean Merlot with your TV war?  Much better than American Idol right?

For me, I wonder in 50 years, what will be the greater Holy Land area snapshot?    Will it be;

• a  Jewish State of Israel for jews only
• a Democratic Israel run by a non-jewish majority
• the modern country of a democratic Palestine for all
• an Islamic republic of Palestine

Although I hope for sanity, peace, and compromise, the Las Vegas odds don’t see peace on the horizon.  There are just too many extremists running around. 

I mean the lack of cooperation and truly disparate cultures continue to clash just like the Native American Indians in the Americas knocked heads with their European invaders ending with the English culture dominating while Indians get to play blackjack and slot machines on some werid thing called a reservation.

For me, it’s just too many extreme views and ways of being that cannot be reconciled. Somethhing has gotta give!

So yeah, I hope I am wrong for the sake of children in the holy land and for the sake of the beloved rich cultures that grace the lands there. but really, I am truly concerned that we have been and continue to be witness to a modern trail of tears.

And so goes evolution!

Your comments, views and opions are appreciated

TERRORISM IS SELDOM WHAT IT SEEMS

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/ Senior Editor

In America, terrorism has meant little.  I won’t allow the word “terrorism” to be used to describe 9/11 until real police investigate it without the Whitehouse interfering and spiriting any potential witness out of the country.  If a real cop looked at 9/11 or the “Crotch Bombing” in Detroit, the most powerful motives would be insurance fraud and stock manipulation followed by a sick totalitarian domestic agenda involving Christian Zionist extremists.  Nobody in a cave in Afghanistan gained anything, money, power, fame or support from 9/11.  No motive, no crime.  To prove a crime, you must prove MEANS, MOTIVE AND OPPORTUNITY. 

Monk, Columbo or Psych are unlikely to end up taking poor dead Osama bin Laden away at the end of the show.  Years ago, when now also dead Benazir Bhutto announced on TV that Sheik Omar, who also killed Daniel Pearl, murdered Osama Bin Laden, the phony press spent days trying to convince us that she made a mistake.  Why does our phony news and government or was that phony government and news, I keep getting confused, try to sell us tired TV plots nobody would watch anymore?

Today, in Pakistan, 39 were killed in Lahore, a city on the Indian border, by suicide bombers.  Lahore is large city, more populace than Chicago and impressive, even beautiful.  It is also dangerous.  I was there a week ago.  Heading to briefings and interviews in town, we had two security vehicles, including a SWAT type squad clearing traffic for us.  To me it seemed like it said, “shoot the idiots in the car in the middle” but what do I know.

The people killed weren’t American journalists, they were ordinary people who were shopping.  This happens a couple of times a week in Pakistan.  Anywhere and everywhere you go, you are reminded you can be killed.  Every daily activity can become a bombing or gunfire can ring out.  It doesn’t seem to stop anyone from living their lives, but you can feel it in the air and see it in the massive security forces, perhaps numbering in the many thousands.   Their children’s schools have to be guarded better than our nuclear weapons storage sites and are.

In 2008, India suffered a significant terror attack on  November 26, 2008 when ten gunmen killed dozens in Mumbai.  The crimes were planned, or so it seemed, in Pakistan and arrests were made there, some claiming just to keep peace with India and some claiming the real planners were caught.  In fact, the truth is unlikely to be known about any of these attacks, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or similar attacks in the US, such as the Detroit “Crotch Bombing” or the London attacks of 2005.

India is the probable culprit for the Lahore terror attack that the US papers, mostly controlled by Israel, a close ally of India, claim was done by Islamic terrorists.  In fact, if anything, the newspaper reports provide reason to believe that these continual attacks, almost daily, are done with Israeli complicity.  This is what any “beat cop” could figure out in a minute.  If a suspect lies to you, a stupid lie and is caught, chances are he is guilty.

Fox News reports Muslims attacked Muslims on the border between India and Pakistan, to me it means India did it and Israel is helping, either in preparation or, minimally, in trying to shift the blame.

We know there are Islamic terrorists, people convinced by extremist religious leaders to  murder innocents as part of a sick system of retribution for real or imagined injustice.  These attacks are seldom the efforts of masterminds but more often the cynical manipulations of sociopathic religious types with a sick agenda.  However, the real terrorist attacks are seldom highly complex, involving training, logistics and extensive intelligence planning.

No serious Muslim terrorist would attack any enemy but Israel, no Islamic terrorist, not really.   Problem is, nobody really attacks Israel.  We now know that the biggest threat Israel ever had was the “invasion” they suffered during the 1967 war.  We now know that it was Israel that did the invading and attacked an American ship, the USS Liberty and murdered 33 sailors to cover their tracks.  Oh how the ADL hates to be reminded of this.  They are at war with the aging survivors of the USS Liberty massacre, choosing Israel over America and murderers over veterans and heroes.   From the official record and the cover-up attempt by Admiral McCain:

Declaration of
Ward Boston, Jr.,Captain, JAGC, USN (Ret.)

Counsel to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry’s investigation into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty

I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their superiors, who had ordered the attack, were well aware that the ship was American.

I saw the flag, which had visibly identified the ship as American, riddled with bullet holes, and heard testimony that made it clear that the Israelis intended there be no survivors. 10. Not only did the Israelis attack the ship with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned three lifeboats that had been launched in an attempt by the crew to save the most seriously wounded — a war crime.

Admiral Kidd and I both felt it necessary to travel to Israel to interview the Israelis who took part in the attack. Admiral Kidd telephoned Admiral McCain to discuss making arrangements. Admiral Kidd later told me that Admiral McCain was adamant that we were not to travel to Israel or contact the Israelis concerning this matter.

Can any country that smuggles 16 murderers with phony passports in and out of Dubai, blow up a school in Islamabad or arrange for a ship to be attacked, let’s say, the USS Cole, be called anything but a terrorist state or “evil doer?”  I think we have proven MEANS.  We sure know the motive.  Can anyone disprove OPPORTUNITY? 

How many of the Dubai “hit squad” are hiding among the Jewish community in the United States?  Reports suppressed by the MSM/Corporate news in America indicate several of the killers are here, hiding from justice. 

Every one of those attacks carries a signature, usually of an intelligence service and requires resources, often within the victim country itself, to cover it up.  An integral part of such plots is often the ability to control an investigation, suppress evidence under “national security” and to manage news.  What country controls airport security, can supply passports from any country or can provide terrorists/agents that can appear to be any nationality or religion?  Only one comes to mind.

Another critical part of such attacks is the ability to blame them on others.  It would be irrational to use highly sophisticated  planning and advanced preparation, things only military and intelligence organizations are capable of and then actually accept blame and the retribution that goes with it.  The game has always been, get a “dupe” to get caught and direct the retribution against a third party.  This is the nature of “proxy warfare.” 

It would be a good guess that all sophisticated terror attacks are really proxy warfare.  As with the current war in Afghanistan, the idea of wildly independent groups, tribes and factions banding together, communicating over continents without being penetrated by intelligence agencies or being monitored somehow is an unimaginable farce.  The reason that Pakistan and the US capture endless “leaders” of the Taliban but it has no effect is that there are hundreds of Taliban leaders, most of whom don’t know the others even exist.

What if the same country that built the MRAP vehicles for the United States Marine Corps was closely allied with another country that supplied the technology to build the IED’s the same vehicles were meant to defeat?  Any good cop would think about this, look at the terrorist training camps India is operating inside Afghanistan and wonder if some of the weapons and technology meant to be used against Pakistan is actually being used on Americans.  Too bad we don’t seem to have any cops around anymore, not real ones it seems.

WHAT IF YOU DON’T REALLY HAVE AN ENEMY WORTH GOING TO WAR WITH? 

We simply make up or “brand” enemies the way we branded Hitler and Tojo during WW2.  How does America explain that it invaded Afghanistan to catch the Saudi attackers of 9/11 who were trained in the United States, financed thru the FBI, Saudis and secret accounts with a certain major insurance company and performed acts no stunt pilot, magician, acrobat or master spy could in a million years, all managed from inside a cave 9000 miles away? 

If Osama bin Laden dies, first you get a double and put out phony threats.  Then you make up new “bin Ladens” as Sibel Edmonds tells us.  If you have to, you recruit them yourself, furnish them with CIA planes to fly them around, all to keep up the pretense of a war that doesn’t exist.  Yes, this is exactly what was testified to, what is in the FBI documents that were classified by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

We got caught hiring our own terrorists and flying them around, financing it all with drug money.  You don’t know this?  Well, it has been reported.  Find it if you can.  If you can’t, ask why?  A good cop would ask, if we could find a good cop.

We simply “branded” the first person that came to mind, poor Osama bin Laden and immediately invaded the first country available that had oil and was easy to beat.  Even that has turned around and bitten us in the behind.

Means, motive and opportunity.

The Detroit bombing attempt was all spy agencies, security companies and big business.  Billions were made in profits.  The 39 dead in Lahore?  Was it India retaliating or was it real terrorists, a crazy religious freak, a dupe and a bomb maker murdering innocent people out of blind hatred?  Any cop knows when he is looking at a street crime or when it is time to call in detectives for a major case.  Anyone know where we can find a cop?

Trust No One

Means, motive and opportunity.

Everything that happens has to be looked at.  The London attacks in 2005 seemed simple at first.  Then we looked at it a bit longer, one of the busses rerouted, stories not matching up and the convenient timing just when Tony Blair had to have a terrorist attack happen. 

Methodologies of Terrorism

Every aggressive act one country perpetrates against another requires something to justify it and sway public opinion.  Would a country blow up a school to justify invading Lebanon or carpet bombing Gaza?  Do people actually think like this?  Of course they do.  This week I watched an evaluation copy of a TV show on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.  One American soldier put it quite simply, “If the Army orders me to kill a baby, I kill a baby.  It is not for me to question the army, it is for me to do my duty to my country.  If the Army says a baby is the enemy and I am told to kill the enemy, I will kill a baby.”  A hundred babies were killed that day by Americans, part of 567 civilians murdered, all unresisting, all unarmed.  Getting a cynical intelligence agency to organize a mass murder to establish a “New World Order” but setting on nation on another or pushing thru an agenda to remove “inconvenient” laws thru stirring up hate and fear is nothing in comparison.   With no more cops, real mass murderers are seldom arrested, many are treated as heroes, some even elected to the oval office. 

We never know.

Was Kennedy murdered by the Mossad, mob or FBI?  The idea that Oswald killed Kennedy with an Italian rifle with a Tasco 4×15 scope is insane.  I have this exact same scope sitting on my desk.  You can’t follow a pedestrian walking on a sidewalk 40 feet away, much less put three shots into a moving vehicle.  I compare this to driving a car while looking thru a drinking straw.  Since that time, a dozen TV shows, maybe two dozen have all reenacted the assassination.  None of the rifles had the same scope, one with screws missing from the mount.  Hell, what do I know.  I was a Marine sniper.  I have no experience with such things.  I know I can’t hit a cantaloupe from 25 feet using this scope while at a bench.  Maybe Oswald couldn’t come up with the extra $3 to buy an M1 carbine or $7 for a Garand, a rifle that could have made the shot from 200 yards with no scope at all, a rifle he had been trained on. 

The things some people do to save a buck….

If the people who control Hollywood want me to think something, who am I to question it.  Were both Kennedys killed because they were trying to prevent Israel from getting nuclear weapons?  That I am still seeing this on TV, recently on NCIS, I will say that things point that direction.  What we do know is that it didn’t involve Cuba or Oswald.  No cop would have bought in on the “Fair Play for Cuba” thing, not with Oswald’s history of moving in and out of Russia.  The smell was pure CIA.

Dallas set the stage for everything since.  Anyone could be killed and, eventually, any country could be bombed or invaded on a whim, all that was needed was the right crime and the proper “patsy.”

Why Use Terrorism?

Terrorism is about fear, nothing else.  Terrorism has one purpose, it is a political act meant to bring about a political end.  People who are afraid, powerless, will turn to people they believe will make them safe.  People in fear will give up their freedoms, sacrifice their institutions, their laws and, most of all, will take on a mob mentality, ready to lash out at any enemy put before them.  When Nero burned Rome, he blamed the Christians and started a “counter-terrorist” campaign.  What he actually wanted was to move people so he could build a huge estate in central Rome.  Burning the city and blaming others was a good way of getting what he wanted.  Think of Nero as George Bush and Caligula as Dick Cheney or is it the other way around.  I keep getting confused.

Terrorism is designed to make people change how they think.  It is one tool of many, terrorism followed by an “evil doer” being name, confirmed, as always, by a rigged investigation and newspapers and TV jumping onboard, always following along, accepting any story without question out of a sudden burst of “patriotism” and the fame and money that goes with it.  Terrorism is like a TV show, like Glen Beck only with real dead people.  It can all be a lie, like professional wrestling or it can be real as anything.

We never know and aren’t allowed to ask.  Asking early on is “unpatriotic” and later on becomes “conspiracy theory.”  Never let a cover story be confused by the facts.

All Terrorism is About Israel…Why?

Our news is always tied to Israel and terrorism.  Israel wants to control the land of Palestine with a state controlled by a single religion, or so they tell us, and for over 60 years millions of others who lived there first seem unhappy about it.  We get news stories telling us one side is “terrorist” and the other side uses tanks to kill children and bulldozers to destroy homes and steal land.  The truth is that both sides use terrorism politically, Israel more powerfully and systematically and Palestinians out of frustration.  Back when it was a “gang war” between Israel and the Palestinians, a war we always got only one side of, it was one thing.  Now Israel has made it personal, using military power paid for by the United States to openly kill civilians on a massive scale. 

When Saddam did the same thing, he was repeatedly hit with Cruise missiles.  With Israel, we give them $1.8 billion in replacement ammunition and hide it in Pentagon accounting as “stored items likely to be used.”

Terrorism is a two edged sword.  In the hands of the powerful, those who can manage news, those who own armies, terrorism is a way of herding a population of sheep into an army of fearful and confused that will hate on cue or send their children half way around the world to chase heroin and oil in the name of safety.  Whenever you hear of a terrorist act, be like a cop. 

MEANS, MOTIVE AND OPPORTUNITY

This is the basis of any criminal case.  If you can prove these three things, you can find who the real criminal is and if, by chance, you have an honest system of  justice, you can jail those responsible unless they are a government, real or “shadow,” themselves. 

Part of any criminal conspiracy is a plan to escape justice.  Only some terrorist acts are done overtly, claiming credit and begging for violent retribution.  Thus, a common plan for any criminal conspiracy is to “brand” a crime as a terrorist act by using either “puppet” spokesman like the “American Taliban,” found to be the grandson of one of the directors of the Anti-defamation  League (ADL) or to “certify”  online “confessions” that are mysteriously located on the internet only by groups like that of Rita Katz, called “Site Intelligence.” 

The goal is always the same, destabilization, fear and chaos in order to bring about some kind of change, cover for an attack, a massive fraud, or some other goal, commercial or geopolitical.  It is always war, war thru deception, war thru proxy and its inexpensive, effective and never exposed as long as control of the media is present.

Only one nation in the world controls the media and that is Israel, thru her surrogate agents around the world.

By Colonel Eugene Khrushchev

The aims and purposes of “Operation Mushtarak” have been a perfect revelation of how an “innovative” approach disperses in a black hole of a familiar, antiquated path, and why high-maintenance troop and time intensive populace-centric COIN (Counterinsurgency) becomes a fiasco.

The grave imperfection:

To do the flawed thing the flawed technique – and at the flawed place:

The initial intentions of the operation were exceedingly go-getting: to sell further the COIN policy and to buy support from multiple target spectators in the US, EU, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The flawed thing
The COIN doctrine, revived and updated by General Petraeus, is one of the most momentous achievements of post-Cold War military intellect.

This is “the right thing,” no doubt about it.

The window of hope to try it in Afghanistan has been irreversibly closed after the US thoughtlessly invaded Iraq when it should have liberated Pakistan from ISI terrorists’ networks—and then to switch simultaneously from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency both in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Nowadays, after almost a decade of US occupation, a mini-surge in Helmand and Qandahar in accordance with classic COIN requirements is just “too much, too late”:

• For the Afghans, the central government supported by the US is perceived as a Kabul faction of companion capitalism, a sickening democratic trio of land, drug and war lords.
• US intelligence in Afghanistan seems unable to come to its grips with a politically incorrect reality that Talibanization, skillfully exploited from Pakistan, is a local resistance to the capital corruption and incompetence of the puppet “government in the box” – to defend a lucrative, narco business from the authorities “protection” chaos, hostile takeover or taxation.
• Even a countrywide inflated-COIN with 400,000 US troops, would be a futile task – because the insurgents enjoy the hideouts (to call them safe havens is insulting) across the border in Pakistan.

The flawed technique
It was a recipe for disaster to put the cart before the horse – the media campaign should be launched after, not during, the “shape” and “clear” phase of the campaign.

Even Anthony Cordesman reluctantly admits that mistake in his latest review.

It could have been a brilliant psyops and disinformation operation on the eve of the special ops raid:

• To deflate expectations for the sake of plausible deniability (if something wrong might happen, it will)
• to preserve and leverage goodwill (if, inshallah, the results exceed expectations) and regain the initiative
• to surprise and arraign the local criminal community of narco-fighters and bomb-makers

The flawed place
Operation Moshtarak should have taken place a long time ago – right across the border, in Pakistan, to shift from open-secret covert JSOC/CIA black ops into unmitigated COIN with redeployment of all US forces from NATO/ISAF countries.

About the author:
Colonel Evgeny Khrushchev, navy brat & army lifer, is the military analyst at RT (Russian TV).

The dream to become a military attaché in Tehran has yet to materialize – the first foreign mission started in Afghanistan as a psyops officer of the 56th Airborne Assault Brigade in Gardez, Paktia, Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the last one was as the First Secretary of the Russian Embassy in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

He has learned something which should surprise no one outside of mainstream media that is the embellishment of combat reports by U.S. military leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Propaganda is the dissemination of ideas and information for the purpose of inducing or intensifying specific attitudes and actions. Because propaganda is frequently accompanied by distortions of fact and by appeals to passion and prejudice, it is often thought to be invariably false or misleading. This view is relative, however. Although some propagandists may intentionally distort fact, others may present it as faithfully as objective observers. A lawyer’s brief is as much propaganda as a billboard advertisement. Education, whatever its objective, is a form of propaganda. The essential distinction lies in the intentions of the propagandist to persuade an audience to adopt the attitude or action he or she espouses.”

Robert L. Hanafin, Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired, Veterans Today NewsFiction of Marjah as City Was U.S. Information War

“The Marjah operation is a tactical and operational effort to liberate 75,000 Afghans from Taliban tyranny, the general said. “There was a Taliban flag flying over the place,” Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal said. “There was also extensive narco-trafficking and production in the area.”

According to Gareth Porter and investigative reporter for the international Independent media network  Inter Press Services (IPS) News Agency,

“For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a “city of 80,000 people” as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marjah was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand.”

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marjah presented by U.S.  military officials and obediently reported by major U.S.  mainstream news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the Afghanistan conflict.

To tell the truth, Marjah is not a city or even a real town, but in reality is a few clusters of farmers’ homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley.

The above photo taken a Badula Qulp not far from Marjah gives readers some idea what Marjah really looks like. Marjah is more of a mud hut village of a few thousand people than a town or city 70 to 80,000. Afghan National Security and ISAF troops rest during an early morning dismounted patrol supporting Operation Moshtarak, Feb. 19, 2010. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez/Released)

“It’s not urban at all,” an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marjah a “rural community”.

“It’s a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds,” said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards. The photo above right of a squad leader with the U.S. 6th Marine Regiment giving a piece of candy to an Afghan child while on a patrol in Marjah clearly shows how prosperous by Afghan standards Marjah really is. This is not a city despite reports from the front including the caption with this picture that says, “U.S. Marines and Afghan National Army soldiers patrolled through a residential area of the city to conduct counterinsurgency operations as part of Operation Moshtarak, a push to rid Marjah of Taliban presence and intimidation. (USMC photo by Lance Cpl. Tommy Bellegarde/Released)

Richard B. Scott, who worked in Marjah as an adviser on irrigation for the U.S. Agency for International Development as recently as 2005, agrees that Marjah has nothing that could be mistaken as being urban. It is an “agricultural district” with a “scattered series of farmers’ markets,” Scott told IPS in a telephone interview.

The ISAF official said the only population numbering tens of thousands associated with Marjah is spread across many villages and almost 200 square kilometres, or about 125 square miles. Marjah has never even been incorporated, according to the official, but there are now plans to formalise its status as an actual “district” of Helmand Province. The official admitted that the confusion about Marjah’s population was facilitated by the fact that the name has been used both for the relatively large agricultural area and for a specific location where farmers have gathered for markets. [See the Map above].

However, the name Marjah “was most closely associated” with the more specific location, where there are only a mosque and a few shops. That very limited area was the apparent objective of “Operation Moshtarak”, to which 7,500 U.S., NATO and Afghan troops were committed amid the most intense publicity given any battle since the beginning of the war.

How did the fiction that Marjah is a city of 80,000 people get started?

The idea was passed on to the news media by the U.S. Marines in southern Helmand. The earliest references in news stories to Marjah as a city with a large population have a common origin in a briefing given Feb. 2 by Marine spokesmen at Camp Leatherneck, the U.S. Marine base there.

The Associated Press published an article the same day quoting “Marine commanders” as saying that they expected to be “holed up” in the 400 to 1,000 insurgents“southern Afghan town of 80,000 people.” That language evoked an image of house to house urban street fighting similar to that conducted in major urban areas of Iraq.

The same story said Marjah was “the biggest town under Taliban control” and called it the “linchpin of the militants’ logistical and opium-smuggling network”. It gave the figure of 125,000 for the population living in “the town and surrounding villages”. ABC news followed with a story referring to the “city of Marja” and claiming that the city and the surrounding area “are more heavily populated, urban and dense than other places the Marines have so far been able to clear and hold.”

The rest of the U.S. News Media fell into line:

The rest of the news media fell into line with that image of the bustling, urbanised Marjah in subsequent stories, often using “town” and “city” interchangeably. Time magazine wrote about the “town of 80,000″ Feb. 9, and the Washington Post did the same Feb. 11.

A review of media releases coming out of the Pentagon and in-country sources including General McChrystall show the misuse of the terms city or town to give the false impression that Marjah is an urban warfare environment.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran reporting for the Washington Post in his article, Taliban resistance slows coalition forces in Marja, Afghanistan said that “Although U.S. and Afghan forces have made steady inroads here [Marja] since beginning the largest joint military operation of the war…, they control only a few modest patches of this farming community, principally around the two biggest bazaar areas. Much of Marja has not yet been patrolled by troops on the ground, and video images from surveillance drones have shown Taliban fighters operating with impunity in those places. U.S. and NATO commanders were not certain whether the insurgents who have lorded over Marjah for the past three years would stay and fight, or flee to parts of Afghanistan with fewer international security forces. It appears clear, however, that many Taliban members here have opted to stay — at least for now. That may mean many more weeks of arduous house-to-house clearing operations for Marines and Afghan forces in this 155-square-mile area, making this a far more complex and dangerous mission than initially envisaged, and possibly delaying some efforts to deliver government services and reconstruction projects to the 80,000 people who live here.”

“It’s early days yet,” said British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the top allied commander in southern Afghanistan. “You’re dealing with a large area, with a lot of people in it. It’s going to take a while to clear it.”

As “Operation Moshtarak” began, U.S. military spokesmen were portraying Marjah as an urbanised population centre. On Feb. 14, on the second day of the offensive, Marine spokesman Lt. Josh Diddams said the Marines were “in the majority of the city at this point.” He also used language that conjured images of urban fighting, referring to the insurgents holding some “neighbourhoods”.

Several media networks did report or quote Lt. Diddams as saying, “”We’re in the majority of the city at this point,” said Lt. Josh Diddams, a Marine spokesman. He said the nature of the resistance has changed from the initial assault, with insurgents now holding ground in some neighborhoods. We’re starting to come across areas where the insurgents have actually taken up defensive positions,” he said. “Initially it was more hit and run.”

CBS News:

General: Maybe Weeks to Reclaim Marjah – Pockets of Militants Fight Marines, Afghan Troops in Second Day of Offensive at Taliban Stronghold

A few days into the offensive, some reporters began to refer to a “region”, but only created confusion rather than clearing the matter up. CNN managed to refer to Marja twice as a “region” and once as “the city” in the same Feb. 15 article, without any explanation for the apparent contradiction.

The Associated Press further confused the issue in a Feb. 21 story, referring to “three markets in town – which covers 80 square miles….”

A “town” with an area of 80 square miles would be bigger than such U.S. cities as Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Cleveland. But AP failed to notice that something was seriously wrong with that reference.

Washington, DC is approximately 68.3 sq mi with a population of 599,657 vs. mainstream media and Pentagon claims that the ‘city’ of Marjah is 80 square miles with a population of 80,000.

Long after other media had stopped characterizing Marja as a city, the New York Times was still referring to Marja as “a city of 80,000″, in a Feb. 26 dispatch with a Marjah dateline.

Why did mainstream media assist the Pentagon in hyping up Marjah?

Just as mainstream U.S. media played an essential propaganda role in building up public support for the Invasion of Iraq, the decision to hype up Marjah as the objective of “Operation Moshtarak” by planting the false impression that it is a good-sized city would not have been made independently by the lower level Marine command structure at Camp Leatherneck.

A central task of “information operations” in counterinsurgency wars is “establishing the COIN [counterinsurgency] narrative”, according to the Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual as revised under Gen. David Petraeus in 2006. That task to use misinformation is usually done by “higher headquarters” rather than in the field, as the manual notes.

The COIN manual asserts that mainstream U.S. news media “directly influence the attitude of key audiences toward counterinsurgents, their operations and the opposing insurgency.” The manual refers to well INFOWARS – “a war of perceptions…conducted continuously using the news media.”

Frankly, COIN narrative is a polite way of saying PROPAGANDA, so that it can be used by mainstream media to call it JOURNALISM in order to hype up or SELL War.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of ISAF, was clearly preparing to wage such an INFO 0r PROPAGANDA  war against the American public in advance of the Marjah operation. In remarks made just before the offensive began, McChrystal invoked the language of the counterinsurgency manual, saying, “This is all a war of perceptions.”

The Washington Post admitted on Feb. 22 that the decision to launch the offensive against Marjah was intended largely to impress U.S. public opinion with the effectiveness of the U.S. military in Afghanistan by showing that it could achieve a “large and loud victory” over what in reality was a small village in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan. This is also a case of both the Pentagon and mainstream media playing upon the basic geographic and cultural ignorance and arrogance of the American public. Put politely mainstream U.S. media and the Pentagon believes WE THE PEOPLE are really as dumb as we act.

The false impression that Marjah was a significant city was an essential part of that PROPAGANDA message.

“The military part of the operation in the region is not over, but the high-profile part of security operations is, the general said. Following the strategy of “clear, hold, build and transfer,” the clear portion of the operation will continue for months, he said. “But we have essentially gotten control of the area now, and we have begun moving into the next phase – the hold and build,” McChrystal said.

“Establishing effective government control in the region is key to success as the operation continues,” McChrystal said. “The governmental part of the operation concentrates on the people and allows the national government to show its leadership in a critical area. It also telegraphs where the military and government will move next.”

“Many people talk about Kandahar,” McChrystal said. “We are absolutely going to secure Kandahar. We are already doing a lot of operations in Kandahar, but it is our intent under [Afghan] President [Hamid] Karzai’s direction to make an even greater effort there.”

Related story:

Operation Moshtarak: Gen. McChrystal Details Lessons of Marja Offensive

http://www.isaf.nato.int/en/article/news/gen.-mcchrystal-details-lessons-of-marja-offensive.html

About the Author

Gareth Porter is an independent historian and star investigative journalist for IPS. He is known for the scholarly rigor of his research and analysis and for the frequent scoops which have undermined official propaganda.

Porter follow’s Amira Hass’s famous dictum about journalism in constantly monitoring the centers of power. He has been driving a truck through the carefully constructed edifice of lies and deception of successive administration’s as often as they have been erected.

In 2009 alone he has produced several in-depth reports casting doubt over the Bush administration’s rationale for war in Iraq, the Taliban-al Qa’ida connection, and the alleged Iranian experiments with a ‘neutron initaitor’ for an atomic bomb.

He is one of the few investigative journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

Biden Gets Disrespected by Israel

What do you you do when someone disrespects you?  Give them boat load of mo’ money!  That’s the real US Policy towards Israel!

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the Palestinians deserve a “viable” independent state with contiguous territory.  He was seeking to reassure them of U.S. support after Israel announced plans to expand a Jewish neighborhood in disputed east Jerusalem.

The Israeli move has overshadowed Biden’s visit, which is meant to promote U.S.-led peace negotiations that are set to begin in the coming weeks.

Great!  Our U.S Vice President comes to make peace and the Israelis have contempt for him while they expect us to pay them over $ 10 billion a year in aid money and defense contracts.  With our economy in tatters and states cutting back on education, we’re asked to stand up for Israel and aid them.  You gotta be kidding!   I mean, the least they can do is pretend they support our positions while they rape us blind!

I mean when Israeli leaders embarrass us, should they expect us to send them more money?  Well, for most of us in the normal world, the answer would be NO.  Heck in our daily lives, we would never reward people for stepping on us.  But this is the bizarro world of Israel where normal is not normal and they have a stranglehold around our proverbial necks, well, bizarro is the norm.

At a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Biden reiterated his condemnation of Israel’s plan and urged both sides to refrain from actions that could “inflame” tensions.

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, whose office announced the new construction on lands Palestinians claim for a future state, said the problem was about timing, not substance.

“We had no intention, no desire, to offend or taunt an important man like the vice president during his visit,” Yishai told Israel Radio. “I am very sorry for the embarrassment. We need to remember that approvals are done according to law even if the timing was wrong. … Next time we need to take timing into account.”

Israel’s planned construction in east Jerusalem was an embarrassing setback for Biden after a day of warm meetings with senior Israeli officials — and drew an unusually harsh condemnation from the vice president.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the Israeli announcement was “damaging” and posed a “great challenge” to restarting peace talks. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the new construction would be the main item on the Abbas-Biden agenda.

“I think the Israeli government is making it almost impossible for us, the Americans and the international community, to take a one centimeter step in the direction of reviving the peace process,” Erekat said.

Palestinian security forces lined the streets of Ramallah as Biden’s convoy of black SUVs made its way from Fayyad’s office to Abbas’ headquarters, a 10-minute drive. Riot policemen, with their backs to the road, faced small groups of Palestinians watching from side roads and shops.

‘Undermines’ trust
In an apparent snub Tuesday night, Biden pointedly arrived 90 minutes late to his scheduled dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and he sharply rebuked the Israeli step — which came just after the Palestinians agreed to a new round of indirect peace talks under U.S. mediation after a 14-month lapse.

I admire Biden’s snub.  Its’ a good start and sending these contemptous jerks a message!  But really, they don’t care what Biden does or says.  They know they have our congress so sewed up that the whitehouse can’t do a dam thing about it accept bend over.  So contempt is just a game they can afford to play and laugh at us while they do it.

Biden said “The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now. “We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them,” he added, warning that “unilateral action taken by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations.”

Fayyad said the Palestinians appreciated “the strong statement of condemnation” by the U.S. administration.

Israel’s opposition Kadima party said it is planning a no-confidence vote in the prime minister in parliament for “destroying” the Biden visit.

The new construction plan also drew a sharp rebuke from Egypt, Israel’s closest ally in the Arab world, and from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“This is absurd. It is disdainful of the Arab and the Palestinian positions and the American mediation,” said Hossam Zaki, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.

Israeli media lambasted the move, calling it an embarrassment.

“A slap heard round the world,” read the headline of a front-page commentary in Israel’s Haaretz daily.

Israel’s refusal to halt building on war-won land has infuriated the Palestinians and undermined their faith in the U.S. as an effective mediator.

President Barack Obama initially called for a complete settlement freeze, but did not take Israel to task when it only agreed to a 10-month moratorium on housing starts in the West Bank. Netanyahu refuses to stop building in east Jerusalem, saying he will never partition the city.

The Palestinians want east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War, as their future capital.

Growing settlements
Earlier this week, the Palestinians reluctantly agreed to indirect negotiations with Israel, with U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell to shuttle between Abbas and Netanyahu in coming months.

Abbas has said he won’t resume direct negotiations without a settlement freeze, leaving the U.S. no choice but to arrange the indirect talks in hopes of ending the impasse.

Growing settlements take up more and more of the land the Palestinians want for their state and make partition increasingly difficult. Today, nearly 300,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and 180,000 in east Jerusalem.

The ongoing construction is also eroding domestic support for Abbas and his policy of trying to negotiate the terms of Palestinian statehood with Israel.

Many Palestinians are critical of U.S.-led peace efforts, saying two decades of on-and-off negotiations have deepened Israeli control over the lands they want for their state, instead of bringing them closer to independence.

The latest Israeli building plan is undermining Abbas, said Erekat. “It’s a really disastrous situation. I hope that this will be an eye-opener for all in the international community.”

At Tuesday’s dinner, Netanyahu told Biden he was caught off guard by the ministry’s announcement, a senior Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the dinner was closed.

While Netanyahu considers east Jerusalem to be part of Israel, he acknowledged the timing of the announcement was poor and said he had no intention of sabotaging Biden’s visit. He stressed that there are no plans to begin construction anytime soon.

Whatever!  It does not matter because contempt governs as;

• Israel will continue to build settlements on real peoples land while calling them people that don’t really exist.
• The U.S. Congress, thus the American people, will continue to send them billions to commit the crime.
• The American people will continue to lose ground at home while funding an occupation in some foreign land that has no real asset value to us.
• American Rachel Corrie was murdered by an Israeli Bullozer in defense of peace on March 16, 2003 and no one in America even knows her name!

What a joke!   The peace NO process!   What do we stand for anyway?

Look, I live in the real world and want education for my kid. I don’t care what Israeli’s or Palestinians want as long as I don’t have to pay for it.  I pray peace find their children someday.  But as for Joe Biden, hey bud, take it up the wazoo because Israelis have one hand up your arce and the other around your neck while we get the shaft .

And so the shakedown continues!

See larger image An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel (Paperback) By (author) Jeff Halper List Price: $27.95 USD New From: $15.01 In Stock Used from: $15.01 In Stock

As I have noted, the far-right in anti-Obama hunt for Red October had reached new lows when Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz launched a slanderous campaign against government lawyers who had in the past defended detainees in US custody.

Adding to this blacklisting and targeting is Fox News, who – despite the lynch mob forming around these lawyers – made their identities public.

But now, even well respected human rights and civil liberties organizations are being singled out and attacked in an arrogant, defensive, and bizarre column by Bill Kristol. As you read the snips below, keep in mind the following points:

• Kristol, along with Liz Cheney, are board members of Keeping America Safe – the very group that has launched attacks on the lawyers to begin with. So he is indeed defensive.
• The arrogance Kristol displays in an almost child-like tantrum, claiming he knows something we don’t know, na na na na na.
• The very organizations that Kristol singles out – the ACLU and Human Rights Watch – helped expose detainee abuses which implicate Dick Cheney in serious crimes and raises questions about the true motivations of Liz Cheney and her group (which includes Kristol).

In addressing the closing of Gitmo question, here is what Bill Kristol writes::

Well, get ready for more shock and concern, ACLUers — it’s going to happen. President Obama (aided by his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel), is coming to realize how foolish he’s been to delegate so much authority on war on terror matters to his hapless attorney general and the left-wingers working for him at the Justice Department. He is going to reverse course on the KSM trial — as he has on preventive detention and on the release of photos of alleged abuse by U.S. servicemen, and as I suspect he ultimately will on closing Guantanamo.

Does anyone else find the above entirely bizarre in the level of arrogance and defensiveness?

Read more at-Largely

CAUGHT!  A NEW 9/11 GAME OUTED

By Gordon Duff  / STAFF WRITER / Senior Editor

Today, John Avalon wrote a piece for the Daily Beast describing those who are asking for a new 9/11 investigation as “wingnuts.”  What he fails to tell us is that, as “propaganda chief”  for Rudy Guliani, a man whose former chief of staff is now doing time as a Mafia “bag man” Bernie Kerik, burying the truth has long been a part of his job. 

The prisoner in question, Bernie Kerik, was supposed to head Homeland Security.  Think about a character from the movie Goodfellas as the nation’s chief law enforcement official and you have an idea where John Avalon comes from.  The only way of going further would have been to put the ghost of the “dapper don,” John Gotti himself into the Whitehouse.  Is Avalon another Kerik or just a “Kerik/Guliani associate?”

Much of the 9/11 controversy centers around the mysterious collapse of Building 7, never hit by a plane, a building Guliani is said to have been warned to leave before it was brought down by controlled demolition. 

Larry Silverstein, the controller of the destroyed WTC complex, stated plainly in a PBS documentary that he and the FDNY decided jointly to demolish WTC 7 late in the afternoon of 9/11. In the documentary “America Rebuilds“, aired September 2002, Silverstein makes the following statement;

“I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.”

The problem with this story is that, according to literally thousands of engineers and architects, it would take weeks to engineer the collapse of a building like this.  Did Silverstein have a crystal ball or are all buildings in New York wired to explode, “just in case?”  The 9/11 Commission was never allowed to look into Building 7.   Guliani and Silverstein are people John Avalon worked with on a daily basis.

Avalon is a tool, an “asset,” but whose?  Who profits from his story?  When the 9/11 Commission itself asked for prosecutions of those who perjured themselves and presented false documents and have, quite frankly, stepped away from their own findings, a massive movement to reopen the investigation has grown worldwide.  Top intelligence officials, military officers, scientists and engineers, in numbers far exceeding any of opposing opinion, are clamouring for a new investigation. 

It has become so powerful that the “assets” are coming out of their holes.  Avalon’s approach is classic:

“It is appropriate that Ahmadinejad used the phrase the “big lie,” first coined by Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf to explain the psychology behind propaganda campaigns of misinformation. “In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility,” Hitler wrote, because “It would never come into [most people's] heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

Avalon doesn’t tell us what “truth” is being distorted but he drags out Hitler, Mein Kampf and the very suspect Ahmandinejad of Iran, a veritable “kitchen sink” of unrelated references in what is unavoidably part of a misinformation campaign almost exactly as he himself is describing.

Avalon is describing a conspiracy.  Who is the “wingnut” here? 

Exactly what group is conspiring together?  Who is financing the “9/11 truth” propaganda campaign that is part of the massive conspiracy that Avalon is referring to?  What is their goal?  So far, the “9/11 truth” movement is what it looks like, people unsatisfied with the explanation they got, scientists, scholars, politicians, world leaders and a few crazy people, all loosely tied to one idea, finding the truth, a truth that key members of the 9/11 Commission have said is not in their report because of a “criminal conspiracy” to mislead them.

If anything, the “9/11 truth “movement is the victim, a victim of smear campaigns and it is increasingly reported that their organizations, which number in the hundreds, have come under investigation by security agencies and their membership has been heavily infiltrated much as with the militia movements of the 80s and 90s.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, the militias disappeared.  It is claimed they had one last meeting.  It went like this:

“We’ve been putting this off for awhile but its time we faced up.  OK, I have a question for the membership.  Will all  FBI informants please step forward.  OK, will all of you please step back where you were.  Meeting adjourned.”

Avalon’s article appears to be a small and very stupid part of the “truth debunking” movement, clearly tied to “insiders,” and there is no more of an “insider” than Rudy Guliani.  Is someone figuring that if we are drowned with enough baseless charges of conspiracy, the real conspiracies can go unchallenged?  This is a very common “psy-ops” deception ploy meant, frankly, to be wielded by a greater intellect and with greater skill.

Do the terms “truth debunking” and “obstruction of justice” mean the same thing?  We should think about this. 

“9/11 truthers” aren’t armed radicals and nothing is being threatened other than a “cover story” that fell apart years ago.  If the “9/11 truth” movement is being investigated as a criminal conspiracy, as seems to be the case, using extraordinary means, even to the point of applying Patriot Act “counter-terrorism” provisions, what does this mean?

Informants are being discovered in nearly every 9/11 group, some spouting insane theories, others advocating violence.  We call people like this “agent provocateurs.”  This is also a classic “counter-intelligence” practice.  Why is this being done and who is ordering it, financing it?  It’s happening, and on an ever growing scale. 

Do we have two conspiracies now or is it three?  Can anyone keep track?  We certainly know Avalon’s story is part of something, the smell is outrageous.  Is it a conspiracy?  Does working for Rudy Guliani, now rumored to represent many of the world’s most vicious dictators as a lobbyist, make people simply “go bad?”

After dragging out Hitler, Avalon then went after poor and long dead Osama bin Laden.  While in Pakistan last week, meeting with Lt. General Hamid Gul, former head of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI,  and General Aslem Beg, former Chief of Staff, Army of Pakistan, along with Col “Imam,” coordinator of military activities against the Soviets, I was able to verify the December 2001 death of Osama bin Laden.  This was also confirmed at the highest governmental levels, the same folks that regularly brief our own government. 

If you are looking for suspects, you are now safe to start looking at anyone presenting video, audio or other “evidence” of bin Laden or statements about bin Laden, 9/11 or terror attacks after bin Laden’s death.  Anyone originating such information can easily be assumed to have been involved in the planning and execution of the acts being put off on bin Laden.

Thankfully, we know who these people are and can arrest and prosecute them as soon as we come to our senses. 

Not only has bin Laden been dead for years but the CIA’s own translation of bin Laden’s tapes shows him denying all involvement in 9/11.  What does Avalon do?  He brings out the transcript of a long discredited “phony bin Laden” tape received from former Israeli Defense Force member, Rita Katz and her organization Site Intelligence, a group that downloads things from conspiracy sites on the internet, something Avalon must know alot about.

Here is what Avalon had to say:

“Alternately, you can just take Osama bin Laden’s word for it. He’s repeatedly taken credit for the attacks, including on a videotape where he recounts the planning process and his wish for maximum damage: “We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. … Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we hoped for.”

Of course, bin Laden never said any of this.  This is a fabrication.  Why would someone write something like this unless there was something to hide?  Who teaches people to write like this?  Did writing speeches for Rudy Guliani suddenly make a political propagandist into a journalists?  Let’s check Avalon’s sources against the official record.

This is the CIA’s version of the only verified bin Laden statements on 9/11.  How does Mr. Avalon’ story hold up?

DECLASSIFIED TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BY THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

FOREIGN BROADCASTING INTERNATIONAL SERVICE:

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Usama: In the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful. Praise be to Allah,
Who is the creator of the whole universe and Who made the earth as an abode for peace,

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY 179

for the whole mankind. Allah is the Sustainer, who sent Prophet Muhammad for our

guidance. I am thankful to the Ummat Group of Publications, which gave me the

opportunity to convey my viewpoint to the people, particularly the valiant and Momin

[true Muslim] people of Pakistan who refused to believe in lie of the demon. I have

already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As

a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. Neither I had any knowledge of these

attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an

appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and

other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. It is the United

States, which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children, and common

people of other faiths, particularly the followers of Islam.

Is the CIA now involved in a plot to discredit, well, exactly who?  Are they plotting against John Avalon? If you wondered why Osama bin Laden had never been charged with any 9/11 related crimes, this statement and a rather telling lack of evidence might help you with your conclusions, unless, of course, you think that the FBI is involved in a plot against Avalon and Guliani also.

We, long ago, had written off journalism as an honest profession.  Were I to make a living out of accusing others of being “wingnuts,” I might, first of all, learn to write.  Beyond that, I would learn to get one or two facts straight and, if I were to try using cheap propaganda tricks, I would be alot better at it.  This is lame.

BRINGING SUSPICION ON THEMSELVES

After billions have been spent and 9 years have past, no proof of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11 has been presented.  However, we have had attempts to lie to the 9/11 Commission and more than a few stories like this one, inaccurate, cheap propaganda that emit this kind of stench.

What?

Always ask, why would someone write something this blatant unless they were serving some purpose?  Are articles like this proof of a conspiracy in themselves?  The “9/11 truth” movement is only asking for an investigation.  It isn’t making statements of having proof of “false flag” operations against the United States by the Bush administration or Israel. 

Would an investigation head that way?  What would be found?  Why try to stop an investigation when, obviously, a new one is required, even demanded?   With the original 9/11 Commission’s work falling apart with continual scandals and new evidence, our path is obvious.

What is being hidden?  What agenda does Avalon’s article serve and who is he tied to?

How much money have so many made off 9/11?  Names like Chertoff, Silverstein, Guiliani, Ridge, Haliburton, Blackwater and dozens more, all friends, political allies, always come up.  I don’t know if all the coincidences make up a massive conspiracy against the United States, a conspiracy that killed thousands and put us into two wrongful wars.

Can I prove this article is part of a conspiracy or just dumb?  The dumb part is obvious.  The ties to Guliani, who sits at the heard of any conspiracy theory, is, if anything, a demand for an investigation.

There wouldn’t be articles like this, not so many, unless there is a conspiracy, like the one Avalon accuses others of, but one he is serving himself, knowingly or  not.  Is it a conspiracy to save Americans from learning something unpleasant about the nature of their own government and what kinds of things it is capable of?

This is what most Americans think.  Are they right?  Do they have the right to know? 

These are the questions and articles like John Avalon’s make the point for asking those questions and perhaps using some of those Patriot Act powers, the waterboarding, the detentions, the renditions and the special tribunals for something other than silencing dissent. 

Defeat the Debt

See larger image The Truth and Lies of 9-11 (DVD) Director: Mike Ruppert List Price: $9.99 USD New From: $9.99 In Stock Used from: $8.99 In Stock Release date December 11, 2008.

IS AMERICA THE VICTIM OF A WAR FROM WITHIN?

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

One day you read about a break-in at a Senator’s office, the next day, you learn the Acorn “scandal” was a ruse.  None of these things get any follow-up in the MSM/Corporate news.  Then you find the only magazine that will report on massive spy operations against America is Hustler, and their coverage of the national security scandal involving Sibel Edmonds testimony.

This is the biggest spy scandal, biggest scandal in America’s history, best documented and most damaging and has been covered up for years.  When a huge story like this breaks, we hear nothing, read nothing.

Keep thinking, “If it isn’t in the newspapers or on TV, it can’t hurt me.”  You couldn’t be more wrong.

Your spam box fills with accusations, polished lies, propaganda, dozens a day sometimes and you never know who or where.  It is never anything exposing the truth, always something coordinated with the MSM.  They report only what they are allowed and leave the cover-up and lies that point fingers the wrong way to their friends on the internet.

Its called “psy-ops,” a form of warfare and we are the victims.  The military spends billions protecting us from “cyber-warfare” but fails to note that the spam we get daily is cyber warfare, in fact it is terrorism.  Every criminal organization, every terrorist group, uses psy-ops, and cyber warfare.  Much of your email is part of it and it is so successful that you don’t even know who your real enemies are anymore.

An enemy calls this “winning.”

The current leaked memo showing the GOP plan to “scare,” read DESTABILIZE  the United States through an organized and systematic plan of disinformation is psychological warfare, “psy-ops” and a form of cyber-terrorism.  Who runs the GOP?  Who runs the Democrats?  Do you think we do?

If you do, you are a victim of psy-ops.  Score another one for the “enemy.”

Any systematic plan to misinform and deceive Americans to undermine their ability to make informed decisions for their own welfare is an attack on the United States and, under law, a criminal act.  If it is done with intent to inflict damage on the security of the United States it is treason.  Anyone have a problem with this definition?

Where are those we trust, those we pay to protect us?  You say you believe they are part of it? 

We had an electronic voting scandal and no newspaper reported it.  A witness who claimed he had been threatened by Karl Rove died in a mysterious plane crash, the financier, Ohio Republican leader, Tom Noe went to prison for 22 years and more than minor proof is available that the 2004 election for President is invalid.

This gave us the Roberts Supreme Court, whose decisions have done untold damage to the security of America.  You won’t hear this on the MSM/Corporate news but 4 “minority” Supreme Court justices will glady tell you.  5 members of our Supreme Court are now defacto “enemies of the state” yet now, they control the state to the point of stepping so far outside their Constitutional mandate that our original system of government is gone.

Hijacked.  Two crooked elections had a purpose, stacking the court, bring us to permanent war and looting the American financial system while undermining our civil rights and system of laws.  It is done, signed sealed and delivered.

Proof is flowing in from around the country of votes being “flipped” and machines being hacked, to the point of millions of votes.  Not only is this not reported, the government itself is either unwilling or unable to protect America from these basic attacks on our freedoms. 

This is how we define a “failed state” when talking about others.  Normally, we would ask for sanctions and plan a regime change to save the people from tyranny and injustice.

The crimes aren’t just torture and massive election fraud, it goes deeper.  All the talk about the “bail outs” is part of it too, that and the hundreds of billions stolen by defense contractors in Iraq.

The GAO itself even reports 295 billion stolen so far but nothing is done, not a day of jail time, no investigation.

What does this prove?

If elections are rigged, news is managed, public opinion is twisted by phony scares, or invented news and massive deception campaigns, then anything can be done, any crime, murder, theft, spying, treason, we aren’t safe from anything.

America’s own “war on terror” has made America itself a victim of those some of us trusted to protect us.  Finding proof of this is child’s play but nobody is looking, nobody reporting, nobody “minding the store.”  There are no investigative journalists, not ones on TV or in Newspapers or major magazines, no curious judges or prosecutors, Congressional committees “getting at the facts.”

Could everyone be involved?  Who has that kind of power, that much money?

Are there domestic black operations?  Are there groups that are controlled by political parties, like the GOP’s private militia, “Blackwater” or the AIPAC/Mossad groups that can do alot more than just manage the news or harass citizens?

With hundreds of trained spies, snipers, “black-bag” crews and “hit squads” from the CIA and other spy organizations, not only working for extremists but working inside the US for years, has anyone wondered why nothing is done to investigate anything?

Is there a secret domestic reign of terror, unreported, unseen by the public but there just the same?

How many of our national leaders are being blackmailed?  Check on the “retirements” and resignations.  Then add to that number, those who vote for things they despise and say nothing about corruption and tyranny.  It isn’t just the Whitehouse and Congress but the courts, Justice Department and, of course, the Pentagon.

Not everyone can be bribed by defense contractors or bullied by the AIPAC/Israel lobby, it has to get rougher than that, or we would be hearing more, much more.  When we turned our Joint Special Operations Command over to Dick Cheney as his personal private army then began “privatization” of our black operations, rendition programs, counter-intelligence, those who are supposed to silently kill America’s enemies to “keep us safe” did we suspect it would all go so wrong?

Did we end up with the same people who bilk the government out of hundreds of billions now having to investigate their own crimes?  Do they control the intel, the operations and even have the power to run their own wars?  What do you think privatization does?

The results are obvious.  We are now in the middle of massive military operations in Afghanistan against an enemy who is laughing at us.  We are waving flags, claiming victory and they, with their weapons put aside, are cheering us on.  We know it, they know it, only the American people are fooled.  It is all a game, dead Afghanis, broke and unemployed Americans and rich and fat defense contractors.

Oh, we also forgot to mention the drug barons in Afghanistan.  Do you really believe that our new “privatized” CIA and mercenary armies are above drug running?  Get real.  Ask one of your kids how cheap heroin is now, any kid over 10 will know. 

Can a population, can the American people be free if systematically deceived by every information source they are told to trust?  It started small, with phony Osama bin Laden translations, done in Israel, that were the opposite of what he actually said.  From there, where did they go?

We have all been told that Israel and defense contractors control our newspapers, TV and half the internet, listen to our phone calls and buy and sell our government.  We have watched, for the past year, crooked insurance companies dance our government around like a toy.

We accept the things we seem to have once feared as though they don’t matter. 

One of the best psy-ops games is to bombard us with phony conspiracies to hide the real ones.  We get so many now that none seem to matter, we either deny everything out of “funk” or simply feel overwhelmed.  This is what was intended and if you feel overwhelmed, “they” have done their jobs to perfection.

It is a war, a terrorist war against America, as real as crashing planes and blowing up buildings, in fact it is worse.  We are slowly being beaten down with lies to where we don’t care anymore.  We may have been there for years already.

Our own institutions have become part of it, some of it out of idiocy but mostly because of money.  Check how much money leaders of groups like the NRA make or what they spend on public relations.  The NRA is a pack of Washington elitists living like kings, playing their members for fools.  It isn’t just the NRA but almost every group, all thieves, all liars, all with one goal, raking in cash.

Most of them are now working against the United States, subverted from years of lying for money to lying to manipulate, deceive, destabilize and ruin our country.  How have they done so far?

Remember the guy who got on a plane with a bomb built into his shoe and tried to light it? Did you know his trial is over?

Did you know he was sentenced January 30, 2003 ?

Did you see or hear any of the judge’s comments on TV or Radio?

Didn’t think so.!!!

Everyone should read what the judge had to say.

Ruling by Judge William Young, US District Court.

Prior to sentencing, the Judge asked the defendant if he had anything to say.

His response: After admitting his guilt to the court for the record, Reid also admitted his ‘allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah,’ defiantly stating, ‘I think I will not apologize for my actions,’ and told the court ‘I am at war with your country.’

Judge Young then delivered the statement quoted below:

January 30, 2003, United States vs. Reid.

Judge Young: ‘Mr. Richard C. Reid, hearken now to the sentence the Court imposes upon you.

On counts 1, 5 and 6 the Court sentences you to life in prison in the custody of the United States Attorney General. On counts 2, 3, 4and 7, the Court sentences you to 20 years in prison on each count, the sentence on each count to run consecutively. (That’s 80 years.)

On count 8 the Court sentences you to the mandatory 30 years again, to be served consecutively to the 80 years just imposed. The Court imposes upon you for each of the eight counts a fine of $250,000 that’s an aggregate fine of $2 million. The Court accepts the government’s recommendation with respect to restitution and orders restitution in the amount of $298.17 to Andre Bousquet and $5,784 to American Airlines.

The Court imposes upon you an $800 special assessment. The Court imposes upon you five years supervised release simply because the law requires it. But the life sentences are real life sentences so I need go no further..

This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes. It is a fair and just sentence. It is a righteous sentence.

Now, let me explain this to you. We are not afraid of you or any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is too much war talk here and I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court, we deal with individuals as individuals and care for individuals as individuals. As human beings, we reach out for justice.

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war.

You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether the officers of government do it or your attorney does it, or if you think you are a soldier, you are not—– you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not meet with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You are a big fellow. But you are not that big. You’re no warrior. I’ve known warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal that is guilty of multiple attempted murders. In a very real sense, State Trooper Santiago had it right when you first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and the TV crews were, and he said: ‘You’re no big deal.’

You are no big deal.

What your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today?

I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing? And, I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you, but as I search this entire record, it comes as close to understanding as I know.

It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom.

Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose. Here, in this society, the very wind carries freedom.. It carries it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom, so that everyone can see, truly see, that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely. It is for freedom’s sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf, have filed appeals, will go on in their representation of you before other judges.

We Americans are all about freedom. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties. Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bear any burden; pay any price, to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. The day after tomorrow, it will be forgotten, but this, however, will long endure.

Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across America , the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done. The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.

See that flag, Mr. Reid? That’s the flag of the United States of America . That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom. And it always will.

Mr. Custody Officer. Stand him down.

So, how much of this Judge’s comments did we hear on our TV sets? We need more judges like Judge Young.

Never Forget – Rachel Corrie

RACHEL CORRIE - AN AMERICAN HERO

Israel and its watchdogs have been on special alert regarding criticisms coming from Jews and Jewish organisations.

It’s almost as if they want the world at large to believe that all Jews stand behind them and support their policies of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

Anyone who is a regular reader of this Blog knows that nothing is further from the truth.

The latest uproar is about a film called Rachel…. a film by Simone Bitton about the death of Rachel Corrie.

Ms. Bitton is not only Jewish, she is also an Israeli! That’s way too much for the zionists to swallow… so the campaign to boycott the film has started….     

Better to BOYCOTT ISRAEL!

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NEVER FORGET RACHEL CORRIE…
P.I.P: Rachel Corrie, an Human rights activist member of International Solidarity Movement that was killed by an Israeli Army bulldozer in march 2003
23 years old coed from Oregon. Neighter the Israeli or U.S Goverment has ever offered an explanatory apology.
(brave american murdered by IsraeL Troops)
Music: thank u for hearing me (by Sinead O´Connor)  

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Below you will find some interesting information about the film and the efforts to keep it from the public eye…. The following is from an entry on Daily Kos…

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the largest Jewish Film festival in the world, will screen many films this year, many with discussion with filmmakers and others featured in the film. Some of these films will be controversial, there will be all sorts of issues explored.

None has generated more controversy than the film “Rachel”, a film by Jewish-Israeli filmmaker Simone Bitton about the death of Rachel Corrie, the young woman killed by an Israeli-military bulldozer as she was protecting homes in the Rafah, Gaza. At the request of the filmmaker, they have invited Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother to speak. Big time controversy and condemnation by a weekly Jewish magazine and even from the local Israel Consul General.

Cindy Corrie has publicly advocated for ensuring “justice, freedom, security and economic viability for both Israelis and Palestinians.”

Israel Consul General protests the presence of Cindy Corrie:

“The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival made a serious error in judgment in inviting Mrs. Corrie to the festival,” Israel Consul General Akiva Tor said via e-mail. “She is a propagandist who is immune from responsibility for the causes she supports because it was her daughter, Rachel, who was accidentally killed.

“So her staged presence becomes a kind of emotional grandstanding, rather than pursuit of a deeper insight.”

Propagandist? The Consul General has been busy supporting policies of expanding settlements in the West Bank, supporting the war on Gaza, supporting a brutal blockade, and now will be supporting a policy of muzzling Palestinians, and Jewish Israelis, who dare to commemorate the Nakba of 1948. The Foreign Minister, his boss, is seen by many (even Israeli diplomats) as extreme as fascist Haider of Austria… and this man is calling Cindy Corrie a “propagandist”?  Cindy Corrie who wants justice, freedom, security and economic viability for both Israelis and Palestinians?

I think its a way of saying there is a point of view that the Consul General finds might disturb the status quo. Change might happen. Scary. Also a way to challenge the official narrative. “accidental” he says? That’s the official line. Not so fast. Maybe not an accident. as perhaps the deaths of hundreds of civilians in the war on Gaza of December/January is perhaps not an accident, or the continuing blockade that brings hunger to the people of Gaza is not an accident.  Perhaps the latter atrocity is nothing more than a joke among its designers.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a national group based in the Bay Area, is one of the groups co-sponsoring this film, and they are to be commended for their courage, as well as the festival organizers. Compare this to the sometimes successful effort to not allow the staging of the play: “My Name is Rachel Corrie” at several theaters around the country (which helped tremendously, no doubt, with publicity and its success where it was produced).

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Footage from Rachel’s murder by the Israeli Defense Forces. Actual cockpit transmission from the D-9 bulldozer driver to the watch tower, saying he “hit an object” and “I think the object got hit by the dobby (D-9) and he is in a severe condition.” He is asked “Did you see him?” and responds “Yes I saw him, I think he is dead.”
From the documentary “Rachel: An American Conscience” which you can order here: http://www.palestineonlinestore.com/films/american.htm

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Here is how Cecilie Surasky of Jewish Voice for Peace responds to J Weekly’s editorial opposing the presence of Cindy Corrie.

There’s something so deeply, deeply depressing about the attack against Cindy Corrie by J Weekly, the Bay Area’s Jewish newspaper. True, it’s just one of countless examples of the moral malaise that plagues the institutional Jewish world when it comes to Palestinians, but on this day, this day when I am fresh back from Gaza, from Hebron, from Silwan, it has gotten to me.

I’m not sure which is worse- the possibility that the J’s editorial writer actually believes the morally groundless drivel he or she is writing? Or the possibility that they know full well that the moral outrage that is the Israeli treatment of Gazans is an affront to all Jews and feeling people, but that they care more about keeping advertisers happy.

Change is happening, both in the Jewish Community and the wider community, and the keepers of the status quo cannot shut it down. that’s not to say they are not trying. This should be seen in the wider context. In Israel, beyond the attempt to erase “Nakba” from the history books, (see assaf’s diary)there is also the arrest and detention of Jewish groups who desire a different future for Israel, not based on militarism and oppression. The government must resort to repression not just of Palestinians, which is widely-accepted Israeli tradition, but now even Jewish dissidents. It is the criminalization of dissent, by any means necessary.

It won’t work. Arrests will not work. Personal attacks will not work. Like the ones that will accumulate below, more likely than not, some based purely on the idea that most of my diaries deal with oppression of Palestinian rights… what if i were focusing on the Health Care debate… would there be this wild accusations without basis if i was consistently unfriendly to insurance company policies? Is there some mathematical formula to determine one’s “acceptable” criticism of Israel? It really is nothing less than a lame attempt to avoid dealing with substance, and diverting people’s attention.

This movement to demand justice in the Middle East is already too large, too diverse for that to work. They will call Rachel and her mother “terrorist sympathizers” who have no business going to Gaza. Like they say that Ezra Nawi has no business protect homes in the West Bank. Like others said that Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had no business going to Mississippi to support the movement for justice there. Or like others said that Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel and Jean Donovan had no business in El Salvador.

It is our business to share in the struggle for human rights and peace.

Rachel will be shown on Saturday, July 25th, 1:30 pm at the beautiful Castro Theater in San Francisco. Cindy Corrie Will be there.

Here is the Statement from the organisors of the San Francisco Film Festival….on why they are screening Rachel

Why San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is showing Rachel, a film by Simone Bitton about Rachel Corrie, and inviting Cindy Corrie, Rachel Corrie’s mother, to the Festival:

1. The film Rachel is directed by veteran filmmaker Simone Bitton, a dual citizen of Israel and France. The documentary takes an unflinching look at the controversy surrounding the death of an American activist who was protesting Israeli military actions in Gaza. In the film, Bitton, through interviews with eyewitnesses, Israeli soldiers and spokespeople, and others close to the tragedy, exposes new information about the incident which we believe makes for very worthwhile viewing, from both a journalistic and an aesthetic perspective. The film has already played in such prestigious festivals as the Berlin International Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival (New York).

2. The film Rachel includes the viewpoints of people with a variety of opinions on the events which led to Ms. Corrie’s death. It includes interviews with Israeli army spokeswoman Avital Leibovitch, as well as doctors, activists, soldiers, Israeli and Palestinian civilians, and Rachel Corrie’s parents. The film also includes military video from the Israeli army.

3. As with all the films we show at SFJFF, we are presenting the views of the filmmakers and their subjects in what we hope is an atmosphere that encourages free expression and public debate. We regret that the filmmaker of Rachel could not be present to discuss the film personally, although we invited her to be here. Cindy Corrie, Rachel Corrie’s mother, is a subject of the documentary, and it is customary (and even expected by audiences) for documentary subjects to participate in Festival screenings. This kind of exchange has occurred throughout our Festival’s long history, and Cindy Corrie herself has addressed audiences at the Tribeca Film Festival, presentations in New York theaters, and other cultural forums. We wish to provide our audiences with the same opportunity. Her appearance at SFJFF is not intended to provide a political platform but rather to deepen the dialogue around the film. Cindy Corrie has publicly advocated for ensuring “justice, freedom, security and economic viability for both Israelis and Palestinians.” We think it will be an illuminating conversation.

4. We are presenting the film as part of a wider series on social justice and activism, and want our audience to have the benefit of a direct encounter with those who can help them understand Rachel Corrie’s motivations ] even if they don’ agree with them ] from a very personal standpoint. The filmmaker considers herself a film essayist rather than a reporter and desires the film to be viewed as an artistic statement as well as an investigation.

5. SFJFF’ commitment to Israeli filmmakers and cinema is steadfast. We are proud that this year we are showcasing 37 individual films from or connected to Israel –comedies, dramas, documentaries, animation and shorts –which together form a very vibrant portrait of the country and its complexity. Other political affairs documentaries besides Rachel include Gilad Shalit: 2 Years in Captivity, a portrait of Gilad Shalit, the soldier captured by Hamas; and Chronicle of a Kidnap, a portrait of Karnit Goldwasser, the widow of Ehud Goldwasser, an Israeli soldier who was one of many victims of the Lebanon war.

6. The SFJFF supports the democratic exchange of ideas that great filmmaking provides. We believe that the best artists, including documentary filmmakers, create work that makes us think and sparks a dialogue both within the Jewish community and the greater community of the Bay Area. We do not expect that the views of every film or speaker will be embraced by all of our audiences, nor can every film represent the diverse views of SFJFF staff, board, members or  sponsors. We unanimously embrace the tradition of spirited debate that is a core element of Jewish inquiry, and strive to provide a welcoming forum for the discussion of different perspectives.

• RACHEL, a film by Simon Britton on Facebook
• The Rachel Corrie Foundation
• Rachel on IMDB

The AP count is three more than the Defense Department’s tally, last updated on 26 Feb at 10 a.m. EDT.

The most recent 11 troops killed in SW Asia and released publicly by DoD ranged in age from two 19 year young being the youngest,20, two 22, a 24 year young, two 27, 29, and a 30 year YOUNG man.

Robert L. Hanafin, Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired, Veterans Today News

717 Troops Killed in Hostile Action

Of the 924, at least 717 military personnel died in the Afghan region as a result of hostile action, according to the Pentagon’s numbers.

Outside the Afghan region, the department reports 76 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Of those, eight were the result of hostile action.

The military lists these other locations as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen.