Sabbah Report » Failures

The Death of American Democracy [Video]

Anthony Lawson — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 20:04:53 +0000

By Anthony Lawson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Video link: http://vimeo.com/25588822
Alternative link: http://youtu.be/iK7SRYp4sBc

The collapses of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre, on September 11, 2001, were the most frightening images that I have ever seen, up until May 24th, 2011, when Binyamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the United States Congress and received 29 standing ovations, along with many other outbursts of sycophantic applause.

It was the final nail in a coffin, the construction of which began long ago, and in it all remaining vestiges of democracy were joyfully laid to rest—by those sworn to protect it-as it became clear that the United States was now controlled by Enemies Inside it's Gates.

* Anthony Lawson (known professionally as Tony Lawson) is a retired international-prize-winning commercials director, cameraman, ad agency creative director and voice over. He used to be known for shooting humorous commercials, but doesn’t find much to laugh about, with the way the world is going, these days.

Syria Shuts Down the Internet As Revolt Gains Steam

Haitham Sabbah — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 07:24:08 +0000

Internet intelligence firm Renesys reported on its blog that starting at 3:35 UTC yesterday, approximately two-thirds of all Syrian networks became unreachable from the global Internet. Over the course of roughly half an hour, the routes to 40 of 59 networks were withdrawn from the global routing table.

This image shows the current state (green: reachable, red: unreachable) of each network prefix in the Middle East this morning, visualized as a packed Hilbert-curve representation. The size of the colored area is proportional to each country's Internet presence, so you can see that Syria's Internet (red block near the top center) is a little smaller than that of Kuwait.

The network prefixes that remain reachable include those belonging to the Syrian government, although many government websites are slow to respond or down. The Oil Ministry is up, for example, and Syrian Telecom's official page, but the Ministry of Education is down, as is the Damascus city government page, and the Syrian Customs website.

The networks that are not reachable include, substantially, all of the prefixes reserved for SyriaTel's 3G mobile data networks, and smaller downstream ISPs including Sawa, INET, and Runnet.

News is filtering out of Syria very slowly. If Egypt and Libya's Internet outages are any guide, one might conclude that events on the street in Syria are reaching a tipping point.

Syria has been banning social media services in the last few months, but this is the full time there has been a widespread Internet outage.

The move comes as protests have intensified in the troubled nation. 34 people were killed Friday after security forces opened fire. The uprising, which began in late January, has been focused on ousting Bashar Al-Assad from his role as President of Syria. Al-Assad ascended to the presidency in 2000 after his father’s 29-year rule.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak shut down Internet services during the Egyptian revolution so protesters couldn’t easily organize. It didn’t quell the revolt though, and on February 11, Mubarak resigned.

The Mysterious Collapse of WTC 7

SR Editor — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 16:47:42 +0000

By David Ray Griffin* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Mysterious Collapse of WTC 7: Why NIST's Final 9/11 Report is Unscientific and False¹

At 5:21 in the afternoon of 9/11, almost seven hours after the Twin Towers had come down, Building 7 of the World Trade Center also came down. The collapse of this building was from the beginning considered a mystery.

The same should have been true, to be sure, of the collapse of the Twin Towers. But they had been hit by planes, which had ignited big fires in them, and many people assumed this combination of causes to be sufficient to explain why they came down.

But WTC 7 had not been hit by a plane, so it was apparently the first steel-framed high-rise building in the known universe to have collapsed because of fire alone. New York Times writer James Glanz quoted a structural engineer as saying: "[W]ithin the structural engineering community, [WTC 7] is considered to be much more important to understand [than the Twin Towers]," because engineers had no answer to the question, "why did 7 come down?"²

From a purely scientific perspective, of course, there would have been an obvious answer. Scientists, presupposing the regularity of nature, operate on the principle that like effects generally imply like causes. Scientists are, therefore, loath to posit unprecedented causes for common phenomena. By 9/11, the collapse of steel-framed high-rises had become a rather common phenomenon, which most Americans had seen on television. And in every one of these cases, the building had been brought down by explosives in the process known as controlled demolition. From a scientific perspective, therefore, the obvious assumption would have been that WTC 7 came down because explosives had been used to remove its steel supports.

However, the public discussion of the destruction of the World Trade Center did not occur in a scientific context, but in a highly charged political context. America had just been attacked, it was almost universally believed, by foreign terrorists who had flown hijacked planes into the Twin Towers, and in response the Bush administration had launched a "war on terror." The idea that even one of the buildings had been brought down by explosives would have implied that the attacks had not been a surprise, so this idea could not be entertained by many minds in private, let alone in public.

This meant that people had to believe, or at least pretend to believe, that Building 7 had been brought down by fire, even though, as Glanz wrote: "[E]xperts said no building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire."³ And so, this building's collapse had to be considered a mystery – insofar as it was considered at all.

But this was not much. Although WTC 7 was a 47-story building, which in most places would have been the tallest building in the city, if not the state, it was dwarfed by the 110-story Twin Towers. It was also dwarfed by them in the ensuing media coverage. And so, Glanz wrote, the collapse of Building 7 was "a mystery that . . . would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world," if the Twin Towers had not also come down.⁴ As it was, however, the mystery of Building 7's collapse was seldom discussed.

For those few people who were paying attention, the mysteriousness of this collapse was not lessened by the first official report about it, which was issued by FEMA in 2002. This report put forward what it called its "best hypothesis" as to why the building collapsed, but then added that this hypothesis had "only a low probability of occurrence."⁵

This FEMA report, in fact, increased the mystery, thanks to an appendix written by three professors at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This appendix reported that a piece of steel from WTC 7 had melted so severely that it had gaping holes in it, making it look like a piece of Swiss cheese.⁶ James Glanz, pointing out that the fires in the building could not have been hot enough to melt steel, referred to this discovery as "the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation."⁷

The task of providing the definitive explanation of the collapse of WTC 7 was given to NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Although NIST had been expected to issue its report on this building along with its report on the Twin Towers, which came out in 2005, it did not. NIST then continued to delay this report until August of 2008, at which time it issued a Draft for Public Comment.

1. NIST's Denial of Evidence for Explosives

At a press briefing, Shyam Sunder, NIST's lead investigator, declared that "the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery." Also, announcing that NIST "did not find any evidence that explosives were used to bring the building down,"⁸ he said: "[S]cience is really behind what we have said."⁹ In the remainder of this lecture, I will show that both of those statements were false.

NIST and Scientific Fraud

With regard to the question of science: Far from being supported by good science, NIST's report repeatedly makes its case by resorting to scientific fraud.

Before going into details, let me point out that, if NIST did engage in fraudulent science, this would not be particularly surprising. NIST is an agency of the US Department of Commerce. During the years it was writing its World Trade Center reports, therefore, it was an agency of the Bush-Cheney administration. In 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists put out a document charging this administration with "distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends." By the end of the Bush administration, this document had been signed by over 15,000 scientists, including 52 Nobel Laureates and 63 recipients of the National Medal of Science.¹⁰

Moreover, a scientist who formerly worked for NIST has reported that it has been "fully hijacked from the scientific into the political realm," with the result that scientists working for NIST "lost [their] scientific independence, and became little more than 'hired guns.'"¹¹ Referring in particular to NIST's work on the World Trade Center, he said everything had to be approved by the Department of Commerce, the National Security Agency, and the Office of Management and Budget-"an arm of the Executive Office of the President," which "had a policy person specifically delegated to provide oversight on [NIST's] work."¹²

One of the general principles of scientific work is that its conclusions must not be dictated by nonscientific concerns – in other words, by any concern other than that of discovering the truth. This former NIST employee's statement gives us reason to suspect that NIST, while preparing its report on WTC 7, would have been functioning as a political, not a scientific, agency. The amount of fraud in this report suggests that this was indeed the case.

According to the National Science Foundation, the major types of scientific fraud are fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. There is no sign that NIST is guilty of plagiarism, but it is certainly guilty of fabrication, which can be defined as "making up results," and falsification, which means either "changing or omitting data."¹³

The omission of evidence by NIST is so massive, in fact, that I treat it as a distinct type of scientific fraud. As philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said in his 1925 book, Science and the Modern World: "It is easy enough to find a [self-consistent] theory . . . , provided that you are content to disregard half your evidence." The "moral temper required for the pursuit of truth," he added, includes "[a]n unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account."¹⁴

NIST, however, seemed to manifest an unflinching determination to disregard half of the relevant evidence.

Physical Evidence of Explosives

Some of the evidence ignored by NIST is physical evidence that explosives were used to bring down WTC 7.

Swiss-Cheese Steel: I will begin with the piece of steel from WTC 7 that had been melted so severely that it looked like Swiss cheese. Explaining why it called this "the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation," James Glanz wrote: "The steel apparently melted away, but no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright."¹⁵ Glanz's statement was, in fact, quite an understatement. The full truth is that the fires in the building could not have brought the steel anywhere close to the temperature – about 1,482°C (2,700°F) – needed for it to melt.¹⁶

The professors who reported this piece of steel in the appendix to the FEMA report said: "A detailed study into the mechanisms [that caused] this phenomenon is needed."¹⁷ Arden Bement, who was the director of NIST when it took on the WTC project, said that NIST's report would address "all major recommendations contained in the [FEMA] report."¹⁸

But when NIST issued its report on WTC 7, it did not mention this piece of steel with the Swiss-cheese appearance. Indeed, NIST even claimed that not a single piece of steel from WTC 7 had been recovered.¹⁹

This piece of steel, moreover, was only a small portion of the evidence, ignored by NIST, that steel had melted.

Particles of Metal in the Dust: The Deutsche Bank building, which was right next to the Twin Towers, was heavily contaminated by dust produced by their destruction. But Deutsche Bank's insurance company refused to pay for the clean-up, claiming that this dust had not resulted from the destruction of the WTC. So Deutsche Bank hired the RJ Lee Group to do a study, which showed that the dust in the Deutsche Bank was WTC dust, which had a unique signature. Part of this signature was "Spherical iron . . . particles."²⁰ This meant, the RJ Lee Group said, that iron had "melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles."²¹ The study even showed that, whereas iron particles constitute only 0.04 percent of normal building dust, they constituted almost 6 percent of WTC Dust – meaning almost 150 times as much as normal.²²

The RJ Lee study also found that temperatures had been reached "at which lead would have undergone vaporization"²³ – meaning 1,749°C (3,180°F).²⁴

Another study was carried out by the US Geological Survey, the purpose of which was to aid the "identification of WTC dust components." Besides also finding iron particles, the scientists involved in this study found that molybdenum had been melted. This finding was especially significant, because this metal does not melt until it reaches 2,623°C (4,753°F).²⁵

NIST, however, did not mention either of these studies, even though the latter one was carried out by another US government agency.

NIST could not mention these studies because it was committed to the theory that the WTC buildings were brought down by fire, while these studies clearly showed that something other than fire was going on in those buildings.

Nanothermite Residue: What was that? A report by several scientists, including chemist Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen, showed that the WTC dust contained unreacted nanothermite, which – unlike ordinary thermite, which is an incendiary – is a high explosive. This report by Harrit and his colleagues, who included Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan, did not appear until 2009,²⁶ several months after the publication of NIST's final report in November 2008.

But NIST, as a matter of routine, should have tested the WTC dust for residue of explosives, such as nanothermite. The Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations put out by the National Fire Protection Association says that a search for evidence for explosives should be undertaken whenever there has been "high-order damage." Leaving no doubt about the meaning of this term, the Guide says:

High-order damage is characterized by shattering of the structure, producing small, pulverized debris. Walls, roofs, and structural members are splintered or shattered, with the building completely demolished.²⁷

That description applied to the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC 7. The next sentence – "Debris is thrown great distances, possibly hundreds of feet" – applied to the destruction of the Twin Towers, a fact that NIST had to admit in order to explain how fires were started in WTC 7.²⁸ So NIST should have looked for signs of explosives, such as nanothermite.

But when asked whether it had, NIST said No. A reporter asked Michael Newman, a NIST spokesman, about this failure, saying: "[W]hat about that letter where NIST said it didn't look for evidence of explosives?" Newman replied: "Right, because there was no evidence of that." "But," asked the reporter "how can you know there's no evidence if you don't look for it first?" Newman replied: "If you're looking for something that isn't there, you're wasting your time . . . and the taxpayers' money."²⁹ (You couldn't make this stuff up.)

When Shyam Sunder, who headed up NIST's investigation of the WTC buildings, gave his press conference in August of 2008 – at which he announced that "the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery" – he began by saying:

Before I tell you what we found, I'd like to tell you what we did not find. We did not find any evidence that explosives were used to bring the building down.³⁰

By making this point first, Sunder indicated that this was NIST's most important conclusion – just as it had been NIST's most important conclusion about the Twin Towers. However, although Sunder claimed that this conclusion was based on good science, a conclusion has no scientific validity if it can be reached only by ignoring half the evidence.

Molten Metal: In addition to the ignored evidence already pointed out, NIST also, in its investigation of the WTC, ignored reports that the rubble contained lots of molten metal – which most people described as molten steel. For example, firefighter Philip Ruvolo, speaking of the Twin Towers, said: "You'd get down below and you'd see molten steel, molten steel, running down the channel rails, like you're in a foundry, like lava."³¹

Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction, which was involved in the clean-up operation, said that he saw pools of "literally molten steel."³²

However, when John Gross, one of the main authors of NIST's reports, was asked about the molten steel, he said to the questioner: I challenge your "basic premise that there was a pool of molten steel," adding: "I know of absolutely no . . . eyewitness who has said so."³³

However, in addition to Ruvolo and Tully, the eyewitnesses who said so included:

Leslie Robertson, a member of the engineering firm that designed the Twin Towers.³⁴
Dr. Ronald Burger of the National Center for Environmental Health.³⁵
Dr. Alison Geyh of The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, who headed up a scientific team that went to the site shortly after 9/11 at the request of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.³⁶
Finally, the fact that "molten steel was also found at WTC 7" was added by Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc., which was involved in the clean-up.³⁷

And yet John Gross suggested that no credible witnesses had reported molten steel. That appears to have been a gross lie.

Testimonial Evidence for Explosives

Besides ignoring physical evidence that explosives had been used, NIST also ignored testimonial evidence.

NIST's Twin Towers Report: In its 2005 report on the Twin Towers, NIST ignored dozens of testimonies provided by reporters, police officers, and WTC employees, along with 118 testimonies provided by members of the Fire Department of New York.³⁸ NIST even explicitly denied the existence of these reports, saying that there "was no evidence (collected by . . . the Fire Department of New York) of any blast or explosions" that would have suggested that explosives were going off.³⁹

However, when a group of scholars including scientists and a lawyer called NIST on this false statement, NIST refined its meaning, saying:

NIST reviewed all of the interviews conducted by the FDNY of firefighters (500 interviews). . . . Taken as a whole, the interviews did not support the contention that explosives played a role in the collapse of the WTC Towers.⁴⁰

So, although NIST had said in its report that there was no testimonial evidence for explosives, it now seemed to be saying that, because only 118 out of 500 reported explosions, the testimonies, "taken as a whole," do not support the idea that explosions were going off, so that NIST had been justified in claiming that there was no testimonial evidence to support the idea that explosives had been used.

Imagine an investigation of a murder on the streets of San Francisco. Of the 100 people who were at the scene at the time, 25 of them reported seeing Pete Smith shoot the victim. But the police release Pete Smith, saying that, taken as a whole, the testimonies did not point to his guilt. That would be NIST-style forensic science.

Reports from People Outside WTC 7: NIST continued this approach in its WTC 7 report. There had been several credible reports of explosions. A reporter for the New York Daily News, said:

[T]here was a rumble. The building's top row of windows popped out. Then all the windows on the thirty-ninth floor popped out. Then the thirty-eighth floor. Pop! Pop! Pop! was all you heard until the building sunk into a rising cloud of gray.⁴¹

NYPD officer Craig Bartmer said:

I was real close to Building 7 when it fell down. . . . [A]ll of a sudden. . . I looked up, and . . . [t]he thing started pealing in on itself. . . . I started running . . . and the whole time you're hearing "boom, boom, boom, boom, boom."⁴²

Reports from Hess and Jennings from Inside WTC 7: Besides ignoring these and other reports of explosions made by people outside Building 7, NIST distorted the testimony of two highly credible men who were inside: Michael Hess, who was New York City's corporation counsel, and Barry Jennings, the deputy director of the Emergency Services Department of the New York City Housing Authority.

Immediately after the North Tower was struck that morning, both men followed the instruction that, whenever there was an emergency, they were to meet Major Giuliani at his Emergency Management Center on the 23^rd floor of Building 7. The North Tower was struck at 8:46, so they would have arrived at about 9:00. They found, however, that everyone had left. Calling to find out what they should do, Jennings was told to get out of the building immediately. So, finding that the elevator would not work (the electricity had evidently been knocked out at 9:03 by the airplane strike on the South Tower), they started running down the stairs. But when they got to the 6^th floor, there was a huge explosion, which blew the landing out from under them and blocked their path. They went back up to the 8^th floor, broke a window, and signaled for help.

Firemen came to rescue them, Jennings said, but then ran away. Coming back after a while, the firemen again started to rescue them, but then ran away again. They had to run away the first time, Jennings explained, because of the collapse of the South Tower, which occurred at 9:59, and the second time because of the North Tower collapse, which occurred at 10:28. On that basis, Jennings told Dylan Avery in an interview in 2007, he knew that, when that big explosion occurred, "both buildings were still standing." Finally, when the firemen returned after the second tower collapsed, Hess and Jennings were rescued.

This must have been sometime between 11:00 and 11:30, because at 11:57, Hess gave an on-the-street interview several blocks away. Jennings also gave an on-the-street interview. Both men reported that they had been trapped for some time – Hess specified "about an hour and a half."

This story obviously was very threatening to NIST. It was going to claim that, when Building 7 came down at 5:21 that afternoon, it did so solely because of fires. There were no explosives to help things along.

But here were two city officials reporting that a big explosion had gone off pretty early in the morning, evidently before 9:30. In his interview for Dylan Avery, moreover, Jennings said that the big explosion that trapped them was simply the first of many. He also said that when the firefighter took them down to the lobby, he saw that it had been totally destroyed – it was, he said, "total ruins, total ruins." Jennings also that, when he and the firefighter were walking through this lobby, they were "stepping over people."⁴³

Jennings's testimony contradicted the official story, according to which there were no explosions in WTC 7 and no one was killed in this building. What would NIST do?

NIST's Treatment of the Hess-Jennings Testimony: NIST simply ignored Jennings' report about the lobby and, with regard to the time that Hess and Jennings got trapped, followed the line that had taken by Rudy Giuliani in a 2002 book, according to which the event that Hess and Jennings took to be an explosion within WTC 7 was simply the impact of debris from the collapse of the North Tower.

But that collapse did not occur until 10:28, whereas the event described by Hess and Jennings had occurred at least an hour earlier.

Also, Jennings said that the South Tower as well as the North Tower was still standing when the event he called an explosion occurred, and that is surely what he told NIST when it interviewed him (as well as Hess) in the Spring of 2004.

Another problem was that Hess had said that they had been trapped for "about an hour and a half." If the event that trapped them did not happen until almost 10:30, as NIST claims, then they would not have been rescued before noon. And sure enough, in an Interim Report on WTC 7 put out by NIST in 2004, it claimed that Hess and Jennings had been rescued "[a]t 12:10 to 12:15 PM." But that is clearly false, given the fact that Hess was being interviewed several blocks away before noon.⁴⁴

NIST would, of course, deny that it had distorted Jennings' testimony. But when we sent a Freedom of Information Act request to NIST to obtain a copy of the Hess and Jennings interviews, NIST declined on the basis of a provision allowing for exemption from FOIA disclosure if the information is "not directly related to the building failure."⁴⁵ NIST thereby suggested that a report of a massive explosion within the building would be irrelevant to determining the cause of its failure. Using such an obviously phony reason seemed to be NIST's way of saying: There's no way we're going to release those interviews.

The BBC Helps Out: In any case, NIST's attempt to neutralize the testimony of Barry Jennings was aided by the BBC, which interviewed Jennings and then, obviously, changed the timeline, so that the narrator, with her reassuring voice, could say:

"At 10:28, the North Tower collapses. . . . This time, Tower 7 takes a direct hit from the collapsing building. . . . Early evidence of explosives were just debris from a falling skyscraper."⁴⁶

Mike Rudin, who produced this BBC program, recently telephoned me to discuss the possibility of interviewing me about my little book, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?⁴⁷ I told him that I had a book coming out shortly about WTC 7 and that, after seeing it, he probably would not want to interview me. When he asked why, I said because I pointed out that he had obviously distorted the timeline of Jennings's account. When he denied this, I said, OK, show me the uncut, unedited interview. If this interview had showed that Rudin had not distorted the timeline, I would have told the world. Rudin, however, declined to allow me to see the unedited interview.⁴⁸

This BBC program had appeared in July of 2008. The first version of NIST's final report – its Draft for Public Comment – was to be released at a press briefing on August 21, at which time Sunder would announce that the mystery of the collapse of WTC 7 had been solved.

The Death of Barry Jennings: Two days prior to that, Barry Jennings died – and died very mysteriously. No one has been willing to provide any information as to how or why this 53-year-old man had died. Dylan Avery, trying to find out something, hired a private investigator – reputed to be one of the best in the state of New York – to find out what she could. He used his credit card to pay her a considerable fee. Within 24 hours, however, Avery received a message from her, saying:

Due to some of the information I have uncovered, I have determined that this is a job for the police. I have refunded your credit card. Please do not contact me again about this individual.

This is not the response one would expect, Avery observed, if she had merely found that Jennings had passed away "innocently in a hospital."⁴⁹ The dedication page on my book says: "To the memory of Barry Jennings, whose truth-telling may have cost him his life."

Be that as it may, his death was very convenient for NIST, which now did not need to fear that Jennings might hold his own press conference to say that NIST had lied about his testimony.

The BBC Helps Out Again: The death of Jennings was also convenient for the BBC, which could now put out a second version of its program on WTC 7, this time including Michael Hess.

In the first version, the BBC had pretended that Jennings had been in the building all by himself. Even though Jennings would say, "We did this, and then We did that," the BBC spoke only of Jennings, never mentioning the fact that Hess was with him.

But in the new version, which was aired at the end of October 2008, Hess was the star. While admitting that, back on 9/11, he had "assumed that there had been an explosion in the basement," he said: "I know now this was caused by the northern half of Number 1 [the North Tower] falling on the southern half of our building," exactly what Giuliani had said in his book. It is no surprise that Hess supported Giuliani's account, given the fact that since 2002 Hess has been Giuliani's business partner.

In spite of the fact that Hess could in no way be considered an impartial witness, Mike Rudin portrayed him as such. On his BBC blog, Rudin said that some "self-styled truthers" had charged that the BBC, in presenting Barry Jennings' testimony, had "misrepresented the chronology." But, Rudin said triumphantly, Michael Hess, "In his first interview since 9/11 . . . confirms our timeline."

But Hess's account could be said to "confirm" the BBC timeline only if it were a credible account. In my book, however, I show that it is riddled with problems, so that anyone can easily see that he was lying.⁵⁰

2. NIST's Own Theory of WTC 7's Collapse

Thus far, I have spoken about the first half of my book, which deals with NIST's negative claim, namely, that it had found no evidence that explosives were used to bring down WTC 7. NIST could make this argument, I have pointed out, only by committing two kinds of scientific fraud: Ignoring relevant evidence and falsifying evidence – in this case, the testimony of Barry Jennings.

The second half of my book deals with NIST's own theory as to how fire brought the building down. To develop such a theory, NIST had to falsify and fabricate data on a possibly unprecedented scale. And yet, after all of that, it had to violate one of the basic principles of science: Thou shalt not affirm miracles.

You perhaps know the cartoon about this. A physics professor has filled several boards with mathematical equations, at the bottom of which we read: "Then a miracle happens." In science, you cannot appeal to miracles, whether explicitly, or only implicitly – by implying that some basic principle of physics has been violated. And yet that is what NIST does.

Fabrication of Evidence

But before describing its miracle story, I will point out three especially obvious examples of scientific fraud committed by NIST before it resorted to this desperate expedient. These examples all involve fabrication.

No Girder Shear Studs: NIST's explanation as to how fire caused Building 7 to collapse starts with thermal expansion, meaning that the fire heated up the steel, thereby causing it to expand.

A steel beam on the 13^th floor, NIST claims, caused a steel girder attached to Column 79 to break loose. Having lost its support, Column 79 failed, and this failure started a chain reaction, in which all 82 of the building's steel columns failed.⁵¹

Without getting into the question of whether this is even remotely plausible, let us just focus on the question: Why did that girder fail?

It failed, NIST said, because it was not connected to the floor slab with sheer studs. NIST wrote:

In WTC 7, no studs were installed on the girders.

Floor beams . . . had shear studs, but the girders that supported the floor beams did not have shear studs.

This point was crucial to NIST's answer to a commonly asked question: Why did fire cause WTC 7 to collapse, when fire had never before brought down steel-framed high-rise buildings, some of which had had much bigger and longer-lasting fires? NIST's answer was: differences in design.

One of those crucial differences, NIST stated repeatedly, was "the absence of [girder] shear studs that would have provided lateral restraint."

But this was a fabrication on NIST's part. How can we know this? All we need to do is to look at NIST's Interim Report on WTC 7, which it had published back in 2004, before it had developed its theory of girder failure.

This report stated that girders as well as the beams had been attached to the floor by means of shear studs.⁵²

We have here as clear a case of fabrication as one will see, with NIST simply making up a fact in order to meet the needs of its new theory.

The Raging Fire on Floor 12 at 5:00 PM: NIST also contradicted its "interim report" in telling a lie about the fire in the building. NIST claims that there were very big, very hot fires covering much of the north face of the 12^th floor at 5:00 PM. This claim is essential to NIST's explanation as to why the building collapsed 21 minutes later. However, if you look back at NIST's interim report, published before it had developed its theory, you will find this statement:

Around 4:45 PM, a photograph showed fires on Floors 7, 8, 9, and 11 near the middle of the north face; Floor 12 was burned out by this time.

Other photographs even show that the 12^th floor fire had virtually burned out by 4:00. And yet NIST now claims that fires were still going strong at 5:00 PM.⁵³ We have here another clear case of fabrication.

Shear Stud Failure: A third case of fabrication involves shear studs again – this time the shear studs that connected to the steel beams to the floor slab.

NIST claims that, due to the failure of that crucial girder discussed earlier, the floor beams were able to expand without constraint. But each of these beams was connected to the floor slab by 28 high-strength shear studs. These studs should have provided plenty of restraint.

They would have, except for the fact, NIST tells us, that they all broke.

Why did they break? Because of what NIST calls "differential thermal expansion," which is simply a technical way of saying that, in response to the heat from the fires, the steel beams expanded more than the floor slabs did.

But why would that have been the case? Steel and concrete have virtually the same "coefficient of thermal expansion," meaning that they expand virtually the same amount in response to heat. If that were not the case, reinforced concrete – that is, concrete reinforced with steel – would break up when the weather got very hot or very cold. NIST itself points out that "steel and concrete have similar coefficients of thermal expansion."

So why does NIST claim that the shear studs broke because of differential thermal expansion?

To understand this point, you need to understand that NIST's theory is an almost totally computer-based theory. NIST fed various variables into a computer program, which then supposedly told it how WTC 7 would have reacted to its fires. So, what did NIST feed into its computer that caused it to say that the steel would have expanded so much more than the concrete slab that all of the shear studs would have broken? The answer is given in this bland statement:

No thermal expansion or material degradation was considered for the concrete slab, as the slab was not heated in this analysis.

When I first read this statement, I had to rub my eyes. Surely, I thought, I have mis-read the statement, because a few pages earlier, NIST had said: "differential thermal expansion occurred between the steel floor beams and concrete slab when the composite floor was subjected to fire." The "composite floor," by definition, is the steel beams made composite with the floor slab by means of the shear studs. So NIST had clearly said, in stating that the composite floor had been subjected to fire, that both the steel beams and the concrete slab had been heated.

But then in the eye-rubbing passage, NIST said: When doing its computer simulation, it told the computer that only the steel beams had been heated; the concrete floor slab was not.⁵⁴

So of course the steel beams would have expanded, while the floor slabs stayed stationary, thereby causing the sheer studs to break, after which the steel beams could expand like crazy and bump into Column 79, which then causes the whole building to come down.

A comic book version of the official story of 9/11 has been published.⁵⁵ This was an exercise in redundancy, because the official reports already are the comic book version of what happened on 9/11. In any case, I come now to NIST's miracle.

NIST's Miracle

Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement had almost from the first been pointing out that WTC 7 came down at the same rate as a free-falling object, at least virtually so.

NIST'S Denial of Free Fall: In NIST's Draft for Public Comment, it denied this, saying that the time for the upper 18 floors to collapse "was approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time and was consistent with physical principles."

Implicit in this statement is that any assertion that the building did come down in free fall would not be consistent with physical principles – that is, the principles of physics.

Explaining why not, Shyam Sunder said at a technical briefing:

[A] free fall time would be [the fall time of] an object that has no structural components below it. . . . [T]he . . . time that it took . . . for those 17 floors to disappear [was roughly 40 percent [longer than free fall]. And that is not at all unusual, because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case. And you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place. Everything was not instantaneous.

Chandler's Challenge: However, high-school physics teacher David Chandler challenged Sunder's denial at this briefing, pointing that Sunder's 40 percent claim contradicts "a publicly visible, easily measurable quantity."

The following week, Chandler placed a video on the Internet showing that, by measuring this publicly visible quantity, anyone knowing elementary physics could see that "for about two and a half seconds. . . , the acceleration of the building is indistinguishable from freefall."

Finally, Chandler wrote a comment to NIST, saying: "Acknowledgment of and accounting for an extended period of free fall in the collapse of WTC 7 must be a priority if the NIST is to be taken seriously."

NIST Admits Free Fall: Amazingly, NIST did acknowledge free fall in its final report. It tried to disguise it, but the admission is there on page 607. Dividing the building's descent into three stages, it describes the second phase as "a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds]. "Gravitational acceleration" is a synonym for free fall acceleration.

So, after presenting 606 pages of descriptions, testimonies, photographs, graphs, analyses, explanations, and mathematical formulae, NIST on page 607 says, in effect: "Then a miracle happens."

Why this would be a miracle was explained by Chandler, who said: "Free fall can only be achieved if there is zero resistance to the motion."

The implication of Chandler's remark is that, by the principles of physics, the upper portion of Building 7 could have come down in free fall only if something had removed all the steel and concrete in the lower part of the building, which would have otherwise provided resistance, and only explosives of some sort could have removed them.

If they had not been removed and the upper floors had come down in free fall anyway, even for only a second or two, a miracle would have happened.

That was what Sunder himself had explained the previous August, saying that a free-falling object would be one "that has no structural components below it" to offer resistance. Having stated in August that free fall could not have happened, NIST also stated that it did not happen, saying: "WTC 7 did not enter free fall."

But then in November, while still defending the same theory, which rules out explosives and thereby rules out free fall, NIST admitted that, as an empirical fact, free fall happened. For a period of 2 and a fourth seconds, NIST admitted, the descent of WTC 7 was characterized by "gravitational acceleration (free fall)."

Knowing that it had thereby affirmed a miracle, meaning a violation of a law of physics, NIST no longer claimed that its analysis was consistent with the physical principles. In its Draft put out in August, NIST had repeatedly said that its analysis of the collapse was "consistent with physical principles." One encountered this phrase time and time again. In its final report, however, this phrase is no more to be found.

NIST thereby admitted, for those with eyes to see, that its report on WTC 7, by admitting free fall while continuing to deny that explosives were used, is not consistent with the principles of physics.⁵⁶

And yet the mainstream press will not report this admission. So the press continues to support the notion that anyone who questions the official reports on 9/11 is unfit for public service.⁵⁷

Conclusion

The 9/11 Truth Movement has long considered the collapse of Building 7 to be the Achilles' heel of the official story about 9/11 – the part of this story that, by being most vulnerable, could be used to bring down the whole body of lies.

My latest book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 Is Unscientific and False, shows that the official account of this building is indeed extremely vulnerable to critique – so vulnerable that, to see the falsity of this account, you need only to read NIST's attempt to defend it, noting the obvious lies in NIST's report and its violations of basic principles of physics.

I hope that my book will indeed help bring down that body of lies that some of us call the Bush-Cheney conspiracy theory, according to which al-Qaeda hijackers, by flying planes into two buildings of the World Trade Center, brought down three of them – an obviously false conspiracy theory that is still being used, among other things, to kill women, children, and other innocent people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Notes

¹This essay is a slightly revised version of a lecture presented at the 9/11 Film Festival at Grand Lake Theater, Oakland, California, September 10, 2009. It is based on David Ray Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False (Northampton, Mass., Olive Branch [Interlink Books], 2010). This essay was originally posted in Global Research (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15201).

²James Glanz, "Engineers Suspect Diesel Fuel in Collapse of 7 World Trade Center," New York Times, November 29, 2001 (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/29TOWE.html).

³Ibid.

⁴Ibid.

⁵See FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf), Ch. 5, Sect. 6.2, "Probable Collapse Sequence."

⁶Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and Richard D. Sisson, Jr., "Limited Metallurgical Examination," FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, Appendix C (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/AppendixC-fema403_apc.pdf).

⁷James Glanz and Eric Lipton, "A Search for Clues in Towers' Collapse," New York Times, February 2, 2002 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E0DE153DF931A35751C0A9649C8B63).

⁸Shyam Sunder, "Opening Statement," NIST Press Briefing, August 21, 2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/opening_remarks_082108.html).

⁹Quoted in "Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building," USA Today, August 21, 2008 (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm).

¹⁰Union of Concerned Scientists, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Federal Policymaking" (www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/scientists-sign-on-statement.html).

¹¹"NIST Whistleblower," October 1, 2007 (http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2007/10/former-nist-employee-blows-whistle.html).

¹²Ibid.

¹³"What is Research Misconduct?" National Science Foundation, Office of Inspector General, New Research Misconduct Policies (http://www.nsf.gov/oig/session.pdf). Although this document is undated, internal evidence suggests that it was written in 2001.

¹⁴Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925; New York: Free Press, 1967), 187.

¹⁵Glanz and Lipton, "A Search for Clues in Towers' Collapse."

¹⁶The melting point of iron is 1,538°C (2,800°F). Steel, as an alloy, comes in different grades, with a range of melting points, depending on the percent of carbon (which lowers the melting point), from 1,371°C (2,500°F) to 1,482°C (2,700° F); see "Melting Points of Metals" (http://www.uniweld.com/catalog/alloys/alloys_melting.htm).

¹⁷Barnett, Biederman, and Sisson, "Limited Metallurgical Examination," C-13.

¹⁸Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., Testimony before the House Science Committee Hearing on "The Investigation of the World Trade Center Collapse," May 1, 2002 (http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/official/nist/bement.htm). In the quoted statement, the name "FEMA" replaces "BPAT," which is the abbreviation for "Building Performance Assessment Team," the name of the ASCE team that prepared this report for FEMA.

¹⁹ "Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation," updated December 18, 2008 (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html).

²⁰RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature," Expert Report, May 2004 (http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTCDustSignature_ExpertReport.051304.1646.mp.pdf), 11.

²¹RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature Study: Composition and Morphology," December 2003 (http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTC%20Dust%20Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf), 17. On the differences between the 2003 and 2004 studies, see my discussion in The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False (Northampton, Mass., Olive Branch (Interlink Books], 2009), 40-41.

²²RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature Study" (2003), 24.

²³Ibid., 21.

²⁴WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/lead/physics.html).

²⁵WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/molybdenum/physics.html). Although the scientists involved with this USGS study discovered the molybdenum, they did not mention it in their report. Knowledge of their discovery was obtained only by means of a FOIA request. See The Mysterious Collapse, 44-45.

²⁶Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, and Bradley R. Larsen, "Active Thermitic Material Observed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009/2: 7-31 (http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm).

²⁷National Fire Protection Association, 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, 1998 Edition (http://www.interfire.org/res_file/92112m.asp), Section 18.3.2.

²⁸See The Mysterious Collapse, 142-44.

²⁹Jennifer Abel, "Theories of 9/11," Hartford Advocate, January 29, 2008 (http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=5546).

³⁰Sunder, "Opening Statement."

³¹Ruvolo is quoted in the DVD "Collateral Damages" (http://www.allhandsfire.com/page/AHF/PROD/ISIS-COLL). For just this segment plus discussion, see Steve Watson, "Firefighter Describes 'Molten Metal' at Ground Zero, Like a 'Foundry,'" Inforwars.net, November 17, 2006 (http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/firefighter_describes_molten_metal_ground_zero_like_foundry.htm).

³²Quoted in Christopher Bollyn, "Professor Says 'Cutter Charges' Brought Down WTC Buildings," American Free Press.net, May 1 & 8, 2006 (http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/cutter_charges_brought_down_wt.html).

³³ "NIST Engineer, John Gross, Denies the Existance [sic] of Molten Steel" (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7180303712325092501&hl=en).

³⁴James Williams, "WTC a Structural Success," SEAU News: The Newsletter of the Structural Engineers Association of Utah, October 2001 (http://www.seau.org/SEAUNews-2001-10.pdf).

³⁵Quoted in Francesca Lyman, "Messages in the Dust: What Are the Lessons of the Environmental Health Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11?" National Environmental Health Association, September 2003 (http://www.neha.org/9-11%20report/index-The.html).

³⁶"Mobilizing Public Health: Turning Terror's Tide with Science," Magazine of Johns Hopkins Public Health, Late Fall 2001 (http://www.jhsph.edu/Publications/Special/Welch.htm).

³⁷Quoted in Bollyn, "Professor Says 'Cutter Charges' Brought Down WTC Buildings."

³⁸For the FDNY testimonies, see Graeme MacQueen, "118 Witnesses: The Firefighters' Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers," Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 2/August 2006 (http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/Article_5_118Witnesses_WorldTradeCenter.pdf): 49-123. For a brief discussion of these and other testimonies, see The Mysterious Collapse, 75-82.

³⁹NIST, "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions," 2006 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Q. 2. For discussion, see The Mysterious Collapse, 77.

⁴⁰NIST, "Letter of Response to Request," September 27, 2007, published in Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 17/November 2007 (http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/NISTresponseToRequestForCorrectionGourleyEtal2.pdf).

⁴¹This statement (by Peter Demarco) is quoted in Chris Bull and Sam Erman, eds., At Ground Zero: Young Reporters Who Were There Tell Their Stories (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002), 97.

⁴²Bartmer's statement is quoted in Paul Joseph Watson, "NYPD Officer Heard Building 7 Bombs," Prison Planet, February 10, 2007 (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/100207heardbombs.htm).

⁴³For documentation of these points about the testimonies of Hess and Jennings, see The Mysterious Collapse, 84-92.

⁴⁴For discussion and documentation of NIST's treatment of the testimonies of Hess and Jennings, see The Mysterious Collapse, 92-94.

⁴⁵Letter of August 12, 2009, from Catherine S. Fletcher, Freedom of Information Act Officer, NIST, to a FOIA request of August 8, 2009, from Ms. Susan Peabody, for "[t]he complete texts of NIST's 2004 interviews of Michael Hess and Barry Jennings, which are cited in NIST NCSTAR 1-8. . . , 109, n.380, as 'WTC 7 Interviews 2041604 and 1041704.'"

⁴⁶For discussion and documentation of the BBC's treatment of Hess and Jennings in the first version of its program, see The Mysterious Collapse, 95-99.

⁴⁷ David Ray Griffin, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? (Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books], 2009).

⁴⁸Telephone conversation, September 1, 2001.

⁴⁹See The Mysterious Collapse, 98-99.

⁵⁰For documentation and discussion of the second version of the BBC's show, including the problems in Hess's testimony, see The Mysterious Collapse, 99-104.

⁵¹See The Mysterious Collapse, 150-55.

⁵²For documentation and discussion of NIST's claim about the lack of girder shear studs, see The Mysterious Collapse, 212-15.

⁵³See The Mysterious Collapse, 187-88.

⁵⁴For discussion and documentation of this point about failed shear studs, see The Mysterious Collapse, 217-21. As I point out in the book, the contradictions between NIST's final report and its 2004 interim report, involving the 4:45 fire and both claims about shear studs, were discovered by Chris Sarns.

⁵⁵Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006).

⁵⁶For documentation and discussion of this point about free fall, see The Mysterious Collapse, 231-41.

⁵⁷I am referring to the fact that Van Jones, who had been an Obama administration advisor on "green jobs," felt compelled to resign due to the uproar evoked by the revelation that he had signed a petition questioning the official account of 9/11. The view that this act made him unworthy was perhaps articulated most clearly by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. After dismissing as irrelevant the other reasons that had been given for demanding Jones's resignation, Krauthammer wrote: "He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding . . . investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 – i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil – and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House. Unlike the other stuff . . . , this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous. . . . You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier – a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice" (Charles Krauthammer , "The Van Jones Matter," Washington Post, September 11, 2009 [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/10/AR2009091003408.html]).

* David Ray Griffin (born 1939) is an American retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology.

Our Multiple Realities Mess

Lawrence Davidson — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:10:51 +0000

By Lawrence Davidson * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Part I - The Security Council Resolution and Veto

The inspiring moments when President Obama appeared before the cameras, and thus the world, to declare that the dictator Hosni Mubarak must step down and the people of Egypt given the inalienable right to self-determination are now in the past. It was a moment when U.S. foreign policy actually appeared to correspond to the foreign reality it addressed. Ironically, it was this very correspondence that made the moment anomalous–something quite out of the ordinary. Therefore, soon after Mubarak went into involuntary retirement at Sharm el-Sheik, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was off to Israel and Jordan to confirm that foreign policy would immediately return to its normal pathway. What is the norm here? Well, it is one where U.S. foreign policy references domestic political reality, like the power of the Zionist lobbies, rather than anything that might serve objective national interests. For all intents and purposes that was Mullen's message, we are back on the normative track. And, on 18 February 2011, the administration backed up the admiral's words with deeds.

On that day the American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, vetoed a Lebanese/Palestinian sponsored resolution in the Security Council that simply stated the truth–that the settlements built and being built on Palestinian occupied territory are illegal and an obstacle to peace. Except for Israel itself, this is admitted by everyone, including the U.S. State Department. The resolution had over120 cosponsors (just about the entire non-Western world) and the support of every other member of the Security Council. The only thing wrong with it was that it singled out the Israelis as the culprits and was thus anathema to the politicians in Washington. For the Obama administration, it was a supremely embarrassing moment.

It was so embarrassing that the administration had invested a lot of energy in trying to make sure the moment never came. Someone in the White House, either Secretary of State Hilary Clinton or President Obama himself, called Mahmoud Abbas to tell him that the U.S. had a compromise in the works that would make the objectionable resolution unnecessary. And what sort of compromise did Washington have in mind? It turned out to be the same old "balanced" position that they U.S. has maintained for years. The compromise statement would express "strong opposition to any unilateral actions by any party which might prejudice the outcome of negotiations...and reaffirm that it does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity....and condemns all forms of violence, including rocket fire from Gaza and stresses the need for calm and security for both peoples." By surrounding the seminal issue of settlements with all the other references to what the Palestinians might be doing, such a statement would sustain the Israeli position that the Palestinians are also obstacles to peace. That in turn would make this pronouncement marginally acceptable to both those embedded in the domestic reality of Congress and to the men in Jerusalem. Indeed, the Americans had pre-cleared their proffered compromise with Israel prior to offering it to Abbas. The Palestinians, of course, said that such pablum missed the point and they would have none of it.

Part II - Multiple Realities

The concept of multiple realities is the key to understanding American behavior when it comes to Israel/Palestine. Thus, on 17 February 2011, it was reported that Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, the Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (a rabid anti-Castro Cuban American), that committee's ranking Democratic member Howard Berman, the Middle East subcommittee Chariman Republican Steve Cabot, the subcommittee's ranking Democratic member Gary Ackerman, and others as well, were insisting that Obama "pledge to...veto any U.N. Security Council resolution that criticizes Israel regarding final status issues." After all, as Cantor and Hoyer stated, the fault lies with the Palestinians. It is they who "reject the difficult but vital responsibility of making peace with Israel through direct negotiations and instead advocate for anti-Israel measures by the United Nations Security Council [that are] counterproductive and unacceptable."

American politicians can only say these things because their audience is first, the Zionist lobbies themselves (from whom they desire political support and fear political opposition) and second, an ignorant American public who can not judge the veracity of their comments. So, while their position does reference the rather shabby political reality in Congress, their characterization of the reality under which Abbas and his fellows operate is all wrong. That other reality has recently been revealed by the leaked Palestine Papers. These show very clearly that the men Cantor and Hoyer accuse of avoiding "direct negotiations" had been in just those sort of talks but a short time ago, and while negotiating had offered the Israelis everything short of their very souls. Whereupon the Israelis had turned up their noses, walked away and recommenced building on stolen land. That left the Palestinian "leadership" in their own domestic political bind. For while the American politicians have to answer to lobbyists, the Palestinians now had to answer to an increasingly angry citizenry. At this point one can ask if, according to the Congressmen, it so necessary for the Palestinian politicians to "take up the difficult but vital responsibility of making peace with Israel," why should it not be equally required that American politicians take on "the difficult but necessary responsibility" of shaking off their corrupt dependency on Zionist dictates so as to pressure the Israelis to make a just peace? The whole thing makes no sense unless one takes into consideration: multi realities and the politicians' propensity for hypocrisy and double standards.

The result of all this was that on February 18^th the UN representatives of three quarters of nations of the earth went about their business in muted disgust at the cowardice of the world's greatest power. They probably avoided making eye contact with Ambassador Rice who had played the role of the good and loyal soldier. Hanan Ashrawi, a respected and very smart member of the PLO Executive Committee, had said that an American veto would be "a direct affront to the international community and the requirements of peace." And so it was. But then, that is the rest of the world's reality, which has yet to penetrate the Washington DC beltway. Inside that beltway it is the requirements of domestic politics, and not that of peace, that holds sway.

In the meantime, in the far off land of Palestine, the Israelis announced the plans for 120 new settlement units to be built in occupied East Jerusalem. The politicians in Jerusalem play to yet another reality–one shaped by ideology and power. The ideology of Zionism they dreamt up all by themselves. The power, at least in part, is made the USA. It is strange how history sometimes repeats itself. If, in November 1947, the UN had voted against the partition of Palestine it would have made no difference to the Zionists who were then determined to make Israel a reality come what may. And, on February 18^th, if the Security Council had voted in favor of the resolution describing settlements as illegal, it would have made no difference to the Israelis who are determined to make greater Israel a reality come what may.

This is our present multiple realities mess. And, it is going to take more than UN resolutions to bring everyone concerned into the same world. The key group here is not the Palestinian politicos nor even the American politicians. The key group is the Israelis. It is their ideologically driven reality that has to reconstructed. When that happens the American politicians will meekly follow along. And how is this to be achieved? Through the slow but sure isolation of the Zionist state and its ideologues. Through a process of isolation that relentlessly raises the cost of Zionist reality until it is too great to bear. That process has already begun and will continue until racism is a dead issue in Israel whatever its ultimate borders. This struggle is now in the hands of a worldwide movement of civil society. And that movement will be the one to decide the ultimate reality in Israel/Palestine.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

Julian Assange in the Honey Trap

SR Editor — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 20:02:38 +0000

By Justin Raimondo * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

By Carlos Latuff

Anyone who doubts the unmitigated evil of the US government and its international enablers has only to look at the disgraceful persecution of Julian Assange to see Washington's brazen malevolence in full flower. As the WikiLeaks web site continues to release daily examples of US incompetence, bullying, venality, and corruption, the response from the Imperial City has been a coordinated campaign of lies, smears, and what can only be described as utter filth.

This outpouring of satanic bile has been disgorged onto the front pages of the world's newspapers in retaliation for the "crime" of revealing the everyday machinations and cynical maneuverings of the US government as it rampages, loots, and murders its way across the face of the earth. In doing so, Assange and WikiLeaks have violated the first principle of the new world order, which is that they (the governments of the world) have every right to know what we're saying in the privacy of our own homes: in our emails, our phone conversations, and anywhere else we (falsely) believe we're free from prying eyes and ears. However, we have no right to know what they are doing, in our name – with our tax dollars – and to believe otherwise is "treason."

For these people – the scum who inhabit the corridors of power – character assassination is an art, to be practiced with a fine attention to detail: and, to be sure, in this case they have outdone themselves. While sex is a weapon they've often used to hunt down their quarry, they can't nowadays merely expose the intimate details of their victims' personal life. In a society that resembles the last days of the Roman empire, where what we used to think of as immorality is rife, the smear artists have to give their revelations a more specific character, and in Assange's case they have given us a textbook example.

The "charges" against Assange, made by two women – Anna Ardin, a "feminist" harridan who works as the "gender equity" officer at Uppsala University, and Sophia Wilen, a sometime photographer and former Assange groupie with stalkerish tendencies – are quite murky. Assange had come to Sweden at Ardin's invitation, or, rather, at the invitation of the "Brotherhood," a Christian faction of Sweden's Social Democratic party for which Ardin is the press secretary. He was staying at her home because she was supposedly going to be gone for a few days with her family, but Ardin returned early, for some reason, and they agreed to cohabit on a temporary basis. Ardin avers that she had agreed to (or perhaps – who knows? – even initiated) consensual sex with Assange, and so, as the Daily Mail reported, "they had sexual relations, but there was a problem with the condom – it had split. She seemed to think that he had done this deliberately but he insisted that it was an accident." Ardin also claims Assange used the weight of his body to keep her immobilized – being a feminist, she likes to be on top.

However, she gave no indication of distress, either that day or the next: instead, she threw a party for Assange at her home. That evening Assange gave a seminar at the Stockholm headquarters of a trade union, and in the front row sat Sophia Wilen, an employee of the local Social Democratic-controlled council in the northern town of Enkoping. Wilen later told police that she had seen Assange on television and had become "obsessed" by him. When she heard he was speaking in Sweden, she called the "Brotherhood" of Social Democratic Christians to volunteer to help at the event, but was turned down: she came anyway, of course, and was soon glomming on to Assange with all the persistence of a blond and very leggy tick – the kind that give you Lyme Disease.

Loitering outside the venue in her shocking pink jumper, she approached Assange and two others who were going to a local café, and managed to get herself invited to join. One of the participants in the ensuing conversation describes her as "certainly an odd character," who seemed out of place. Aggressively pursuing Assange, she sat there looking at him adoringly, and there was – say witnesses – what seemed to be a mutual attraction. After lunch, the two went out to a movie, and later on, when Assange said he had to go – Ardin was planning a crayfish party for him, a traditional Swedish-style event – she asked if she could see him again. He readily agreed. Later, at the party, Ardin would Tweet to her friends that she was "'Sitting outside ... nearly freezing, with the world's coolest people. It's pretty amazing!" She later tried to erase this record of her short-lived joy, but the internet knows all, sees all, now doesn't it?

The honey-trap was nearly sprung, but there were a few more details to take care of. As Ardin was stuffing her face with crayfish and getting drunk, Assange was on the phone with Sophia. They arranged to meet in Stockholm. As the Daily Mail reported:

"When they did meet they agreed to go to her home in Enkoping, but he had no money for a train ticket and said he didn't want to use a credit card because he would be 'tracked' (presumably, as he saw it, by the CIA or other agencies)."

Little did he suspect that was already being tracked. Sophia generously offered to buy him a ticket. When they got to her Enkoping digs, they had sex: he used a condom. The next morning, they again had sex, this time without a condom. They went out for breakfast, with no sign of displeasure or even the barest hint of "rape" coming from her side of the fence: she told him to stay in touch, and he said he would. She then bought him a return ticket to Stockholm, and he was gone – but hardly forgotten.

Here is where the story gets murky: for some reason not readily apparent to me, Sophia called Anna, and the two got to talking: the former confided she had been sleeping with Assange. Anna was furious: here is a woman who had earlier posted on her personal blog a rather scary "Seven Steps to Legal Revenge," which reads like it might have been written by Valerie Solanis.

Sitting alone in Enkoping, wondering why Assange didn't call, Sophia had been simmering in her own resentments, and Ardin was more than happy to give her the opportunity to vent. Together they concocted a plan to go to the police: initially the focus was on Sophia's obsession with the possibility she might have contracted AIDS from the unprotected sex. The two of them went to a police station and asked if it was possible to force Assange to undergo a test for STDs.

It was the weekend, and the regular prosecutor was off duty: a substitute prosecutor listened to their story and decided, on her own authority, to go after Assange. The police combed the entertainment district of Stockholm, looking for him: to no avail. This indictment was later rescinded, however, by the regular prosecutor, due to the fact that, as the office put it, there was "no evidence" a crime had been committed.

The two had leaked the story to the Swedish tabloid Expressen, which relentlessly blared it on their front pages. Pretty professional work for a couple of alleged groupies. Indeed, Ardin is a former Swedish embassy official who served in Buenos Aires, and Havana: she was reportedly asked to leave Cuba after her interactions with Cuban exile groups linked to the CIA.

With those kinds of connections, Ardin was not easily deterred by the dropping of the charges. In order to construct a legal case against Assange, she recruited Claes Borgström, a lawyer and the former "Equal Opportunities Ombudsman" for "gender equity issues." He has been working assiduously to expand the legislative reach of high feminist theory, including by extending the legal definition of rape. According to this new manifestation of extreme political correctness – which is only possible, one hopes, in dreary, suicide-prone Sweden – rape need not necessarily involve physical coercion. There is also, these professional victimologists believe, a form of "psychological" coercion enforced by the unequal "power relations" between the sexes.

In league with a third prosecutor, Marianne Ny, Borgström succeeded in having the case re-opened in order to advance this unique legal innovation: the concept of "rape" without physical coercion. As Assange's Australian lawyer, James Caitlin, puts it:

"Consensual sex can be rape, according to Borgström and Ny – but the alleged victims don't decide – they do. "The new laws which establish these 'precedents' are not yet on the books – but it's Marianne Ny's intention to make the Assange affair into a test case for that purpose. "In other words: Marianne Ny wants to try Julian Assange for something that wasn't a crime when it took place."

So much for the "legal" case against Assange. It's a put up job, pure and simple, so brazen that one wonders how anyone – let alone a sitting judge outside of Zimbabwe, or Saudi Arabia – can entertain it with a straight face. And yet a British judge has indeed upheld the validity of the international arrest warrant, which went straight to the top of Interpol's agenda as soon as it was issued: in the new world order, "sex by surprise" is on a par with being a mass murderer. In spite of having pledges of funding from prominent supporters, the judge denied Assange bail: and so the governments of the world have him where they want him – behind bars.

In their quest to destroy WikiLeaks, the Powers That Be are destroying their own credibility – such as it is, or was. This disgusting frame-up discredits them much more than it does Assange, or WikiLeaks. As the corporate extensions of the US government – PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, etc., ad nauseam – shut their doors to WikiLeaks, and COINTELPRO-style disruption of its operations continues unabated, the fact that the site is still up – indeed, it's much easier to access now than ever before – indicates the battle is far from over.

What this all means is that the future of the internet is being decided, right here, right now: if the worldwide alliance of tyrants and crooks succeeds in shutting WikiLeaks down, the rest of us are doomed. If they can get away with this, they can get away with anything – including legislation regulating content. That's where we're headed, unless the authoritarian assault – led by Senators Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein, Fox News (excepting Judge Napolitano, of course), and neocons left and right – is repulsed.

There is no more important task for antiwar activists, civil libertarians, and all those who treasure freedom than the defense of WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange. That's why the Amazon boycott is so important. That's why we've got to work tirelessly to free Assange. That's why we must never give in to the Liebermans, the Feinsteins, and the Fox News lynch mob. As the commies would say: No Pasaran!

The extradition of Assange to Sweden would signal the final phase of Britain's long slow slide into authoritarianism, an outcome that seems nearly inevitable for a society that imposes a draconian "speech code," and has its population under constant surveillance. From there the plan is obviously to jail him in Sweden until the US can cook up a "legal" rationale to have him extradited for trial in the US – perhaps as a material witness in the case of Bradley Manning, suspected of providing the diplomatic cables – and the Afghan and Iraq war logs – to WikiLeaks.

Truth is on trial – and a conviction would be fatal not only to WikiLeaks, but for the cause of liberty itself. This is an issue that the ruling elite is counting on to plug the giant hole in their armor called the internet. We can't afford to lose this one – at least without inflicting some pretty heavy damage on the enemy.

Assange is the first high-profile political prisoner is a new age of repression and fear. If he is martyred to the cause of liberty, let his bravery and determination serve as an example and an inspiration to us all. But we don't need any more martyrs: we need living activists, like Assange, who are willing to take on the States of the world. We must tirelessly work to free him, and in the process free ourselves.

* Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com.

The New York Times Again Censoring WikiLeaks

Stephen Lendman — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:01:14 +0000

By Stephen Lendman * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

On November 28, WikiLeaks began releasing over 250,000 leaked State Department and US Embassy cables (many designated "secret"), dating from 1966 through end of February 2010. Their content ranges from embarrassing to important revelations about US spying on allies and the UN, ignoring corruption and human rights abuses in "client states," corporate lobbying, backroom dealmaking, disparagements of foreign leaders, and overall revealing a much different America than its public persona. Most of all, it offers more proof of a sham democracy, a lawless imperial state rampaging globally though little, if anything, of a smoking gun nature was disclosed.

Unsurprisingly, the London Guardian said the documents "reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material. Classified 'human intelligence directives' issued in the name of Hillary Clinton or her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, instruct officials to gather information on military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA."

Washington's "most controversial target was the leadership of the United Nations." One document requested "the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top UN officials and their staff and details of 'private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, (and) personal encryption keys."

Candid comments also revealed disparaging assessments of world leaders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was called weak, describing her as "risk averse and rarely creative." Her Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, got even harsher treatment, described as incompetent, a man with an "exuberant personality" but little foreign policy experience.

Christopher Dell, US ambassador to Zimbabwe, called President Robert Mugabe "ruthless," "clever," and "to give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactician." He "will not go down without a fight....he will cling to power at all costs."

Elizabeth Dibble, US charge d'affaires in Rome, called Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi "feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader." Another document described him as a "physically and politically weak (leader whose) frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest," the implication being to do his job properly. Still another document said he appears "increasingly the mouthpiece of (Russian Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin" in Europe.

Der Spiegel reported more, including:

America's disdain for Keynan President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga;
Turkey's Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan was called an unreliable "fundamentalist," governing with "a cabal of incompetent advisors in a country....on a path to an Islamist future;"
America must "endure the endless tirades of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek, who claims to have known that the Iraq war was the 'biggest mistake ever committed' and who advised the Americans to 'forget about democracy in Iraq,' " recommending a military coup once US forces leave; and
Middle east cables "expose the superpower's weaknesses....the world power is often quickly reduced to becoming a plaything of diverse interests," including Arab leaders using their Washington ties to their own advantage.

Other documents expressed high level concerns about Pakistan's growing instability, a clandestine effort to combat Al Qaeda in Yemen, and shifting China/North Korean relations.

Grave fears were revealed about Pakistan's nuclear capability, officials warning of a potential economic collapse and risk of smuggling nuclear material to suspected terrorists.

Another cable discussed Afghan corruption, one alleging that vice president Zai Massoud was carrying $52 million in cash with him when he was stopped during a United Arab Emirates visit.

In still another, Secretary of State Clinton questioned the mental health of Argentina's president.

The Financial Times reported that "The leaks will reinforce suspicions that Israel is considering an attack on Iranian facilities. According to reports of the cables, Ehud Barak, the defense minister, warned in 2009 that the world had six to 18 months to deal with Iran's nuclear programme."

Israel, like Washington, is notorious for crying wolf. If an attack was planned, neither nation would announce it.

An expected revelation ahead is that America for years supported Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an organization Washington and Ankara designated a terrorist group. Regional expert, Mehmet Yegin from the Center for American Studies at the USAK research organization, told the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet that "US support for the PKK could have been a result of Turkey's decision in 2003 not to allow the United States to enter Iraq through Turkish soil."

Still more cables about:

a senior Politburo official orchestrating hacker attacks that forced Google to leave China;
allegations about Russia giving Silvio Berlusconi lavish gifts and lucrative energy contracts;
others about Russian intelligence using mafia bosses to conduct criminal operations, one cable describing "a virtual mafia state;"
sharp Pentagon criticism of Britain's military in Afghanistan;
inappropriate British royal family member comments about a UK law enforcement agency and a foreign country;
criticism of UK Prime Minister David Cameron and requests for intelligence information on individual MPs;
various corruption accusations;
US Honduran ambassador Hugo Llorens calling the June 2009 coup "illegal and unconstitutional;"
Russia offering Israel $1 billion for drone technologies, saying it would also cancel its sale of advanced S-300 missiles to Iran;
harsh criticism of US embassy staff in the Caribbean, China, Russia and elsewhere;
saying Afghan President Hamid Karzai is "driven by paranoia;"
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called another Hitler; so is Hugo Chavez, Saddam Hussein before his capture and hanging, and other leaders earlier so vilified to hype fear about them;
various Arab leaders, including Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, urging Washington to bomb Iran to destroy its nuclear capability
Saudi donors named as the biggest financiers of terror groups;
discussion of a Washington/Yemen coverup over using US planes to bomb suspected Al Qaeda targets;
a description of a rogue enriched uranium shipment causing a near "environmental disaster" in 2009;
technical details of US/Russian secret nuclear missile negotiations in Geneva; and much more besides new material to be released.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange provided the documents to the London Guardian, Germany's Der Spiegel, France's Le Monde, Spain's El Pais, and The New York Times.

Censorship - Standard New York Times Practice

After last July's "Afghan War Diaries" release, The Times collaborated with White House officials to sanitize it, clearing it in advance before publishing. Its Washington bureau chief, Dean Baquet, confirmed that he and two reporters (Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt) "did in fact (tell them) what we had," Obama officials "prais(ing) us for the way we handled it, giving them a chance to discuss it, and for handling the information with care. And for being responsible."

Afterwards, editor Bill Keller wrote this to readers:

"The administration, while strongly condemning (the release), did not suggest (we not) write about them. On the contrary, in our discussions....while challenging some of (our) conclusions....thanked us for handling the documents with care (read sanitizing disturbing truths), and asked us to urge WikiLeaks to withhold information that could cost lives. We did pass along that message."

In addition, he concealed daily war crimes, including mass civilian deaths, many willfully committed. Also, Task Force 373, death squad assassins killing suspected insurgents, cold-blooded murder The Times suppresses, collaborating with imperial lawlessness.

Instead, it focused on "Pakistan's Double Game," a July 27 editorial "confirm(ing) a picture of Pakistani double-dealing that has been building for years," saying "If Mr. Obama cannot persuade Islamabad to cut its ties to, and then aggressively fight, the extremists in Pakistan, there is no hope of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan." The Times, of course, supports US imperial wars, including the Afghan and Iraq quagmires.

On November 29, The Times published "A Note to Readers: The Decision to Publish Diplomatic Documents," saying:

Released documents are either marked "secret," "noforn" (not to be shared with other countries' representatives), "secret/noforn," "confidential," or unclassified. "Most were not intended for public view, at least in the near term."

"The Times has taken care to exclude, in its articles and in supplementary material, in print and online, information that would endanger (read expose) confidential informants or compromise national security (read reveal Washington's imperial agenda). The Times redactions were shared with other news organizations and communicated to WikiLeaks, in the hope that they would similarly edit (read sanitize) the documents they planned to post online."

"After its own redactions, The Times sent Obama administration officials the cables it planned to post and invited them to challenge publication of any information that, in the official view, would harm the national interest (again reveal America's true agenda - global imperial destructiveness). After reviewing the cables, (officials) suggested additional redactions. The Times agreed to some, but not all."

The Times said it will post only about 100 cables, some redacted, others in full, "that illuminate aspects of American foreign policy," but will follow White House instructions in do doing.

The "newspaper of record," of course, is a longstanding imperial tool, the closest equivalent in America to an official ministry of information and propaganda, what Times editors and bosses know but won't say.

* 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.

Anti-Defamation League joins bigots in opposing Manhattan mosque

SR Editor — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:37:13 +0000

The Anti-Defamation League has announced its opposition to the building of an Islamic community center (or mosque, as CNN and others put it) in Manhattan, near ground zero. It accepts that the builders have every right to do so, but believes that they should not because its presence there will cause offense and pain.

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain --unnecessarily -- and that is not right.

Perhaps the Anti-Defamation League could produce some helpful maps to delineate the areas in our cities where Muslims may live, work and pray without causing more pain.

The original statement was linked to here by others, but it's not currently available. Via CNN.

Source: boingboing

Guess Who Wants to Kill the Internet? by Maidhc Ó Cathail

Maidhc Ó Cathail — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:05:13 +0000

By Maidhc Ó Cathail* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

It would be hard to think of anyone who has done more to undermine American freedoms than Joseph Lieberman.

Since 9/11, the Independent senator from Connecticut has introduced a raft of legislation in the name of the "global war on terror" which has steadily eroded constitutional rights. If the United States looks increasingly like a police state, Senator Lieberman has to take much of the credit for it.

On October 11, 2001, exactly one month after 9/11, Lieberman introduced S. 1534, a bill to establish a Department of Homeland Security. Since then, he has been the main mover behind such draconian legislation as the Protect America Act of 2007, the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, and the proposed Terrorist Expatriation Act, which would revoke the citizenship of Americans suspected of terrorism. And now the senator from Connecticut wants to kill the Internet.

According to the bill he recently proposed in the Senate, the entire global internet is to be claimed as a "national asset" of the United States. If Congress passes the bill, the US President would be given the power to "kill" the internet in the event of a "national cyber-emergency." Supporters of the legislation say this is necessary to prevent a "cyber 9/11" - yet another myth from the fearmongers who brought us tales of "Iraqi WMD" and "Iranian nukes."

Lieberman's concerns about the internet are not new. The United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which Lieberman chairs, released a report in 2008 titled "Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat." The report claimed that groups like al-Qaeda use the internet to indoctrinate and recruit members, and to communicate with each other.

Immediately after the report was published, Lieberman asked Google, the parent company of You Tube, to "immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations." That might sound like a reasonable request. However, as far as Lieberman is concerned, Hamas, Hezbollah and even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are terrorist organizations.

It's hardly surprising that Lieberman's views on what constitute terrorism parallel those of Tel Aviv. As Mark Vogel, chairman of the largest pro-Israel Political Action Committee (PAC) in the United States, once said: "Joe Lieberman, without exception, no conditions ... is the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress. There is nobody who does more on behalf of Israel than Joe Lieberman."

Lieberman has been well-rewarded for his patriotism – to another country. In the past six years, he has been the Senate's top recipient of political contributions from pro-Israel PACs with a staggering $1,226,956.

But what is it that bothers Lieberman so much about the internet? Could it be that it allows ordinary Americans access to facts which reveal exactly what kind of "friend" Israel has been to its overgenerous benefactor? Facts which they have been denied by the pro-Israel mainstream media.

How much faith would American voters have in the likes of Lieberman, who claims that the Jewish state is their greatest ally, if they knew that Israeli agents planted firebombs in American installations in Egypt in 1954 in an attempt to undermine relations between Nasser and the United States; that Israel murdered 34 American servicemen in a deliberate attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967; that Israeli espionage, most notably Jonathan Pollard's spying, has done tremendous damage to American interests; that five Mossad agents were filming and celebrating as the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001; that Tel Aviv and its accomplices in Washington were the source of the false pre-war intelligence on Iraq; and about countless other examples of treachery?

In his latest attempt to censor the internet, does Lieberman really want to protect the American people from imaginary cyber-terrorists? Or is he just trying to protect his treasonous cronies from the American people?

*Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan.

Mark Morford – BP Welcomes You to the Apocalypse

SR Editor — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:56:57 +0000

By Mark Morford | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

By Monte Wolverton

Please do not worry. Please do not fret about that one thing you always fret about, or that other thing, or even that third thing that might have something to do with erupting oil, dead pelicans and that sickening feeling in your gut that Something is Very Wrong Indeed.

I come bearing fabulous news. There is no longer any need to concern yourself with pesky trifles like love, a mortgage, child rearing, planting a garden, dreams, money, shoes, wristwatches, parking spaces, mysterious rashes, foreign policy, baseball, bridge tolls or generally caring about much of anything in particular.

I am delighted to report it will all be over soon. If not sooner. It's true.

And it's a good thing, too, because I was just reading up on six of the worst-case scenarios resulting from the BP spill, all sorts of horrors and tragedies, abuses and unspeakables, from dire seafood shortages to horrifying ecosystem destruction, wildlife mutilation to all the years and decades before the gulf region will be anywhere near recovered. These scenarios all were, in a word, bleak. They were, in three more, thoroughly f--ing depressing.

They were also, whoops, from about two months ago. So I clicked around and quickly found another, far more recent worst-case scenario article, and boy, were its scenarios worse indeed. So awful that they effectively made the earlier batch seem meek and laughable and even sort of quaint.

So it's come to this. Every day in the media, a sort of deranged, comical footrace to figure out which worst-case scenario is really the worst, because every day comes a new stat, prediction, photo, possibility for abject horror we hadn't even conceptualized yet because, well, we've never exactly been here before, not at this scale. How bad can it all get, really? No one has a clue. Joy!

But I'm not at all worried. Because the fact is, almost none of those worst-case scenarios will actually come to pass. Do you know why? Because there are two or three even worse worst-case scenarios that easily trump any you might be reading about anywhere. Ultra, mega, super worst-case scenarios that make all the rest seem like a little splotch on your pretty new iPhone 4.

So, just what are these supermegaworst-case scenarios? They all have one thing in common: Each one of them, all by itself, spells the end of modern life as we know it. Utter annihilation. The End. I am so not kidding. OK, maybe a little. But only until we all die. After that, not kidding at all.

BP Will Kill Us All Scenario #1: Everyone knows that, early on in the spill, BP was thoughtful enough to pump millions of gallons of a horrible chemical dispersant called Corexit 9500 into the gusher, a violently toxic compound so notoriously lethal it's been banned for years by the European union. Obama & Co finally caught on to BP's tactic and told them to knock it off.

Too late. Obscure Russian scientists tell us Corexit's deadly compounds are now breaking up and evaporating into North American rainclouds, which will shortly begin raining down complete toxic hell on us all, poisoning all crops, babies, cats, Christians, Starbucks baristas and none-too-bright redneck videographers -- though it will somehow magically spare the really good jazz clubs in Louisiana and that one guy who scored the goal for the USA in the World Cup, because he's a freakin' hero.

These scientists say the toxic rain could be so poisonous, it will destroy the entire food chain and plunge North America into chaos, rendering the entire region unlivable, with any straggling survivors crawling desperately up to Canada, where they will be promptly made into slave labor to build hockey arenas and drink lager and fade into the woods.

Does that sound dubious? Totally implausible? Fine. No problem. For there is another, even better backup apocalypse scenario, even more melodramatic and wickedly cinematic, and therefore much more likely to come to pass.

BP Will Kill Us All Scenario #2: Apparently, deep in the ocean floor, just beneath the gushing oil, lives a massive bubble of methane gas the size of... oh, let's just say Texas. Maybe Oklahoma. South Carolina. Someplace gassy and slightly rancid and always ready to explode at the poke of a big phallic stick.

This is the drama: All our mucking around on the ocean floor could trigger a methane explosion so gargantuan, it will cause a tsunami. Not just any tsunami, mind you, but a "supersonic tsunami" so ultra-awesomely massive it will effortlessly wipe out the much of the gulf coast states, killing millions and completely destabilizing the nation and inducing zombie riots in the streets as everyone wails over the loss of Florida. Or, you know, not.

So there you have it. Toxic rain and supersonic tsunamis, the end of North America as we know it. Done. Finished. Certainly, one of those two scenarios is guaranteed to come to pass, right? Maybe, if we're really lucky, even both?

All right, fine. In the off-off chance that invisible Russian scientists and nutball doomsayers are wrong (impossible!), well, there is one more glorious mega scenario to consider. There is a backup to the backup to the backup. Hey, we're Americans. When it comes to dorky apocalyptic visions, we got you covered.

Here is your grand finale: A new survey says that a disturbingly large percentage of Americans -- 40 percent, to be exact -- actually believe Jesus will return by 2050, likely riding on the back of a flaming asteroid (30 percent think one will hit us by then), waving a cowboy hat and yodeling as he careens toward our hapless blue dot of inequity, pain and lousy AT&T reception.

Jesus will then crash land in Texas, wink at Dubya and Sarah Palin, and then sweep up all the True Believers in their beige Dodge minivans just as the earth shudders and implodes, just like one of those swirling black holes in "Star Trek."

How cool will that be? Answer: It will be very cool indeed. It is so cool, in fact, it totally wipes out the need to care much about anything at all. See how easy? Now, who wants pie?

Source: ICH

The West Hypocrisy

SR Editor — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:57:05 +0000

By Dr. Sami Alrabaa* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Holocaust Hypocrisy

Undoubtedly, the "Holocaust" which was inflicted on the Jews before the II World War was a crime against humanity; it was an egregious genocide, like several other genocides inflicted on the Native Americans, African Americans, and the Armenians, for instance. But as far the Jews are concerned the Holocaust is a "unique" crime, incomparable with any other crime. Day in and day out, the Jews across the globe insist that comparing the Holocaust with other crimes is politically incorrect and impermissible.

You can question the severity of any crime, but not the Holocaust, otherwise you are branded as anti-Semitic and one of those right-wing populists.

This is reminiscent of the racial discrimination in the US until the 1960s. Racial discrimination was "politically correct" at least in the America. Critics of racial discrimination were portrayed as "anti-American" and "communists".

Every chapter in the human history was dominated by a certain mindset, regardless how irrational and inhumane it was. What was politically correct proved later to be incorrect. Over more than three centuries, racial discrimination against African Americans was politically correct, at least in America.

After the II World War, the Jews have set out to single out their "Holocaust" as the WORST atrocity ever inflicted on a religious minority. They have insisted that any description short of that is improper and anti-Semitic. This implies a perverse discrimination against victims of other genocides. This mindset dominates the media and political life at least in the West and handled as politically correct per excellence. But, like other mindsets, sooner or later, this prevailing mindset will disappear and the Holocaust will be treated as not superior to other crimes against humanity. Many field studies, which have not been published for fear of provoking the Jewish lobby, prove without any shred of doubt that ordinary people view the Holocaust as a crime like any other crime.

In Germany and in the West at large, you are not allowed to compare any crime to the Holocaust. For the German establishment (media and politics across the board), controlled by an influential Jewish lobby, the Holocaust is a "UNIQUE" crime in the history of mankind. If someone slips and compares the Holocaust, even metaphorically, to any crime anywhere in the world, they are immediately urged to withdraw their comparison. The Holocaust is more "sacred" than the Bible and the Koran. Most recently, the Pope's secretary compared the media campaign about child abuse in Catholic institutions to the hate campaign against Jews under the Nazis before the II World War. The Jewish lobby rushed to muzzle him and ordered him to apologize, which he did.

Discrimination of any kind is politically incorrect. But it seems that Jews insist that discrimination against other victims of atrocities is "legitimate". It also seems that Jewish blood is more precious than other bloods.

By the way, denying the "Holocaust" is illegal and punishable in Germany and Austria. Think of the British David Irving who was jailed in Austria for simply saying that the 6 million Jews who were burned to death by the Nazis is exaggerated. Recently, a German court ruled that the British bishop, Richard Williamson had to pay a fine of € 10 million for claiming that the Holocaust never took place.

Likewise, if the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad happens to visit Austria or Germany, he would be persecuted and jailed, although he never denied the Holocaust. He simply criticized the number of Jews killed by the Nazis; Ahmedinajad believes that the 6 million is an exaggerated figure.

However, when you talk in private to Germans, they tell you, this is absurd. Nobody dare to compare the Holocaust to other crimes and genocides in the history of mankind. If you criticize that then you are branded as "anti-Semitic"!

By the way, the political establishment in Germany avoids conducting surveys about sensitive issues like the Holocaust and Islamism, for example, constructing minarets. More often than not, the public thinks differently than the political establishment and main stream media preach.

Jewish history is omnipresent in contemporary Germany. No day passes by without a Jewish story. All kinds of stories are told in newspapers, radios, and TVs, short, long, true, and fictitious stories are told.

How about crimes committed against the Native Americans and African Americans, just to name a few? For the Jewish lobby and mainstream media, you are comparing apples to oranges.

According to the British Encyclopedia, the Belgium King Leopold II (1835-1909) ordered the killing of 12 million Africans in Congo. This is real Holocaust. But this fact is as dead as Leopold himself. African Americans, Congolese, and Native Americans never received any kind of compensation, but the Jews received huge sums of money.

Along their history until now, the Jews have always marketed themselves as victims in the Diaspora; in Spain, Europe, and the Middle East.

The Iranian nuclear program which Israel blasts, day in and day out, is a welcome opportunity to play the victim. But how about the Israeli nuclear arsenal? Neither the West nor the IAEA dare check out this arsenal.

Further, Israel in not interested in peace. Peace with its Arab neighbors would mean an end to the "victim theory".

The Media Hypocrisy

I have been living in Germany for the past 30 years working as a sociology and communication professor. Hence, I know what I am talking about. I could fill up volumes about the hypocrisy and contradictions reproduced by the German media and German politics.

The German mainstream media and political establishment divide the world into democratic countries and dictatorships. Countries of the so called Third World which hold elections and have a parliament are branded as democratic, provided of course they are friendly to the West. It does not matter whether these countries introduce political and socio-economic reforms or not. Despotic Arab regimes with dismal human rights records are rarely criticized. They are branded as "moderate" and allegedly play a "geo-strategic role in the Middle East".

The truth of the matter, the West benefits from the Saudi billions of petrodollars. These huge sums of money are largely invested in the West. In addition, introducing real democracy in the Arab world would leave the West without stooge allies.

Democratic countries, like Iran, Bolivia, and Venezuela, for instance, which have introduced huge economic reforms and narrowed the gap between the rich and poor, are arbitrarily depicted by the Western media and political establishment as "dictatorships".

Also, the West accuses Third World countries of being corrupt. But how about the West? Isn't it also corrupt and greedy? Siemens and Mercedes, for example, have spent and still spend billions of dollars in corrupt channels in countries of the Third World. They bribe officials in these countries to gain bids. Siemens spent in the 1990s one and a half billions of dollars in corrupt transactions in Saudi Arabia alone. This was confirmed to me by a Siemens manager. Most recently, Mercedes agreed to settle corruption charges in a US court by paying a fine of 200 million dollars. Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minster ordered British courts and legislation NOT to investigate corruption charges in an arms deal of $ 20 billion instigated by the Saudi Bandar Bin Sultan. Blair argued at the time, "an investigation into the corruption charges" is not in British national interests and would harm the deal and damage thousands of jobs in the British arms industry.

Having said that, you can see that the West freezes democracy and human rights principles when their interests are in jeopardy. They use these principles when they conveniently suit them.

In the 1990s I used to teach at King Saud University and once in a while I was asked by the German Embassy to translate for German politicians visiting Saudi Arabia. In one of those visits by Juergen Moellemann, former chairman of the German Free Democratic Party (FDP), he received a gift check of 40 million dollars from Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh. What for is the money? Moellemann distributed part of the money among influential journalists in Germany so that they keep silent as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned.

When the money, which Moellemann deposited in a secret account in Switzerland, was discovered he committed suicide in 2003.

Germany is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of Berlin wall and the unification of east and west Germany. The German media brag: East Germany is now free. However, when you talk to people from East Germany, they tell you: "yes we are free now, we can travel wherever we want, but we do not have the money to do so. 40% of East Germans are jobless.

In contrast, it is big business in Germany which has benefited most from the unification. Whole state-owned industries and agricultural cooperatives were sold for peanuts.

Since the riots in Teheran after the latest presidential elections, the German correspondent of ARD TV, Peter Mezger has reported from Iran. He still reports from Teheran and concocts lies. He interviews "dissidents", but he never interviews supporters of the Iranian government.

If I were the Ambassador of Iran in Berlin, I would sue Mr. Mezger and his ilk for spreading lies. Certainly, the Ambassador would not win the case, where the German constitution, at least in theory, guarantees freedom of speech. But the case would instigate a debate on fair reporting.

In view of the fact that fewer people buy and subscribe daily papers and increasingly turn to the Internet for information, and in order to save costs and keep managing editors' salaries up, many of these German papers have withdrawn their correspondents from overseas. These journalists sit now in their cozy offices and concoct distorted reports about Iran, Venezuela, Bolivia, China, and Syria, for example. Insiders have confirmed this practice.

German TV stations, radio, and newspapers interview dissidents in Germany pretending that they were interviewed in their own home countries. People, who support their governments in the aforementioned countries and elsewhere, are sparsely interviewed. Their views seem not to be important for the German public.

I get sick when I see or read in German media that Mr./Ms. so and so is described as an expert in Iranian and Afghan affairs, for instance. When you check out their qualifications, you find out that they neither speak the language of these countries nor have studied their culture. Besides, they have never been to Iran or Afghanistan. They have read a couple of articles about these countries and hence have become "experts".

The German media condemn violence when Germany is not involved. As the American marines attacked an American ship, kidnapped by Somali pirates and freed the crew last year, the German media rushed to condemn the attack. When recently the Dutch marines attacked a German vessel and freed its crew from Somali pirates, the German media jubilated and approved of the attack.

Democracy and Human Rights Hypocrisy

How honest/dishonest is the West with regard to human rights?

The West claims that human rights are universal and must be respected everywhere in the world.

But does the West really support human rights activists equally across the world?

The answer is a big NO. The West supports human rights activists selectively as long as they suit them and serve their political and economic interests. The West blasts dismal human rights records in countries that are not friendly to the West and turns a blind eye to lack of these rights in "friendly" states.

While the West awards the Sacharov prize to Chinese dissidents, it ignores human rights activists in the Arab world.

Most recently, in his latest visit to Saudi Arabia, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle ignored addressing the dismal human rights record of the Al Saud. Later as he was visiting China, he loudly urged the Chinese government in a press conference to respect human rights.

As far as Westerwelle is concerned, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt play a "vital strategic economic and political role". China is an economic and political adversary.

Obviously, the Cold War is not completely dead. Western propaganda is still active towards those countries which do not submit to the will of Western establishments. Western media and political establishments operate according to the motto: If you are friendly to us, we let you do whatever you want. If you are not friendly to us, then you are our enemy, and we will do everything in our power to topple you.

In general, Western Europe has always looked down at East European countries and has never recognized Turkey as part of the European continent.

During the Cold War Turkey was a member of the NATO. After the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, Western Europe rushed to admit East European countries in the European Union (EU) and in the NATO. Turkey's wish to join the EU has so far been rejected, especially by Germany, Austria, and France. The EU argues Turkey is still backward and not European enough, although Turkey is not less developed than Bulgaria, Rumania, and Poland. All these countries, including Turkey have the same level of development in all walks of life. Why is this so?

Turkey has never been a "friend" of Russia (the core left of the Soviet Union) and would never ally itself with Russia. But East European countries could become allies of Russia if they were left outside the EU and NATO. Therefore, the EU was strategically more than happy to admit East European countries before they ally themselves with Russia, the old and new adversary of the West. Turkey was left out. It is politically insignificant in this equation.

The German media and the Western media at large come up with headlines like, "Tibet in Flames" and demand independence for this integral part of China. They allege that the natives of Tibet are oppressed and not allowed to practice their culture, language, and religion.

The truth of the matter is Tibet has been part of China for the past three centuries and its people are free to exercise their religion and culture. And Tibetans are not discriminated against as the Western media allege.

But how about Palestine and Kurdistan? For decades, the people of these countries have been fighting for independence. Until now, the West has ignored the basic rights of the Kurds for independence although they constitute an ethnic and cultural entity living in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. Yet, until recently, the Kurds in Turkey have been forbidden to use their own language and practice their own culture. In Syria, the Kurds are not recognized as an ethnic minority.

Viva Western rationale of democracy and human rights!

* Dr.ٍ Sami Alrabaa is a 60-year old retired sociology professor. Among other universities, he taught at Michigan State University, King Saud University, Kuwait University. He also published extensively in academia and print media. His latest book is "Veiled Atrocities" published by Prometheus Books, New York, 2010.

Stuart Littlewood – Losing patience with squabbling ’2-rump’ Palestine

Stuart Littlewood — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:29:28 +0000

Palestine: The Enemy Within

By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!"

A few weeks ago, on the annual Robert Burns Night, these immortal lines from 1786 were being recited all over the world, but probably not in Palestine. The leadership there aren't blessed with the gift of seeing themselves as the rest of the world sees them... a bit like the Israelis that way. The consequences for the Palestinians are tragic.

Fatah especially would do well to learn the lines off by heart. The next two go

"It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion!"

The poem addresses a louse, which seems appropriate enough.

We've heard a great deal about Fatah spreading security chaos, almost provoking a civil war, then collaborating with the US to recruit sinister battalions of "security" thugs with orders to crush all opposition, silence dissent, destroy Hamas and the welfare structure it provides, and force Palestinians to bend to Israel's will.

This vile scenario is topped off with unjustified arrests, torture and lack of due process. It sounds like Fatah's brave "security" forces have been trained in terror tactics by the Gestapo and are working for the enemy.

Who is the enemy these days? Palestine's external enemy we know about. But the 'enemy within' is always more dangerous.

Since I first visited the Holy Land nearly 5 years ago I have tried to keep my promise to tell the story of those wonderful people struggling under cruel occupation. So I added my voice to the many that campaign for justice and freedom. But what exactly are we giving our support to?

The endless ordeal of the Palestinian people and their terrible loss tugs at the heart-strings of millions here in the West, but efforts to win over public opinion are continually undermined by the infighting between Fatah and Hamas.

This 2-rump division and the violent squabbles are what Israel prayed for. Mr Abbas, Mr Fayyad and the Palestinian National Authority are the 'Acceptable Face' of Palestine but only because they are propped up by the psychopaths in Washington and Tel Aviv. Abbas and Fayyad have power but little or no legitimacy and it's not clear whom they represent, which again is what Israel prayed for. They rule the West Bank in a game of footsie with Israel and with funding and support from the US, but are silent to the media, and the Israelis love that.

The PNA's embassies in the West have nothing to say, and Israeli propagandists are laughing themselves silly. The London embassy is deliberately starved of resources. Who but a raving lunatic – or a knave - would gag their communications outlet in the world's media capital?

This part of the Palestinian story just doesn't sell.

Israel meanwhile continues its bombings and abductions and its land-grabbing and water thieving and house demolitions and settlement building and blockades and check-points and collective punishment and general harassment, even ruins youngsters' education and forces Gazans to rebuild their blitzed homes and factories with mud bricks.

It is obvious that Fatah must face down threats from the US, forge unity with Hamas and agree clear objectives based on what has already been set out in UN resolutions and international law. Both camps need to behave impeccably, hold new elections instead of overstaying their term, and co-operate if they are to earn respect inside and outside Palestine. They need to become squeaky-clean and media-friendly. Everyone needs to sing off the same hymn-sheet.

Every day they delay, more damage is done to the cause.

But instead, the Palestinian National Authority (a misnomer if ever there was one) presents such an appalling image to the outside world that the long-suffering people it is supposed to represent are actually losing the sympathy they deserve. If any progress has been made recently it's by campaign groups and students in the West creating awareness and putting pressure on governments and business, and no thanks to Palestine's leaders.

Hamas charter an obstacle to peace

Democratically elected Hamas is the 'Unacceptable Face' of Palestine, according to the White House and the rest of Israel's hirelings. But even those who dislike Hamas have a sneaking admiration for their courage and single-minded determination against impossible odds. How many of their critics could have emerged from what they have been through with colours still flying? We in Britain owe a duty to Palestinians to talk to Hamas as well as Fatah instead of welcoming onto our streets Israelis wanted for mega war crimes.

Islam is only a problem to the West when it is corrupted and distorted by fanatics. The teachings of Christianity and Judaism are also a menace when distorted, and we don't have to look very far.

But don't you think, Mr Meshaal and Mr Haniyeh, that the Hamas Charter is an obstacle to peace? Can you appreciate that ordinary Westerners, who could turn the tide of opinion, see the Charter as threatening and are easily persuaded not to back your cause, while the enemies of Palestine - especially the 'Friends of Israel' and their stooges in the corridors of power - gleefully use it to make mischief and stoke up hatred?

OK, the Charter dates from 1988 and is basically an Intifada rallying call by a resistance group that never dreamed of being catapulted into government 18 years later. But the puzzle is why it wasn't torn up promptly in 2006 and why Hamas didn't seize the occasion to re-invent themselves.

A new Charter removing the West's objections would significantly improve chances of a just settlement. Right-thinking people will respect your unwillingness to sacrifice national constants and your reluctance to accept Israel's claims of legitimacy, but after 42 years you might consider formally accepting the reality of Israel within internationally agreed pre-1967 borders, as set out in UN resolutions and international law. This would show that Hamas is at least evolving and now worthy of being considered a potential partner for peace, if not among the West's present crop of corrupted leaders then at least among the people they answer to.

Israel of course will continue to demand "recognition" but on what basis? On the 57 per cent of mandated Palestine generously allocated to the Jews by the UN in 1947? Or the 78.5 per cent they had illegally expanded to by 1949?

Or are we all supposed to recognise present-day Israel occupying/blockading 100 percent and determined to keep it all, including Jerusalem? Their relentless drive to dispossess the Palestinians totally must be halted. Until it is who can reasonably be expected to recognise Israel, especially the Palestinians?

Enforce the law first. Negotiate afterwards, on a level playing field

No-one should be asked to agree peace with an occupier's jackboot on his throat. The UN and the International Court of Justice have already spoken and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is simple enough to understand. Justice can only be delivered when Israel conforms to international law and complies with UN Resolutions, yet the international community still funks implementation and takes the coward's way, urging "negotiations".

What is there to negotiate? Is international law negotiable? Or human rights? Is the US entitled to re-write these laws and conventions to suit its Israel lobby?

Negotiations should not even be mentioned until all outstanding legal issues are dealt with and a level playing field is prepared. That, one would have thought, is the unshakable precondition for any talks.

The question is, when will the US see to it? Answer: not until its pro-Israel lobby is purged, or the rest of the world runs out of patience and overrules America.

The same goes for the UK, where 'Friends of Israel' and their stooges now run foreign policy.

That stooge extraordinaire Tony Blair is now to step up his efforts as Middle East peace envoy by doing things "bottom-up" – more months/years of negotiations to improve freedom of movements, change living conditions, encourage investment, etc – which has been a recipe for failure for decades. The Israelis will love that too. Top-down enforcement of international law is what's needed before anything useful can be achieved.

Saeb Erekat, the PNA's chief negotiator, is urging the Palestinians to call for a new UN resolution that recognises a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and builds upon the position established by numerous previous resolutions. That's more like it!

But good ideas and fine words are not enough. Palestine's 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' faces, both ugly as sin, must dissolve seamlessly into a single, likable, honest face that inspires confidence. The quarrelsome rumps must vanish for ever.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Stuart Littlewood – What festive cheer will the West bring to the Holy Land this Christmas?

Stuart Littlewood — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:34:24 +0000

By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The UK is now in the grip of festive fever as the nation prepares for the customary annual binge called Christmas. Despite the recession families are being urged to spend, spend, spend on an excess of food and alcohol and extravagant presents. For them there is also the luxury of unrestricted travel to see relatives or take a foreign holiday.

A far cry from the kind of Christmas that's possible in the illegally occupied and blockaded territories of the Holy Land...

Two years ago, in the run-up to Christmas 2007, I had just returned from Gaza and the West Bank. With tears of rage in my eyes I addressed these remarks to Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown:

The dire conditions we witnessed in Gaza are designed to enable Israel and the West to grind Hamas into submission and bring a weakened and demoralised population under the puppet regime now governing the West Bank. Will the plan succeed? It's hard to say. There is astonishing pride and resilience among the Gazans. But if you kick, murder and starve people long enough, commit crimes against humanity often enough and turn your back callously enough, hey presto! victory can be yours... But please tell us, Mr Gordon Brown, why is Britain complicit in such a base and cowardly scheme?

Gaza was formerly under British mandate, which is sufficient reason for us to feel special responsibility for its wellbeing. But it isn't even on the agenda at the Annapolis peace conference. In which case I say to the British government: "Go see for yourselves the misery, the human tragedy and the devastation you have heaped on these nice people. Feel the pain and weep.

"Then amaze us. Do something courageous for once. Lift the cruel siege. End the 90 years of betrayal that has so shamed Britain. Land supplies on Gaza's empty beach. Those are Palestinian territorial waters: if Israeli gunboats interfere shoo them away. And suspend all trade association agreements until Israel complies with UN resolutions and International Court of Justice rulings, ends its unlawful occupation and withdraws behind its pre-1967 borders."

And to church leaders in western Christendom:

"Are you just going to sit there while the Holy Land is stolen from under your noses?"

Was I angry! At the same time I had received a letter from Kim Howells, then the minister of state at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office responsible for the Middle East...
In it, Howells recited the hardships heaped on the Gazan people. "We share concerns about the situation in Gaza and reports that the Israeli government may reduce services to Gaza..." How quaintly put.

"We remain firmly committed to Israel's security but we are concerned that any measures taken by Israel in response to actions by violent extremists should not cause suffering to innocent Palestinians. Israel has expressed its commitment to avoiding a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and we have called on Israel to ensure that any response is in accordance with international law.

"We have made clear our commitment to helping all Palestinians, including those in Gaza... We also share concern about freedom of movement... We have repeatedly raised our concerns about movement and access with the Government of Israel... Continuing rocket fire into Israel by extremist groups within Gaza is a reminder of the dangers Israel faces. However, the deteriorating humanitarian situation is a real cause of concern. The UN Secretary General spoke forcefully to this issue and we support his efforts to ensure that the interests of the civilian population are not forgotten."

Commitment, commitment, concern, concern...If any of it were genuine, Christmas in Gaza, 2009, should be a very jolly occasion. But the situation for the Palestinians today is even worse. We wait in vain to see "something courageous" from the western powers. Cowardice is the norm.

This week the knife of betrayal was given an extra twist by David Miliband, our foreign secretary. He calls Israeli settlements illegal but appears happy to sidestep international law and join America in appeasing the Israeli regime's relentless determination to seize the whole of Jerusalem. "Britain will do all it can to support US efforts to re-launch negotiations," he promised. "Negotiations are the only way for the Israelis and Palestinians to achieve a comprehensive, just and secure peace." Not international law, then? No, that's filed away in the Too Difficult drawer.

Last Christmas, did Gordon Brown spare a Yuletide thought for the starving, shivering Palestinians in Gaza? He wished the Jewish community a happy Chanuka from Number10.gov.uk and recalled how he celebrated with them Israel's 60th birthday...

But he had no festive greeting for the Gazans. And no word of cheer, either, for the Christian communities in Gaza and the West Bank endlessly persecuted by his Israeli friends. I was told that many of the 1.5 million people packed into the ravaged Strip were having to scavenge through rubbish tips for food to survive. What sort of Christmas was in store for their little ones while the criminals who inflicted on them such unspeakable hardship and torment, and who denied them their human rights, had their snouts in the Yuletide trough and enjoyed a warm bed?

One presumes that Brown, a staunch ally of Israel, knew about the hell that his friends were about to inflict on Gaza during the Christmas celebrations. Christians living in the Strip were certainly aware of the invasion threat and abandoned plans to celebrate the midnight Christmas mass in protest. But they couldn't have imagined the enormity of the devastation and slaughter that would be unleashed on them and their children.

Brown is the son of a Church of Scotland minister, which makes his indifference all the more surprising. But does western Christendom actually care, even when slapped in the face? Last year, if you remember, Christian hotels in the Holy Land as well as Catholic and Anglican churches in the UK faced Christmas without Bethlehem wine because Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint at Hebron stopped shipments. For 125 years this wine has been produced by a Christian religious order at the Cremisan winery in Beit Jala, a suburb of Bethlehem. The business supports their pastoral work among the poor and provides a livelihood for many local Palestinian families. Christians in the Holy Land and abroad buy the wine not just for its quality but because the income helps the economy of Bethlehem, which has been devastated by Israel's wrecking tactics over the years.

There are 26 bishops in the British parliament's House of Lords, enough to make a very big noise if they wanted to. These Lords Spiritual (to give them their proper title) are the top five holy men of the Church of England plus the 21 longest time-servers. According to the CofE they "play a full and active role in the life and work of the Upper House" besides reading prayers at the start of each meeting. Their presence, we're told, is an extension of their general vocation to preach God's word and provide an independent voice and spiritual insight. They are supposed to be a voice for all people of faith, not just Christians.

In a quick search through theyworkforyou.com I could find no record, in the wake of Israel's killing spree in Gaza, of these 'super-clerics' raising questions about the appalling conditions in the Holy Land, the plight of the Palestinians, Israel's criminal onslaught and persecution of the Christian and Muslim communities, and the unending humanitarian crisis... nor any criticism of the British government's failure to alleviate the suffering of innocent Gazans, many thousands of whom will be sleeping in tents among the rubble of their homes, without drinking water, this festive season.

When these lordly men of God piously officiate at Christmas-time in their glorious churches and historic abbeys I shall permit myself the uncharitable hope that they choke on their Cremisan altar wine, if they have managed to get any.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Mohamed Khodr – America’s Media? A Colonial Force for Israel’s Infallibility

Mohamed Khodr — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:23:21 +0000

Illustration By Carlos Latuff

By Mohamed Khodr *

Zimbabwe expels U.N. rights investigator (Washington Post, October 29, 2009)

Zimbabwe Deports U.N. Investigator (New York Times, October 29, 2009)

Zimbabwe Deports U.N. Investigator (Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2009)

BUT: This headline is Absent.

Israel denied entry to Richard Falk, UN Human Rights special rapporteur and deported him from Ben Gurion (December 15, 2008)

What's the difference between the first three headlines and the last one?

Simple, the first three headlines that appear in the three Jewish papers don't deal with Israel (Rupert Murdoch now owns the Wall Street Journal, a staunch Zionist nevertheless), the second headline does, so its persona non grata in â€œTheir/ourâ€ media, although both stories deal with the similar expulsion of two U.N. Representatives from Zimbabwe and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

U.N. Representatives Manfred Nowak and Richard Falk were to investigate human rights abuses and criminal acts in Zimbabwe and the Occupied Palestinian Territories respectively, but both were expelled, and both called upon the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate this diplomatic outrage.

It is axiomatic that "their/our" news media protects Israel from any negative stories that may expose its war crimes; crimes against humanity, its three-year siege of 1.5 million Palestinians denied access to food, water and medicines, its imprisonment and torture of women and children as well as one third of the Palestinian elected representatives. It publicly states with all the chutzpah it only possesses that it does not want peace and let the world go to hell. And guess what, the world salutes, obeys, and moves on to the main story in â€œTheir/ourâ€ media: The balloon boy that turned out to be a hoax, much like all the stories initiated by Israel and its lobby against Islam, Muslims, Arab countries and its soon-to-be-attacked Iran.

Shockingly, the world just accepts as de facto Israel's repeated public statements that it will attack Iran, damn the consequences to America and the world. There is no world outrage that this violates the U.N. Charter and International Law, i.e. to attack an innocent sovereign nation on the premise of â€œwhat ifâ€, much like Bush/Cheney with Iraq. IAEA, U.S. Intelligence evidence be damned.

The only question the world asks is not if Israel will attack Iran but when, never as to how is this possible. If this is the case, then Iran has the right to preemptively attack Israel with or without nuclear weapons and let the chips fall where they may.

â€œTheir/ourâ€ media is the true Apartheid Wall between Israel and our nation. It strangles our capitol like an elastic beltway that it tightens and loosens according to Israel's directions.

It is the whip that keeps our cowardly politicians in tow and our populace ignorant of the truth about Israel â€œour ally and only democratic government in the Middle Eastâ€. Israel is the huge sucking sound that drains our money, military, and mind set while we like indoctrinated puppets cheer it on. We are helping Israel in its strategy to create our own national suicide.

Just recent examples of the Jewish media's blanket love fest for Israel at the expense of our own national interest:

1. Not reporting on the Goldstone Report condemning Israel for its war crimes, criminal acts, and siege of Gaza, nor on Obama's AIPAC directed rejection of it.

2. Failure by our networks to report on Israel's newest Jewish spy who sold sensitive national secrets to Israel. (Only Wolf Blitzer, a former AIPAC employee reported the story briefly, simply to state that Israel is not implicated in any wrongdoing; a way to prepare returning to AIPAC after you've left CNN).

3. Not reporting on the embarrassing slap to Obama on its continued building of illegal settlements, demolition of homes in Jerusalem, and its military/police attack on Islam's third holiest site, Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

4. Not reporting on Amnesty International's Report that Israel is controlling and depriving Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza of water to drink. It reports that the illegal settlers use more than four times the water allocated to the Palestinians. The settlers use that much to fill their swimming pools and water their gardens. This criminal act is deliberately ignored by the west lest it has to issue its usual mild â€œconcernâ€.

5. Not reporting on the quick AIPAC driven retreat by Obama calling for Israel to freeze all construction of illegal settlements including the outrageous claim of â€œnatural growthâ€. Obama has now abandoned another of his campaign and policy promises to directly remain involved in the peace process (piece by piece theft of Palestinian land) between the traitor Mahmoud Abbas who should resign if he has any dignity left, or be removed. And Netanyahu, the Nazi from hell.

A USATODAY report states that Obama's top fundraisers have received the plumb jobs of Cabinet, Agency, and Ambassadorial appointments. (Top Obama Fundraisers Get Posts, October 29, 2009).

The story reports: â€œMore than 40% of President Obama's top-level fundraisers have secured posts in his administration, from key executive branch jobs to diplomatic postings in countries such as France, Spain and the Bahamas, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Twenty of the 47 fundraisers that Obama's campaign identified as collecting more than $500,000 have been named to government positions, the analysis found.â€

If you look closely you will find that the vast majority of these donors are Jewish, many from Wall Street, or Pro-Israel activists.

So why is America silent, confused, and supportive of Israel? Why do polls show Americans support Israel? Well, if your only source of information is our Jewish dominated media that inputs Pro-Israel Garbage, you'll get Garbage out; in addition to the fear Americans feel to opposing Israel, knowing the caller has their phone number and address. They don't want to hear a knock on their door, Shalom.

Why is our Congress so slavishly a doormat for Israel's Lobby?

Simple: Jewish money, Jewish Lobby, Jewish Media.

That's why a shot in the arm of billions is going to Israel and Goldman Sachs while America's children are left without the Swine Flu shot.

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

Obama Administration Takes from American Farmers, Gives to Israel

Alison Weir — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:43:04 +0000

Policy change slips in under the radar

American Gothic by Hajjaj

At a time of financial crisis in the United States in which thousands of Americans have lost their jobs and homes, an Israeli news service reports that President Obama has just signed a presidential memo eliminating a tariff on Israel that protected American dairy farmers and that raised money for the American economy.(1)

In addition, according to the Israeli report, US trade authorities have ordered the return of $17,000 to an Israeli export agent for a levy paid for butter produced by an Israeli company.

The move comes at a time when American dairy farmers have been facing what industry representatives call a "crisis." According to the National Milk Producers Federation website, "U.S. dairy producers have been facing unprecedented losses over the past year due to low milk prices and high input costs. The dire economic straits have forced many dairy farmers to exit the industry, oftentimes having to sell their herds or farms."(2)

According to the news report by Israeli wire service Ynet, the Obama memo, which was signed several days ago, removed the import subcharge on dairy products from Israel.

The report noted that such levies are important for protecting local production against competing imports, "which put the local production at risk." The levy is required from most countries that export dairy products to the U.S.

According to Ynet, Israeli agricultural attachÃ© Yaakov Poleg was able to convince the US that "the trade agreement between Israel and the US prohibits placing taxes on exports from Israel."

However, this tax was required under previous American administrations.

The Ynet report quotes Israeli export agent Dudu Buch, whose company is to receive the $17,000, as taking credit for obtaining this change in US policy.

Buch states: "My American colleague was under a lot of pressure and almost gave up, saying that if the American system imposed a protection levy it would last forever."

Buch goes on to say, "I told him that we Israelis can think differently. I turned to the Agriculture Ministry's representative at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and the matter was dealt with quickly."

Israel's attachÃ© was particularly pleased that this change was made through a presidential memo, rather than through normal channels, stating "... in light of the fact that Israel was removed from the list through a presidential declaration, there is no fear that it will be placed on us again in the future."

According to Ynet, Israeli dairy exports to the US are "constantly on the rise," a situation that could hurt US dairy farmers.

The Obama memo would seem to hinder what the Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) described in July as a broad effort, which included the US Department of Agriculture, "to reverse the current dairy crisis."

The DFA emphasized: "Every initiative we can successfully implement to bolster milk prices makes a vital difference to the dairy farmers who are fighting hard to maintain their livelihoods."(3)

Yesterday the organization mailed out a special cash payment to dairy farmers around the country to help "bridge the gap" to a full recovery, stating that it recognized "that our members have a long road ahead as they heal from this difficult year. Our intent is that this special cash payment will help these dedicated farmers hang on until recovery is in full swing and positive cash flows return."(4)

No one at the US Department of Agriculture contacted for information about this policy change had been aware that it had been implemented. Some suggested that it might be related to a free trade agreement with Israel signed in 1995, but had no information as to why an ongoing US policy had been modified by presidential order.

Council for the National Interest President Eugene Bird objected to the change: "Once again we see Israel receiving special treatment, at the cost to Americans. Even American citizens who oppose protective tariffs want to see a fair and equitable policy. Instead we have a policy change -- implemented without public input or debate -- that benefits one of the richest nations on earth, and a nation that consistently flouts US laws and policies."

Israel is generally rated as having the 17th wealthiest population in the world.(5)

Bird also noted that Israel, in violation of US trade agreements, has been blocking some American products entirely. "A serious look should be taken at how Israel has prevented certain American products from being imported into Israel," Bird said, "for example orange juice."

In addition, Bird pointed out that for decades Israeli policies have prevented Palestinian exports, creating extreme financial hardship that has escalated in recent years. Numerous Palestinian farmers have lost their livelihoods, and unemployment and malnutrition are being seen in Gaza at what the Red Cross has called "devastating" levels.(6,7)
Notes

1. http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3792821,00.html
2. http://www.nmpf.org/milk_pricing/NMPF_actions
3. http://www.dfamilk.com/newsroom/pr/090731_support.htm
4. http://www.dfamilk.com/newsroom/pr/091006_payment.htm
5. http://www.worldsalaries.org/total-personal-income.shtml
6. http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14660454
7. http://www.counterpunch.org/roy10042006.html

* Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. Photos and videos referenced in the article can be viewed on the website (http://ifamericansknew.org) She can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org

Educating Children in War Zones: Israeli Arab Schools Get Only Half the Funding of Their Jewish Counterparts

SR Editor — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:33:45 +0000

By Catherine Rottenberg and Neve Gordon*

Educating children in a conflict zone is no simple matter. More often than not, those responsible for the curricula succumb to the masters of war and adopt a pedagogical approach that exacerbates rather than diffuses strife. Israel, unfortunately, is no exception.

Consider the way Jewish and Palestinian children are educated. Segregation in the classroom is the rule so that Jewish and Palestinian children only rarely mix. This strict segregation exists despite the fact that the Palestinians are citizens of Israel, comprising 19.5 percent of Israel's population--around 1.37 million people--and 25 percent of all school children. Unlike the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, these Palestinians vote and pay taxes like Jewish citizens.

Notwithstanding their incorporation into the citizen body, Palestinian citizens do not enjoy full equality. In comparison to their Jewish counterparts, Arab schools receive half the per capita budget. It is therefore not very surprising that Palestinian students have the highest dropout rates and lowest achievement levels in the country.

Equality in education is reserved to the uniformity of the school curriculum, particularly the texts dedicated to teaching the history of the Israeli state. The existing history textbooks adopt the Zionist historical narrative, erasing all trace of the Palestinian nakba (Arabic for "catastrophe", referring to the events of 1948, when approximately 750,000 Palestinians out of a population of 900,000 either fled or were expelled from their homes). Furthermore, these textbooks emphasise the significance of the Land of Israel for Jews and attempt to prove that the State of Israel could only have been created in historical Palestine, while simultaneously portraying the connection between the Arabs and Palestine as purely incidental. Along similar lines, the study of literature in the Arab schools is oriented toward Zionist portrayals and is conspicuously lacking in any patriotic or nationalistic Palestinian sentiments.

It is, no doubt, a truism that public schools in modern liberal democracies inculcate their students with the dominant national worldview. In the US, for example, children still recite the pledge of allegiance and in France children sing La Marseillaise. But while the public schools in these democracies are today more willing to provide students with a multicultural curriculum that includes the historical narratives of those who have been oppressed and marginalised over the centuries, Israel is arguably becoming less tolerant to any pedagogy that challenges the dominant Zionist national narrative.

This increasing intolerance does not bode well for the future of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. It has therefore become more urgent than ever to consider alternative educational models.

Since educating for tolerant thinking within a conflict zone is no easy task, there are very few such projects in Israel. The bilingual Arab-Jewish Hagar School in Beer-Sheba is the only one of its kind in Israel's southern region--a region that is home to over half a million people, 25 percent of whom are Palestinian citizens. While Hagar is a public school supported by the Ministry of Education, it is also the exception that proves the rule.

Hagar's uniqueness stems from the fact that it has created a venue in which Jewish and Arab children not only mix (each ethnic group makes up 50 percent of the student body) but learn together in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Currently 67 children, nursery through first grade, attend this bi-lingual school, whose commitment to equality informs every aspect of its educational agenda.

To ensure that Hebrew and Arabic are awarded equal status, for example, two teachers, one Jewish and the other Arab, are present in every classroom. By creating a bilingual space that encourages direct contact with the heritage and customs of the different cultures, Hagar promotes tolerance, while being sensitive to nurture the personal identity of each child and each tradition. Thus, by the time the children are old enough to learn that there are two conflicting national narratives, both of which will be taught, they already have the necessary emotional and intellectual tools to deal with conflict through dialogue.

Hagar is an educational island that is expanding against all odds. Indeed, the school's achievements within the current political context--especially following the assault on Gaza and the sporadic missile attacks on Beer-Sheba--are astonishing. But ongoing local support and international financial assistance are necessary to guarantee the future success of this educational space--a space that is actively translating a pedagogy of mutual respect into practice within a conflict zone.

* Catherine Rottenberg is a founding member of Hagar and sits on its pedagogic committee.

* Neve Gordon is chair of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and author of Israel's Occupation (University of California Press, 2008).