Sunday, October 31, 2010

YEMEN TERROR EXPLAINED, Dozens of Israeli Navy Commandos of Yemeni origin are roaming Yemen for years....

Ibrahim al-Asiri 'of the CIA/MOSSAD'.

The CIA/MOSSAD and the Pentagon want to do to Yemen what they are doing to Pakistan, and what they have already done to Iraq and Afghanistan.

After Yemen will eventually come Saudi Arabia....

(DID THE CIA USE NASSER AGAINST SAUDI ARABIA'S KING SAUD? / Saudi Arabia - You are next?)

"In February of 1975 the London Sunday Times revealed information from a leaked and classified US Department of Defense plan.

"The plan, drawn up by the Pentagon, was code named 'Dhahran Option Four' and provided for an invasion of the world's largest oil reserves, namely Saudi Arabia." - (Who Really Wants to Invade Saudi Arabia, and Why?) - Who can Saudi Arabia trust?

A plan to split Saudi Arabia gives the Saudis the holy sites and us the oil - New Statesman - The secret partition



Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri (Aseery) is alleged to be the bomb maker in:

(1) the failed Yemen parcel bomb plot of October 2010

(2) the failed attempt to kill Saudi counter-terrorism chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in August 2009

(3) the failed Christmas bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Underpants Bomber.

(U.S. eyeing Saudi-born bombmaker in parcel bomb plot / Yemen parcel bombmaker believed to be al Qaeda terrorist Ibrahim ...)


UK journalist Con Coughlin, who is believed to be an asset of MI6 (Con Coughlin and MI6-Mossad propaganda), writes:

"Not since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am flight 103 (aangirfan: LOCKERBIE IS ABOUT HEROIN), which killed 270 people, has a terror group sought to smuggle primed explosive devices in the cargo holds of commercial aircraft...

"In February 2006 ... 23 suspected al-Qaeda members managed to escape from a prison in Sana'a, including the alleged mastermind of USS Cole attack.

"Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi, a former personal assistant to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was another escaper ."

The boss of the Yemen al Qaeda militants is said to be AL-AWLAKI OF THE CIA?


Monday, October 25, 2010

Anti-Muslim CIA/MOSSAD crusaders make millions while spreading fear...and the exact same PLAN is replicated on Five Continents...






The Tennessean is just one of many dying main stream propaganda filled newspapers trying to hold on but every now and then they come up with a report that ruffles the feathers of some of the Islamophobia scammers. This time they delve into who is making some big bucks in the anti-muslim fear mongering non-profit/for profit circus.

Of course they don't go as far as naming some of these groups and individuals jewish or zionist although christian zionism does get a mention. The comments at the article are littered with what we in middle Tennessee are confronted with ... ignorance and the holding on to the 'official ' 9/11 tale that "Muslims did it."

What's interesting is that USA Today carried this story but has now deleted it along with over 175 comments. Someone with clout didn't like it.


The Price of Fear
excerpts:{links added}
Steven Emerson has 3,390,000 reasons to fear Muslims.

That's how many dollars Emerson's for-profit company — Washington-based SAE Productions — collected in 2008 for researching alleged ties between American Muslims and overseas terrorism. The payment came from the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, a nonprofit charity Emerson also founded, which solicits money by telling donors they're in imminent danger from Muslims.

Emerson is a leading member of a multimillion-dollar industry of self-proclaimed experts who spread hate toward Muslims in books and movies, on websites and through speaking appearances.




The Rev. Darrel Whaley, pastor of Kingdom Ministries Worship Center, is the leader of a group of evangelical pastors opposed to the Murfreesboro mosque. He says “America exists … to partner with Israel, to protect Israel.”
SANFORD MYERS / THE TENNESSEAN






In Europe it's the same tactics all over, with WWW.DRZZ.info leading the cahrge, a MOSSAD outfit wall to wall....


Frank Gaffney, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, makes his way to the witness stand to testify about the threat of Shariah law during a motion hearing in Rutherford County. He earned a $288,300 salary from his nonprofit in 2008.
AARON THOMPSON / FILE / GANNETT TENNESSEE


Gaffney was a key witness in recent hearings in the Rutherford County lawsuit filed by mosque opponents.

He said he paid his own way.

On the stand, the Reagan-era deputy assistant defense secretary accused local mosque leaders of having ties to terrorism, using ties to Middle Eastern universities and politics as evidence. His main source of information was his own report on Shariah law as a threat to America, one he wrote with other self-proclaimed experts.

But, under oath, he admitted he is not an expert in Shariah law.


The list of people on the anti-Islam circuit goes on. IRS filings from 2008 show that Robert Spencer, who runs the Jihadwatch.org blog, earned $132,537 from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative nonprofit.

Brigitte Tudor {a/k/a Brigitte Gabriel}, who runs the anti-Islam groups ACT! For America and the American Congress for Truth, earned $152,810, while her colleague Guy Rodgers collected $154,900.


Despite what critics call inaccuracies, the anti-Islam message has found traction in Middle Tennessee, with some casually citing it.

Sally Snow hosted {Bill}French's {runs the Nashville-based, for-profit Center for the Study of Political Islam} speech along with her husband, former Rutherford County Republican Party Chairman Howard Wall. She has been a regular at hearings in a lawsuit aimed at stopping a new Murfreesboro mosque.

One day this month, Snow arrived wearing sunglasses and joked that she was trying to cover up marks on her face.

"Howard's turned into a Muslim," she said. "He's started beating me."


Some oppose Islam on theological grounds, seeing it as a threat to their Bible Belt culture or, for Christian Zionists, to the state of Israel.

According to that belief, American Christians have a religious duty to protect the state of Israel. When Israel expands, they believe, Muslims in Iran and Iraq will be forced out of their homes to make way. Then the second coming of Jesus can begin.


Laurie Cardoza-Moore, who led opposition to a failed mosque in Brentwood, also is Christian Zionist. Her nonprofit, the Franklin-based Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, exists to drum up support of Israel among Christians.
read the entire article HERE


Sunday, October 24, 2010

Letter from Islamophobistan


Letter from Islamophobistan
By Pepe Escobar

This whole charade about the evil danger of Islam for Europe and the World is being actively encouraged, fomented daily by MOSSAD since 2000....on a daily basis....

Last Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stunned the world by declaring, in front of young members of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), that multiculturalism - or multikulti, as it is known in Germany - was dead.

The day before, I was in the
Lufthansa lounge at Frankfurt airport having a parallel discussion with a group of German businessmen; they had practically handed me down a news alert on what Merkel would soon make public. Not accidentally, the best seller at all airport kiosks was the Islamophobia pamphlet published by a former Bundesbank higher-up, Thilo Sarrazin, who paints Muslim immigrants at best as lazy, welfare cheats and fornicating sub-intelligent beings. Sarrazin sees Muslims as an existential threat to Germany on a par to hardcore Zionists seeing Iran as an existential threat to Israel.

By that time, after three weeks roving from northern Italy to southern Sweden via Copenhagen, I had no doubts; I was deep inside Islamophobistan - that Europe-wide arc where Islamophobia is being gleefully practiced as an electoral business of fear.

Arbeit macht frei
Among other things, Merkel also said that immigration was prejudicial to the German economy - an assertion which in itself is ridiculous; to fight its severe labor shortages over the past decades the country has successively resorted to gastarbeiter (guestworkers) from Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia. But most of all it's those ominous, resurrection shades of a dominatrix German culture which may have sent a chill through many a European spine. What's more ominous, in fact, is that Merkel's words mirror an European-wide response to immigration.

Multikulti was the concept found in the 1980s to accommodate a wave of migrants Germany never wanted to really gobble up - not with all the trouble of assimilating their culture, their languages and their religion. The heart of the multikulti bargain was that an immigrant was allowed to be attached to his native culture, but he had to pledge loyalty to the German state.

The problem is that the ploy basically led to permanent alienation of large swathes of immigrants. And a further problem is that the European definition of a nation is through nationality.

So why is this ballistic "return of the repressed", the ever-so-touchy question of national identity in Germany, exploding now? First of all, because of those masses of Muslim workers, mostly Turkish. In Germany it seems to have coalesced an explosive amalgam of Turkey and Islam - which includes everything from jihadi terror to Turkey's application to join the European Union (EU).

All major polls agree that a majority of Germans is not exactly fond of 4 million resident Muslims (5% of the overall population). 35% believe the nation is "swamped by foreigners" and 10% want the return of a Fuhrer with an "iron hand". In Germany there are scores of neo-Nazi groups with minimal public impact; on the other hand the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NDP) has already reached 5% of the votes in Thuringia.

Then there's the deep crisis of the EU itself. If the German government attacks multikulti, it is at the same time affirming the primacy of German national identity. And that identity is certainly not subordinated to the notion of an overarching European identity. Mein Gott; in a nutshell the EU dream is in deep, deep trouble.

If Germany cannot import qualified workers - Merkel said the country needs at least 400,000 high-tech specialists - it may certainly export everything from its production lines to information technology support. But what if these much-needed new high-tech workers came from Russia? And Russia started to receive even more German investment? Now that is a completely different approach to the EU. And as the whole of Europe is now immersed in a severe cultural clash - real or imagined - within the EU borders, no wonder the proclaimed death of multikulti, beyond Merkel's electoral aims, is bound to have immense geopolitical and geoeconomic repercussions.

The new Inquisition
Austrian-American psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in his Mass Psychology of Fascism, stressed that racial theory is not a creation of fascism. On the contrary; fascism is a creation of racial hatred and its politically organized expression.

The New (anti-Islam) Inquisition did not hit Europe immediately after 9/11; it has reached critical mass only today. The popular political sport in Europe today is not to watch Real Madrid and AC
Milan playing in the Champions Football League; it is to watch populists invoking Islam - depicted as an "ideology that opposes everything that matters to us" - to crystallize all manner of phobias and fears of European citizens.

Fear of Islamization, fear of the burqa - no distraction could be as convenient for people to forget the dire, unending economic crisis that has produced catastrophic unemployment rates all across Europe. This may be part of a deep cultural and psychological crisis within Europe, with not a shred of a real political alternative; but few progressive minds are alert to the fact that this turbo-charging of racism and xenophobia is also a consequence of the overall crisis of neo-liberalism.

Mad against foreigners? Mad against politicians? That's soooo last century. The new groove is mad against Islam. It does not matter that immigration to Europe has been in decline for years; still "they" have to become like "us". An aging, fearful, reactionary Europe is terrified that The Other, issued from younger or more dynamic regions of the world, is catching up.

Asia - not Europe - is the future. A melancholic weekend in a tourist/trash-infested Venice turned into a replica of its Las Vegas mirror provided me the graphic illustration; I did feel like Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice - and so must feel countless Europeans.

Anyone left?
As much as Sweden invented modern social democracy and the best performing welfare state of the latter part of the 20th century, it was hardly surprising that the extreme right, the Sverigedemokraterna (SD, as in Swedish Democrats) first entered parliament last September 19, with 5.7% of the votes.

The SD, considered by many as "racist and neo-Nazi", is led by Jimmie Akesson, 31, the new young darling of the European extreme right alongside his elder Dutch counterpart Geert Wilders. Akesson stresses that Islam/Muslim immigration is the biggest foreign threat to Sweden since Adolf Hitler. (Wilders for his part was recently invited to Berlin by former CDU member Rene Stadtkewitz, who founded a new party, Die Freiheit ("Freedom"), named after Wilders' own Freedom Party; and he was also recently invited to New York to speak against the proposed Islamic Center in Manhattan near Ground Zero).

This
video shows how the SD went no holds barred to get their votes (as it was explained to me, the video was banned, and later one private TV station would air it, but only with the video completely blurred out). No one needs to speak Swedish to understand an elderly lady being overrun to get state benefits by a horde of burqa-clad women.

There's hardly a way to evade a direct link between the historically very low score of the Swedish social democrats and the also historic rise of the extreme right. For American, Asian, Middle Eastern observers this may sound utterly suicidal; how could the Swedes possibly reject an old-school welfare state that assures to everyone the Holy Trinity of health, education and a good pension?

So if the ultra-civil Swedes were not rejecting their model, what was it? Maybe the answer is in a book first published in Italy in 2008 by
Italian linguist and essayist Raffaele Simone, whose subtitle literally translates as "Why the West is not leaning to the Left".

In the extremely well-argued book, Simone proves that the European Left is intellectually dead; it simply has not understood the drive of hardcore capitalism (which he defines as "arch-capitalism", or "the political and economic manifestation of the New Right"); it has not understood the correlated primacy of individualism and consumerism; and it has refused to discuss the phenomenon of mass immigration.

From France to Denmark, from Italy to Sweden, it's easy to see how savvy populists skillfully deploy those European values of free speech, feminism and secularism - oversimplifying issues to the point that their take seems logical - as ammunition against mosques, minarets, headscarves and, of course, "sub-intelligent beings".

And then there are local realities. The majority of those voting SD were protesting against overwhelmingly Muslim immigrants, a great deal of them jobless, who come to Sweden, get fat government benefits and remain idle. Sweden is nowhere as tough on immigration as Denmark,
Norway or Holland.

In Malmo, a mere 20-minute train ride via the stunning Oresund bridge from Copenhagen, about 80,000 (60,000 of them Muslims) of the overall population of 300,000 are immigrants. There are certified losers in Malmo's carefully calibrated transition from old industrial city to a post-mod consumer haven; the old, the poor, and most of all, immigrants. So Sweden seems to have posed the European-wide question of the necessity for the European welfare state to concentrate less on health care and pensions and more on "including" immigrants. But is this really the real question?

Shoot the minaret
Talk about an European summer of hate - from minarets banned in Switzerland to burqas banned in Belgium.

The populist extreme right has been part of coalition governments in Italy and Switzerland for many years now. And they are represented in the parliaments of Austria, Denmark, Norway and Finland. The National Front in France had 9% of the vote in last spring's French regional elections.

But now everywhere it feels like a Lamborghini let loose. Geert Wilders' Freedom party in Holland has turbo-charged Islamophobia to the point of almost paralyzing Dutch governance. The elegant, eloquent, peroxide-blonde populist Wilders wants to ban the Koran - which he has compared to Hitler's Mein Kampf - and impose a "headscarf tax" (how come no government thought about this in the Middle East or in Pakistan?)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy - now facing his own, self-provoked May '68 remix in the streets over his pension reform - tried to seduce (once again) the National Front by expelling planeloads of Romanian gypsies.

Austrian extreme right stalwart Heinz-Christian Strache, running for mayor of Vienna less than two weeks ago, took no less than 27% of the vote. And Barbara Rosenkranz, who insists anti-Nazi laws should be abolished, came second in Austria's presidential race.

The Islamophobic, anti-immigrant Northern League of Umberto Bossi in Italy is part of the government in Rome and not accidentally the country's fastest-growing party, now controlling the ultra-wealthy provinces of Veneto and Piemonte. During the latest election campaign, La Lega supporters handed out bars of soap to be used "after touching an immigrant".

In Spain, the movement Preventive Reconquista is gaining ground - a perhaps George W Bush-inspired preventive war against the 1 million Muslim immigrants and their allegedly "evil" plans to re-attach Spain to Islam. A "headscarf controversy" already erupted in Madrid last April. Local town councils have been prohibiting the burqa and niqab - French-style (although a national ban was only narrowly defeated in the Spanish Congress last July).

It comes as no surprise that the extreme right is more turbocharged than ever in scores of European post-industrial cities which used to be center-left; that's certainly the case of Wilders in Rotterdam, Le Pen in Marseille, Strache in Vienna and Akesson in Malmo. Simone's assessment is being proven right.

And what makes these populists even more dangerous is their cross-pollination. Austria's Freedom Party copied a game from the Swiss People's Party in which players shoot at minarets popping up in their The Sound of Music-like landscape (with the added Austrian bonus of shooting at the muezzins as well).

The SD learned a lot from Wilders as well as the Danish People's Party and its chairwoman, Pia Kjaersgaard. They are all copying Wilders' trademark tactic of pitting immigrants against old pensioners - Islamophobia mixed with the widespread fear of the welfare state being plundered by foreigners.

In France, the revamped National Front - targeting Islamophobia - may be even more dangerous, now led by non-dogmatic, "intellectual", business suit-wearing Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean Marie, the party's founder; Marine wants to conquer the political center, to the point where Sarkozy simply won't be able to win anything without her.

This cross-pollination might even lead to an European-wide alliance, also including the US and Canada; an Atlanticist Islamophobistan. In fact that's Wilders' dream; the outfit is actually called International Freedom Alliance and was launched last July - to "defend freedom" and "stop Islam".

Marine Le Pen is not so hot about it - her preferential agenda is to conquer power in France. The US is also a dodgy proposition - after all Muslims make up only 1% of the US population, leading to the surrealist American phenomenon of Islamophobia without Muslims. Anyway it's troubling that virtually 50% of Americans say they have a negative impression of Islam. Allah needs a good PR firm, fast.

Fear sells
So what to do? We are smack in the middle of the second globalization. The first globalization took place between 1890 and 1914. It's a back to the future scenario mixed with a return of the living dead; then as now the acceleration of capital transfer, migrations and transportation is generating regression - misguided nationalism, xenophobia, racism, and a New Inquisition.

At a recent meeting of writers and journalists organized by the magazine Internazionale in Ferrara, in Emilia - one of Italy's and Europe's wealthiest provinces - arguably the most crucial debate was titled "Islam; a specter hovers around Europe". The key speakers were Tariq Ramadan, professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford and a real academic rock star in Europe, and Olivier Roy, professor at the European University Institute in Florence and one of Europe's top authorities on Islam and jihad. It's fair to say both have provided a road
map for sensible citizens to follow through.

Asked about the reasons for the widespread fear of the Muslim immigrant, Ramadan noted that this "perception harks back to the construction of the European project". These immigrants were supposed to have come to Europe just to work. "But now we have immigrants of second, third and fourth generation, they leave their ghetto, they are more visible, they feel at ease to express themselves, and their voices are heard." That causes a tremendous conflict with their overall perception.

Ramadan insists "European Muslims have it very clear in their minds the European concept of freedom of expression." And he is adamant; "Integration is a thing of the past; we are already integrated" (but try convincing Angela Merkel about it, or the citizens of Malmo for that matter).

Ramadan's key point is that Europeans - and Americans as well - should "make a clear distinction about the instrumentalization of these fears by movements and parties, derived from ignorance and fear itself. We should go beyond the theme of integration and stress common values. There is a consensus now in Europe that immigrants from second and third generation are more visible, in the cultural, political and sporting spheres. It's passivity facing instrumentalization that could become a tremendous risk for all European citizens."

Roy attacks the impasse from a different perspective. For him, "now there's a sort of fake consensus. Our consensus on Islam is related to the fact that we Europeans don't agree on what we are. Now in most European parliaments the left and right vote together to forbid the burqa, the construction of mosques ... Left and right seem to be in agreement against Islam, but for different motives. There's a disconnect between a religious marker and everyday life. What is religion? And what is culture? We should say religion is religion, and
citizenship is citizenship. That's how it works in Europe. City of Man and City of God. Muslims in Europe have adopted and are adopting the European model of separation between Church and State."

Roy defines "two aspects about the fear of Islamization; immigration and Islamization. For most of public opinion, they are synonyms, but that's not true. In France, for the second and third generations, there is everything, Muslims who pray all the time, some that pray sometimes, those who have no practice but say they're Muslims, Europeans converting to Islam, Muslims converting to Catholicism ... Everything depends on the political culture of the country. Freedom of religion in Europe is not a consequence of human rights. It was defined as a compromise after centuries of religious wars. But this compromise - in each European country - is now in crisis. For two reasons. One, the nation-State is in crisis. Because of globalization, European integration, national compromises overrun by supra-national laws. And now the freedom of religious practice is an individual right. That's something entirely new in European political culture."

Not sure that would be enough to convince Wilders and Akesson. They are not for inclusion; they're for exclusion - and more than ever they know the electoral business of fear sells. The New Inquisition will go on no matter what (and it will go out of control if one of those ghostly al-Qaedas, from Iraq, from the Maghreb, from the Horn of Africa, from wherever, crashes a jet on the Eiffel Tower). With that bleak prospect in mind, I left Islamophobistan the best way I could - boarding a
flight to a non-hate, non-fearful, certainly hopeful, boundless dynamic and religious war-free part of the world: South America.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Shalem, Jerusalem, Jerusaleme, Yerushalayim...




Shalem, Jerusalem, Jerusaleme, Yerushalayim...

Zionist propaganda....

The parallel between Jerusalem and Mecca is pointless. Jerusalem – Al Quds – was the first place towards Muslims turn in prayer. From a spiritual point of view, this city is as important as Mecca – and it is also a holy city to Christianity.
The “strong emotional attachment” to this place is not reserved to one people, it is common to all Abrahamic faiths. If you can’t understand/admit that point, you simply don’t deserve being in that place.

It is rather ironic to see Zionists using now the “spiritual” card – while the most substantial part of their nationalist/colonial ideology has nothing to do with spirituality.

Some thought about al Quds is so confused. They should read Augustine’s City of God before intending to tell us something coherent about your “emotional attachment” to Jerusalem – if by “emotional” you mean “spiritual”.

“Judaism barely survived without Jerusalem and the temple....”

!!! HOPEFULLY for Judaism, Judaism survived without Jerusalem and the temple. – writing the contrary is factually a lie and theoretically mere Zionist propaganda.

In conclusion, the spiritual attachment to Al Quds is not that exceptional : it is common to ALL Abrahamic traditions.
But Zionists – even/especially when they know nothing about the rich traditions of Jewish spirituality – use the “strong emotional attachment” argument when they need to justify both judaization and illegal settlements (comme d’habitude).

Jews who have a “strong emotional attachment” and genuine commitment with Jewish spirituality don’t support the colonial project and the racist idea that Jerusalem should be reserved to only one people....

It seems hard for most to understand that the City a spiritual tradition refers to is not exactly a material/historical one on which you have to practice ethnic cleansing, deportations and other aggressions.

Give us a break with your Zionist arguments using Judaism only to justify an ethnocratic policy and the ongoing judaization of Jerusalem.

You can check Zionists favorite source by the way : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaization_of_Jerusalem

“Judaization” in territorial terms is characterized by Oren Yiftachel as a form of “ethnicization”, which he argues is “the main force in shaping ethnocratic regimes”. Yiftachel identifies Judaization as a state strategy and project in Israel, not confined to Jerusalem alone. He also characterizes the goals of those pursuing a “Greater Israel” or “Greater Palestine” as being driven by “ethnicization”, in this case by “Judaization” and “Arabization” respectively.
Valerie Zink writes that much was accomplished towards the Judaization of Jerusalem with the expulsion of Arab residents in 1948 and 1967, noting that the process has also relied in “peacetime” on “the strategic extension of Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, bureaucratic and legal restrictions on Palestinian land use, disenfranchisement of Jerusalem residents, the expansion of settlements in ‘Greater Jerusalem’, and the construction of the separation wall.” The attempts to Judaize Jerusalem, in the words of Jeremy Salt, “to obliterate its Palestinian identity” and thicken ‘Greater Jerusalem’ to encompass much of the West Bank, have continued under successive Israeli governments.
Cheryl Rubenberg writes that since 1967, Israel has employed processes of “Judaization and Israelization so as to transform Jerusalem into a Jewish metropolis,” while simultaneously pursuing “a program of de-Arabization” so as to facilitate “its objective of permanent, unified, sovereign control over the city.” These policies, which aim to change Jerusalem demographically, socially, culturally and politically, are said by Rubenberg to have intensified after the initiation of the Oslo peace process in 1993.
Drawing on the scholarship of Ian Lustick, Cecilia Alban writes of how the Israeli government has succeeded in establishing “new powerful, concepts, images, and icons” to explain and legitimize its policies in Jerusalem. The government’s use of the term “reunification” to describe its occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967 is cited as one such example, which in Alban’s view, falsely implies that this area belonged to Israel in the past. Noting the reality of the fear among Israelis that Jerusalem would become redivided under dual sovereignty or internationalization proposals, Alban’s writes that such fears were “exploited politically to justify the forced retention and Judaization of East Jerusalem.”
In a 2008 report, John Dugard, independent investigator for the United Nations Human Rights Council, cites the Judaization of Jerusalem among many examples of Israeli policies “of colonialism, apartheid or occupation”, that create a context in which Palestinian terrorism is “an inevitable consequence”.

Interesting to read Party of God’s role in facilitating the new coalition government of Iraq.

One legacy of 2003 invasion of Iraq is that Hezbollah is now formally part of the Iraqi government, the leader of the Iraqi branch of the party who appears to these days reside most of his time in Iran.

On another matter, gotta smile when reading about “we” and “us” controlling Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, founded around 2600 BCE by a people that pre-date the idea of Jews, Christians or Muslims, has for long periods of past 2500 years been controlled by people whose ancestors are today’s Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians and Jews.

The “built-up place of Shalem” long-predates the arrival of monolithic religions and while the civil war between the Abrahamic tribes is entertaining, it is a side-show to the real action in human development – the action is in east Asia, south and central Asia and increasingly Latin America and parts of Africa and the interrelationships across those rapidly expanding economies.

What is most interesting about south west Asia to me is not so much the temporary civil conflict between cousins over a pre-Abrahamic city – which is we all suspect a small town that will eventually end up sharing but just haven’t settled yet on a modus operandi for that sharing, which is a trifling matter – but more what will the role be for Turkey in particular – will be succeed in maneuvering itself as a center of commerce and trade in central Asia – and how Turkey’s relationships are developing with other emerging economic powers – that is an interesting subject.

I would love to see a serious look from a Lebanese point of view – what are the commercial, cultural and other opportunities for Lebanon to leverage more out of emerging Turkey....

Arguments should be honest, objective and based upon rational facts, please read Schlomo Sand’s classic book : The Invention of Jewish People.


http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234/ref=pd_sim_b_4


“A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe.”

Friday, October 15, 2010

Israel: An Arab-free Jewish thuggocracy?


Israel: An Arab-free Jewish thuggocracy?
By Linda S. Heard

Oct 13, 2010,

The powers that be within Israel are showing their true bigoted racist colors. On Sunday, the Israeli Cabinet agreed to a new law obliging new non-Jewish immigrants to first swear allegiance to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state.” The concept is certainly original when one of the building blocks of democracy is equal rights for all citizens irrespective of their ethnicity or religious beliefs. Instead, the oath should surely read “a Jewish and theocratic state.”

Moreover, the law is discriminatory in that it presupposes that all Jews are inherently loyal to Israel, which is far being the case. Members of the orthodox Naturei Karta sect believe Israel’s very existence is a sin, while a large proportion of the most influential pro-Palestinian activists are Jews.

Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish political scientist and author, was barred entry to Israel because of his views and the Jewish Israeli conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim was awarded a Palestinian passport for his support. In recent weeks, an all “Jewish boat” has made an attempt to break the siege of Gaza.

But Israel’s arrogant prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his ultra-nationalist sidekick, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, are oblivious to such criticisms. They may have feuded in the past over style but their goal is the same: A country with Jerusalem as its capital without Arabs.

Netanyahu is a smarmy consummate diplomat who has spent too much time hobnobbing with his AIPAC buddies in Washington to display his true hand. He is currently playing a skillful game of bluff with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to keep Israel’s benefactors in Washington happy.

Peace talk is cheap and, what’s more to the point, it provides Israel with time to expand its colonies in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank. Netanyahu has never supported the idea of a Palestinian state with any conviction and if one cannot be avoided, then, from his perspective, it should fit on a postage stamp, be economically dependent on Israel and militarily toothless. But even his smiles and honeyed tones cannot hide his duplicity.

Even as he is urging Abbas to return to the peace table, he knows he has injected a giant spoke in the wheel. Before there can be a settlement, the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state,” which they cannot do without comprising the citizenship rights of Arab Israelis and the right of return of Palestinian refugees who were forced to flee in 1948 and 1967.

Lieberman, on the other hand, doesn’t bother pretending. He wants Israeli Arabs, who make up 20 percent of Israel’s citizenry, to be stripped of their nationality and herded into any future Palestinian entity. In the meantime, he would ideally like Israel’s Arab nationals to swear an oath of loyalty to the Jewish state. How they could even consider doing that when a sword hangs over their lives and livelihoods is difficult to imagine.

In other words, he wants the original Muslim and Christian sons of the soil, whose land and autonomy was stolen from them in 1948, to bow before Judaism. This ultimate humiliation of an oppressed minority, whose members have been treated as third class citizens since Israel was born, isn’t something that should be tolerated in the 21st century. Indeed, it smacks of the Spanish Inquisition when a Catholic Tribunal ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to Christianity on pain of death or exile.

If the new loyalty oath for non-Jewish immigrants is passed by the Knesset, it will represent one step toward fulfilling Lieberman’s revolting ambition.

In truth, not all Israelis are enthusiastic about the proposed law; indeed, many consider it contemptible. Israeli actress Hana Maron joined approximately one hundred academics at a demonstration against the “continuous erosion of Israeli democracy.”

There, Maron reminded her fellow protesters of her country’s Declaration of Independence which reads the State of Israel will “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” “This makes me want to cry. What has become of us?” she asked.

At the same gathering, the author Sefi Rachlevsky warned that Israel is in danger of becoming a fascist state. One of the pillars of fascism is the state’s non-tolerance of cultural or ethnic minorities that cannot or will not be assimilated into the dominant community.

An Israeli educational psychologist, Professor Gavriel Solomon, said “the idea of Judenrein (Jew free zone) or Arab-rein (Arab free zone) is not new . . . Some might say, ‘How can you compare us to Nazis?’ I am not talking about the death camps, but about the year 1935. There were no camps yet but there were racist laws. And we are heading forward toward these kinds of laws . . .”

Ha’aretz columnist Gideon Levy suggests Israel should change its name to the Jewish Republic of Israel and warns his countrymen “from now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country.”

Levy also warns that the loyalty oath for new non-Jewish citizens could be the tip of the iceberg. “At its next session, the Knesset is to debate close to 20 other anti-democratic bills,” he writes. These include a bill for the revocation of citizenship as well as a loyalty law for Knesset members and film producers.

Unfortunately, such outrage doesn’t extend to the majority of Israelis who are either too busy with their own lives to care or too apathetic to raise their voices against looming injustice. There are also those who would be delighted to replace their Arab neighbors with “nice” Jewish ones.

Even worse, is the silence of the international community which is determined to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil on the topic of Israel. That is a barbaric crime in itself!

Monday, October 11, 2010

Will Hezbollah defeat Israel (again...) in the coming war?


Will Hezbollah defeat Israel (again!) in the coming war?

Oct , 2010


Part I: “Know thy enemy.” . . . Sun Tzu

Maroun al Ras on the Lebanon/Occupied Palestine border

On a clear day you can see Akka, Palestine from my favorite Lebanese village, Maron al Ras, where more than a few analysts here conjecture that the next and 6th aggression by Israel against Lebanon will begin.

On any day, but particularly since 9/21/10, you can also see beefed up Zionist military patrols, assorted electronic listening posts, sundry spy devices, new Raytheon produced surveillance equipment, two new supposedly camouflaged cinder block one room shacks with Zionist soldiers peering out menacingly while talking on their, Hezbollah monitored, cell phones to girlfriends, mothers, pals and their HQ’s. They frequently glare from windows heavily screened to keep out stones that tourists on the Lebanon side of the ‘blue line’ regularly throw at them when UNIFIL guys aren’t paying attention or shoo them away. You can also see land mine fields, wide soft sand swatches along the wire fences to detect trespassing neighbors footprints, a couple of orchards, and the edges of three colonial settlements. And if one were to squint, like really squint, or better yet, risk getting shot between the eyes by a Zionist sniper with an American 7.62 mm, Sniper Weapon System, M24 (called a “system” because it can be used with various detachable telescopic sights and other accessories) and were to use some Barska Cosmos 25X100 binoculars, one might see, well, vent holes. These air ducts, according to imaginative and joking village kids, are guarded by specially trained scorpions, the holes bringing in fresh air for scores of 130 feet plus bunkers that some miscreants are rumored to have gone and built all over northern Palestine as far south as Safad.

The increase in activity along the Blue line, especially near Fatima’s Gate is only partially in preparation for the rumored visit of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in mid- October. An Israeli invasion could be launched at any time and locals explain that, for their part, they have selected their targets, completed their surveillance, so far eluded capture and are ready to attack deep into Palestine when commanded.

President Ahmadinejad is also expected to appear and speak at Maroun al Ras, presumably without binoculars and resisting the temptation to cast a few stones in solidarity with the Palestinian intifadas. UNIFIL personnel at the scene reveal that several Israeli military leaders have been visiting the area this past month, including Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

It is here in this ancient verdant, war scared hillside village of Maroun al Ras where tradition instructs that Jesus (Issa) from Nazareth, less than a day’s walk to the South, accompanying his sainted mother Mary (Miriam), paused to rest on their trek to a wedding feast at Qana, some 30 km west.

At Qana, the site of unspeakable massacres in 1996 and 2006, two of the more than 60 committed by Zionist forces over the past six decades, the bearded Palestinian “terrorist,” so-listed by the Sanhedrin judges, performed at his mother’s request his first miracle. Qana residents are quick to point out that it was this same Sanhedrin that would later pay Judas Iscariot 30 pieces of silver to deliver up Jesus for trial on false death penalty charges of Blasphemy and would sentence his brother James to death by stoning.* According to a local priest who conducts tours of the Grotto of the Virgin Mary in Qana, where Mary and her son visited with the family of the soon to be newlyweds, “By turning water into wine, Jesus dutifully fulfilled his mother Mary’s request to provide additional refreshment for the larger than expected gathering of nearby villagers.” The priest explains to visitors that the parents of the bride and groom wanted to avoid the acute social embarrassment of running out of refreshments and were concerned for the comfort of last minute uninvited guests, who they anticipated would arrive for their children’s wedding as word quickly spread that Jesus and his mother would be attending.

One guest who is receiving invitations even from March 14 pro-Saudi political parties for frank discussions this month and who has already been invited to Qana, but who probably won’t imbibe local the “miracle wine” sold by local entrepreneurs, from under the tent so to speak, will be the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is said to be a devotee of Prophet Issa and Miriam, both venerated in the Holy Qur’an.

In Lebanon, it sometimes appears even to the “particularly obtuse” - to borrow a phrase from my favorite constitutional law professor and scholar, Henry Paul Monaghan, who sometimes called us first year law students “particularly obtuse” - that everything is viewed thru the smoky prism of local politics and sects. Two lovely and politically passionate Qana villagers (one giggling and claiming to be a “Shia-Christian” and her friend interjecting “I’m a Christian-Shia!”), both Muslims who follow the teachings of “Prophet Issa,” explained to this foreigner that while many Rabbi’s disparage Jesus’ miracle in Qana by claiming that it was the Hebrew Moses who was first able to turn water into another substance. They then gleefully counter that “Moses may well have done, but Moses turned water into blood as a message of harsh judgment and violence, whereas “our” Palestinian Issa turned water into wine as a message of love, generosity and hospitality.” The discussion ended when an American Yeshiva student from Brooklyn appeared and entered the discussion announcing to the villagers that both Bible stories “suck” and that when the next war comes Qana may witness itself being miraculously turned into depleted uranium dust.

In both Maroun al Ras and Qana, villagers believe it’s just a matter of time before Israel will invade Lebanon and it’s a subject of rare unanimous sectarian consensus in all of Lebanon. For example, in the course of no more than two hours the other day, while running errands around Beirut, this observer was informed, without even bringing up the subject, by (1) my Shia Muslim Hezbollah motorcycle mechanic patching up my bike after a slight mishap (again!) (2) Miss Idriss, the Maronite Christian lady who works at the corner bank and who truly adores “al Hakim” Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces (since 2006, Geagea and the LF has been siphoning off alienated cadres and youth from the ranks of Geagea’s rivals including the Gemayals’ Phalange and Michel Aoun’s Christian pro-Hezbollah Free Patriotic Movement, and (3) my Sunni Muslim greengrocer lady who has absolutely no use for any of the above, that a major war is coming and probably sooner rather than later.

Purveyors of Israeli Hasbara are also keeping busy with predictions of a World War I type inevitability of major war in Lebanon given the claimed rapid arming of the national Lebanese resistance led by Hezbollah, and the Israeli touted collection of yet more new ‘ ultra-tech super weapons’ including robotic insects, new stealth drones, Iron Domes, David Sling I and II missile shields, yet even more improvements to the “impenetrable” Merkava Mark IV tank that took such a beating in 2006 that three countries, including Belgium, cancelled Merkava purchase orders. Israel and its “academic agents” tout more than 20 other spectacular “game changing” technological breakthroughs ‘ just since the 2006 war which, according to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies and Jane’s Defense Weekly, likely will not function in real war conditions - despite the largess of the unknowing American taxpayers who pick up the tab for their R & D.

Virtually the whole waterfall of Hasbara studies, many handsomely paid for by various Israel lobby funders, conclude that the next Hezbollah Israel war will be nothing like the 2006 July War. In addition, pro-Israel authors routinely skew their research to reassure their paymasters that Hezbollah will lose to the spruced up, better-equipped and trained Israeli soldiers and that their defeat will not only shatter Hezbollah, but destroy Syria and Iran’s political power base and fundamentally changed the political scene in Beirut. This they confidently predict will lead to a pro-American and Israel-tolerant realignment of political parties and even achieve the long sought Lebanon- Israel “peace treaty.” Some “Lobby papers” conclude that the next battle will deliver changes as far away as Iran, and destroy Hamas.

Designed to bolster the increasingly dubious Israeli public opinion, some Israeli think tanks claim that the massive US taxpayer funded therapy program for returning 2006 Israeli troops has succeeded in lowering the rates of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and has lowered the percentage of “shell shock” disability cases in Israel. No mention of the skyrocketing rates of PTSD among US troops returning from various deployments in the Middle East which are skyrocketing, and American family complaints that needed medical help in being denied due to Pentagon budget “priorities.” A Rand study in 2008 estimated the total number of American service members who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who returned with PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), or “had their bell rung” to use the terminology employed by some staff in Ward E7 at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington, is more than 320,000. Today the figure is thought to be near 350,000. Only a small percentage are being properly treated according to the Department of Veterans Affairs and Bethesda medical staff, both of which admit they are not equipped to handle them -- most severely maimed for life. Increasingly, some family members are becoming bitter and complaining about budget cuts. One mother recently complained to Congressman Steny Hoyer, veteran not of the US military but of more than a dozen US taxpayer paid trips to Israel, that “Israel always comes first and we pay for treatment and therapy for their soldiers and we sent our boys and girls to Iraq and Afghanistan because they told us to.” As reported by Ray McGovern, writing in Counterpunch recently, “Just this past week at Fort Hood, Texas, four decorated veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took their own lives, adding to the 14 other suicides this year at Fort Hood alone.

Timur Goksel, former advisor to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), is dismissive of many of these “Research Papers” and their almost without exception, Zionist authors: “They don’t know the other side of the story. They don’t know what is happening here in Lebanon or what is Hezbollah doing or what is Hezbollah capable of. They will likely be shocked when they find out. They guess from newspapers and whatever and Hezbollah is not the organization you can read about in newspapers accurately. They don’t talk too much.” Goksel added.

Some of the Israeli Lobby think tank predictions may indeed materialize but the history of Hezbollah and Israel on the battlefield and other factors, ignored by pro-Israel “scholars” who either aren’t aware of them, or don’t want to risk their sinecures by mentioning unpleasant facts to their employers, suggest that Israel will lose its next aggression against Lebanon. It is clear that Hezbollah has been studying its enemy.

Scorecard: Four Hezbollah conflicts with Israeli forces

The June 1982 Israeli invasion is not included in this brief consideration because Hezbollah was not fully organized and in fact its birth was partially the result of the 1982 “Peace for Galilee” aggression that slaughtered nearly 20,000 Lebanese civilians and Palestinian refugees as well as setting the stage for the Sabra-Shatila Massacre. On August 30, 1982, Israel did achieve its goal of expelling most of its PLO nemesis but catastrophically failed in its main objective of ending Lebanese resistance activity. As a PLO replacement Hezbollah quickly became a far stronger and more sophisticated adversary. Many fighters who eventually joined Hezbollah but who fought in 1982 with the PLO or with a variety of affiliated militia inflicted much damage on Israeli forces during numerous mountain battles and at Khaldeh on the coast south of Beirut.

1985: Hezbollah pushes their Zionist enemy out of the mountain areas

Between 1978 to 1985, Zionist forces occupied approximately 1/3 of Lebanon including 801 towns and villages. The newly forming Hezbollah never stopped its resistance attacks. An important Hezbollah political victory against Israel was achieved on March 5, 1984 when its work to achieve the Lebanese Council of Ministers cancellation of the U.S.-Israel created May 17, 1983 agreement that would have yielded significant Lebanese sovereignty and territory to Israel. Another was the expulsion of foreign “peacekeeping forces” that increasingly attacked the civilian population of Lebanon on behalf of Israel and its local allies.

During this period Hezbollah and its allies surprised and hit Israeli forces hard all over the mountains and valleys and on January 14, 1985 Israel began withdrawing from 168 villages, being 55% of South Lebanon or 11% of Lebanon including Sidon, Tyre, Nabatieh and parts of the Western Bekaa.

The July 1993 Aggression -- so called “Operation Accountability”

Israeli Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, told the Lebanese government on 7/31/93, “Disarm Hezbollah or watch Israeli do it.” He said about the same thing to the Obama administration on 9/30/10 at the Pentagon.

Despite, 1,224 bombing attacks, according to UNIFIL data, and firing more than 30,000 artillery shells and rockets, Hezbollah retaliated with what AFP on 7/25/93 called, “A hell of a shelling last[ing] 10 hours without a pause.” For seven days resistance forces conducted at least 30 operations along the Blue line targeting Zionist forces and their Lebanese surrogates. The US and Israel, shocked that the CIA-Mossad intelligence estimates that Hezbollah had only 500 rockets and this supply would be depleted in three days, decided to call for a cease-fire. The “July Accord” took effect at 6 p.m. on 7/31/93 and Israel withdrew and stood down, failing to achieve any of its objectives which frankly are always the same: Disarm the Resistance, break Hezbollah’s relationships with the Lebanese public, and force the Lebanese government to dismantle the Resistance. On 8/19/93 Israel’s PM Rabin told his cabinet: “ I regret saying this, but Hezbollah has defeated us.”

The April 1996 Aggression:--the so-called “Grapes of Wrath”

This aggression started on April 11, 1996 with bombing attacks in Baalbeck and down south in Tyre at the Lebanese army base and for the first time since 1982, attacks on Dahiyeh in South Beirut. Israel bombed a wider area that in 1993 over a period of 16 days.

This invasion became known among some in South Lebanon as the “ Four Massacres aggression”: Suhmor on 4/12/96; the bombing of the Al-Mansouri ambulance on 4/13/96; Nabatieh on Day 7; and the Qana massacre on the same day when 118 civilians were slaughter and 127 injured. Hundreds of thousands were displaced with 7,000 homes completely or partially destroyed. Total civilian casualties exceeded 250.

Having studied each preceding war with its enemy, Hezbollah succeeded in anticipating Israeli tactics, paths of entrance into Lebanon and targeting actions. Israel, not being able to find any, failed to target a single resistance fighter or to prevent any rocket pads from launching at will. Until the moment the US-Israel requested ceasefire took hold, having been arranged by US Sec. of State Warren Christopher, Hezbollah’s retaliation with Katuysha rockets continued unabated. Israel’s goals were again those noted above. There was one addition and that was to present Shimon Peres with a military victory to help his election campaign which was backed by President Clinton and staffed with some key Clinton campaign staff. On May 29, 1996 Peres lost the election and Hezbollah emerged from “Grapes of Wrath” victorious and widely perceived in Washington and Tel Aviv as having exposed Israeli battle field errors or what the Resistance called “impotence.”

The May 24, 2000 withdrawal of Israeli forces and the complete collapse of their surrogate collaborationist Lahdist forces. Israel’s notorious prison at Khiam was liberated by villagers and their loved ones freed. This resistance victory was perhaps its sweetest to date. No cheap political deals to help the Zionists save faced. Total defeat as Israeli faces snuck out during one night without even telling their collaborators. A half century after Israel started its inroads into Lebanon, except for some border enclaves like Shebaa, Kfar Kouba and Ghajar that Hezbollah and the Lebanese army aims to recover during the coming war, it was out.

This victory was especially valuable to the Resistance and Lebanon as it demonstrated qualities that will determine the outcome of the next war. It blended a deep belief in God, magnanimous in victory, human treatment of the vanquished, care for the families of martyrs, insistence on dialogue with internal adversaries, confidence in the victory of good over evil, and thorough preparation for future aggressions and acceptance of sacrifice.

The July 2006 War, the mis-named “ Second Lebanon War”

The results of the 2006 33-day Israeli aggression are well known and documented, with none of Israel’s stated goals of, destroying Hezbollah, a treaty with Lebanon, breaking popular Lebanese support for the National Lebanese Resistance, being achieved. Hezbollah’s victory resulted in a deep sea change in Lebanese sectarian attitude towards Israel partly because living during the war all of Lebanon saw through the Hasbara articles produced for cash at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP was set up by AIPAC in 1985), the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies , and the Foreign Policy Initiative, among several others.

Preparing for the coming war- knowing the enemy

Sometimes Hezbollah members complain to this observer, as one did recently, that “we spend so much time studying every imaginable aspect of the Zionist forces and their corrupt society, from their psychology, strengths and weaknesses on the battle field, every battle and every little encounter over the past 28 years, favorite foods, drugs, and video games. Really, I don’t find them all that interesting I just want to expel them from the rest of Lebanon and all of Palestine. The sooner the better!”

Among past wars involving Israel that Hezbollah is said to microscopically study, in addition to all its own battles during Israeli wars and invasions, are those of 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1978. As well as the serial aggressions inside occupied Palestine including Gaza. Hezbollah believes Israel will indeed attack Lebanon and that the Zionist battle plan will include the use of the following Israeli units which Hezbollah has been carefully studying and preparing to confront. Among these are the 91st “Galilee Division” which Hezbollah believes will be backed by multiple regular and reserve brigades trying to seal Lebanon’s southern border to stop Resistance/Lebanese Army units from moving deep inside occupied Palestine.

Additionally, Hezbollah is preparing to seek out and cripple the 162nd Armored Division which it damaged regularly during the 2006 war as well as confronting the 36th Armored Division normally assigned to the Golan Heights, (unless Syria fights this time) and at least three reserve armored divisions ( Hezbollah sources believe probably the 366th and 319th). Hezbollah has prepared meticulous plans to destroy the 98th Paratroop Division, the much touted “Special Forces Quality” Golani Infantry Brigade (which Hezbollah reserve forces mauled badly in 2006), the 35th Paratroop Brigade, the 551st “Spearhead” Brigade, the Givati Infantry Brigade, the Alexandroni Reserve Infantry Brigade, the Kfir Infantry Brigade specializing in “Urban Warfare,” the Carmeli Infantry Reserve Brigade, the Sayeret Matkal Reconnaissance Unit, the Sayeret Egoz reconnaissance unit attached to the Golani Brigade, the Shayetet 13 Naval Commando Reconnaissance and Raiding Unit, the Sayeret Yael Engineering Unit, plus a variety of units specializing in combat intelligence, supply, transport and communications.

Both Hezbollah and Israel have declined comment on current rumors coming from concerned Pentagon staff in Washington that Hezbollah intelligence agents inside Israel have provided the Lebanese Resistance with the names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and email addresses of each personnel assigned to every one of the above units to be in its crosshairs when the battle begins.

Is Hezbollah prepared to fight Israeli collaborators on additional fronts?

Lebanese national resistance allies in and around Parliament are claiming that the US is frantically trying to organize a “northern second front” to help Israel in the coming war by enticing right wing Christian militias, Al Qaeda mixed-bag “Salafists for lease,” and anyone else willing to fight a back door war against the Resistance while Israel kicks in the front door north of Safad and Nahariyah down south. The White House has reportedly vetoed one scheme to bring in Blackwater type private contractors.

Former MP Nasr Kandil who is close to Hezbollah stated on 9/30/10: “Egypt is also training hundreds of young gunmen in military camps in north Lebanon that were set up under the guise of mobile hospitals while Jordan is training more than 700 Sunni militia members” at the behest of the US Embassy in Beirut and Jordan as part of “subversive initiatives against Lebanon for Israel’s benefit.”

These militia are claimed by Kandil and other politicians in Lebanon including Senior Arab Democratic Party member Rifat Ali Eid, to be Salafi groups with links to Al Qaeda organized by the CIA and Saudi Intelligence Services similar to the Fatah al Islam group that fought a summer long battle from the Palestinian camp of Nahr al Bared in 2007, and whose ranks are being replenished in Lebanon.

This week the Lebanese Forces were accused by Hezbollah’s Sheik Naim Qassim, Deputy to SG Hassan Nasrallah, of running new LF militia training camps with speculation that they are being trained on Russian-made BKC machine guns and the American MAG and small mortars. If so, they are not the only ones participating in an arms acquisition frenzy. A weapons run ignited during the May 8, 2008 violence, cooled down over the past two years but flared up again last month with virtually all political parties and many private citizens buying up available stocks of M4’s (with a launcher $12,000) M16’s ($1,500) and AK47 Kalashnikov’s rifles (ranging between $750-$1,000) out of the back of cars or on road sides and alleys. Truck loads have been reported arriving from Iraq hauling US military supplies ‘shrinkage.’

Some analysts believe that once the Israeli attack date is imminent, northern Sunni militia being clustered around Tripoli and Akkar and other locations will attack Shia targets diverting Hezbollah units and weakening its southern and eastern (Bekaa) resistance.

They expect beefed up Saudi financed “Security-Plus Inc.” type units that were attempted in May of 2008. It may be recalled that effort soon fizzled and was ridiculed in Lebanese media as “Security-Minus Inc.” because when the green recruits got off their buses down in Hamra they quickly defected en masse deciding they did not want to fight Hezbollah “second team” forces after all.

For the past three years, Israel has been instructing the White House and Congress, as Ehud Barak told Bill Clinton on 9/21/10 at the opening of the Clinton Global Initiative in NYC: “This time Hezbollah must be totally eradicated from Lebanon. We don’t even want to find their residue after the next operation!”

Despite Barak’s instructions, the Pentagon’s J-8 Directorate for Force Structure Resources and Assessment, which among other duties conducts analysis, assessments, and evaluates strategies for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and some special American friends, agrees with Israeli military planners and Hezbollah on at least one subject. The next Hezbollah-Israel war will not see Israel using many ground forces outside of armored personnel carriers once they enter Lebanon. The reason is that all three agree with the Pentagon’s J-8 Directorates opinion that based on previous battlefield performance, it will likely require 5 Israeli soldiers to offset one Hezbollah defender’s battlefield acumen.

* Act 6:12 and Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1

Next: Part II “Know thy self.” . . . Sun Tzu and Hezbollah Unit Commanders...


Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Russian navy chief warns of China's race for Arctic .

Russian nuclear-powered submarine
Russia has vowed 'not give up a single inch' ...

Russia will increase naval patrols in the Arctic Ocean to defend its interests against nations such as China seeking a share of the area's mineral wealth, the navy commander was quoted as saying....

Arctic nations such as Canada, Russia, Norway, the United States and Denmark are trying to file territorial claims over the oil, gas and precious metal reserves under the Arctic sea bed that may become accessible as the ice cap shrinks.

But in a rare public warning about China from Russia's top military brass, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky warned that China had already joined the scramble for a piece of "the Arctic pie".

"We are observing the penetration of a host of states which ... are advancing their interests very intensively, in every possible way, in particular China," Admiral Vysotsky was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Russia would "not give up a single inch" in the Arctic.

"The ships of the Northern and Pacific fleets are continuing to increase their military presence in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation with new navy ships," he was quoted as saying by state RIA news agency.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin tried to dampen fears of China last month, saying Russia had nothing to fear from its eastern neighbor, though many senior officials in Moscow are privately concerned about China's growing global clout.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a research note in March that China was positioning itself to gain from the prospect of new Arctic shipping routes and the region's untapped resources as the ice cap melts.

China, the world's fastest growing major economy, has sought to secure long-term oil and gas supplies from Russia, the world's biggest energy producer, which has a population of 142 million compared to China's 1.3 billion.

By international law, Canada, Russia, Norway, the United States and Denmark have a 370km (200 nautical mile) economic zone north of their Arctic borders.

Russia wants more, claiming the Arctic Ocean sea floor is an extension of its continental shelf, though Putin urged Arctic nations last month to cut a deal on how to explore the region's mineral resources.

Russia believes its entire Arctic territory holds twice as much oil and gas reserves as Saudi Arabia, the world's second biggest oil producer after Russia.

China’s Arctic Play -- Gordon G. Chang, The Diplomat


An admiral stakes a territorial claim—and it looks like there’s more to come.

‘The Arctic belongs to all the people around the world as no nation has sovereignty over it.’ So said Chinese Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo, in comments relayed by the official China News Service on March 5 that essentially staked Beijing’s claim to the North Pole.

Of course, China, lacking an Arctic coast, has no recognizable right to any portion of the roof of the world. The five Arctic littoral states—Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States—do, however, and their overlapping claims remain unresolved.

Read more ....


Monday, October 4, 2010

Second decade of the New American Century: ‘A Clock Work Orange’ meets ‘American Psycho’


Second decade of the New American Century: ‘A Clock Work Orange’ meets ‘American Psycho’
By John Stanton

Oct 4, 2010,


“The United States will protect its people and advance our prosperity irrespective of the actions of any other nation . . .” --President Barak Obama in National Security Strategy of the United States, 2010

The American Empire is not in decline. It is rebooting for a new era of dominance.

The American Empire’s success depends on successfully converting the national American psyche into a sociopathic national consciousness (SNC). Once completed, America’s empire will be as successful as it is ruthless.

This conversion process is ad hoc and always the consequence of an “outside” event or “crisis” and the fear it engenders. The sociopath, as individual or collective, is opportunistic and reaps advantage from uncertainty. Sociopaths are in abundance at every level of American society.

For example, the response to 9/11 was mostly ill-conceived as the world now knows. But the fallout from that, though, is irreversible: state secrets, wire tapping, torture, leaders inciting fear in American society, terrorists around every corner threatening life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, fusion centers, laws conceived for punishing terrorists used on common criminals/vandals, war as meaningless, etc. Now more war is needed and so it’s cyberwar, helicopter gunships into Pakistan and Yemen, and that pesky homegrown terrorist problem (antiwar activists).

There is no end game for this state of affairs just as there is no stopping the conversion of America to a totally sociopathic empire.

In the USA, Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon and the societies of Orwell’s 1984 and Zamyatin’s We are taking shape rapidly. The institutions/societies they created/portrayed are the inevitable result of a society based on a violence-in-the-name-of-good model and indispensible to a warring Empire like the USA. They are critical to its success.

Could it be otherwise? Is the American Empire an exception to the historical rule?

The conversion to the SNC can be seen everywhere.

Language is emptied of meaning, the national securitization of every aspect of life, and the increase of “action at a distance via technology” whether in inter-personnel relations or the execution of war in distant lands.

Examples abound: “too big to fail” as legitimate rationale, a “surge” is not an increase; “combat has ended” when it has not; the recession “is over” when it is not; “we do not torture” when we actually do; the two party system is competitive when it is not, the Tea Party is a grassroots creation when it is not, and so on.

President Obama has stated that national security and homeland security are now the same. Just so: food security, infrastructure security, neighborhood security, personal security, airport security, education security, and on and on. The Christian Easter Sunday normally sees children at the receiving end of an Easter Basket from parents loaded with candy. Now the Easter Basket has toy soldiers and military airplanes included. A popular mouthwash states on its bottle, “Tooth Defense!”

Face-to-face, interpersonal communication is to be avoided if at all possible. When it is witnessed at press conferences, military briefings, town halls, or the “Sunday morning talkies” on the MSM, the ground rules for the contestants make for a sterile and humorless event in which participants simply make noises at each other.

Americans hide in their iPhones, Black Berry’s and cell phones. This scene is commonplace: talking in meet-space with friend, spouse, or fellow worker. In mid-conversation, a cell phone rings with the result that the person on the other end of phone overrides the near-flesh conversation. Even near-flesh experiences during which conversation does take place lacks any degree of substance. How was your weekend? Did you see “American Idol?” How about that football team? What’s the deal with Mel Gibson? Can you believe Lady Gaga?

No existential or ontological discussion here. It’s a nation of sociopaths, mechanical to the core. That’s okay because that what the Empire needs to move forward unencumbered with reality....

It is the SNC that will be America’s trump card in the game of global domination.

The American Sociopath

The American Empire depends on its people, said President Obama. What are the characteristics of the American people and their “leaders”?

Glibness and Superficial Charm and Manipulative and Cunning: They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.

Grandiose Sense of Self: Feels entitled to certain things as “their right.”

Pathological Lying: Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.

Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt: A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.

Shallow Emotions: When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.

Need for Stimulation: Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.

Callousness/Lack of Empathy: Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.

Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature: Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, and no concern for their impact on others.

Irresponsibility/Unreliability: Not concerned about wrecking others’ lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.

Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility: Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.

Is there any doubting America’s character?

Critics of the Empire: Convert now!

Naysayers believe that the American way of consumption is at an end. The USA can’t continue to consume 25 percent of the Earth’s resources, they say. They point to the presence of new and powerful global competitors in Brazil, China, Russia, Turkey and India that are cutting into the sole source status that the USA once enjoyed around the globe. Profligate US government spending and the financial crisis of 2008 sapped America’s ability to shape its own future, just as it has wounded its ability to meddle in the affairs of other nations.

The naysayers fail to understand the ebbs and flows of building and sustaining an empire. There are constant setbacks and challenges. They also underestimate the American Way of Empire: an empire based on the principle of excessive violence, consumption and amusement. The American Empire’s mission is right there in the Declaration of Independence: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” It’s an inalienable right.

When asking what Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Washington would think about the current state of the American Experiment as Empire, they undoubtedly would applaud it. Why? Because they would be smart enough to understand that the speed of movement of people/resources and information/ideas around the globe is exactly what America is all about. It’s simply a reflection of the pace of life in the USA. Imagine it: Jefferson may have been able to pay off his debts rather than have died penniless. What living US president these days has ever gone broke?

The American Empire, just as its predatory predecessors (Greece, Rome, for example), proclaims -- quite loudly -- that its way of life is most noble, its technology preeminent, its political system unmatched, its culture and Gods supreme. An empire must shape the world in its own image, must conquer and enslave. The Gods favor conquerors, favor the emperor who orders destruction in the name of a good or a God, favors the citizens who go about their daily business or willingly sacrifice their existence for the Empire’s cause.

Empires tolerate internal dissent -- “free press” -- as part of the grand theater that is politics and entertainment. Allowing dissent legitimizes the destruction of the empire’s foes, internal and external (assassinating US citizens?) that are intolerant of dissent, who operate contrary to the empire’s ethos, who challenge the rule of violence.

The price of empire: Psychopathic, vapid culture

“Despair, feeding, as it always does, on phantasmagoria, is imperturbably leading literature to the rejection, en masse, of all divine and social laws, towards practical and theoretical evil.” --Isadore Ducasse/Lautreamont

“The Korova Milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence.” --Alex from “A Clock Work Orange”

“It did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change, or that the world could be a better place through one’s taking pleasure in a look or a feeling or a gesture, or receiving another person’s love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term ‘generosity of spirit’ applied to nothing, was a cliché, it was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality is no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire is meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, and grief, were things, emotions that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love can’t be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in . . . this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged . . .” --Bateman from “American Psycho”


John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security and political matters.