Wikileaks and the War for your Mind

By Joe Quinn

Wikileaks and the War for your Mind

In November 2008, current advisor to President Obama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, described to a group of British political and corporate elite two very basic transforming developments that he believes are occurring on the world scene:

“The first change concerns the surfacing of global issues pertaining to human well being as critical international issues such as climate, environment, starvation, health and social inequality. The second change concerns a global political awakening.”

Brezezinski described this second change as “a truly transformative event on the global scene”. He said that: “for the first time in all of human history, almost all of mankind is politically awake, activated, politically conscious and interactive. There are only a few pockets of humanity here or there in the remotest corners of the world which are not politically alert and interacted with the political turmoil and stirrings and aspirations around the world. And all of that is creating a world wide surge for the worldwide surge for personal dignity and cultural respect in a diversified world.”

To an audience in the US he described the global ‘terror threat’ in this way:

“I’m deeply troubled that a very vague emotionally stated semi-theologically defined diagnosis of the central global menace is obscuring our national ability to comprehend the historically unprecedented challenge which is being posed in our time”

The historically unprecedented challenge is:

“A massive global political awakening and this is obstructing our ability to deal effectively with the global political turmoil that this awakening is generating.”

Brzezinski went on to describe another new reality that global powers such as the US must face: “”while the lethality of [our] power is greater than ever, [our] capacity to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is at an historical low”. He further noted that:

“In earlier times, it was easier to control a million people than physically to kill a million people. Today it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people.”

Brzezinski is no political light-weight. He has been on the Washington scene for 40 years and served as Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser not to mention his long-term membership of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg group. As such, his opinions hold significant weight, not so much as an indicator of how things are on our planet, but rather how the US government and the global corporate elites would like things to be. It is clear from Brzezinski’s comments therefore that a potential global political awakening is of great concern to the elite of this world and it would be naive of us to think that they are not taking steps to confront this ‘unprecedented challenge’.

Historically, governments have relied on control of information to control the people. In the last 100 years, that control has been effected largely by control of the media. From government officials as ‘experts’ on the evening news or columnists in newspapers to media representatives ’embedded’ with troops overseas at war, it was a relatively easy task for the government to present a very one-sided picture of world events. With the dawn of the internet age however, and particularly in the first ten years of the 21st century, came the ability for the ordinary person to provide news and analysis to a wide audience and effectively challenge the monopoly of the mainstream media and government control of information.

With the launch of the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, the need for the US government to control information reached new heights. In response to the threat posed by a virtual army of amateur journalist bloggers and web-site owners, the US government has not been idle.

In 2006 a US military document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) gave a fascinating insight into the US government’s plans for ‘information operations’. Written in 2003, the document, entitled ‘Information Operations Roadmap‘, describes the new methods that were being used to fight what the White House understood as an electronic information war. Signed by then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, the ‘roadmap’ called for military and government public affairs officers to brief journalists and admitted that information put out as part of the US military’s psychological operations would be directed also at the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans and, as a result, English-speaking people the world over.

“Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” the document reads. The term “fight the net” appears several times in the document and makes clear that the US government views the internet, and the information available thereon, as an enemy.

In a 2007 book entitled Information Strategy and Warfare: A Guide to Theory and Practice, Professor of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, John Arquilla, and Douglas A. Borer, Associate Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, assert that US government information strategists could “consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other person of prominence […] to pass the US message. Sometimes specific numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message, for example, may be worth considering. An alternative strategy is to ‘make’ a blog or blogger […] if a [covert] military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources it could rise in ranking fairly rapidly.”

As regards blogs or web sites that speak too much truth to the people, the strategy outlined involves: “hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data – merely a few words or phrases – may be sufficient to being destroying the bloggers credibility with the audience. […] There may also be times when it is necessary to pass false or erroneous information through the media. […] In these cases, extra care must be taken to ensure plausible deniability and nonattribution and to employ a well thought out deception operation that minimizes the risk of exposure.”

The Israeli government too has recruited an ‘army of bloggers’ to combat anti-Zionist web sites according to an article in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper in January 2009.

Recent polls suggest that the US and Israeli government’s fears in this regard are well-founded. A 2008 Pew Research Center poll for example found that 40% of people in the USA get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, compared to 35% who say they use newspapers. While 70% of all respondents said they used television as their main source of news, almost 60% of people under 30 years old reported using the internet rather than television as a main source of national and international news.

So the question is, if the US and Israeli governments view the internet as the ‘fifth battlefield’ (behind, land sea, air and space), to what lengths are they likely to go to win the ‘war’? More to the point, does winning this ‘war’ ultimately involve shutting down internet freedom of speech and all dissent against the government?

Today it is public knowledge that, in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, the mainstream media acted as a mouth-piece for government in unquestioningly spreading the lies and propaganda of the Bush administration and the Washington Israeli lobby far and wide. The effect was to generate public support for what were clearly imperial wars of conquest. Independent news sources sprang up in response to this utter failure on the part of the mainstream media corporations to fulfill their supposed role of holding government officials to account.

Confronting government lies with truth then has been the means through which truth-tellers on blogs and web sites the world over have gained public attention and respect. It would make sense therefore that, to effectively counter or neutralize this ‘threat’, the US and Israeli governments would have to come up with something rather special as a replacement. They would have to produce a convincing facsimile that appeared to be a genuine ‘whistle-blower’ operation capable of re-directing public attention away from the independent media and monopolizing the market for truth in an age of deception. At the same time however, any such operation would have to remain under the control of the same governments. Subtle deception with “plausible deniability and nonattribution” would be the name of the game.

Enter Wikileaks

Wikileaks is officially an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources and news leaks. Its first document was published in December 2006. The site claims to have been “founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa”. WikiLeaks started out with the aim of “exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.” Interestingly, these are very same areas that are primary geo-strategic and political interest to the US and Israeli governments.

Julian Assange is generally described as the director of Wikileaks. In September 2010 Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year-old political activist in Iceland, questioned Mr. Assange’s judgment over a number of issues in an online exchange in 2010. In response, Assange told him: “I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier, and all the rest. I don’t like your tone, if it continues, you’re out. If you have a problem with me, you can f**king quit.” In a July 2010 interview with Belfast Telegraph reporter Matthew Bell, Assange had this to say about “conspiracy theories”

“Any time people with power plan in secret, they are conducting a conspiracy. So there are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It’s important not to confuse these two. Generally, when there’s enough facts about a conspiracy we simply call this news. I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.”

Assange appears to be unaware of the fact that the US wars crimes that he is allegedly so eager to expose were only possible because of the 9/11 attacks and that the official US government story about how the attacks occurred is so full of contradictions and omissions that it is safe to conclude that it is a complete fabrication.

As of June 2009, the Wikileaks site had over 1,200 registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange and eight other people. One such board member, Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang, said that while he received an e-mail from WikiLeaks, he had never agreed to be an adviser. Phillip Adams, another putative board member, said he’d never met Assange or been asked for any advice and suggested that the board was just “window dressing”.

For the first few years, Wikileaks was a relatively unknown to the general public. It wasn’t until March 2010 when the organisation acquired and released a video from a 2007 incident in which Iraqi civilians and journalists were killed by US forces that Wikileaks’ true rise to global fame began. In July of the same year, WikiLeaks began what has turned out to be a sort of ‘strip tease’ for the politically awakened when it released the ‘Afghan War Diary’, a compilation of 92,201 records of individual events or intelligence reports from US troops and agents in Afghanistan. In October 2010, the group released a package of almost 400,000 US military field reports from the US invasion of Iraq called the ‘Iraq War Logs’. In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

Beginning with the Afghan War Diary, Wikileaks teamed up, bizarrely, with three mainstream media ‘partners’ – the UK Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, France’s Le Monde and The New York Times – ostensibly to facilitate the organisation and dissemination of the documents. Few Wikileaks enthusiasts seem to have considered the problems with the very idea of such a partnership. It was, after all, the mainstream media who were largely responsible for selling the lies that led to the illegal Iraq and Afghan invasions and the massive suffering and deaths that have resulted. The New York Times for example on September 8, 2002, led with a front-page story by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, which falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy aluminum tubes as part of its ‘worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb.’ As contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, Michael Massing later wrote, “In the following months, the tubes would become a key prop in the administration’s case for war, and the Times played a critical part in legitimizing it”. Despite this, Assange himself stated that he chose the NY Times because it is “one of the best newspapers in the world for investigative research“. How could Assange and Wikileaks possibly expect that ‘secret documents’ exposing US government war crimes would be delivered uncensored to the public by media corporations with such a track record?

Indeed, the first raft of documents concerning the US presence in Afghanistan were transformed into headlines that did more to support the US government’s position on the Afghan conflict than to expose any grand lies. Via Wikileaks mainstream media ‘partners’, the public was regaled with stories of Iran’s ties to al-Qaeda, Iran’s development of suicide bombs in Iraq, Pakistan’s aid to the Taliban, Iran’s growing nuclear threat etc. Subsequent document releases have followed suit with the most recent ‘Cablegate’ documents supposedly revealing that several Middle Eastern governments secretly wanted the US and Israel to ‘deal with’ Iran. There were, of course, a few crumbs thrown to the anti-war community in the form of rather benign ‘leaks’ about US spying at the U.N. and already publicly known details of the US military killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and condoning torture, but overall there was little in the documents to cause more than temporary embarrassment to big government and much to support their war-mongering policies.

But perhaps the most worrying result of the Wikileaks documents release is the reaction of US and other government officials in calling for changes to laws designed to protect freedom of speech. For example US Senator Mitch McConnell called Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a “high-tech terrorist” on NBC’s Meet the Press and said, “if it’s found that Assange hasn’t violated the law, then the law should be changed.” On December 3rd 2010, Sens. John Ensign, Joe Lieberman and Scott Brown introduced the Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act (SHIELD) which would give the government the flexibility to pursue Assange for allegedly outing confidential U.S. informants. Brown said the law would prevent anyone from compromising national security in a similar manner. While Wikileaks supporters have denounced such moves and claim them as evidence that Wikileaks constitutes a real threat to government secrecy and lies, given that the Wikileaks documents themselves have so far proven ineffective in reigning in government corruption, it is difficult to see the entire Wikileaks fiasco as anything other than a cunning set-up.

Israeli Fingerprints

Further suspicion has been cast on the integrity of the Wikileaks operation due to the fact that, despite the large number and the wide array of political and military subjects that the documents detail, not one of them portray either the Israeli government or military in a negative light. Indeed, only a handful of documents make reference to the Israeli government in any way. Given the well-known close relationship between the US and Israeli governments and the close involvement of the Israelis in Middle Eastern affairs in general, this fact is rather astonishing and has given rise to further suspicions about the source and integrity of Wikileaks as an organisation.

Suspicions of ties to the Israeli government were partly confirmed when, in December 2010, Julian Assange admitted in an interview with Al-Jazeerah TV that only a meager number of files related to Israel had been published so far because ‘Western’ newspapers that were given exclusive rights to publish the secret documents were reluctant to publish “sensitive information about Israel“. “The Guardian, El-Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel. Even the New York Times could not publish more due to the sensitivities related to the Jewish community in the US,” he added. In the same interview, Assange said: “We were the biggest institution receiving official funding from the US but after we released a video tape about killing people in cold blood in Iraq in 2007, the funding stopped and we had to depend on individuals for finance.” Assange also appears to hold Israeli Prime Minister and accused war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, in high regard calling him a “sophisticated politician“. Writing in the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, Aluf Benn wrote, “Thanks to Wikileaks, there is now no fear Washington will exert heavy pressure on Israel to freeze settlement construction or to accelerate negotiations on a withdrawal from the territories.”

What this amounts to is a tacit admission by Assange that the mainstream media had indeed been censoring documents, that Wikileaks was, at least in the beginning, funded by the US government and that the Israeli government has been afforded special treatment by Assange and Wikileaks. This last revelation came hot on the heels of the allegation in November 2010 by a Syrian newspaper reporter that Assange had met with Israeli officials and agreed to not release documents that were critical of Israel. In late December 2010, and apparently in response to the allegations of ties with Israel, Assange claimed that he would “release 3,700 files related to Israel over the next six months, depending on our sources.” Several questions arise as a result of Assange’s remarks: Why wait 6 months? Isn’t Wikileaks fundamentally about speaking truth to power and informing the public of facts that government’s would rather keep secret? Why withhold information about an Israeli government and military that has already been proven guilty of war crimes and opt instead for spreading US and Israeli government lies and disinformation about Iran?

When taken with other aspects of the overall Wikileaks phenomenon, Assange’s comment that the Israel documents would be released “depending on our sources” is highly suggestive of the fact that the Israeli government itself could be the source of these documents. Indeed, when viewed from a broad perspective, the Wikileaks organisation fits the profile of an Israeli operation designed to manipulate both the global public and the US government. After all, Israel excels at manipulating the world’s only super-power and has done so very effectively for many decades via its firmly entrenched US spy network. In truth, the Wikileaks operation affords the Israelis a wonderful new tool with which to subtly pressure and threaten US officials into playing the game the way Israel wants. If Obama comes on a little too strong in his condemnation of Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land, there are undoubtedly as yet unreleased documents that would make US spying at the UN look like a misdemeanor offense. And then of course there is the claim by Assange that he has received documents that relate to that mystery of mysteries: UFOs. If those behind the Wikileaks documents desired to truly throw the cat among the pigeons and radically transform human society and perhaps carry out the greatest deception of all, a ‘smoking gun’ disclosure on the ‘reality’ of extra-terrestrials would be the way to go.

I should make it clear that, when I speak of ‘Israel’, I am not simply referring to the public face of the Israeli government but more specifically to a small group of global ‘financiers’ who have adopted the Israeli national and Jewish religious ideology. To these individuals, both the geographic position of the gerrymandered state of Israel (a wedge and source of division between East and West, old and new), and the religious position of Judaism (a wedge and source of division between Christianity and Islam) is essential to achieving their aims of complete control of the global population.

In summation: based on the available data (past and present) we can reasonably conclude that, through the media hype afforded to the Wikileaks documents and the side show of Assange’s alleged rape charges, a concerted effort is being made to distract public attention from the efforts of genuine anti-war and truth-teller bloggers and web sites to expose the true crimes of the US government and the hidden hand behind global affairs; at the same time, the US government is given an excuse to clamp down on internet freedom of speech and prepare the way for an eventual terminal shut-down of the world wide web.

Wall Street versus the Poor and the Middle Class: Obama’s FY 2012 Budget Is A Tool Of Class War

By Paul Craig Roberts

Wall Street versus the Poor and the Middle Class: Obama’s FY 2012 Budget Is A Tool Of Class War

Obama’s new budget is a continuation of Wall Street’s class war against the poor and middle class.

Wall Street wasn’t through with us when the banksters sold their fraudulent derivatives into our pension funds, wrecked Americans’ job prospects and retirement plans, secured a $700 billion bailout at taxpayers’ expense while foreclosing on the homes of millions of Americans, and loaded up the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet with several trillion dollars of junk financial paper in exchange for newly created money to shore up the banks’ balance sheets.

The effect of the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” on inflation, interest rates, and the dollar’s foreign exchange value are yet to hit.  When they do, Americans will get a lesson in poverty.

Now the ruling oligarchies have struck again, this time through the federal budget. The U.S. government has a huge military/security budget.  It is as large as the budgets of the rest of the world combined. The Pentagon, CIA, and Homeland Security budgets account for the $1.1 trillion federal deficit that the Obama administration forecasts for fiscal year 2012. This massive deficit spending serves only one purpose–the enrichment of the private companies that serve the military/security complex. These companies, along with those on Wall Street, are who elect the U.S. government.

The U.S. has no enemies except those that the U.S. creates by bombing and invading other countries and by overthrowing foreign leaders and installing American puppets in their place.

China does not conduct naval exercises off the California coast, but the U.S. conducts war games in the China Sea off China’s coast. Russia does not mass troops on Europe’s borders, but the U.S. places missiles on Russia’s borders. The U.S. is determined to create as many enemies as possible in order to continue its bleeding of the American population to feed the ravenous military/security complex.

The U.S. government actually spends $56 billion a year, that is, $56,000 million,  in order that American air travelers can be porno-scanned and sexually groped so that firms represented by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff can make large profits selling the scanning equipment.

With a perpetual budget deficit driven by the military/security complex’s desire for profits, the real cause of America’s enormous budget deficit is off-limits for discussion.

The U.S. Secretary of War-Mongering, Robert Gates, declared: “We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril.” The military brass warns of cutting any of the billions of aid to Israel and Egypt, two functionaries for its Middle East “policy.”

But what are “our” global security responsibilities?  Where did they come from?  Why would America be at peril if America stopped bombing and invading other countries and interfering in their internal affairs?  The perils America faces are all self-created.

The answer to this question used to be that otherwise we would be murdered in our beds by “the worldwide communist conspiracy.”  Today the answer is that we will be murdered in our airplanes, train stations, and shopping centers by “Muslim terrorists” and by a newly created imaginary threat–”domestic extremists,” that is, war protesters and environmentalists.

The U.S. military/security complex is capable of creating any number of false flag events in order to make these threats seem real to a public whose intelligence is limited to TV, shopping mall experiences, and football games.

So Americans are stuck with enormous budget deficits that the Federal Reserve must finance by printing new money, money that sooner or later will destroy the purchasing power of the dollar and its role as world reserve currency.  When the dollar goes, American power goes.

For the ruling oligarchies, the question is: how to save their power.

Their answer is: make the people pay.

And that is what their latest puppet, President Obama, is doing.

With the U.S. in the worst recession since the Great Depression, a great recession that John Williams and Gerald Celente, along with myself, have said is deepening, the “Obama budget” takes aim at support programs for the poor and out-of-work.  The American elites are transforming themselves into idiots as they seek to replicate in America the conditions that have led to the overthrows of similarly corrupt elites in Tunisia and Egypt and mounting challenges to U.S. puppet governments elsewhere.

All we need is a few million more Americans with nothing to lose in order to bring the disturbances in the Middle East home to America.

With the U.S. military bogged down in wars abroad, an American revolution would have the best chance of success.

American politicians have to fund Israel as the money returns in campaign contributions.

The U.S. government must fund the Egyptian military if there is to be any hope of turning the next Egyptian government into another American puppet that will serve Israel by continuing the blockade of the Palestinians herded into the Gaza ghetto.

These goals are far more important to the American elite than Pell Grants that enable poor Americans to obtain an education, or clean water, or community block grants, or the low income energy assistance program (cut by the amount that U.S. taxpayers are forced to give to Israel).

There are also $7,700 million of cuts in Medicaid and other health programs over the next five years.

Given the magnitude of the U.S. budget deficit, these sums are a pittance. The cuts will have no effect on U.S. Treasury financing needs.  They will put no breaks on the Federal Reserve’s need to print money in order to keep the U.S. government in operation.

These cuts serve one purpose: to further the Republican Party’s myth that America is in economic trouble because of the poor:  The poor are shiftless. They won’t work. The only reason unemployment is high is that the poor had rather be on welfare.

A new addition to the welfare myth is that recent middle class college graduates won’t take the jobs offered them, because their parents have too much money, and the kids like living at home without having to do anything. A spoiled generation, they come out of university refusing any job that doesn’t start out as CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  The reason that engineering graduates do not get job interviews is that they do not want them.

What all this leads to is an assault on “entitlements”, which means Social Security and Medicare. The elites have programmed, through their control of the media, a large part of the population, especially those who think of themselves as conservatives, to conflate  “entitlements” with welfare.  America is going to hell not because of foreign wars that serve no American purpose, but because people, who have paid 15% of their payroll all their lives for old age pensions and medical care, want “handouts” in their retirement years. Why do these selfish people think that working Americans should be forced through payroll taxes to pay for the pensions and medical care of the retirees?  Why didn’t the retirees consume less and prepare for their own retirement?

The elite’s line, and that of their hired spokespersons in “think tanks” and universities, is that America is in trouble because of its retirees.

Too many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that America is in trouble because of its poor and its retirees.  America is not in trouble because it coerces a dwindling number of taxpayers to support the military/security complex’s enormous profits, American puppet governments abroad, and Israel.

The American elite’s solution for America’s problems is not merely to foreclose on the homes of Americans whose jobs were sent offshore, but to add to the numbers of distressed Americans with nothing to lose the sick and the dispossessed retirees, and the university graduates who cannot find jobs that have been sent to Chine and India.

Of all the countries in the world, none need a revolution as bad as the United States, a country ruled by a handful of selfish oligarchs who have more income and wealth than can be spent in a lifetime.

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts

Israel, Thy Name is Arrogance

By Joharah Baker

Israel, Thy Name is Arrogance

It goes without saying there is many an Arab leader right now spending sleepless nights, tossing and turning in the fear that their turn is next. The turn of events in the last few weeks has been nothing short of fascinating. I have spent hours, teary-eyed and goose-bumped, marveling at the strength, determination and sheer courage of Tunisians and Egyptians, of the images of Jordanians and Algerians as they take to the streets demanding change. Nowhere has this been more amazing than in Egypt as millions of people insist that the 30-year old autocracy of Hosni Mubarak come to an end. Most predictions give Mubarak a few weeks, if not days left in power, even though the aging president himself insists he will continue what is left of his term. As the protests grow louder and Mubarak’s inevitable downfall grows closer, Tel Aviv’s worry lines get deeper by the minute.

For Israel, when the Mubarak regime falls, it will leave a gaping hole of uncertainty in terms of the new relationship the two countries will have to forge. Mubarak – Israel’s holy cow in the Arab world – has been one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest allies in the region, with the two meeting in closed quarters in Sharm Al Sheikh as recent as two weeks ago.

Amazing what a few days and a million people can change.

Read more

What Corruption and Force Have Wrought in Egypt

AP / Ben Curtis

January 30, 2011: By Chris Hedges

What Corruption and Force Have Wrought In Egypt

The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters—few of whom speak Arabic or have experience in the region. Egyptians are not Americans. They have their own culture, their own sets of grievances and their own history. And it is not ours. They want, as we do, to have a say in their own governance, but that say will include widespread support—especially among Egypt’s poor, who make up more than half the country and live on about two dollars a day—for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties. Any real opening of the political system in the Arab world’s most populated nation will see an empowering of these Islamic movements. And any attempt to close the system further—say a replacement of Mubarak with another military dictator—will ensure a deeper radicalization in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

The only way opposition to the U.S.-backed regime of Mubarak could be expressed for the past three decades was through Islamic movements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to more radical Islamic groups, some of which embrace violence. And any replacement of Mubarak (which now seems almost certain) while it may initially be dominated by moderate, secular leaders will, once elections are held and popular will is expressed, have an Islamic coloring. A new government, to maintain credibility with the Egyptian population, will have to more actively defy demands from Washington and be more openly antagonistic to Israel. What is happening in Egypt, like what happened in Tunisia, tightens the noose that will—unless Israel and Washington radically change their policies toward the Palestinians and the Muslim world—threaten to strangle the Jewish state as well as dramatically curtail American influence in the Middle East.

The failure of the United States to halt the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel has consequences. The failure to acknowledge the collective humiliation and anger felt by most Arabs because of the presence of U.S. troops on Muslim soil, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in the staging bases set up in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, has consequences. The failure to denounce the repression, including the widespread use of torture, censorship and rigged elections, wielded by our allies against their citizens in the Middle East has consequences. We are soaked with the stench of these regimes. Mubarak, who reportedly is suffering from cancer, is seen as our puppet, a man who betrayed his own people and the Palestinians for money and power.

The Muslim world does not see us as we see ourselves. Muslims are aware, while we are not, that we have murdered tens of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have terrorized families, villages and nations. We enable and defend the Israeli war crimes carried out against Palestinians and the Lebanese—indeed we give the Israelis the weapons and military aid to carry out the slaughter. We dismiss the thousands of dead as “collateral damage.” And when those who are fighting against occupation kill us or Israelis we condemn them, regardless of context, as terrorists. Our hypocrisy is recognized on the Arab street. Most Arabs see bloody and disturbing images every day from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, images that are censored on our television screens. They have grown sick of us. They have grown sick of the Arab regimes that pay lip service to the suffering of Palestinians but do nothing to intervene. They have grown sick of being ruled by tyrants who are funded and supported by Washington. Arabs understand that we, like the Israelis, primarily speak to the Muslim world in the crude language of power and violence. And because of our entrancement with our own power and ability to project force, we are woefully out of touch. Israeli and American intelligence services did not foresee the popular uprising in Tunisia or Egypt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel’s new intelligence chief, told Knesset members last Tuesday that “there is no concern at the moment about the stability of the Egyptian government.” Tuesday, it turned out, was the day hundreds of thousands of Egyptians poured into the streets to begin their nationwide protests.

[Read more]

TSA Gestapo Empire

By Paul Craig Roberts

TSA Gestapo Empire

It doesn’t take a bureaucrat long to create an empire. John Pistole, the FBI agent who took over the Transportation Security Administration on July 1 told USA Today 16 days later that protecting trains and subways from terrorist attacks will be as high a priority for him as air travel.

It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowed subway platforms or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance for a 15 minute subway ride, but once bureaucrats get their teeth in the bit they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. Buses will be next, although it is even more difficult to imagine open air bus stops turned into security zones with screeners and gropers inspecting passengers before they board.

Will taxi passengers be next? In those Muslim lands whose citizens the US government has been slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for retaliating against the Americans are car and truck bombs. How long before Pistole announces that the TSA Gestapo is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and interstates to check cars for bombs? That 15 minute trip to the grocery store then becomes an all day affair.

Indeed, it has already begun. Last September agents from Homeland Security, TSA, and the US Department of Transportation, assisted by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, conducted a counter-terrorism operation on busy Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta, Georgia. Designated VIPER (Visible Inter-mobile Prevention and Response), the operation required all trucks to stop to be screened for bombs. Federal agents used dogs, screening devices, and a large drive-through bomb detection machine. Imagine what the delays did to delivery schedules and truckers’ bottom lines.

There are also news reports of federal trucks equipped with backscatter X-ray devices that secretly scan cars and pedestrians.

With such expensive counter-terrorism activities, both in terms of the hard-pressed taxpayers’ money and civil liberties, one would think that bombs were going off all over America. But, of course, they aren’t. There has not been a successful terrorist act since 9/11, and thousands of independent experts doubt the government’s explanation of that event.

Subsequent domestic terrorist events have turned out to be FBI sting operations in which FBI agents organize not-so-bright disaffected members of society and lead them into displaying interest in participating in a terrorist act. Once the FBI agent, pretending to be a terrorist, succeeds in prompting all the right words to be said and captured on his hidden recorder, the “terrorists” are arrested and the “plot” exposed.

The very fact that the FBI has to orchestrate fake terrorism proves the absence of real terrorists.

If Americans were more thoughtful and less gullible, they might wonder why all the emphasis on transportation when there are so many soft targets. Shopping centers, for example. If there were enough terrorists in America to justify the existence of Homeland Security, bombs would be going off round the clock in shopping malls in every state. The effect would be far more terrifying than blowing up an airliner.

Indeed, if terrorists want to attack air travelers, they never need to board an airplane. All they need to do is to join the throngs of passengers waiting to go through the TSA scanners and set off their bombs. The TSA has conveniently assembled the targets.

The final proof that there are no terrorists is that not a single neoconservative or government official responsible for the Bush regime’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Obama regime’s slaughters of Pakistanis, Yemenis, and Somalians has been assassinated. None of these Americans who are responsible for lies, deceptions, and invasions that have destroyed the lives of countless numbers of Muslims have any security protection. If Muslims were capable of pulling off 9/11, they are certainly capable of assassinating Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Condi Rice, Kristol, Bolton, Goldberg, and scores of others during the same hour of the same day.

I am not advocating that terrorists assassinate anyone. I am just making the point that if the US was as overrun with terrorists as empire-building bureaucrats pretend, we would definitely be experiencing dramatic terrorist acts. The argument is not believable that a government that was incapable of preventing 9/11 is so all-knowing that it can prevent assassination of unprotected neocons and shopping malls from being bombed.

If Al Qaeda was anything like the organization that the US government claims, it would not be focused on trivial targets such as passenger airliners. The organization, if it exists, would be focused on its real enemies. Try to imagine the propaganda value of terrorists wiping out the neoconservatives in one fell swoop, followed by an announcement that every member of the federal government down to the lowest GS, every member of the House and Senate, and every governor was next in line to be bumped off.

This would be real terrorism instead of the make-belief stuff associated with shoe bombs that don’t work, underwear bombs that independent experts say could not work, and bottled water and shampoo bombs that experts say cannot possibly be put together in airliner lavatories.

Think about it. Would a terror organization capable of outwitting all 16 US intelligence agencies, all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel’s Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, air traffic control, the Pentagon, and airport security four times in one hour put its unrivaled prestige at risk with improbable shoe bombs, shampoo bombs, and underwear bombs?

After success in destroying the World Trade Center and blowing up part of the Pentagon, it is an extraordinary comedown to go after a mere airliner. Would a person who gains fame by knocking out the world heavyweight boxing champion make himself a laughing stock by taking lunch money from school boys?

TSA is a far greater threat to Americans than are terrorists. Pistole has given the finger to US senators and representatives, state legislators, and the traveling public who have expressed their views that virtual strip searches and sexual molestation are too high a price to pay for “security.” Indeed, the TSA with its Gestapo attitude and methods, is succeeding in making Americans more terrified of the TSA than they are of terrorists.

Make up your own mind. What terrifies you the most. Terrorists, who in all likelihood you will never encounter in your lifetime, or the TSA that you will encounter every time you fly and soon, according to Pistole, every time you take a train, a subway, or drive in a car or truck?

Before making up your mind, consider this report from Antiwar.com on November 19: “TSA officials say that anyone refusing both the full body scanners and the enhanced pat down procedures will be taken into custody. Once there the detainees will not only be barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as suspected terrorists . . . One sheriff’s office said they were already preparing to handle a large number of detainees and plan to treat them as terror suspects.”

Who is cowing Americans into submission, terrorists or the TSA Gestapo?

Wikileaks Is Zionist Poison

By Jonathan Azaziah

Wikileaks Is Zionist Poison

Disinformation is defined as ‘misinformation that is deliberately disseminated in order to influence or confuse rivals.’ It is used by governments to mislead and brainwash their citizen populations, instigate wars, and blackmail foreign regimes. It is the ultimate instrument of the media. The most effective disinformation is that which is comprised of falsehood as well as facts. Wikileaks, founded by Julian Assange, fits this description perfectly, right down to the letter. Seemingly overnight, it has become one of the biggest ‘whistle-blowing’ agencies in modern history. In reality though, it is one of the biggest disinformation projects in modern history, and it may be the most dangerous because it is masquerading as an organization of truth. The information released by Wikileaks isn’t new; it isn’t groundbreaking; it doesn’t hurt the US as much as people think, it’s fractional really; and it is overloaded with as much as propaganda as the day-to-day Zionist media is. This propaganda is benefitting someone. And that someone is the illegal usurping entity of Israel. Even the Israeli government itself thinks so (1).

Afghanistan Drivel

The first major ‘leak’ released earlier this year by Assange was about occupied Afghanistan in the form of more than 92,000 documents. These docs included ‘secret files’ about civilian killings by the US and NATO along with boogeyman stories about the long-dead Osama Bin Laden, garbage regarding the Taliban acquiring ground-to-air missiles, and plenty of lies about Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI (2). There wasn’t a single document about the Israeli training of the Taliban (3), the massive drug profiteering by the Mossad (4), the CIA (5) and the US-puppet Hamid Karzai and his brother (6), Karzai’s connections to Unocal and Zionist war criminal Henry Kissinger (7), the clandestine Israeli business operations set up to take control of the oil fields in neighboring Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan (8), or the Russian-Jewish mafia, fully protected by the Zionist entity, selling guns to US-backed Afghan warlords (9). Why weren’t any of these massively important, critically damning events and operations mentioned? Because by doing so, it would incriminate the already internationally condemned Zionist regime. Journalists, bloggers and activists, from occupied Afghanistan and abroad, have been reporting on the vast civilian casualties in Afghanistan since US intervention began more than 30 years ago. Wikileaks revealed nothing that wasn’t already known; however, it did reinforce Zionist propaganda regarding the illegal ‘war on terror.’

Iraq Malarkey

The next major ‘leak’ by Assange’s organization, which has gained more notoriety than the previous ‘leak,’ was about occupied Iraq in the form of nearly 400,000 documents. Like the occupied Afghanistan disinformation, it included ‘secret files’ about mass civilian killings by US forces, torture by war criminal Nouri al-Maliki and his forces (which according to Wikileaks, US military officials attempted to halt) (10), US government failings in reprimanding Blackwater (XE) for committing murder (11), and brutal executions by the American and British occupiers mixed with more tripe about fictitious Al-Qaeda, nonsense about Iran training militant Iraqi militias and Iranian drones flying over Iraq (12), Iran smuggling guns, munitions, and explosives into Iraq (13), ridiculous accusations of the Lebanese Resistance movement Hezbollah training Iraqis in the art of kidnaping (14), slanderous attacks on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and other absurd assertions about the Islamic Republic involved in the murder of innocent Iraqis. The Wikileaks Iraq war logs also ‘reveal’ civilian casualties numbered at 66,081 (15). The logs also ‘reveal’ that Iraqi WMDs actually did exist, as US soldiers found chemical weapons labs, terrorist toxin specialists, and chemical weapons caches (16).

There was nothing ‘secret’ about American and British forces murdering, torturing and raping innocents in occupied Iraq. Like Afghanistan, Iraqi and international journalists, bloggers, and activists have been reporting the murder of civilians in Iraq since the beginning of the illegal occupation, with much more effectiveness than Wikileaks. The US military didn’t attempt to halt the puppet al-Maliki’s torture of unlawfully imprisoned Iraqis, they partook in it. They led the way after they signed off on it. They were the primary perpetrators (17). Secret prisons are still operating at this very moment where US forces barbarously torture innocent Iraqis (18). The US hired Blackwater’s contractors to instill fear and execute terrorism against the people of Iraq, of course it didn’t reprimand them. Erik Prince’s private army of terror was only doing what it was told to by the US government.

The concept of Hezbollah training foreign militias to meddle in state affairs is absolute lunacy; Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah himself has stated on numerous occasions that if Hezbollah wanted to overthrow the Lebanese government, they would’ve done so already (19). Their objectives (as evidenced by their actions), are to protect the Lebanese people, provide them with security and uphold their dignity. Hezbollah hasn’t undermined its own government, it is asinine to think it would undermine the government of another nation. The propaganda targeting Iran is pathetic; there are enough guns in Iraq thanks to American support of Saddam Hussein to last lifetimes (20), there was no need for Iran to provide weapons to Iraqi militias through ‘smuggling.’ The only drones that were flying in Iraq’s skies belonged to the repulsive Zionist entity, not Iran (21). The other accusations sound like concoctions dug up from the dungeons of Zionist think tanks and lobby organizations salivating for the destruction of the Islamic Republic, not the work of whistle-blowers attempting to expose corruption and disseminate truth. These accusations further the Zionist case for striking Iran militarily. These accusations are promoting more war, not peace.

Wikileaks must not have gotten the memo about civilian casualties in occupied Iraq. They are nowhere near 66,081. They have eclipsed the 1.5 million mark. Anything less than this, especially a number as low as the one presented by Wikileaks, is classic misreporting aimed at protecting the United States government and its collaborators. That is an insult to the 5 million Iraqi orphans and the 5 million Iraqi refugees. It is a slap in the face to the dead Iraqis whose names will never be known because they were incinerated by US and Israeli weaponry. And the notion that US soldiers found WMDs in Iraq, after the ‘Iraq has WMDs’ myth has been debunked as Zionist-designed propaganda over and over again, is frankly, infuriating. The only WMDs that exist in Iraq are the mark-77, white phosphorus, and thousands of tons of depleted uranium used in Basra, Baghdad, and Fallujah by the terrorist army of the US and strategically placed Mossad agents of Israel (22).

Targeted On Behalf Of Israel

Where are the leaks on the 55 Zionist companies profiting from Iraqi blood being spilled (23)? Where are the leaks on Iraq’s artifacts being stolen by Zionist agents (24)? Where are the leaks on hundreds of Mossad agents operating in Mosul (25)? Where are the leaks on the Mossad bomb-making facility in Kirkuk (26)? Where are the leaks on the Mossad murderers stationed in several villages around the devastated area of Fallujah (27)? Where are the leaks on the depleted-uranium-tipped IEDs of Zionist-owned Zapata Engineering that have massacred thousands in Najaf, Karbala and Tal Afar, just to name a few (28)? Where are the leaks on the Israeli arms dealers supplying weapons to CIA-trained death squads (29)? Where are the leaks on Zionist war criminal Paul Wolfowitz importing Shin Bet torture experts to train the US military (30)? Where are the leaks on Mossad conducting interrogations and torture in Iraq jails, including Abu Ghraib (31)? Where are the leaks that will actually tie the illegal war, which was exclusively designed by Zionists, to Israel? They don’t exist because Wikileaks isn’t concerned with uncovering the truth regarding the real criminals; they’re concerned with leading the public away from the truth to keep them under control. It’s COINTELPRO all over again.

The target of Wikileaks’ first release was the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The objectives of the operation were to give credibility to war criminal Obama’s illegal drone strikes that have murdered over 1,000 civilians (32), raise the possibility of a future overt occupation, and cover up the meddling of Israel in occupied Afghanistan. It is vital to note that the de-stablization of Pakistan has been a Zionist objective since the declaration of al-Nakbah architect, David Ben-Gurion (33). The target of Wikileaks’ second release was the Islamic Republic of Iran. The objective of this operation was to slander two of the very few entities on earth resisting Israel, Hezbollah and Iran; as well as cover up the Zionist fingerprints all over the mutilation of Iraq. The IAEA has already inadvertently foiled the Zionist plan to attack Iran based on the nuclear premise, confirming that the Iranian nuclear program is peaceful in nature and has nothing to do with weaponization (34). The Zionist hasbara experts needed to try something new; through Wikileaks, the accusations of the Zionist Bush administration against Iran have resurfaced under the guise of ‘whistle-blowing.’ What a sham.

Conclusion

A final note needs to be made about Julian Assange, the man who has been praised as a freedom fighter, a revolutionary and a friend of the oppressed people. In a recent interview, he stated, “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud (35).” It’s shameful that Assange is annoyed by those seeking truth regarding the reason 1.5 million innocents are dead in occupied Iraq, 1.2 million innocents are dead in occupied Afghanistan, and thousands of more innocent men, women and children are dead in occupied Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. 9/11 is anything but a false conspiracy; there is overwhelming evidence that American and Israeli officials didn’t just have foreknowledge of the event, but planned the attack and carried it out. It was a Mossad-CIA false flag used to protect the Zionist entity from any future military threat and expand the parasitic hegemony of the US and the illegitimate Tel Aviv regime throughout the world via the Zionist-inspired ‘war on terror (36).’ Someone insulting the seekers of 9/11 truth, slandering the righteous movement of Hezbollah, spreading propaganda about Iran which adds to the demonization campaign levied against the Islamic Republic by the Zionist lobby and the Zionist media, and deliberately leaving out Israeli crimes in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq is no freedom fighter; such a person is a liar and a propagandist.

Wikileaks’ most recent ‘leak’ about occupied Iraq was delivered to several mainstream news outlets including Al-Jazeerah, the Zionist New York Times, Der Spiegel of Germany, which has smeared Hezbollah in the past by despicably accusing the Resistance of selling narcotics (37), Zionist-controlled Le Monde of France which has also smeared Hezbollah recently (38) and The Guardian of the UK, in packages, as if it was some sort of gift for a holiday. This isn’t a leak. This isn’t an expose. This is a press release. This is a media spectacle. This is a circus to cover up real crimes. Those interested in seeing a real leak, in addition to real courage, should read the story of Mordechai Vanunu, who blew the whistle on Israel’s nuclear program and has spent the last 26 years in and out of Israel’s inhumane prisons, including 18 years consecutively with 11 of those years in solitary confinement (39).

Iraq was annihilated for the Zionist regime, as was Afghanistan. When discussing the destruction of these nations, and the murder of millions of their people, it is integral to the understanding of the crimes committed to discuss the Israeli role in these crimes. Any person or institution failing to do so is ignorant, a coward or a collaborationist. None of these persons have any place in the movement to restore the occupied lands to the indigenous people and bring their tormentors to justice. By supporting Wikileaks, you are not fighting the occupier. You are not honoring the martyrs. You are not combating imperialism. And you are not striking back at the oppressor. You are supporting Israel and the cover-up of the activities of its criminal network. Wikileaks is Zionist poison. Wake up.

~ The End ~

Sources:

(1) Wikileaks Reports Could Halt Iran’s Nuclear Drive by Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post

(2) Wikileaks, Afghanistan and Pakistan by Muhammad Abdullah Gul

(3) Framing Pakistan: How The Pro-Israel Media Enables India’s Surrogate Warfare by Maidhc O Cathhail

(4) Intel Expert Says 9/11 Looks Like A Hollywood Show by Christopher Bollyn

(5) The Spoils Of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade by Michel Chossudovsky

(6) Wikileaks Is Israel, Like We All Didn’t Know by Gordon Duff, Veterans Today

(7) Profile: Unocal by History Commons

(8) The Great Game: The War For Caspian Oil And Gas by Christopher Bollyn

(9) Drugs For Guns: How The Afghan Heroin Trade Is Fueling The Taliban Insurgency by Jerome Starkey, The Independent; Red Mafiya: How The Russian Mob Has Invaded America by Robert Friedman (rip)

(10) Iraq War Documents Shed Light On Civilian Deaths, Prisoner Abuse by David Wood

(11) Iraq War Logs: Private Militarization Run Amok by Pratap Chatterjee, The Guardian

(12) US Shot Down Iranian Drone In Iraq, Wikileaks Confirms by Adam Weinstein

(13) Iraq War Logs Detail Iran’s Aid For Militias by Michael R. Gordon and Andrew W. Lehren, The New York Times

(14) Wikileaks Tip Iran’s Hand In Iraq by Samuel Segev, Winnipeg Free Press

(15) Iraq War Leaks: No US Investigation Of Many Abuses by Al-Masry Al-Youm

(16) Wikileaks Show WMD Hunt Continued In Iraq – With Surprising Results by Noah Shachtman

(17) Iraq Today: Afflicted By Violence, Devastation, Corruption And Desperation by Stephen Lendman

(18) Lawless Arrests, Detentions And Torture In Iraq by Stephen Lendman

(19) Sayyed Nasrallah: Bellemare, UN Protecting False Witnesses by Al-Manar

(20) Ho Hum, More Wikileaks Chickenfeed by Gordon Duff, Veterans Today

(21) Israeli Drones Said Operating Over Iraq And Afghanistan by Yossi Melman, Haaretz

(22) The Zionist Murderers Of Iraq by Jonathan Azaziah

(23) 55 Zionist Companies Working In Iraq Under Assumed Names by Yaqen News Agency, translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr

(24) Israel Hopes To Colonize Parts of Iraq as ‘Greater Israel’ by Wayne Madsen

(25) Facts Vs. Beliefs – Today’s Ancient Warfare by Jeff Gates

(26) Resistance Kills Mossad Agents In Iraq by The Egyptian Gazette

(27) Israel’s Battle In Fallujah by Rashid Khashana, Al-Hayat

(28) Iraq IEDs: Mossad/Zapata Engineering Conspiracy? by Cloak and Dagger; Israeli Made IEDs and US Zapata Engineering made IED Triggers Are Killing US, Canadian And NATO Soldiers by NB Gazette

(29) Israeli Officer Sells Weapons To Terrorists In Iraq by Press TV; CIA Death Squads Operating In Iraq by Henry Michaels

(30) Seymour Hersh And The Missing Zionist-Israeli Connection by James Petras

(31) Mossad Does Interrogations in Iraqi Jails: Human Rights Group by China Radio International English; What Were Mossad Agents With Fraudulent New Zealand Passports Doing In Iraq? by Jerry Mazza

(32) US Drone Strikes Kill 18 In Pakistan by Press TV

(33) Mossad And India Spy Agency Team Up, Target Pakistan by Tariq Saeedi

(34) IAEA Report: Zero Evidence Of Iran Nukes. US Orwellian Corporate Media: Iran Building Nukes? by Carl Herman, The Los Angeles Examiner

(35) Wanted By The CIA: The Man Who Keeps No Secrets by Matthew Bell, The Independent

(36) 9/11: Israel’s Grand Deception by Jonathan Azaziah

(37) Hezbollah Denies Der Spiegel’s ‘Cheap Fabrications’ by Al-Manar

(38) Le Monde: A Group Affiliated With Hezbollah Takes Photos Of The Hague by NOW Lebanon

Ho Hum, More Wikileaks “CHICKENFEED”

By Gordon Duff

GORDON DUFF: HO HUM, MORE WIKILEAKS “CHICKENFEED”

LAMEST WIKILEAK SO FAR…IS ISRAEL BEHIND IT?

The new Wikileaks claims the US undereported by 15,000, the deaths of Iraqi “civilians.” With the numbers listed by the military as little as 10% or less of the actual deaths, bumping up the numbers must be a joke. More leaks about torture and killings, Iraqi torture and the US “looking away?” More idiocy. With the US sending “suspects” around the world on rendition flights, sent to secret prisons and obvious to anyone with a brain, to shallow graves, this Wikileak is simply another sideshow, more “chickenfeed.”

Things have already come apart in Iraq. Why leak this now? Regular news stories are actually going much further than these “leaks.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the agenda here, an agenda with absolutely nothing to do with enlightening the world.

What does it prove, any of it? For sure, we see one thing. Everything leaked is carefully screened to have nothing of real value. With Mossad running around Mosul, operating out of Erbil, supplying and advising the terrorist PKK, not a word is mentioned. Instead, poor Iranians are swimming the Euphrates with explosives strapped to their chests.

Get real.

Thousands of tons of explosives were “mislaid” in Iraq. The US failed to secure Saddam’s weapons depots which were looted. These stockpiles were vast. The idea that anyone would need to bring weapons into Iraq is insane, simply another Israeli ploy to pre-stage an attack on Iran. Any fool can see this in seconds.

In fact, there are more assault rifles in Iraq than people.

While trying to blame Iran, is Wikileaks reporting the hundreds of thousands of weapons bought by the US that simply disappeared in Iraq? It is easier to buy an assault rifle or RPG in Iraq than to get potato chips. This need to blame Iran, the idea that “secret agents” are smuggling ordnance into Iraq, a country loaded with explosives, is insane. Who would believe it? The idiotic controlled press?

What will we see if we watch the stories coming out? Where will the press be told to manipulate the public to look? Americans proved long ago that they were immune to guilt about torture and killing. In fact, polls show that the more religious an American, the more willing they are to accept brutality, and few countries are as “religious’ as America. No other country in recent times as killed as many people as America, even overshadowing the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and Bosnia or the “situation” in Israel.

As with the earlier “leak,” Wikileaks has the ability to go through hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, carefully eliminating any blackmarket dealings, drug running or, as with Iraq, the massive corruption and theft of oil.

There are dozens of subjects that seem to be carefully screened from any Wikileak. Even the Department of Defense, not so secretly, thanks Wikileaks for holding back really embarrassing information. “Held back” information is, of course, blackmail.

Who is Wikileaks?

Is Wikileaks Israel?

Only Israel has the penetration of the Department of Defense that would allow this kind of spying. Not only can they do it, they also have so many spies in the American chain of command, they could easily prevent it. Who has the facilities to gather and filter this much data? Who would want to?

With the biggest story in Iraq the falsified intelligence on “weapons of mass destruction,” why didn’t Wikileaks get us documents on this? We know that the military had orders to try to falsify documents showing that they found fully operating nuclear, biological and chemical warfare facilities. These would have made good reading along with the thousands of pages of reports about how these stories would be fabricated. Even the “controlled press” wouldn’t touch them although they are still out there.

The lies.

Exposing this real Iraq scandal would so some good, except for one thing, friends of Israel inside the Pentagon were the creators of this program. Is this why Wikileaks dodges the real issues? Is it because the trail for much of what happened in Iraq heads directly to Tel Aviv?

Who even cares about Iraq this many years later?

Look at the watered down reports about American support of Al Qaeda. The US is blamed for accidentally helping Al Qaeda by organizing the Sons of Iraq. In truth, the US actually reorganized the Baathists, something far worse than the imaginary construct “Al Qaeda.” Not a word is said about this.

One of the biggest scams of the Iraq “experience” was the looting of oil resources. Most easily verified is the theft of oil from the Kirkuk fields through the Kirkuk/Ceyhan pipeline, which goes to the Mediterranean through Turkey. Ships that load oil are shown on locator sights run by insurance companies and even the US Coast Guard. Their tonnage is available, how many ships, how long. When doing the math, how much oil is loaded compared to how much is paid for, billions and billions of dollars of oil is missing.

When Americans were paying $4 a gallon for gas, how many knew the oil that made the gasoline was “free” to the oil companies? Who spit the take on this? Who was paid? How much was stolen through Basra? Were the British involved?

Then we have Fallujah. We are told America “carpet bombed” civilians and “ethnically cleansed” the area, as we are now informed, for no reason. The version the Army told is being debunked along with the phony stories of the “embedded” press. Nothing on this hit Wikileaks either.

We are also noting high levels of radiation there and a health crisis that can only be described as shocking. Where is wikileaks on this REAL story?

There is little doubt that Wikileaks is a “sideshow’ run by an intelligence agency with dozens of agents inside the Department of Defense. Only Israel has this capability, having penetrated Defense to such a degree they run it as their own. What is the agenda of Wikileaks? Is it revealing the truth? If so, why is the truth censored and watered down to such a degree as to be “non-news” as the earlier leak had been. In fact, most stories about leaks are simply speculation and most “leaks” are little than “chickenfeed.”

The last leak was an attack on Pakistan. Wikileaks tried to make a case for Pakistan running the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, the Taliban are Pashtun and don’t care much for Pakistan, they are “blood enemies.” Because of this, Israel and India have found them useful allies against Pakistan, the only Islamic nuclear power. Aid of all kinds gets to the Taliban from the Mossad and RAW, something Wikileaks worked hard to keep secret.

Real leaks by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds proved that documents exist showing that rendition flights were used to ferry terrorists around, move drugs and tons of cash. With bales of cash leaving Afghanistan every day, why is it that not one page, not one word of any of this, things we know are in American files, hit Wikileaks?

Why does Wikileaks spend more time hiding things than revealing them? When the story dies down, are the Julian Assange rape allegations going to be dragged out again to give the story more play? Last time they “double dipped” on that one, first charges, then no charges, then charges. It was like a badly written “soap opera.”

What about this new “leak?”

This one may be aimed at Iran.

Anyone surprised or shocked to find that Iraqi security forces killed or tortured people is living on their own private planet. These were Saddam’s killers and torturers first. Then they became ours. What do killers and torturers do?

There was one reason for the invasion of Iraq with all the lies, all the killing, all the corruption. Israel wanted Iraq destroyed. Will Wikileaks ever get to something real?

Obama’s Finest Hour: Killing Innocent People For “Made-Up Crap”

October 18, 2010: By Chris Floyd

Obama’s Finest Hour: Killing Innocent People For “Made-Up Crap”

If ever I am tempted by the siren songs of my tribal past as a deep-fried, yellow-dawg Democrat, and begin to feel any faint, atavistic stirrings of sympathy for the old gang, I simply think of things like the scenario below, sketched last week by Johann Hari, and those wispy ghosts of partisanship past go howling back to the depths:

Imagine if, an hour from now, a robot-plane swooped over your house and blasted it to pieces. The plane has no pilot. It is controlled with a joystick from 7,000 miles away, sent by the Pakistani military to kill you. It blows up all the houses in your street, and so barbecues your family and your neighbours until there is nothing left to bury but a few charred slops. Why? They refuse to comment. They don’t even admit the robot-planes belong to them. But they tell the Pakistani newspapers back home it is because one of you was planning to attack Pakistan. How do they know? Somebody told them. Who? You don’t know, and there are no appeals against the robot.

Now imagine it doesn’t end there: these attacks are happening every week somewhere in your country. They blow up funerals and family dinners and children. The number of robot-planes in the sky is increasing every week. You discover they are named “Predators”, or “Reapers” – after the Grim Reaper. No matter how much you plead, no matter how much you make it clear you are a peaceful civilian getting on with your life, it won’t stop. What do you do? If there was a group arguing that Pakistan was an evil nation that deserved to be violently attacked, would you now start to listen?

…[This] is in fact an accurate description of life in much of Pakistan today, with the sides flipped. The Predators and Reapers are being sent by Barack Obama’s CIA, with the support of other Western governments, and they killed more than 700 civilians in 2009 alone – 14 times the number killed in the 7/7 attacks in London. The floods were seen as an opportunity to increase the attacks, and last month saw the largest number of robot-plane bombings ever: 22. Over the next decade, spending on drones is set to increase by 700 per cent.

Friends, it’s very simple: if you support Barack Obama and the Democrats — even if reluctantly, even if you’re just being all sophisticatedly super-savvy and blogospherically strategic about it, playing the “long game” or eleven-dimensional chess or what have you — you are supporting the outright murder of innocent people who have never done anything against you or yours. You have walked into a house, battered down the bedroom door, put the barrel of a gun against the temple of a sleeping child, and pulled the trigger. That is what you are supporting, that is what you are complicit in, that is what you yourself are doing.

But hey, let’s be all super-savvy and eleventh-dimensional ourselves here for a moment. Let’s be pragmatic, and technocratic, let’s be grown-ups, let’s not get sidetracked by a bunch of jejune, dorm-room, hippy-dippy moralizing. No, let’s concentrate on practicalities, let’s get down to brass tacks, let’s be serious and focus on “what works” to protect our national security. OK, so here’s the practical result of the illegal campaign of mass murder that Obama is waging on the sovereign territory of one of America’s allies:

… Drone technology was developed by the Israelis, who routinely use it to bomb the Gaza Strip. I’ve been in Gaza during some of these attacks. The people there were terrified – and radicalised. A young woman I know who had been averse to political violence and an advocate of peaceful protest saw a drone blow up a car full of people – and she started supporting Islamic Jihad and crying for the worst possible revenge against Israel. Robot-drones have successfully bombed much of Gaza, from secular Fatah to Islamist Hamas, to the brink of jihad.

Is the same thing happening in Pakistan? David Kilcullen is a counter-insurgency expert who worked for General Petraeus in Iraq and now advises the State Department. He has shown that two per cent of the people killed by the robot-planes in Pakistan are jihadis. The remaining 98 per cent are as innocent as the victims of 9/11. He says: “It’s not moral.” And it gets worse: “Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially as drone strikes have increased. … It could be poised to get even worse: Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars says the US has an immediate plan to bomb 150 targets in Pakistan if there is a jihadi attack inside America.

Why, it’s almost as if the drone campaign was designed to create more and more enemies — and more and more contracts for war profiteers to build more and more drones, which can then be used to create more and more enemies, which means more and more contracts for …. say, it is a practical plan, after all! A practical plan to create terrorism, not quell it.

And what is the “evidence” used by the Administration militarists as they draw up their target lists for the defenseless villages in Pakistan? What is the “intelligence” produced by the $75 billion lavished on our 200,000 security apparatchiks every year? On what basis is Barack Obama killing people in Pakistan? Hari reports:

..[The] press releases uncritically repeated by the press after a bombing always brag about “senior al-Qa’ida commanders” killed – but some people within the CIA admit how arbitrary their choice of targets is. One of their senior figures told The New Yorker: “Sometimes you’re dealing with tribal chiefs. Often they say an enemy of theirs is al-Qa’ida because they want to get rid of somebody, or they made crap up because they wanted to prove they were valuable so they could make money.”

That’s right: Barack Obama is killing hundreds of innocent civilians in Pakistan on the basis of crap made up for money. Made-up crap. For money. That’s why a child who is just as precious as your child is to a parent who is just as real a person as you are was killed this week, by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party and the entire bipartisan foreign policy establishment of the United States of America: crap made up for money.

And of course, it’s not just tribal chiefs making up crap for blood money: the entire aforementioned bipartisan foreign policy establishment is now and has for years been making up crap “so they could make money” — for themselves, for their corporate patrons, for their government agencies, for their defense and “security” stockholdings, for the perpetuation of their bloated, belligerent, pig-ignorant domination of world affairs and American society — by killing innocent people all over the world.

“But oh my gosh, oh my lord, we have to support Obama! What if those Tea Party Republicans get into power? What would happen then?” What would happen? The same goddamned thing that’s happening right now, that’s what. More and more war, more and more murder, more and more domination by a militarist kleptocracy. As Glenn Greenwald notes this week, Obama and the Tea Partiers (and the neocons, and the liberal hawks, and the Bush Regime war criminals) are in lockstep (even goosestep) on keeping the War Machine stoked and rolling.

That’s why the opposition to the Tea Party Republicans has been so anemic, focused almost entirely on personality flaws or asinine comments or resume padding or stupid things they did in college. The Democrats can’t possibly attack them on substance — i.e., the fact that the Tea Partiers are rabid warmongers who delight in murder, torture and repression and believe that the poor, the sick, the old, the weak, the unlucky, and the vulnerable should just eat shit and die already — because these are the same positions the Democrats hold! Who “reformed” health care into a gargantuan, guaranteed boondoggle for rapacious conglomerates? Who bailed out the bankers and left millions in the hands of savage “robo-signers?” Who set up the “Catfood Commission” and stocked it from top to bottom with long-time, deep-dyed haters of the poor and the weak? It wasn’t Dick Cheney, bub.

I don’t want to see the Tea Partiers in power. But I’m not going to support one faction of murderers and plunderers just to keep out another faction of murderers and plunderers. Hari makes this good analogy about the drone program:

Yet many people defend the drones by saying: “We have to do something.” If your friend suffered terrible third-degree burns, would you urge her to set fire to her hair because “you have to do something”? Would you give a poisoning victim another, worse poison, on the grounds that any action is better than none?

Similarly, I say: would you support one murderer — who likes to break into children’s bedrooms and blow their brains out — in order to stop another murderer, who would do the same thing, from taking over a vicious gang of murderers? What would be the basis, the reason for your support? That the first murderer wears nicer suits? Digs cooler music? Throws better street parties? Leaves a pretty little flower next to the blown-out brains?

For a system sunk so deeply in evil, there is no “lesser” evil to choose. The militarist kleptocracy itself is evil, and every political faction that does not denounce it and seek to dismantle it is complicit in this evil. The choice is to stand outside such factions; the choice is non-cooperation with evil, as advocated by Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King. I’m not going to spend my brief time here on earth standing with blood-soaked killers, no matter what factional name they give themselves, or what loyalties they might claim on our myth-clouded memories of the past. I’m not going to teach my children that all we can do is to grovel before one child-murdering maniac or another, to keep quiet, to never speak the truth, to sell their votes, their dignity and their souls to murderers who would pervert every good instinct — and every bad instinct — every worthy hope and every nasty fear, to keep themselves in power.

Dead children. Made-up crap. For money. That’s what our leading “dissidents” want us to support. There is much that could be said about the utterly puerile arguments being offered for this murder-abetting stance; but in the interests of brevity, and civility — and my own sanity — I will forbear, and simply say: no thanks.

Caught! Mossad Paid by U.S. to Spy on “Dissident,” Tea Party, Environmentalist

By Gordon Duff

GORDON DUFF: CAUGHT! MOSSAD PAID BY U.S. TO SPY ON “DISSIDENTS,” TEA PARTY, ENVIRONMENTALISTS

TAXPAYERS FUNDING ISRAELI DATABASE OF AMERICAN CITIZENS

Did you know that attending a meeting to organize a bake sale for new band uniforms can put you on a terrorist watch list? You don’t have to join a peace group or protest oil drilling to be considered dangerous. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hired ITRR, the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, a Jerusalem based company owned by the Mossad and tied directly to the Israeli Ministry of Defense to track “dissidents” and “activists.” In the process, they managed to find the most dangerous terrorist organization of all, the governor’s own non-profit organization, one supporting school funding initiatives. From ITTR’s website:

“All of the information ITRR’s staff creates is sent to its monitoring center in Jerusalem, where it is analyzed”

Governments, states, cities and even rural towns, believing they are participating in a Homeland Security initiative, have contracted with this and other organizations under foreign control, read “Israeli,” tracking organizations as diverse as the Tea Party and the Sierra Club. Reports submitted by ITTR showed them spying on nearly every organization they could find, no matter how innocent, patriotic or public minded. Organizations tied to Jewish causes, however, managed, somehow, to slip under the radar.

Those that were included are so comprehensive that it would be nearly impossible for an American to escape having confidential files, collected under government authority and financing, paid for by American taxpayers, held by Israeli intelligence agencies. In fact, databases include every organization, regardless of its membership or policies, with personal information on members being stored in databases in Israel.

Never has a nation funded a foreign spy organization’s efforts to catalog potential intelligence assets, operatives and, at the same time, take over the job of watching themselves. This is one of the greatest intelligence coups in history. Combine this with control of America’s airport security and total control of America’s communications networks, everything, mobile, internet, even landlines….we might as well pull down the flag and roll over.

Governor Rendell expressed shock at the gross violation of constitutional rights involved in hiring this company, one that is said to be working for state and local governments across the United States. Rendell said he was “stunned” when he learned about the spying relationship, one he characterized as “ludicrous.” From Governor Rendell’s apology to the people of Pennsylvania at a capitol news conference this week:

“I am deeply embarrassed and I apologize to any of the groups who had this information disseminated on their right to peacefully protest”

As early as December 2001, not long after the 9/11 incident, Fox News investigated Israeli spying on the United States. However, not long after airing the Carl Cameron Report with Brit Hume as Host, not only did the show itself disappear but all transcripts as well, at least “almost all.”

BRIT HUME, HOST: It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence.

At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work. Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn’t tell us before September 11. …

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.

There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are “tie-ins.” But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, “evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.”

Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to September 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States. Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a working group that’s been compiling evidence since the mid ’90s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, “may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity.”

The first part of the investigation focuses on Israelis who say they are art students from the University of Jerusalem and Bazala Academy. They repeatedly made contact with U.S. government personnel, the report says, by saying they wanted to sell cheap art or handiwork. Documents say they, “targeted and penetrated military bases.”

The DEA, FBI and dozens of government facilities, and even secret offices and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel. The majority of those questioned, “stated they served in military intelligence, electronic surveillance intercept and or explosive ordinance units.”

Why would Israelis spy in and on the U.S.?

A GAO investigation states: “According to a U.S. intelligence agency, the government of (Israel) conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the U.S. …It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target.” The document concludes: “Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives.” (END VIDEO CLIP)

And in the days ahead, we’ll take a look at the U.S. phone system and law enforcement’s methods for wiretaps. And an investigation that both have been compromised by our friends overseas.

HUME: Carl, what about this question of advanced knowledge of what was going to happen on 9-11? How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents may have known something?

CAMERON: It’s very explosive information, obviously, and there’s a great deal of evidence that they say they have collected — none of it necessarily conclusive. It’s more when they put it all together. A bigger question, they say, is how could they not have know?

These Fox News revelations from 2001, long dead and gone, buried in the archives never to be heard from again, tell a story, not of betrayal by a “friend” or “ally” but one of America’s national obsession with memory loss, almost as though the “hard drive” meant to represent America’s common sense was “wiped,” reformatted after picking up a virus from opening one of those nasty emails we are all warned about. The virus, of course, is the mainstream news media itself.

The Pennsylvania spying story was never reported nationally. It couldn’t be, there is a “blackout” on any news critical of Israel, real forced censorship, part of the official policy of the Obama administration, as it was of the Bush administration, cheerfully adhered to by media owned and operated by Israel itself.

The Fox News report of 2001, showing America’s counter-terrorism organizations hot on the trail of Israel, was the last report of its kind on any major network. Not one word spoken of by Cameron or Hume has been repeated in nine long years. Not one lead has been followed up, not one more question asked, the entire thing, forgotten, forgiven, overlooked or perhaps something darker and more threatening.

Related:

December 1, 2009: Flashback: Israel Did 9/11
[includes Fox series mentioned in article]

Global BDS Against Israel Is Working

By Steve Lendman

Blobal BDS Against Israel is Working

In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created the Global BDS movement for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights” for Occupied Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian diaspora refugees.

The Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute (RI) provides “real-time strategic decision-making” support in areas of national security and socioeconomic policy. Its new report titled “The Gaza Flotilla: The Collapse of Israel’s Political Firewall” suggests it’s working. It followed an earlier one on “creating a political firewall” against Israel’s “delegitimization challenge,” recommending sabotage and subterfuge against growing global forces it fears, not an equitable solution it rejects.

Focusing now on the Gaza Flotilla, it called it “the tip of the iceberg” attempt along with the BDS movement and Durban conference against racism to cause “tangible and significant damage to Israel.” Unmentioned was how expert Israel is in self-inflicting it by decades of occupation and crimes of war and against humanity.

Clearly they’re having an effect, RI saying opposition “momentum is gaining,” its aim “to delegitimize Israel in order to precipitate its implosion, inspired by the collapses of” apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union. Calling the challenge global, systemic and political, RI blames two cooperating forces:

— the Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah “Resistance Network;” and

— the “Delegimization Network” based in cities like London, Brussels and San Francisco.

Their “constantly adapting” strategy requires Israel to adopt “a comprehensive systemic treatment” of the challenge it faces.

RI gave its version of the Gaza Flotilla interdiction, specifically against the Mavi Marmara mother ship, a “grave incident devlop(ing) during the takeover (when) Members of the Turkish IHH organization attacked Israeli forces with knives and metal bars, and in some cases with live fire. In the ensuing confrontation, nine Israeli soldiers were injured and nine Turkish activists killed.”

An earlier article discussed the truth, not RI’s revisionism, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/05/brave-israeli-commandos-slaughter-aid.html

Israeli commandos (trained killers), planned and executed a premeditated attack in international waters against nonviolent, unarmed humanitarian activists, trying to deliver essential to life aid to besieged Gazans – to break Israel’s attempt to suffocate and starve them.

RI ignored the crime, focusing instead on world outrage, including anti-Israeli demonstrations in dozens of major cities, increased BDS efforts, international investigations, and the “stronger perception of cooperation between Israel’s Arab citizens and the Resistance and Delegitimization Networks.” Turkey also “exploited” the incident, “deepen(ing) the crisis with Israel.”

Israel followed with two inquiry commissions, an IDF one under reserve Major General Giora Eiland and another under retired Supreme Court Judge Jacob Turkel, both mandated to whitewash the crime, what RI won’t admit, instead saying:

“The mandates of both commissions reflect the mindset that mistakes surrounding the Gaza Flotilla were technical-operational or tactical-political in nature. The commissions are thus focused on the reasonableness of the actions taken by decision-makers on existing laws, regulations, and accepted practices.”

In addition, RI is conducting its own inquiry, “based on a methodology of systemic policy analysis and on its conceptual framework for confronting the delegitimization challenge….to contribute to understanding the strategic significance of the event and to suggest principles for preventing similar occurrences in the future.”

RI, of course, means preventing world outrage from boiling over, followed by actions harming Israeli interests, not its repeated crimes of war, against humanity, and high seas outrages. It worries instead about a new challenge because of two developments:

— Hamas’ “increased sophistication and efficiency and the Resistance Network’s ‘Logic of Implosion.’ ” It aims to precipitate Israel’s collapse from overstretch, benefitting from the unpopular occupation, promoting its delegitimization, and engaging in asymmetric tactics against Israeli civilians; and

— the Delegitimization Network’s evolution, aiming to portray Israeli as a pariah state, gaining support from “the Western liberal progressive elite (through) a variety of means aimed at blurring its true intentions.”

In recent years, the Resistance and Delegitimization Networks have created connections able to accelerate the following dynamics:

— “Promoting the one-state paradigm;” and

— Foiling Israel’s ability to contain or deny legitimacy to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Both lead “a systemic and systematic attack against Israel’s political and economic model, which has already had strategic consequences and may become existential if ignored or inadequately addressed.” In addition, Israel hasn’t developed an effective response to this challenge.

Hamas gained “agility” from 2006 electoral victory. Israeli “rigidity” followed – policies unable to change Hamas’ positions or precipitate its demise. “On the contrary, Hamas went from strength to strength” despite Israel’s imposed siege and Cast Lead. It continually adapts to new circumstances, “demonstrating a relatively clear strategic logic….while strengthening its domestic and international status” and ability to promote Israeli delegitimization.

The Gaza Flotilla and others planned are “the latest manifestation of a systemic and systematic attack” to undermine Israel’s legitimacy with considerable support from the BDS campaign, the “lawfare” war against senior Israeli officials, and effect of the Goldstone Commission.

The Flotilla was “a first-of-its-kind collaboration” between Hamas and the Resistance and Delegitimization Networks. Turkey’s involvement was the “difference that made the difference.” In addition, its organizers’ ability to gain Western progressive elite support turned Israel’s interdiction into a “global and politically explosive event.” RI called it a “clash of brands,” Israel tarnished and defeated in the eyes of world public opinion.

Indeed so but not enough. Still RI concludes that Israel’s firewall is eroding because it’s increasingly viewed as not “genuinely striving for peace, consistently and honestly committed to ending control over the Palestinians, or concerned with alleviating the humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

Israel doesn’t understand the gravity of the delegitimization threat, and hasn’t addressed it effectively. The campaign promoting it will continue, perhaps in new forms. RI urges confronting it strategically by “systematically collect(ing) intelligence (and) identif(ing) key (delegitimization) catalysts,” as well as adopting a:

“consistent and honest….commitment to end….control over the Palestinians, advance human rights (at least rhetorically), and promote greater integration and equality for its Arab citizens….”

“It takes a network to fight” one, says RI. Disrupting it is job one by training Israeli diplomats to work in delegitimization hubs, developing its own network, re-branding itself to promote a new image, and engaging “liberal progressive elite(s).” The objective – delegitimize, isolate and marginalize the delegitimizers and BDS movement.

Its earlier “delegitimize challenge” report recommended sabotage and subterfuge against growing forces it fears. Perhaps now it’s softening but not enough. It omitted the right of return, East Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital, the logic of a one-state solution, the renunciation of conflict, an admission of Israeli crimes of war and against humanity, accountability for those responsible, demilitarization as a show of good faith, legislation granting all Israeli citizens equal rights, an occupation end date, a full commitment to the rule of law, and restitution to compensate victims for decades of crimes and destructive harm for starters.

Short of fundamental change, Israeli delegitimization will prevail over half-hearted measures, more rhetorical than substantive the way they’ve always been for decades.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.