Truth and Justice have been a historical anathema to all Empires and the powerful oligarchies throughout history.

From all divine revelations to the necessity of humanity's coexistence in peace, Justice has been the highest and noblest of virtues to ensure that no man, no government, and no nation is above the law of equality of rights for all mankind whereby the weakest, poorest, and oppressed, can exact and restore their freedom, equality of worth, dignity, and receive justice for the ills and evil perpetrated against them. Life, liberty, human rights, freedoms, and free will are divinely endowed, thus humanity's purpose is to allow no man usurp such virtues and blessings.

"There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations."
--Edmund Burke

For the first time in human history nations came together in a united institution to prevent and resolve conflicts, to settle disputes, and to provide an international venue where injustice and the inhumanity of man against man can be heard and adjudicated

Thus emerged from the ashes of two world wars in Europe, the United Nations, an institution of hope, freedom, justice, equality, and human rights for all, people's right to self determination, freedom from aggression and occupation; an institution that fosters peace; but sadly it became an institution of the powerful, for the powerful, at the expense of the lives of billions of people around the world. Since its inception the U.N. has served the political, economic, military, and social whims of the oligarchy of five Security Council nations each with a vote or veto that can preserve lives and peace, or commit wanton genocides allegedly acting in self defense and in the national interests. Much of these Security Council decisions are dependent on domestic politics and the power of special interests. It seems western appetite for imperialistic power has not been satisfied by centuries of imperial occupation of most of the world.

National interests boils down to money, especially in alleged democracies where elections are bought and paid for by the top one percent of their populations. Politicians and political institutions are held hostage by the very people who paid for their elections.

The most glaring examples in modern history are the illegitimate creation of the State of Israel in Palestine due to the influence and power of Britain and the United States who imposed their will on the United Nations as well as the illegal, immoral, and genocidal invasion of Iraq by the U.S. (and allies) due to the powerful influence of mostly Jewish Neocons operating in the interest of Israel, along with the unquenchable avarice of oil companies. They manufactured false intelligence and mass propaganda that created an unstoppable hysteria in the White House, Congress, and nation.

"The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history."
--Ari Shavit, "White Man's Burden", Haaretz, April 3, 2003

After nine years of death and destruction the U.S. finally pulls out of Iraq (not completely) leaving behind a previously prosperous nation converted into a desert, but which they label as a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous Iraq. They killed to spread democracy. Today Iraq is enduring the most violent sectarian violence that threatens the unity of the nation, thanks to Israel and the United States.

"In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous...Imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism."
--Professor Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order", p. 310

These two examples showcase the ineptness, failure, and incompetence of the very United Nations created to prevent just such illegal, unjust and immoral genocidal acts by one nation against another committing unimaginable war crime, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression.

Our world has indeed become an Israeli-centric planet where Israel's interest have become the focal point and obsession of all governments, no where more so than in the United States where Israel's interests form the basis of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. U.S. Presidents usually appoint Jewish Zionists to the National Security Council to direct MidEast policy. Is it any wonder that with U.S. backing Israel has rejected every U.N. Resolution, every International initiative or peace process, even opposing America's national interests, the very hand that feeds, arms, and protects it.

The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, speaking to the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) on September 6, 2011 publicly admitted what the entire world already knows; that U.S. foreign policy is an Israeli formulated policy that only serves Israel, not the United States.

He said:

"The first is this: the test of every policy the Administration develops in the Middle East is whether it is consistent with the goal of ensuring Israel's future as a secure, Jewish, democratic state. That is a commitment that runs as a common thread through our entire government, even while approaching the U.S.-Israel relationship and regional challenges from a variety of perspectives.....The test of our policy - that it advances Israel's status as a secure, Jewish, democratic state - also explains our commitment to vigorously battle against those who would attempt to isolate or delegitimize Israel in the international community."

Many American politicians, diplomats, military officials, academicians, journalists and national organizations have been saying this for decades, but they've been denied any media exposure to address the power of Israel and its lobby, mainly AIPAC, on the U.S. government.

"President Bill Clinton," said AIPAC was "better than anyone at lobbying in this town," or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who called it "the most effective general-interest group ... across the entire planet." Former Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) said upon his retirement that "you can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here," (Quote from Professor Stephen Walt, "The Mythical Power of the Arab Lobby", Dec.9, 2010) Thus for whom the bells toll; they toll for Israel and never for its millions of victimized dispossessed Palestinians. According to Golda Meir "There were no such thing as Palestinians."

The world has been indoctrinated to accept Israel's narrative of history of its creation and its professed innocence toward the suffering of the Palestinians. Israel has attacked Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemeni - and now next stop: Iran.

All the while the U.N. and international community can only profess "concern"; which is meaningless to the dead and injured.

"Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that committed the offence and has turned a deaf ear to the victims."
-- Professor Arnold Toynbee, British Historian

Thus too whom do the victims of western and Zionist imperialism turn to for protection and justice? Who on this planet is courageous and principled enough to tell Israel, one of the smallest nations on earth, that its thievery of Palestine, its unabated ethnic cleansing, its utter destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages, its demolition of thousands of homes, farms and orchards, its oppression and daily violation of the human rights of its subjugated people, its theft of Palestinian water to fill the settler's swimming pools, and its non stop construction of new settlements on stolen Palestinian land despite the repeated "concern" of the U.N., U.S., E.U., the Quartet, and hundreds of U.N. Resolutions that Israel ignores and stomps on with impunity, even humiliating the President of the United States in the Oval office who dared suggest a "freeze" of new settlements.

No such expressed "concerns" have ever stopped one brick from being laid in what the world calls "illegal settlements", but which the U.S. deems only as "illegitimate" as evidenced by the very pandering and humiliating veto cast by the U.S. in the Security Council against a resolution that identifies these settlements as "illegal".

Although fourteen nations in the Security Council somewhat redeemed themselves recently by criticizing the U.S. for blocking condemnation of Israel's continued settlement activity in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Tragically, Israel will once again thumb its nose at the Security Council.

The United Nations has embarrassingly failed in its stated mission and has lost all credibility, with the exception of the U.N. Human Rights Council, that it has any authority or legitimacy to impact Israel's decades of an illegal occupation of over three million Palestinians, much less the status of seven million Palestinian refugees living in squalor camps in neighboring Arab nations. Israel has tried hard to end UNRWA's mission to provide much needed assistance to the Palestinian refugees, even forcing Congress to threaten defunding the organization. According to Israel Palestinian children must not be fed, provided with health care and an education, nor clean drinking water. If it can't kill them with bullets, it'll kill them by starvation and disease.

As long as the world is impotent and cowardly to face Israel there will never be any justice for the Palestinians, or any peace in the region or western hemisphere.

The world has come to accept that Israel is always above the law, that it will never be held accountable for its wars, genocides, and oppression of the Palestinians; that it will continue to rule and act with impunity with American weapons and vetoes against hapless Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

The world is holding its cowardly breath wondering when will Israel attack Iran, an action with serious consequences for the region, the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan, both militarily and economically.

But let's look at the other side of the coin where the United Nations Security Council flexes its muscle. The UNSC's power is only reflected against weaker nations, in particular in the Arab and Muslim world. Here harsh resolutions with serious political and economic consequences are routinely passed whereby these nations are held accountable and some leaders are sought for prosecution in the ICC.

The independent International Criminal Court, much like the U.N. Security Council, is hampered by its Statute, hypocrisy, double standards, and the political will of the same powerful nations who dominate the U.N. In practice it's a court against southern hemisphere nations and leaders, but never against the U.S., Britain etc, for their illegal invasion and devastation of Iraq; and never against Israel, the world's last colonial power.

According to the Associated Press, December 15, 2011, the International Criminal Court's Prosecutor, Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, said this regarding the issue of the potential arrest of the Sudanese President for alleged war crimes:

"The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (Luis Moreno Ocampo) said Thursday that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's "destiny" is clear: he will face justice for alleged genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur... International justice is here to stay."

How courageous against Sudan, but oh, how cowardly against Israel. Is there no courageous state party member of the ICC. that will refer Israel for possible prosecution for its war crimes? Won't anyone refer the two murderous tyrants of Syria and Yemen for their slaughter of innocent civilians yearning to break free from their dictatorships?

Sadly, in the entire structure of the ICC there is not one single Arab or Muslim judge or prosecutor, a glaring omission of representation of 1.7 billion Muslims in the world residing in 57 Muslim nations representing 30% of all nations.
It is conceivable and inhumane that the entire international community has been watching in horror and silence the daily carnage of Syrian and Yemenie civilians without taking any action to stop the ongoing slaughter. The world is more than satisfied to let the impotent and incompetent Arab League, a league of tyrants, to deal with the Syrian issue and allow the Gulf Cooperation Council to resolve Yemen's potential civil war.

The Arabs are doomed to fail given their internal strife and political loyalties to foreign nations, in particular, to the United States and thus indirectly to Israel.

It is hard to fathom why the west, Russia, and China are still attached to Arab dictators given the Arab Spring which will spread to other nations despite its initial growing pains, unless they all fear the rise of "Islamists" who potentially may challenge their hegemony and economic greed.

The Arab Spring is unstoppable and in its conclusion across the Middle East will surely be antagonistic to all the nations that oppressed them, especially the United States and Israel, occupied them, monopolized their resources, and fought and smeared their beloved faith, Islam, and their beloved and revered Prophet Muhammad. The tragedy in the Arab Muslim world is that in their disunity they are their own worst enemies.

Thus the Arabs can vote, they can have a democracy but only if it's a democracy approved by the United States and Israel, free of Islamist, or else, "Remember Saddam.".

The U.N. must reform its charter regarding the Security Council's membership and abolish the Veto structure and adopt resolutions by majority vote. It must be funded in large part by the southern hemisphere nations, especially the wealthy Arab oil nations, to remove the constant American threat to defund the organization. Perhaps even consider moving its headquarters outside of the U.S.

"The United Nations, whose membership comprises almost all the states in the world, is founded on the principle of the equal worth of every human being."
-- Kofi Annan

* 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.

The dynamic of democratic, nationalist and class struggles throughout the Muslim world has set in motion a new constellation of alliances between the imperial West (US and European Union) and Islamist parties, leaders and regimes, dubbed "moderate" by US officials, propagandists and academics.

This essay analyzes the changing contemporary context of imperial domination, especially the demise of longstanding client regimes. It then examines the previous significant ties between western imperial powers and Islamist movements and regimes and the basis of 'historical collaboration'.

The third part of the paper will outline the political circumstances in which the imperial powers embrace "moderate" Islamists in government and utilize "armed fundamentalists" in opposition to secular regimes. We will critically analyze how "moderate" Islam is defined by the Western imperialist powers. Is this a tactical or strategic alliance? What are the political "trade-offs"? What do imperialism's neo-liberal clients and their new 'moderate' Muslim allies have in common and how do they differ?

In conclusion we will evaluate the viability of this alliance and its capacity to contain and deflect the popular democratic movements and repress the burgeoning class and national struggles, especially in regard to the 'obstacles' posed by the Israel-US-Zionist ties and the continued IMF policies which promise to worsen the crises in the Muslim countries.

The Transition from Neo-Liberal Client Rulers to Power-Sharing with Moderate Islamists

The key motivation in Washington's and the European imperial troika's (England, France and Germany) embrace of what their press and officialdom hail as "moderate" Islamist parties has been the collapse or weakening of their long-term client rulers. Faced with the ouster of Mubarak, in Egypt, Ali in Tunisia and Saleh in Yemen, mass protests in Morocco and Algeria, the US-EU turned to conservative Muslim leaders who were willing to work within the existing state institutional framework (including the army and state police), uphold the capitalist order and align with the empire against anti-imperial movements and states. In Egypt, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) (the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood), in Tunisia the Renaissance Party, in Morocco the Justice and Development Party have all indicated their willingness to serve as reliable partners in blocking the pro-democracy movements that challenge the socio-economic status quo and the long-standing military-imperial linkages.

The Islamist collaborators are called "moderate and respectable" because they agree to participate in elections within the boundaries of the established political and economic order; they have dropped any criticism of imperial and colonial treaties and trade agreements signed by the previous client regions - including ones which collaborate with Israel's colonization of Palestine.

Equally important "moderate" means supporting imperial wars against nationalist and secular Arab republics, such as Syria and Libya, and isolating and/or repressing class based trade unions and secular-left parties.

"Moderate" Islamists have become the Empire's 'contraceptive of choice' against any chance the massive Arab peoples' revolt might give birth to substantive egalitarian social changes and bring those brutal pro- western officials, responsible for so many crimes against humanity, to justice.

The West and their client officials in the military and police have agreed to a kind of "power-sharing' with the moderate/respectable (read 'reactionary') Islamist parties. The Islamists would be responsible for imposing orthodox economic policies and re-establishing 'order' (i.e. bolstering the existing one) in partnership with pro-multinational bank economists and pro US-EU generals and security officials. In exchange the Islamists could take certain ministries, appoint their members, finance electoral clientele among the poor and push their 'moderate' religious, social and cultural agenda. Basically, the elected Islamists would replace the old corrupt dictatorial regimes in running the state and signing off on more free trade agreements with the EU. Their role would keep the leftists, nationalists and populists out of power and from gaining mass support. Their job would substitute spiritual solace and "inner worth" via Islam in place of redistributing land, income and power from the elite, including the foreign multi-nationals to the peasants, workers, unemployed and exploited low-paid employees.

Why the Empire Arms Fundamentalist Anti-Secular Muslims

While the US and EU have backed respectable "moderate Islam" in heading off a popular upheaval of the young and unemployed, in other contexts they have enlisted violent, fundamentalist Islamic terrorists to overthrow secular independent anti-imperialists regimes - like Libya, Syria - just as they had done earlier in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. The US, Qatar and the European troika financed and armed Libyan fundamentalist militias and then engaged in a murderous eight months air and sea assault to ensure their client's 'victory' over the secular Gaddafi regime. Fresh from NATO's success, the US, the European 'Troika' and Turkey, with the backing of the League of Arab collaborator princes and emirs, have financed a violent Muslim Brotherhood insurrection in Syria, intent on destroying the nationalist economy and modern secular state.

The US and EU have openly unleashed their fundamentalists allies in order to destroy independent adversaries in the name of "democracy" and 'humanitarian intervention', a laughable claim in light of decade long colonial wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. All target regimes have one crime in common: Using their national resources to develop modern secular states - independent of imperial dictates.

NATO implements its campaigns through conservative 'moderate' or armed fundamentalist Islamist movements depending on the specific needs, circumstances and range of options in any given target nation. With the fall of pro-Empire 'secular dictatorships' in Egypt and Tunisia, pliable conservative Islamist leaders are the fall back "lesser evil". When the opportunity to overthrow an independent secular or nationalist regime arises, armed and violent fundamentalist mercenaries become the political vehicle of choice.

As with European empires in the past, the modern Western imperial countries have relied on retrograde religious parties and leaders to collaborate and serve their economic and military interests and to provide mercenaries for imperial armies to savage any anti-imperialist social revolutionaries. In that sense US and European rulers are neither 'pro nor anti' Islam, it all depends on their national and class position. Islamists who collaborate with Empire are "moderate" allies and if they attack an anti-imperialist regime, they become 'freedom fighters'. On the other hand, they become "terrorists" or "fundamentalists" when they oppose imperial occupation, pillage or colonial settlements.

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Collaboration

The historical record of western imperial expansion reveals many instances of collaboration and cooptation as well as conflict with Islamist regimes, movements and parties. In the early 1960's the CIA backed a brutal military coup against the secular Indonesian nationalist regime of Sukarno, and encouraged their puppet dictator General Suharto to unleash Muslim militia in a veritable "holy war" exterminating nearly one million leftist trade unionists, school teachers, students, farmers, communists or suspected sympathizers and their family members. The horrific 'Jakarta Option' became a model for CIA operations elsewhere. In Yugoslavia the US and Europe promoted and financed fundamentalists Muslims in Bosnia, importing mujahedeen who would later form part of Al Qaida, and then backed the Kosovo Liberation Army, a known terrorist organization, in order to completely break-up and ethnically 'cleanse' a modern secular multi-national state - going so far as to have Americans and NATO bomb Belgrade for the first time since the Nazis in the Second World War.

During President Carter's administration, the CIA joined with Saudi Arabia's ruling royalty, providing billions of dollars in arms and military supplies to Afghan Muslim fundamentalists in their brutal but successful Jihad overthrowing a modern, secular nationalist regime backed by the USSR. The murderous fate of school teachers and educated women in the aftermath was quickly covered up.

Needless to say, wherever US imperialism faces leftists or secular, modernizing anti-imperialist regimes, Washington turns to retrograde Islamic leaders willing and able to destroy the progressive regime in return for imperialist support. Such coalitions are built mainly around fundamentalist and moderate Islamist opposition to secular, class- based politics allied with the Empire's hostility to any anti-imperialist challenge to its domination..

The same 'coalition' of Islamists and the Empire has been glaringly obvious during the NATO assault on Libya and continues against Syria: The Muslims provide the shock troops on the ground; NATO provides the aerial bombing, funds, arms, sanctions, embargoes and propaganda.

These Islamist-Imperialist coalitions are usually temporary, based on a common secular or nationalist enemy and not on any common strategic interest. After the defeat of a secular anti-imperialist regime, militant Muslims may find themselves attacked by the colonial neo-liberal regime most favored by the imperial west. This happened in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the overseas Islamist fighters (Afghan Arabs) returned to their own neo-colonized, collaborating home countries, like Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt and elsewhere.

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Conflict

The relation between Islamist regimes and imperialism is complex, changing and full of examples of bloody conflict.

The US backed the "modernizing" free market dictatorship of the Shah in Iran, overthrowing the nationalist Mosaddegh regime. They provided arms and intelligence for the Savak, the Shah's monstrous secret police as it hunted down and murdered tens of thousands of nationalist-Islamists and leftist resistance fighters and critics in Iran and abroad. The rise to power of the fundamentalist-anti-imperialist Khomeini regime fueled US armed attacks and provoked retaliatory moves: Iran backed and financed anti-colonial Islamist groups in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (the Shia parties).

Subsequent to 9/11 the US invaded and overthrew the Islamist Taliban regime, re-colonized the country, establishing a puppet regime under US-European auspices. The Taliban and allied Islamist and nationalist resistance fighters organized and established a mass guerrilla army which has engaged in a decade long war with armed support from Pakistani Islamist forces responding to US military incursions.

In Palestine, Washington, under the overweening control of Israel's Zionist fifth column, has armed and financed Israel's war against the popularly elected Palestinian Islamist Hamas government in Gaza. Washington's total commitment to the Jewish state and its colonial expansion and usurpation of Palestinian (Muslim and Christian) lands and property in Jerusalem and elsewhere reflects the profound and pervasive influence of the Zionist power configuration throughout the US political system .They secure 90% votes in Congress, pledges of allegiance from the White House, and senior appointments in Treasury, State Department and the Pentagon.

What determines whether the US Empire will have a collaborative or conflict-ridden relation with Islam depends on the specific political context. The US allies with Islamists when faced with nationalist, leftist and secular democratic regimes and movements, especially where their optimal choice, a military-neo-liberal alternative is relatively weak. However, faced with a nationalist, anti-colonial Islamist regime (as is the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Washington will side with pro-western liberals, dissident Muslim clerics, pliable tribal chiefs, separatist ethnic minorities and pro-Western generals.

The key to US-Islamist relations from the White House perspective is based on the Islamists' attitude toward empire, class politics, NATO and the "free market" (private foreign investment).

Today's 'moderate' Islamist parties in Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco (and elsewhere), which have offered their support to NATO and its wars against Libya and Syria, uphold 'private property' (i.e. foreign and imperialist client control of key industries) and repress independent working class and anti-imperialist parties: They are the Empire's "new partners" in the pillage of the resource-rich Middle East and North Africa.

The US-brokered counter-revolutionary alliance among moderate Islamists, the previous military rulers and Washington is fraught with tensions. The military demands total impunity and a continuation of its economic privileges; this includes a veto on any legislation addressing the previous regime's brutal crimes against its own people. On the other hand, the Islamist parties uphold their electoral victories and demand majority rule. Washington insists the alliance adhere to its policy toward Israel and abandon their support for the Palestinian national struggle. As these tensions and conflicts deepen, the alliance could collapse ushering in a new phase of conflict and instability.

Emblematic of "moderate Islamiist" collaboration with US-EU imperialism is the role of Qatar, home to the 'respectable' Arabic media giant, Al-Jazeera, and the demagogic Qatari "spiritual guide" Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi. Sheik Youssef quotes the Koran and Islamic moral principles in defense of NATO's 8-month aerial bombing of Libya, which killed over 50,000 pro-regime Libyans (themselves Muslims). He calls for armed imperial intervention in Syria to overthrow the secular Assad regime, a position he shares comfortably with the state of Israel. He urges the "moderate Islamists" in Egypt and Tunisia to cease any criticism of the existing economic order, ( see "Spiritual guide steers Arabs to moderation", Financial Times, December 9, 2011 - p5). In a word, this respectable Muslim cleric is NATO's perfect Koran-quoting "moderate Islamist" partner - a dream come true.

The Strategic Utility of "Moderate" Islamist Parties

Islamist parties are approached by the Empire's policy elites only when they have a mass following and can therefore weaken any popular, nationalist insurgency. Mass-based Islamist parties serve the empire by providing "legitimacy", by winning elections and by giving a veneer of respectability to the pro-imperial military and police apparatus retained in place from the overthrown client state dictatorships.

The Islamist parties compete at the "grass roots" with the leftists. They build up a clientele of supporters among the poor in the countryside and urban slums through organized charity and basic social services administered at the mosques and humanitarian religious foundations. Because they reject class struggle and are intensely hostile to the left (with its secular, pro-feminist and working-class agenda), they have been 'half-tolerated' by the dictatorship, while the leftist activists are routinely murdered. Subsequently, with the overthrow of the dictatorship, the Islamists emerge intact with the strongest national organizational network as the country's 'natural leaders' from the religious-bazaar merchant political elite. Their leaders offer to serve the empire and its traditional native military collaborators in exchange for a 'slice of power', especially over morality, culture, religion and households (women), in other words, the "micro-society".

For their part, they offer to marginalize and undermine the left, anti-imperialist secular democrats in the streets. In the face of mass popular rebellion calling into question the imperial order, a 'moderate' Islamist-imperial partnership is a 'heavenly deal' praised in Washington, Paris or London (as well as Riyadh and Tel Aviv).

Conclusion: How Viable is the Imperial-Islamic Coalition?

Those who thought that the spontaneous pro-democracy movements spelled the end of the imperial order left out the role of organized "moderate" Islamist electoral parties as able collaborators of Empire. The brutally repressed mass mobilization of unemployed youth was no match for the well-funded grass roots community organization of the moderate Islamists. This is especially true when politics shifted from the street to the ballot box, a process that the Islamist parties facilitated. In the absence of a mass revolutionary party, seeking state power, the existing military-police state was able to work around the mass protesters and put together a power sharing agreement at least in the short-run.

In the November 2011 elections, the radical Egyptian Islamist party, Nour, gathered one-quarter of the vote in Cairo and Alexandria. Their showing was even higher among the urban poor districts, which promises even greater support among poor rural constituencies in the coming elections. Essentially a Salafist Islamist party, Nour, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, combined denunciations of class abuses and elite corruption with mass appeals to a return to a mythic harmonious life. They used effective grass roots organizing around basic services in order to gain a greater proportion of the working class vote than all the leftist parties combined. Nour's message of "class retribution against the ...abuses of Egypt's elite fueled Nour's new found popularity", (Financial Times December 10, 2011 p6).

Despite the successes of the Islamist-Imperial partnership, the world economic crises and especially the growing unemployment and misery in the Arab countries will make it difficult for the 'respectable moderate' Islamists to stabilize their societies. They are inextricably constrained by their alliances to function within the confines of the 'orthodox neo-liberal framework' imposed by the Empire. For that reason, the "moderate" Islamists will try to co-opt some secular liberals, social democrats and even a few leftists as 'minority partners', so that they won't be held solely responsible for dashing the expectations of the poor in their countries.

The fact of the matter is that the pro-imperial Islamist parties have absolutely no answer to the current crises: Charities delivered from the mosque during the dictatorship won them mass support; now more austerity programs imposed from their ministerial posts will certainly alienate and infuriate their mass base. What will follow depends on who is best organized: Liberals are limited to media campaigns and tied to economic orthodoxy; the leftists have to advance from protest movements in the downtown squares to organized political units operating in popular neighborhoods, workplaces, markets, villages and slums. Otherwise radical fundamentalist, like the Salafists, will exploit the people's outrage with moderate Islamist betrayals and promote their own version of a closed clerical society, opposing the West while repressing the Left.

The US and EU may have 'temporarily' avoided revolution by accommodating electoral reforms and adapting to alliances with "moderate" Islamists, but their ongoing military interventions and their own growing economic crisis will simply postpone a more decisive conflict in the near future.

* James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals. Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

HisStory and TheirStory.

I hope that the reader will bear over with me for inventing the word theirstory, but if history is written by those who are victorious and powerful enough to position them selves and their narratives about historical events into acceptance by mainstream historians and media, then, what else should one call the narratives of those who have suffered defeat. Palestinians have for decades suffered from being in the position of the defeated. Their history is theirstory, the one that does not make it into the textbooks of history. When dealing with human beings and their emotional as well as intellectual frailties however, the fact that those who write history are the one that are victorious, and those who write theirstory are those who have suffered defeat does neither validate history nor theirstory. Both usually are "a" story, a narrative about a discourse, as seen form a particular perspective.

The language of political discourse is generally speaking, and by virtue of the nature of politics, dominated by attempts to position one self and others. From perceived positions derive perceived rights and privileges as well as perceived duties and obligations for one self and others. Scapegoating is but one of the many tactics that are applied in the political game of positioning one self and ones interests in the most favorable manner, while positioning ones adversary much less favorably. Spin Doctors or Propaganda Experts are playing a crucial role; so do lobbies, economy, geopolitical considerations and a cohort of other factors one can easily identify. Sadly, the abuse of the language of the political discourse has contributed considerably to prolonging the dispute between Palestine and Israel. Decades of conflict, and unimaginable human suffering of both Palestinian and Israeli individuals, families, communities would not have been possible without eliciting a world wide demand to bring an end to the suffering; That is, if only the conflict would have been presented in a factual manner; That is, if media and entertainment industry would not have been playing a crucial role in dehumanizing one side of the conflict, while eliciting the suffering of the other. A very well researched and documented movie produced by The Media Education Foundation, REAL BAD ARABS, demonstrates how badly Hollywood has contributed to positioning the Arab people as uncivilized, brutal villains, terrorists, and right out inhumane, or sub human (1).

In the movie, featuring Dr. Jack Shaheen, Dr. Shaheen documents that Arabs are being positioned as the most malign group in the history of Hollywood. Rightfully Dr. Shaheen is drawing the comparison between the way Hollywood has been and is positioning Arabs as sub-human, with that of the German National Socialists positioning of Jews as Untermenschen.(ibid.) In both cases, in that of the positioning of Jews and the inhuman suffering that has been inflicted on European Jews during the National Socialist Era in Germany, and the ongoing positioning of Arabs as sub-human, and the suffering of Palestinians, the effect of the positioning is a significant increase in general populations accept of politically motivated violence as legitimate means to solve political conflicts. This includes politicians who grew up with the stereotyping media and entertainment.

In his book "REAL BAD ARABS, How Hollywood Vilifies a People " (2), Dr. Jack G. Shaheen looked at more than one thousand movies, from the oldest archives of Hollywood movies to the greatest "Blockbuster" movies up to 2001. Shaheen elicits the stereotypes that rob a whole people of their humanity. One could say that Dr. Shaheen is demonstrating on Hollywood productions, that what the renown Palestinian scholar Edward W. Said has described as "Orientalism" (3). While Said analyzed the stereotyping of all people of Asia Minor to East and South East Asia, Shaheen particularly analyzes the position Hollywood determines for Arabs. In the movie "REAL BAD ARABS", Dr. Jack Shaheen elicits that the Disney Classic "Aladdin" that has been and is being seen by millions of people world wide, is recycling all the old stereotypes. The song at the beginning of the movie is setting the scene. "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face, it's barbaric, but hey..., it's home." People world wide, and particularly children, are coached into believing that Arabland is a place where innocent women have their hands amputated for forgetting to pay at the bazaar. In other movies Arab men are described as imbecilic super-rich, as sex addicted tyrants who mistreat their woman, and most importantly, American women. Women are kidnapped and sold of to sleazy Arabs in auctions. Dr. Shaheen elicits that over three hundred movies, nearly 25 % of all Hollywood movies in one way or the other demean Arabs. (ibid.)

With respect to demeaning an entire people, the same could be said about the countless movies produced during and subsequent to World War Two, who depict the German people as beasts, inhumane monsters, and genocidal maniacs. Countless Hollywood productions elicit the legitimate suffering of the Jewish people during world war two. As far as I am aware there has not ever been a Hollywood production that elicits the suffering of the at least 25.000 Germans that were burned to death during the bombing and total destruction of Dresden (4), or the at least 17.600 Germans that were burned to death after a 20 minutes bombing raid over Pforzheim (5). The author of this article has lost almost all of his family during the bombing of Dresden and grew up without ever having a grandfather or grandmother, a great grandfather or great grandmother, uncles, or aunts from his fathers side of the family. Is that suffering not legitimate? Is the suffering of those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that of those left behind not legitimate human suffering. The fact is, that human beings are kind hearted by nature, and we do not wish to inflict pain and suffering on fellow human beings, as long as those fellow human beings are granted their dignity as human beings, and not being systematically dehumanized and stripped for all human value.

Dr. Jack G. Shaheen elicits in both the movie and the book "REAL BAD ARABS", that Hollywood and politics go hand in hand in dehumanizing Arabs. Further, he documents that the dehumanization of Arabs began subsequent to World War Two. The Palestinian Israeli conflict, in which the USA unequivocally supported Israel, the Arab Oil Embargo in the seventies, and the revolution in Iran have been the main driving and motivating factors behind the dehumanization in Hollywood productions. (ibid) Ever since the founding of the state of Israel, every single US-Administration has unequivocally declared that it is committed to what is often called "The American Israeli Friendship", or by other euphemisms for the unwavering support of Israel, no matter what, and no matter what violations of international law it commits. On the other hand, the USSR was known for it's unequivocal support of the Palestinian course, more or less regardless what violations of international law there were committed by the militant member organizations of the PLO. In today's Russia, this support is more critical, but it is mainly driven by geopolitical rather than human rights considerations. The people of Israel and Palestine, Arabs, Christians and Jews alike have been, and are still the pawns in superpowers geopolitical stratagems.

Policies impact consensus reality by means of media and the entertainment industry. Consensus reality determines if a people is perceived as human beings, with all the legal, ethical, and moral consequences it implies, or if a people is perceived as sub-human, whose suffering can be tolerated or condoned; if a people can be murdered with impunity. In REAL BAD ARABS (ibid.) Dr. Shaheen is drawing attention to the many Hollywood movies that are produced with the help of the US-Department of Defense, referring to numerous movies where the murder of Arabs is glorified. But it does not stop there. The Pentagon, as well as other defense departments world wide, invest in Media Corporations, infiltrate media with so called "experts and analysts" with ties to civilian and military intelligence services and armed forces. Even the book market is to a large degree controlled by government and military censorship, as demonstrated by the case of Lt. Col. Anthony Schaeffer, whose book "Operation Dark Heart"(6) the Pentagon tried to prevent from entering the market. (7)

After growing up and being indoctrinated to the degree that Arabs utterly have lost their humanity, after growing up and daily being influenced by media reports that are designed to deprive Arabs of their value and dignity as human beings, and after growing up with a constant stream of so called entertainment that vilifies Arabs while it glorifies the murdering of them without the slightest concern about their humanity, is it surprising, that the populations of the West silently and complicity accept the daily violence that is committed against the people of Palestine, or the recent massacres of tens of thousands of Libyans. After all, Libya has supported the PLO and Palestinians for decades, so Libyans must be heartless terrorists, whom Western military forces and hired mercenaries can massacre with impunity in the tens of thousands. After all, what those people in the West have learned from early childhood via Disney cartoons such as Aladdin, and countless other dehumanizing productions is, that the Arabs, and for most Westerners Libyans are perceived as an Arab country, can be murdered and massacred with impunity. They are, after all barbaric and sub-human, we have learned it from the get go.

The reason why the suffering of the People of Palestine is not perceived as legitimate suffering, on an equal scale with the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe during World War Two, and the suffering of Israelis who are murdered by Palestinians is, that the governments of Western countries systematically have deprived the people of Palestine from their humanity.

It is a fact that human being has an innate resistance against taking another human beings life. As long as we are not speaking in terms of psycho-pathology, it takes months of rigorous military training, before a person can overcome this innate human trait. It does not matter if one analyzes this aversion against taking another human beings life from a purely moral or ethical perspective, or if one analyzes it from an evolutionary perspective. Our innate unwillingness against taking another human beings life is meaningful, and has the function to preserve ourselves as a species and human civilization.

We can establish as fact, that there is history and theirstory. Both are equally invalid. While history is a function of political control for those who are in positions of relative power, which can be instrumental for dehumanizing others, and for providing apparent legitimacy for the oppression of others, theirstory is often instrumental in recruiting resistance against the dominant powers while dehumanizing the oppressor. Neither the decades long conflict in Palestine or Israel nor any other conflict can be truly understood, let alone be solved, by a rhetoric approach to the language of the discourse. Language is a powerful instrument that contributes to a great degree in determining our thinking and our actions. Problems in conflicts are only truly comprehended and solved by a language that is free from positioning, scapegoating, and dehumanizing one, while providing legitimacy to the other. Without the foundation of a pure and factual language to the discourse, even if one is aiming for peace, it is almost impossible to discern which arguments in the Palestinian - Israeli discourse are legitimate and valid, and which are not.

To be continued. Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Reference:

1. Real Bad Arabs; Movie, Media Education Foundation.

2. Jack G. Shaheen (2001); REAL BAD ARABS, How Hollywood Vilifies A People” Olive Branch Press, New York, New Hampton.

3. Said Edward G. (1978); Orientalism, Random House, USA.

4. The Bombing of Dresden in WW II. Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

5. The Bombing of Pforzheim in WW II. Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bombing_of_Pforzheim_in_World_War_II

6. Schaeffer Anthony Lt. Col. (2010); Operation Dark Heart, St. Martins Press, New York.

7. Chris McGreal (2010); Pentagon Tries to stop book, publishing details of US Black-Ops in Pakistan. http://www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com/2010/09/16/pentagon-tries-to-buy-entire-print-run-of-us-spy-expose-operation-dark-heart/

* Dr. Christof Lehmann, a life time peace activist, psychologist, and advisor in behavior, finance, economics and politics.

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

Part I - Stretching the Definition of Anti-Semitism
　
Can criticism of Israel, particularly a) criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people and b) criticism of the state ideology of Zionism that justifies that treatment, be labeled anti-Semitic? This is not a hypothetical query. An affirmative answer to this question is being advocated by influential Zionist lobbies in the United States. The question is of particular importance on the nation’s college and university campuses. In places like the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and also at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Zionist students are now threatening to sue these institutions for failing to prevent an "atmosphere of anti-Semitic bigotry" allegedly created by the presence of pro-Palestinian student groups and faculty.
　
One might ask if it isn’t a stretch to assert that protesting Israeli and Zionist behavior is the same as anti-Semitism? Common sense certainly tells us this is so. Unfortunately, we are not dealing with situations that are ruled by common sense. What we are facing here is the issue of ideologues bred to a specific perceptual paradigm and their insistence that others conform to it.
　
Here is an example: Take an American kid from a self-conscious Jewish home. This kid does not represent all American Jewish youth, but does typify say 20% of them. He or she is taught about the religion and also taught about recent history and the near annihilation of the Jews of Europe. He or she is sent to Hebrew school, and maybe a yeshiva school as well. Most of our hypothetical student’s friends will be Jewish and of similar background. Between home, friends and school the student might well find him or herself in something of a closed universe. Throughout this educational process Judaism and its fate in the modern world is connected with Israel and its survival. The Arabs, and particularly the Palestinians, are transformed into latter day Nazis. In addition, Israel’s state ideology of Zionism becomes assimilated into the credos of the religion. Soon our hypothetical student cannot tell the difference between the two. Then, having come of age, our student goes off to college or university. Now he or she is no longer in a closed world. The result can be culture shock and an uncomfortable feeling that the student is on a campus where vocal and assertive debate about Israel and its behavior sounds like an attack on the Jewish religion. Our student complains to the ZOA, Hillel, AIPAC, or some similar organization and we are off down a road toward censorship and/or litigation. Lawsuits are lodged (particularly if the ZOA is involved), donors swear that they will no longer support the institution, legislators bang on desks at the state capital, and boards of directors want to know what is going on and what the institution’s president is going to do about it?
　
Part II - Sweet Reason
　
There have been a number of efforts to try to use sweet reason to work out some of these problems before they get too explosive. For instance, in 2006 there was concern over the efforts of various pro-Palestinian campus groups to promote an academic boycott of Israel. Is this being anti-Semitic? Should campuses allow this to be advocated? After all those who espouse academic boycott have a good deal of evidence of criminal activities on the part of the Israeli Universities. At that time the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) sought to clarify the issues by arranging a roundtable discussion on academic boycott by those who stood pro and con. This sounded like a good idea. But no, the Zionist side did not like the list of discussants on the pro side and tried to censor the list. The AAUP resisted that move, so the Zionist side pressured the donors subsidizing the proposed roundtable to pull their support. The whole thing collapsed. It seemed the Zionists were not going to discuss the topic except on their own terms.
　
Just recently there has been similar attempt at sweet reason. A heated debate is now taking place over whether Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which bars federal funds from institutions that discriminate) can be applied to schools that allow criticism of Israel which the Zionists claim is anti-Semitic. If so, those same Zionists, whose influence is strong in Congress, can use Title VI as a club to threaten colleges and universities with the loss of financial support unless they shut down the criticism. This, of course, equates to censorship and an attack on free speech.
　
Once more the AAUP, which opposes the use of Title VI in such situations, approached the American Zionists in an effort to find a compromise position. Professor Cary Nelson, head of the AAUP, managed to enter into negotiations with Kenneth Stern, the "anti-Semitism expert" of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The two of them worked out a common position which, after consultation with others in each organization, was signed and released to the public. What did this document say? For our needs, here are its most important points:
　
1. Title VI is not an appropriate instrument to use when trying to "protect" Jewish students from "anti-Israel events, statements and speakers." To use Title VI this way amounts to censorship.
　
2. Question: How do we know what is going on at a college or university campus is anti-Semitism? Answer: "Six years ago the European monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) created a working definition of anti-Semitism....while clearly stating that criticism of Israel in the main is not anti-Semitic, [it] gives some examples of when anti-Semitism may come into play, such as holding Jews collectively responsible for the acts of the Israeli state, comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, or denying to Jews the right of self-determination (such as by claiming that Zionism is racism). In recent years the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights have embraced this definition too. It is entirely proper for university administrators, scholars and students to reference the working definition in identifying definite or possible instances of anti-Semitism on campus."
3. Conclusion: Censorship should be avoided, Title VI should be avoided, but the "working definition" should be used to make judgments as to how best to "wrestle with ideas" while at the same time "combating bigotry."
　
This letter was signed by both Cary Nelson as President of the AAUP and Kenneth Stern as the Director of the anti-Semitism and extremism sub-division of the AJC. Released in early August 2011, it took only a few days before it was repudiated by the AJC. On 9 August David Harris, President of the American Jewish Committee, "apologized" for the joint declaration, said it was "ill advised" and blamed a breakdown in the AJC’s "system of checks and balances" for the slip up. Kenneth Stern is now on an unscheduled sabbatical and can not be reached for comment.
　
This is, of course, a replay of the 2006 situation and just goes to show that, it is the hard right ideologues who are in charge on the Zionist side. These people have a worldview that allows for no compromise. Censorship is exactly what they want and Title VI is as good a weapon to wield as any. What could Kenneth Stern possibly have been thinking? There is no room for sweet reason here.
　
Part III - The AAUP Makes a Mistake
　
This is not the end of the story. There is something wrong with the fact that the AAUP was so quick to endorse the EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism (a definition, by the way, that Kenneth Stern had a hand in writing). Consider these two statements from the above AAUP-AJC declaration each of which, according to the "working definition," can be seen as anti-Semitic: 1) "holding Jews collectively responsible for the acts of the Israeli state" and 2) "denying to Jews the right of self-determination (such as by claiming that Zionism is racism)." As we are about to see the first statement has hidden facets to it and the second defies historical reality.
　
Statement 1:

It is absolutely the case that the Jews should not be held collectively responsible for the actions of Israel. But it should be pointed out that it is just such collective responsibility that Zionists insist upon. Zionist ideology demands that Israel be recognized as representing world Jewry. Zionists expect that, in return, all Jews will identify with and actively support Israel–feel one with the "Jewish state." They classify those Jews who do not recognize their collective responsibility to Israel as somehow deficient or perhaps "self-hating" Jews. So let us get this straight, if holding Jews collectively responsible for the acts of Israel is anti-Semitic, what does that make the Zionists?
　
Statement 2:
　
a. That Jews have some sort of natural right to political self-determination is highly questionable. How about Protestants, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists, ad infinitum? Just how far do we want to push this claim of political self-determination for religious faiths? Oh, but the Zionists insist that Jews are not just adherents to a particular faith–they are a "people." Well, for sure that is an opinion. It just doesn’t happen to be the opinion of millions of other Jews who see Judaism as a religion pure and simple. Of course, if the latter are vocal about this they run the risk of being labeled "self-hating."
　
b. And who, except of course the Zionists, says that Zionism is a desirable vehicle for the expression of this alleged right of self-determination? Let us face it. Israel and its Zionist ideology were born of the will of a small minority of Jews, almost exclusively from Central and Eastern Europe, most of whom were secularists, and almost all of whom carried within their heads the poisoned perceptions of European imperialist bigotry – an outlook which still characterizes the state they set up. That is why, in practice, Zionism has resulted in a prima facie racist environment in Israel. And now we are told that, according to the "working definition," pointing out the link between Zionism and racism is an act of anti-Semitism!
　
Given this close reading of parts of the "working definition," the AAUP really ought to rethink its apparent support of the document. It is a position that can only give impetus to the very censorship the AAUP dreads.
　
Part IV - Conclusion
　
One has come to expect twisted logic from the Zionists. Actually, one can expect this sort of thinking from any band of ideologues. Their blinkered vision, incapable of seeing around the corners of their prejudices, guarantees that most of what comes out of their mouths and their pens is sophistry.
　
However, what is one to do when folks you count on as rational and careful thinkers, like the leadership of the AAUP, get caught short this way? What is one to do when flawed reasoning and spurious assumptions start to be translated into criteria for government administrative decisions? What can you do when a fifth of the Congress decides to take a break and visit one of the most racist places on the planet and you risk being labeled an anti-Semite for decrying this fact? Well, you have a good laugh, have a good cry, and then go post your assessment of the situation on your website. Then you get a bit drunk. Finally, you repeat ten times "I will never to stay silent."

* 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.

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

By Mantiq al-Tayr * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1. As is usually the case all of the experts on terrorism and all the Islam-hating bigots were wrong. Sometimes I am not even sure which group is the more loathsome and of course there is considerable overlap between the two. And even though Will McCants actually seems okay, he is only an expert on "terrorism" if the term is only used to refer to Muslims.

According to the this link his areas of expertise are: "Early Islamic History & Exegesis; Babi/Baha'i Scripture & History; Jihadi Movement; Empire & Historiography"

2. As I am sure many of you are aware by now, the latest hero of the Zionist-inspired international club of Muslim haters, Anders Behring Breivik, has left us with at least two moronic anti-Muslim diatribes. One is a short video and the other (if he is actually the author) is a huge anti-Islamic tract. I've watched the video and have scanned the tract and both could just as easily been created by the CI Centre or any of the other good-for nothing Islam-bashing contractors who train US government and law-enforcement personnel around the country. In fact, the written document even quotes some of those cretins. Here is a picture of part of his asanine video.

The two themes above are always misrepresented and then harped on by these scoundrels. And here is Breivik quoting Shoebat and Spencer in his tome:

Readers of this website will recall that I have in the past talked about an 80-page expose of these groups called "Manufacturing the Muslim Menace" which expose groups like the CI Centre and total fakes like Walid Shoebat. Also, you know that I often link to Loonwatch, a site dedicated to exposing these assxxxxx. And as Loonwatch says in this article, these promoters of hatred have created an atmosphere in which all sorts of horrible things are taking place. The blood of these innocent Norwegians is not just on Breivik's hands.

3. One day I am thinking of having a contest or putting up a poll in which people can vote for the US state that is the most Zionist controlled. I used to think that New York would be the hands-down winner followed by New Jersey and then Canada. But my research keeps leading me back to the Cardin State, the state of so many traitors. Again, as readers of this site know, there is a multi-faceted tax-payer supported long-term Zionist radicalization program in the US whose primary target is American Jews and the goal of which is to make sure they are loyal to Israel. The Cardin State seems to bend over backwards in this regard as the readers here know. Well, there's even more. Take a look:

While each of the above noble efforts deserves serious attention, I'd like to draw your attention to the one on the bottom left.

This progam is not aimed at Jewish kids, its aimed at the goyim. According to Rep. Elijah Cummings (Likud, Maryland), "Our broad goal is to promote inter-ethnic understanding, as well as racial and religious tolerance. The process toward achieving that goal includes hands-on, personalized engagement designed to help the ECYP scholars become the core of our region's future leaders."

So, in order to promote "inter-ethnic understanding" you send kids to Israel? You send them to one of the most racist places on the planet? "But Mantiq" (I can hear it now) "these kids are sent to the 'Yemin Orde Youth Village' which is for poor children with no place to go except to Palestine to be used as excuses in the future to steal more Arab land. Oh, and also Mantiq, the place is subsidized by the US taxpayer. Isn't that cool.?"

Sigh: I wonder if the American kids Cummings is sending to this "youth village" will learn that it is named after General Orde Wingate, a Christian Zionist fanatic who trained Haganah terrorists in Palestine in th 1930′s.

Wingate also hated Arabs, I guess he would have made a fine Congressman.

"In June 1938 the new British commander, Gen. Haining, gave his permission to create the Special Night Squads, armed groups formed of British and Haganah volunteers. The Jewish Agency helped pay salaries and other costs of the Haganah personnel.

"Wingate trained, commanded and accompanied them in their patrols. The units frequently ambushed Arab saboteurs who attacked oil pipelines of the Iraq Petroleum Company, raiding border villages the attackers had used as bases. In these raids Wingate's men sometimes imposed severe collective punishmentson the village inhabitants that were criticized by Zionist leaders as well as Wingate's British superiors. Wingate disliked Arabs, once shouting at Hagana fighters after a June 1938 attack on a village on the border between Mandatory Palestine and Lebanon, "I think you are all totally ignorant in your Ramat Yochanan [the training base for the Hagana] since you do not even know the elementary use of bayonets when attacking dirty Arabs: how can you put your left foot in front?" But the brutal tactics proved effective in quelling the uprising, and Wingate was awarded the DSO in 1938."

But I guess since they'll all be there on Mt. Carmel which is where the Baha'i headquarters is and overlooking Haifa which was ethnically cleansed by Israel it's all perfectly okay.

"Based on declassified Israeli documents, the Israeli historian Benny Morris concluded that the Jewish civilian population (especially Haifa's Jewish mayor Shabtai Levy) was at peace with their Palestinian neighbors, but the Haganah and the IZL leadership had a different agenda to ethnically cleanse the city from its Palestinian Arab population. "

Yeah, the Haganah, the outfit whose members Orde Wingate trained, got rid of the majority of the city's Arab population.

"Out of the 61,000 Palestinian Arabs who used to call Haifa home, only 3,566 Palestinians were allowed to stay. The remaining population were in constant fear on their lives and properties, and many of them witnessed the looting of their homes and possessions by the Zionists."

4. Now in case you have not had your full quota today of Zionist Bulllxxxx, let's look at this AP article published not just in the Jerusalem Washington New York Times Post but damn near everywhere else too about a wonderful cuddly miracle-working Rabbi. He is just such a sweet heart. I bet Monica Lewinsky wishes she could give him a blow job.

"Pinto began amassing followers as a young man in the Mediterranean port city of Ashdod, helped by his family heritage and reputation for uncanny insight into human behavior. Some of those followers saw him simply as an unusually wise man. Others believed his wisdom was supernatural, that his blessings had power and that he could see the future and heal the sick."

Getting warm and fuzzy? I hope so.

"Unlike most ultra-Orthodox rabbis, Pinto does not press his secular adherents to observe Jewish law and rejects the mixing of religion and government, he said. Pinto has also spoken out to condemn racism against Arabs."

Well that is nice. May Elijah Cummings ought to do the same. But I digress.

He also works miracles.

"Pinto came to his hospital room when he was comatose, said Ben-Eliezer, who is 74. "I didn't see this, because I was almost in the next world. He sat next to me for between four and five hours, crying. Then he stood up and said to the people in the room - he'll wake up tomorrow morning."

"And so it was."

"He has not only his own life experience, but that of all of the generations that went before him," Ben-Dov said. "Any attempt to describe him falls short of the reality."

How about "con-artist"? Though it too no doubt falls short of the reality. I've reported on this guy before. He lives in a 6.5 million dollar house in Manhatten which is actually owned by his very own charity to which you can make tax-deductable contributions. His number one right hand man is a porn distributor.

Oh, and you'll love this:

"The New York Daily News is reporting that Weiner "regularly" stopped by the classes and holiday gatherings of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto for spiritual advice and counseling. In return, the good rabbi instructed his followers to contribute to Weiner's campaigns, raising over $300,000 for his 2009 abortive run for mayor, and for other elections, the Daily News said."

This from a guy who says he has nothing to do with politics.

Recently that 6.5 million dollar house that Pinto lives in but which is owned by his very own charity was subject to foreclosure. But an unusual white knight appeared:

"[Lebron] James apparently gave Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto a six-figure check to stop the foreclosure."

Oh, and his alleged pro Arabness. Can't find much on it. In this article he refuses to even answer a question posed to him about Israel's treatment of Arabs.

And in a whole host of other articles he criticizes Rabbis in Israel who don't want Jews to rent to Arabs but only because their racism might backfire on Jews in the US.

"New York Jews come to me frightened, saying the newspapers are full of stories on what is going on in Israel. This letter is founded in stupidity. There's great racism against Jews in America today. What does this letter mean? It means that Jews won't be able to live in New York or anywhere else in the world."

5. I want to switch gears for a moment. I am quoting below, with permission, parts of an email I recently received from a Mexican journalist. This person makes some good points. The journalist asked to remain anonymous. I do not agree with all of it, but this person is far more right than wrong.

"Just one favor I'd like to ask: As you well point out, part of the liberal / Zionist agenda is to sort of promote hispanic immigrant sympathy in the U.S., surely for not the right reasons, but anyway they do. And the fact that they do, generates the opposite effect on the groups who try to break free from the Zionist agendas. It causes a lot of un-sympathy for the immigrant causes. It creates an "anti-Mexican" feeling, which is completely unfair.

Let me tell you: the reason the people are migrating, not only the Mexicans but most people in the whole world, are the unfair economic conditions caused by all forms of imperialism, old and new. In Latin America, natives were not "poor" or "needy", until we were invaded. So first it was European imperialism, and more recently North American imperialism. Unfair trade, explotation and currency slavery, cause people to become "poor" in their own land. Mexicans, and any sort of illegal immigrants coming to the U.S., is the direct result of years of the U.S. exploiting the continent. Migration is now just an inevitable, natural reaction; a sort of payback.

Besides, immigrants do not migrate out of evil intentions; on the contrary, they go dreaming of giving an extra to their families. Actually, they love their lands and families more than anything.

And, the hispanic influence on the U.S. will not be a bad thing in the short and long term. Far from that, it will make the U.S. a nicer, warmer, less meaner place. Mexicans are family oriented, and keep strong values like the Muslims or like most of the rest of the people on the planet. The "mexicanization" of the U.S. will bring a lot of relief not only to the world, but also to the U.S. It may be the only chance to save the nation from an absolute economic collapse, because it will inject younger blood, values and hard working people to the heart of the nation.

So, my request is: let's separate the Zionist problem from the Mexican / illegal immigrants problem. The Mexican people need the support from the open-minded, lucid, consciouss people like yourself. The Mexicans who travel are suffering all sorts of hardships for being illegal. They should be legalized, because they are already working there, living there, and helping the nation to survive.

We in Mexico are also victims of the Zionist powers. Many people believe they are fuelling today's drug wars because they sell the weapons. They want the war to continue. They are also terrible exploiters of people in Mexico."

6. Okay, it's video time.

I need to buy that pork spray.

Video link: http://youtu.be/y5GHHbIUxZY

Why You Should Hate Islam:

Video link: http://youtu.be/l0fxGEmym9g

Somehow this song seems fitting here. I still can’t believe he’s gone.

Video link: http://youtu.be/5xB2m2id0q4

* Mantiq al-Tayr is a blogger who is attempting to wake up other American citizens to the true dangers and challenges which face their country and is devoted to justice for the Palestinian people. Truth is his objective, satire is his tool. He also enjoys reading the Qur'an from time to time. See his website.

By Yousef Munayyer * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Earlier this year we watched with amazement as hundreds of thousands of Arabs charged into the streets of their cities demanding reform. The uprisings led to the departure of several leaders who had ruled for decades and also tested (and continue to test) several others.

But what led to this outpouring is much the same as the motivation behind the flotilla initiative which seeks to challenge the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

When fundamentally unjust situations are left unaddressed by states, the people must step in. That is precisely what happened in Tahrir square when hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Egyptians lost all faith in the government's ability to reform.

That is also precisely what drives the flotilla and the activists aboard it. They have watched as the collective punishment of 1.5 million civilians lingers with no objections coming from states that can change the situation. In fact, the siege of Gaza has been supported by Israel, the United States and Mubarak's Egypt (though post-Mubarak Egypt promises to be different).

The blockade of Gaza is just one part of a multilayered siege on the Gaza Strip. The layers include control of land entry and exit points for commercial and humanitarian goods, control over the amount of electricity and water available to the people of Gaza, control of the air and sea lanes, and so on.

The vast majority of water in Gaza is not fit for human consumption. The vast majority of people live on less than $2 a day and rely on daily handouts from aid organisations due to rampant unemployment.

The Israelis try to whitewash the devastating effects of the siege by ignoring the exhaustive documentation by aid organisations and human rights groups, and by claiming they facilitate the entry of hundreds of trucks a day into Gaza. This is tantamount to justifying the encaging of an innocent person by claiming to shove some bread and water through the bars once a day.

In reality, the number of trucks getting into Gaza are far below what the UN believes is necessary to meet the minimum standards of the population.

Exports, which are commercial goods leaving Gaza, have been stymied as well. In fact, in 2005, Israel agreed to allow 400 trucks of exports per day out of Gaza by 2006 yet less than 200 trucks of exports were permitted exit throughout all of 2008-2010! There is yet to be any rational argument from the Israelis as to why they prevent exports from leaving Gaza, and the only plausible explanation is that they want to emaciate the Palestinian economy in the strip.

It should also come as no surprise that Israelis are working around the clock in an attempt to vilify the people on these boats, just like the when the Mubarak regime attempted to do the same with the Egyptians that challenged his rule.

But the passengers on the flotilla realise that nonviolent disobedience is key to the success of their mission to raise awareness about the unjust blockade. The Israelis have even been caught distributing fake videos accusing the flotilla organizers of homophobia, alliances with terrorists and even suggesting the passengers might use chemical weapons.

For a state that claims to be a "democracy", their response to nonviolent disobedience is as irrational as any neighbouring autocrat's.

Vilification is, of course, the first step to justifying violence, and there has been no shortage of violence used against nonviolent activists during the Arab Spring. It seems Israel is laying the groundwork to apply similarly repressive techniques against the good-willed passengers of these boats.

So what will the reaction be?

As the flotilla approaches Gaza, another January 25th moment presents itself. You either stand with members of civil society who have challenged the unjust practices of states, or you stand with those states and their unjust practices.

About 40 brave Americans have cast their lot with civil society by setting sail on the American-flagged ship to Gaza, the "Audacity of Hope". Among them are men and women, elderly, and many Jewish-Americans as well. They will be joined by about ten ships and 300 other activists. They simply refuse to sit idly by like their governments as the crime of the siege of Gaza continues.

As the collective punishment of 1.5 millions civilians persists, it's time to ask yourself: which side are you on?

* Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

This article originally appeared in AlJazeera.net.

Ceyda Nurtsch interview with Noam Chomsky* about the Arabic spring in its global context.

Nurtsch: Mr. Chomsky, many people claim that the Arab world is incompatible with democracy. Would you say that the recent developments falsify this thesis?

False friends: Iran' democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh during a visit in the US in 1951, two years before the CIA's coup d'état that ousted him

In internal discussions in 1958, which have since been declassified, President Eisenhower spoke about a campaign of hatred against us in the Arab world. Not from the governments, but from the people. The National Security Council's top planning body produced a memorandum – you can pick it up on the web now – in which they explained it. They said that the perception in the Arab world is that the United States blocks democracy and development and supports harsh dictators and we do it to get control over their oil. The memorandum said, this perception is more or less accurate and that's basically what we ought to be doing.

Nurtsch: That means that western democracies prevented the emergence of democracies in the Arab world?

Chomsky: I won't run through the details, but yes, it continues that way to the present. There are constant democratic uprisings. They are crushed by the dictators we – mainly the US, Britain, and France – support. So sure, there is no democracy because you crush it all. You could have said the same about Latin America: a long series of dictators, brutal murderers. As long as the US controls the hemisphere, or Europe before it, there is no democracy, because it gets crushed.

Nurtsch: So you were not surprised at all by the Arab Spring?

On 6 April 2008 Egyptian workers, primarily in the state-run textile industry, striked in response to low wages and rising food costs. Strikes were illegal in Egypt, and the protests were eventually crushed

But in Egypt they remember, and that's only one in a long series of militant strike actions. Some of them succeeded. There are some good studies of this. There is one American scholar, Joel Beinen – he is at Stanford – he has done a lot of work on the Egyptian labour movement. And he has recent articles and earlier ones, in which he discusses labour struggles going on for a long time: those are efforts to create democracy.

Nurtsch: Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, claimed to cause a domino effect of freedom with his policy of the "New Middle East". Is there a relation between the uprisings in the Arab world to the policy of George W. Bush?

Chomsky: The main theme of modern post-war history is the domino effect: Cuba, Brazil, Vietnam… Henry Kissinger compared it to a virus that might spread contagion. When he and Nixon were planning the overthrow of the democratically elected Allende in Chile – we have all the internal materials now – Kissinger in particular said, the Chilean virus might affect countries as far as Europe. Actually, he and Brezhnev agreed on that, they were both afraid of democracy and Kissinger said, we have to wipe out this virus. And they did, they crushed it.

Today it's similar. Both Bush and Obama are terrified of the Arab spring. And there is a very sensible reason for that. They don't want democracies in the Arab world. If Arab public opinion had any influence on policy, the US and Britain had been tossed out of the Middle East. That's why they are terrified of democracies in the region.

Nurtsch: The well-known British Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk recently stated that Obama and his policy is irrelevant for the developments in the region…

Chomsky: I read the article, it's very good. Robert Fisk is a terrific journalist and he really knows the region well. I think what he means is that the activists in the April 6th movement don't care about the United States. They have totally given up on the US. They know the United States is their enemy. In fact in public opinion in Egypt about 90 per cent think that the US is the worst threat that they face. In that sense the USA is of course not irrelevant. It's just too powerful.

Nurtsch: Some criticize the Arab intellectuals for being too silent, too passive. What should the role of the Arab intellectual be today?

Chomsky: Intellectuals have a special responsibility. We call them intellectuals because they are privileged and not because they are smarter than anyone else. But if you are privileged and you have some status and you can be articulate and so on we call you an intellectual. And it's the same in the Arab world as anywhere else.

Ceyda Nurtsch
© Qantara.de 2011
Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de

* Noam Chomsky is one of the major intellectuals of our time. The eighty-two-year-old American linguist, philosopher and activist is a severe critic of US foreign and economic policy.

By Mohamed Khodr* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all."
-Tacitus, First Century Historian and Senator in the Roman Empire

• No, America, you are not the land of the free, home of the brave.

• You are not the greatest nation on earth.

• You are not the superpower you proclaim.

• You are not the beacon of freedom, equality, and liberty to all.

• You are not the Promised Land.

• You are not the democracy of the First Amendment where there is Freedom of Speech, of the Press, of Religion, of freedom to petition and assemble.

• Your President is not the leader of the free world.

• You do not have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Thus, what will history record of whom and what you are?

What you are in essence and action is a nation of ignorant cowards, SLAVES, to be exact, to the very nation you created and continue to pay for with your tax dollars, weapons, and the lives of your sons and daughters-Israel.

What you are is a nation of fools according to Israel, "detached from reality"; "delusional", and full of "illusions"; in other words a nation of mental defects who are unaware of who's the real boss of this nation and your supposedly elected government.

It's Israel, Stupid.

But your arrogance and conceit of greatness, of a democracy, of a representative government, a nation where the people freely choose their President and Congressional Representatives, a nation of "American Exceptionalism", blinds you to the reality that you neither control, own, nor create your own destiny.

Who does? It's the little nation from afar-Israel.

No candidate or politician can ever hope to be elected without the obligatory visit to Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial in Israel) while being forced to wear the mind numbing Yarmulke, and the obligatory pandering and shameful visit and speech to the true altar of "your" government-AIPAC. They've been Washington's real power and policy makers for decades.

As Early as 1957:

"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews... terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen ... I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the congress through influential Jewish people in the country"

–Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in February, 1957 quoted on p.99 of "Fallen Pillars" by Donald Neff

You think you have freedom of speech? Then why are you and your government so cowardly intimidated and silent to even mention Israel, Jews, or Judaism, in political or personal debates or conversations? Your knees tremble when these issues come up and you lose your vocal cords while your heart rate and blood pressure rise and your visit to the restroom becomes imperative.

You think you have freedom of the press? You know, the press that's owned, controlled, and run by Jews. Why is there not one single American Jew, Christian, Muslim or person of any faith on television criticizing Israel? Why? They will lose their jobs a la Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Octavia Nasr, and many, many others, not to mention the many politicians who lost their jobs for daring to speak out against Israel. Try to submit an op-ed to the major papers critical of our government's Israeli formulated foreign policy in the Middle East.

Do you wonder why Islam and Sharia Law, two unknown subjects to Americans, have become the hysteria du jour and who's behind it? It's to distract your short attention span away from the control, theft of money, weapons, spying, and wars you pay and die for Israel's security.

Who do you think wants to push Muslims and Christians into a World War III?

Do you honestly think your government represents you? Once they arrive in Congress your representatives are immediately welcomed by an army of AIPAC minions to brainwash them and let them know not to ever cross Israel and always vote for anything AIPAC sends. Most of the Legislative Staff in Congress is Jewish. Do you ever wonder why our Congress cuts meals to our children while sending billions to Israel with overwhelming bipartisan support? Look up the Congressional votes on resolutions supportive of Israel. It's a shocking embarrassment.

For Congressional Votes and Support of Israel visit: http://thomas.loc.gov/

Do you think you have freedom of religion? Who do you think is behind the push that you, yes you Christians, can't celebrate Christmas, not even mentioning it by name instead having to use "holiday"? Who's against school prayers, no displays of Nativity Scene, no courses on world religions, and no school prayers?

It's not the Muslims.

Many Israeli TV Shows mock and use blasphemous remarks against Jesus and the Virgin Mary, yet not ONE Single Christian church, seminary, university, media outlet, organization, or person has ever gone on TV or wrote an Op-ed to a paper condemning our "closes ally" for this filth.

Imagine if this was on Iranian TV?

See the Videos and judge for yourself, then ask yourself, why are you so cowardly not to respond to this visual and literal neo crucifixion of Christ?

From the Israeli Children TV show "Toffee VeHa-Gorillah" a Girl in Bikini makes fun with a monkey of how Jesus Christ, a Nazi, was Crucified and how all Christians are an Evil People.

Video link: http://sabbah.in/l6Hj8h

Israeli TV Show Blaspheme Jesus and Virgin Mary:

Video link: http://youtu.be/qtVpHUjwQSA

Monkey Christ:

Video link: http://youtu.be/-zUvFaW3WY0

Jews and Hasidic Gentiles-United to Save America (JAHG-USA)
http://www.noahide.com/yeshu.htm

"Jesus a false Prophet...with an evil agenda".

However, slam views Jesus, peace be upon him, as the true Messiah, born through a miracle from the Virgin Mary, peace be upon her, and performed miracles during his life

How can Israeli Jews feel such supremacy and the freedom to blaspheme Jesus, the Virgin Mary, peace be upon them both, and all Non-Jews?

Here's a Rabbinical explanation?

"Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,"

According to Rabbi Yosef, the lives of non-Jews in Israel are safeguarded by divinity, to prevent losses to Jews.

"In Israel, death has no dominion over them... With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one's donkey would die, they'd lose their money....This is his servant... That's why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew."

"Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat....That is why gentiles were created."

– Jerusalem Post; "Yosef: Gentiles exist only to serve Jews"; October 25, 2010

Only Israel can slap America's Presidents, Congress, and the American people over and over and over while they all keep turning the other cheek over and over.

What hold do these Zionists have on our government, our minds, souls, freedoms, and courage to speak and act that we in this alleged superpower are so intimidated, so afraid, so cowardly to even raise a whisper in public about the historical costs to our lives, wealth, worldwide credibility, and our very humanity, by a people we saved in Europe, a people whom we against all divine and human laws gifted a foreign land to them, a nation that wouldn't exist without our recognition, support, and protection, a nation that commits genocide in our name and with our tax dollars?

Supporting Israel means supporting genocides against innocent civilians, ethnic cleansing, an expansionist military policy that's based on stealing more land and expelling more people, destroying villages by the hundreds, demolishing tens of thousands of homes, imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people over decades without the rule of law, allowing torture as policy, shooting children in classrooms, stealing drinking and irrigating water for settler swimming pools, building illegal settlements on hilltops, allowing racist settlers free reign to kill, burn, beat, and terrorize families, destroying electrical and water plants, hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, ambulances, and littering lands with cluster bombs to kill and mutilate children.

It means never holding Israel accountable for violating hundreds of U.N. Resolutions due to our, yes you America, vetoes.

It means being subservient to a rogue, terrorist, racist, murderous state whom we have elevated and put on a pedestal for our idolatrous worship.

Here's the nation we support:

"It is the duty of the [Israeli] leadership to explain to the public a number of truths. One truth is that there is no Zionism, no settlement, and no Jewish state without evacuating Arabs, and without expropriating lands and their fencing off."
– Yesha'ayahu Ben-Porat, Yedi'ot Aharonot 07/14/1972

Such is our support of Israel against the hapless long suffering Palestinians who by the millions have lived for decades as refugees in squalor camps and impoverished lives because of Israel's founding, a founding America created. They are homeless and stateless and America is too cowardly and fearful of Israel and organized Jewry to even cast a symbolic vote to support a Palestinian state for the stateless.

Israel has made fools of us, our government, our religions, our beliefs, and everything Americans have come to value about themselves and their country.

America, your new Manifest Destiny, is to serve Israel and only Israel, so help you God.

And so continues the illegal occupations of America and Palestine.

* 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.

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

George Bernard Shaw

Perhaps George Bernard Shaw was thinking of Obama's administration when he said, "Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for the appointment of the corrupt few."

Obama upholds the tradition and then some, doing more harm globally in two years than most of history's tinpot despots in decades, yet most of it gets little attention. Imagine what's planned ahead. Already, his legacy includes:

• breaking every key promise he made across the board;
• looting the nation's wealth, wrecking the economy, and consigning growing millions to impoverishment without jobs, homes, savings, social services, or futures;
• enacting greater Wall Street empowerment, disguised as financial reform;
• expanding unbridled militarism through continued foreign wars, occupations, and stepped up aggression on new fronts with the largest defense budget in history - greater than the rest of the world combined at a time America has no enemies;
• partnering with Israel's regional reign of terror, occupation, and imperial designs;
• presiding over a bogus democracy under a homeland police state apparatus;
• continuing the worst of the Bush administration's lawlessness and torture policies;
• targeting whistleblowers, dissenters, Muslims, and environmental and animal rights activists called terrorists;
• illegally spying on Americans as aggressively as George Bush;
• sacrificing Net Neutrality for greater corporate control and profits;
• destroying decades of hard won labor rights;
• eroding Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other New Deal and Great Society social gains;
• trying to control the media more aggressively than Nixon, according to veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas;
• refusing help for budget-stricken states like California, Illinois, Michigan and New York; forcing them to impose austerity by gutting welfare programs, education, health care for the poor, and other vital services at a time they're most needed;
• proliferating commodified education nationally, ending government responsibility for it, and making it another business profit center;
• enacting healthcare reform that taxes more, provides less, places profits above human need, and makes a dysfunctional system worse;
• passing agribusiness empowerment at the expense of small farmers and consumers, disguised as food safety modernization;
• instituting coup d'etat regime change in Honduras against its democratically elected president;
• plundering Haiti, ignoring its needs, rigging its elections, and refusing to let Jean-Bertrand Aristide return;
• supporting some of the world's most ruthless, corrupt tyrants; and
• planning American-style regime change in Egypt, its vice president of torture in charge; continuing old policies surrounded by Washington-controlled new faces, denying Egyptian masses freedoms they're willing to die for.

Since taking office, Obama fronted for wealth, power, and imperial poison globally, including hardline homeland control. No wonder James Petras called him:

"the greatest con-man in recent history," comparing him to "Melville's Confidence Man. He catches your eye while he picks your pocket. He gives thanks as he packs you off to fight wars in the Middle East on behalf of a foreign country. He solemnly mouths vacuous pieties while he empties your Social Security funds to bail out the arch financiers who swindled your pension investments. He appoints and praises the architects of collapsed pyramid schemes to high office while promising" better times ahead.

He also called him "America's first Jewish president," Israel's man, delivering unconditional support for policies harming America. He "crossed the River Jordan," backing its "colonial power in a strategic region of the" world, no matter how threatening "to world peace (and) US democratic values...."

Even New York Times writers Helene Cooper and Mark Landler noticed in their February 4 article headlined, "US Trying to Balance Israel's Needs in the Face of Egyptian Reform," saying:

Besides whatever emerges in Egypt, its street protests "are rocking an even more fundamental relationship for the United States - its (unconditional) 60-year alliance with Israel." Former "peace negotiator" Daniel Levy worries about:

"apres Mubarak, le deluge," saying that's "the core of what is the American interest in this. It's Israel" uber alles. "It's not worry about whether the Egyptians are going to close down the Suez Canal, or even the narrower terror issue."

White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, assured Israeli officials that "our commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable," no matter the risk to our own. Imagine, however, the irony of Israel, Washington, and Western powers voicing concern about emerging democracy in Egypt, revealing their commitment to prevent it.

Imagine the courage of millions of Egyptians facing off against commonplace regime torture, disappearances, assassinations and other abuses to assure absolute autocratic control.

US State Department Report Exposes Egypt's Human Rights Abuses Under Mubarak

On March 11, 2010, the US State Department documented them in its "2009 Human Rights Report: Egypt," accessed through the following link:

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/nea/136067.htm

Abuses covered included:

• "arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life;
• disappearance(s);
• torture, and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment;
• (horrific) prison and detention center conditions;
• arbitrary arrest(s) and detention(s);
• (the corrupt, brutal) police and security apparatus;
• (lawless) arrest procedures and treatment while in detention;
• denial of fair public trial(s);
• (lawless) trial procedures;
• (numerous) political prisoners and detainees;
• (corrupt courts denying) civil judicial procedures and remedies;
• (restricted) freedom of speech and press;
• (lack of) Internet freedom;
• (restricted) academic freedom and cultural events;
• (impeded) freedom of assembly;
• (obstructed) freedom of association;
• (compromised exercise of) freedom of religion;
• societal abuses and discrimination;
• (few) protectio(s for) refugees (and asylum seekers);
• (denied) political rights, (including) the right of citizens to change their government;
• (undemocratic) elections and political participation;
• official corruption and (lack of) government transparency;
• governmental attitude regarding international and (NGO) investigation(s) of alleged violations of human rights;
• discrimination, societal abuses, and trafficking in persons;
• (no legal protections for) persons with disabilities;
• societal abuses, discrimination, and acts of violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity; (and)
• other societal violence or discrimination," including highly restricted worker rights.

In its "Situation of Human Rights in Egypt 2009" report, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) covered the same ground as the State Department, documenting specific numbers of violations by type.

Nonetheless, despite three decades of Mubarak's autocratic brutality, Reuters (on January 29, 2011) cited the Congressional Research Service saying Washington "has given Egypt an average of $2 billion annually since 1979," making it America's "second largest recipient of US aid after Israel."

Egypt's military gets most of it, largely for internal control for a nation with no foreign threat. A recently WikiLeaks released 2009 US embassy cable said:

"President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3 billion in annual FMF as 'untouchable compensation' for making and maintaining peace with Israel. The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the US military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace."

The funding is also recycled to US defense contractors, supplying military goods and services. Moreover, in 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said military aid to Egypt comes "without conditions. And that is our sustained position."

Waltzing with Despots - Rich, Corrupt Ones

On February 4, London Guardian writer Phillip Inman headlined, "Mubarak family fortune could reach $70bn, say experts," adding:

Mubarak stashed his wealth in UK and Swiss banks as well as US, UK, and Red Sea coast property. "According to a report last year in the Arabic newspaper Al Khabar, (he) has properties in Manhattan and exclusive Beverly Hills addresses on Rodeo Drive. His sons, Gamal and Alaa, are also billionaires."

Durham University's Professor Christopher Davidson said he, his wife and sons accumulated massive wealth through business partnerships with foreign investors and companies, dating back to when he was in the military and in a position to benefit from corporate corruption, giving back more than he got.

He's also invested in Egyptian real estate, including choice Sharm el-Sheikh properties. Like other global despots and corporate bosses, he amassed his fortune the old-fashioned way. He stole it, stashing most discretely offshore.

Egypt Under Mubarak: Key Washington Offshore Rendition/Torture Destination

On February 4, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen headlined, "Obama's gambit: Holding Egypt for Holder," saying:

Torture/renditions date from the Clinton administration. "In fact, Clinton's Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder, now Obama's Attorney General, was the first Department of Justice official to write a legal brief authorizing the rendition of alleged terrorists from third countries by the CIA to Egypt for purposes of interrogation and torture."

Moreover, Egypt specializes in disappearances after torture and interrogations are completed. For his part, "Holder has long been a coddler of torturous regimes," including Egypt's.

Its methods include "hanging prisoners by all four limbs and placing electric nodules on their genitals, nipples and feet. The CIA paid Egypt handsomely to carry out the torture program," its own specialty since the 1950s.

In the 1990s, Holder and then White House chief of staff Leon Panetta signed off on CIA renditions to Egypt. As head of the agency under Obama, Panetta publicly endorsed it globally, despite administration pledges to end torture.

Notably, Omar Suleiman, now Egypt's vice president and man Washington wants to lead an interim government, ran Egypt's torture program for the CIA as General Intelligence Directorate (EGID) head. He also maintains close ties with Mossad on issues relating to Palestine and Syria, as well being allied with other Arab intelligence service chiefs serving imperial Washington.

Obama's waffling on Mubarak "is intended to buy time for the CIA to appropriate the Egyptian government's torture and rendition files that date back to Holder's original authorization...." Moreover, Secretary of State Clinton wants her husband protected, and Panetta has the same aim.

"The CIA has embarked on a policy of suppressing the Egyptian revolution until all potentially (incriminating) documents and computer files" are moved to Washington. Its working "behind the scenes in Egypt advising the security forces and army" to buy time and secure plausible deniability of complicity with the worst of Mubarak's crimes, backed, of course, by generous US aid.

A Final Comment

Throughout Egypt, millions courageously keep protesting for democratic freedoms, including free and open elections for candidates they choose. In contrast, old order Egyptians, imperial Washington, other Western powers, and Israel are determined to prevent it.

On February 6, Al Jazeera headlined, "Egypt impasse continues," saying:

"Banks and businesses are re-opening, but the pro-democracy protesters are still out there," their demands so far unmet. They face long odds against determined pressure to deny them. Moreover, even with partial success, holding it will be precarious at best. Dark forces never quit. They have ferocious power, and aren't shy about using it.

As a result, democratic freedoms never come easily. Often, armed insurrections are needed, but also well organized mass actions. In America, it took decades of struggle to end slavery. Women needed a century of activism to be enfranchised. Sustained freedom marches won civil rights, and only after many years of organizing, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces, and paying with their blood and lives did workers win real rights. All of it came bottom up, none top down, and in all cases effective leadership was essential.

So far, Egyptians are courageously committed. Whether it's enough to prevail is very much up for grabs against Egyptian and imperial might.

Yet global rallies visibly show support, including on February 5, an international mobilization day in solidarity with Egyptian, Tunisian and others in the region wanting freedom.

A Facebook statement says:

"History speaks once. Now is our time. Now is our moment. We must take to the streets and stand in solidarity" with millions "across the Arab world and in the centers of power." If not for Western imperial aid, "these dictatorships would have fallen long ago."

Courageous protestors are determined to succeed now. Maybe, just maybe, their time has come. And imagine that spirit spreading globally, including throughout developed countries. They're more rhetorical than real democracies, especially in America where millions yearn, but don't rally for real change.

* 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.

Cartoon by Joep Bertrams, The Netherlands

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

And Tunisians, and Yemenis, and Algerians, and Jordanians, and Lebanese, and, of course, Palestinians, suffering for over six decades after Israel stole their historic homeland, over 43 years under brutal, suffocating occupation. Their struggle is ours, and it's high time we reacted, showing spirit as courageous as theirs.

In her latest January 31 article, Phyllis Bennis headlined, "Tunisia's Spark and Egypt's Flame: the Middle East is Rising," asking:

"Is this how empires end, with people flooding the streets, demanding resignation of their leaders and forcing local dictators out? Maybe not entirely, (but the) legacy of US-dominated governments across the region will never be the same. The US empire's reach in the resource-rich and strategically vital Middle East has been shaken to its core....The years of Washington calling the shots (based on its) version of 'stability' are definitively over."

On February 3, Haaretz writer Ari Shavit agreed, headlining "The Arab revolution and Western decline," saying:

"After half a century during which tyrants have ruled the Arab world, their control is weakening. After 40 years of decaying stability....rot is eating (it). The Arab masses will no longer accept" old ways. It's "been roiling beneath the surface" for years....suddenly (erupting) in an intifada of freedom." The Tunisian "bastille fell, the Cairo (one) is falling and" others in the Arab world will follow. "The old order is crumbling." So is Western "international hegemony....The West has lost it. (It's no longer a global) leading and stabilizing force....In Cairo's Tahrir Square....Western hegemony is fading away."

On February 3 Immanuel Wallerstein headlined, "The Second Arab Revolt: Winners and Losers," saying:

Britain and France betrayed the 1916 revolt "led by Sharif Hussein bin Ali for Arab independence from the Ottoman Empire." After WW II, America succeeded them as regional hegemon. For years, "(t)he second Arab Revolt has been brewing," ignited by events in Tunisia. At issue is why this succeeded when others failed, and what's next?

Regime "fissures" created opportunities. At this point, events are fluid, outcomes uncertain. Months will pass before winners and losers are known. "(N)o Arab state today (has) a strong organized, secular, radical party like the Bolsheviks (in Russia), ready to take power." Most "organized movements are the Islamist ones," but they vary from moderate to extreme, as well as "in-between varieties (like) the Muslim Brotherhood." As a result, outcomes are uncertain.

Also important is outside influence, mainly Washington's, so far the "great loser," evident by its waffling when decisiveness is needed. The revolt's backdrop includes outrageous wealth distributions, growing global poverty and depravation, and America's weakened dominance, exacerbated by Middle East events.

In contrast, Iran is the biggest winner, though non-Arab, then Turkey by supporting the Arab revolt and confronting Israel. Hopefully, over time, Arabs will benefit most. So far, it's too soon to tell, especially since obstacles facing them are formidable.

A Spark Turned Into Revolt

First in Tunisia, popular dissent spread quickly, Egypt its epicenter as Washington's regional imperial lynchpin, rocked by mass outrage, so far sustained. Rarely ever have Americans matched it. Today, they're practically quiescent, despite an unaddressed worsening economic crisis devastating millions.

On February 1, a New York Times editorial headlined, "Beyond Mubarak," urging him to step aside and let an interim government run "truly free elections." Where's The Times' outrage about America's fantasy democracy, imperial lawlessness, dysfunctional governance, rigged elections more kabuki theater than real, and its corporate-run dictatorship, causing appalling levels of unaddressed human need.

Why isn't it urging public outrage demanding change, instead of worrying about "Egypt's next government (being less) friendly to Washington (than) this one," and saying if "Egypt devolves into chaos, it will feed extremism throughout the region."

In fact, populist liberating extremism is glorious, whether or not Barry Goldwater meant it, saying "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, (and) moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!"

Uprisings are testing America's Middle East iron grip. Matching homeland ones are now crucial, demanding real, not fake democracy, freedom, jobs, education, health care, and overall economic justice, the kind Franklin Roosevelt suggested in his last State of the Union address, proposing a second bill of rights, saying the first one "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness."

His solution: an "economic bill of rights," guaranteeing:

• employment with a living wage;
• freedom from unfair competition and monopolies;
• housing;
• medical care;
• education;
• social security and more, overall what he inadequately provided in his first 11 years, except for measures like the 1935 Wagner Act letting workers, for the first time, bargain collectively on even terms with management, and the landmark Social Security Act, keeping millions of retirees, disabled, and qualified survivors from impoverishment's ravages.

He also stressed other measures, including:

• "A realistic tax law - which will tax all unreasonable profit," corporate and individual;
• "A cost of food law" with floor and ceiling limits on prices; and
• reenactment of the October 1942 stabilization statute, pertaining to prices, wages and salaries affecting the cost of living, saying:

"We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence."

Today, these ideas are abandoned at a time of an unprecedented wealth gap, and officials ignoring essential needs of growing millions, on their own and out of luck because both major parties spurn them.

Instead they rampage globally, bail out bankers and other corporate favorites, and enact repressive laws, heading America toward banana republic harshness, tyranny and ruin. No matter. So far, public outrage is absent. For how long is at issue.

Spreading Revolutionary Fervor

On February 1, trends watcher Gerald Celente headlined, "Revolutionary Fervor to Spread Beyond Arab States; Europe Next," saying:

"The unintended consequences of the regime changes in North Africa and the Middle East" will be as dramatic in Europe, resulting in governments ousted. World leaders and media aren't "recognizing the Egyptian uprising for what it is: a prelude to a series of civil wars that will lead to regional wars, that will lead to the first 'Great War' of the 21st century."

In spring 2010, Celente published a report titled, "The History of The Future: Trends 2012 - The Great War," saying:

Gripped by the "Greatest Depression," he suggested possible "Armageddon Day" in December 2012. "Who would have thought," he asked? "On the way....there was no hint of it in the media, mainstream or alternative," despite plenty of "obvious dots" to connect, revealing "a range of possible outcomes."

What's ahead? "Renaissance or Ruin," he asked. Prepare yourself! "The path to war is already clearly defined. The fires of hatred and revenge have been fueled by decades of persecution and injustice....In the absence of a 'Great Awakening,' there will be a 'Great War.' " Or is a "Renaissance 2012" possible, similar to when:

• America's role model was Main Street, not Wall Street;
• Bedrock middle class values mattered;
• Industrial America offered high-pay, good benefit jobs;
• new generations bettered previous ones;
• Family, not factory, farms fed people;
• Real, not Frankenfood, was commonplace;
• "Quality counted, not just the bottom line;"
• corporate power was less dominant;
• community businesses flourished;
• public schools taught, offering inner-city kids chances for higher education achievement and real futures; and
• hope persisted for better times ahead.

That America is gone, yet rebirth is possible "based on the recognition that much of what worked in the past, in principle, could be effectively and profitably applied to the 21st century." However, getting there requires "rethinking and revaluat(ing)....(d)destructive habits masquerading as 'progress,' (reversing) America's quality-of-life decline" that, so far, shows no signs of materializing.

Will future uprisings roil Europe and America? Who can know or when, but without them, real change won't come, just more double talk and false promises, heading America, and perhaps Western civilization, for tyranny and ruin before whatever emerges on the other side, if there is one.

* 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.

By Dr. Elias Akleh * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

The Palestinians had not gained any positive results through these negotiations. On the contrary they have been witnessing their land being gradually snatched from under them few meters at a time, more of their rights being continuously violated, and more and more of them being routinely murdered by Israeli army and extremist colonizers (settlers).

Although not talked about openly the Palestinians had what could be described as unconscious knowledge of the dubious nature of the negotiations the Palestinian negotiating team is leading. WikiLeaks had just uncovered what have been well-known facts and had forced people to face and to talk about them.

What was really surprising is how far the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its negotiators have been willing to offer the Israelis, who have rejected all the Palestinian generous and free concessions, and the total pro-Israeli bias of the self-claimed American honest peace broker, who exerted tremendous pressure on the PA to surrender even more concessions.

The Palestine Papers have exposed PA and its negotiating team as traitors, who betrayed a national trust given to them by their own people. The Palestinian negotiating team had given Israel so many concessions while getting nothing in return. Besides accepting Israel's existence on occupied Palestinian land in 1948 they had also agreed to accept Israel's annexation of large tracts of 1967 occupied territories over which the Israelis had built more colonies (settlements) especially around Jerusalem in contravention to international laws that consider all settlements in occupied land as illegal. It also seems that they had agreed to some sort of shared sovereignty over Haram Al-Sharif; one of the most Islamic holy sites that is the property of the Islamic Waqf (trust) and belongs to all Muslims not just to the Palestinians.

It seems that the PA had also given up the legitimate rights of seven million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, as guaranteed by all international laws and by UN resolution 194. They had considered it impractical while, at the same time, accepting the fraudulent Jewish claim of right of return from different countries all over the globe to Palestine. They, instead, have negotiated the return of a very small number of Palestinians only to the proposed yet-undefined future Palestinian state in the form of humanitarian reunion of family members.

The PA had also negotiated some sort of security cooperation with Israel that had made the Palestinian forces an Israeli proxy security forces protecting Israeli extremist colonizers and oppressing all forms of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation. This involved, among others, the imprisoning and torturing of Palestinian freedom fighters and political figures, providing security information to Israeli soldiers concerning the locations and movement of Palestinian activists, and allowing the Israeli soldiers to operate freely within the Palestinian towns to arrest and to assassinate activists and Hamas members.

Worst of all the WikiLeaks papers had exposed the roles the PA had played in inciting against the democratically elected Hamas government, its role in the failed coup in Gaza, its cooperation with Israel in the illegal economic siege against Gaza, it's pre-knowledge of the 2008-2009 Cast Lead Operation against Gaza and its intelligence sharing with the Israeli army, and its deployment of security troops to the borders of Gaza/Egypt in preparation of taking over Gaza as soon as the Israeli army finishes off Hamas.

Robert Fisk stated in his article "The Palestine Papers are as damning as the Balfour Declaration". This is actually far worse than Balfour Declaration. We would expect Zionist British Balfour to betray Palestinians, but we would not have expected the PA, who claims to struggle for Palestinians' rights and to establish Palestinian state, to betray their own Palestinian brothers.

The response of the PA and its negotiating team to the Palestine Papers was so pathetic. I have watched their angry emotional nonsensical and at times hostile defense while being interviewed on Al-Jazeera TV, especially that of the Chief Palestinian Negotiator, Saeb Erekat. During his interview Mr. Erekat was extremely emotional, agitated, furious, very hostile, trying to talk down his interviewer with loud screaming voice, avoiding most of the questions posed to him, accusing his interviewer and Al-Jazeera of incitement against his person specifically and against Palestinians in general, threatening to sue Al-Jazeera, and talking big about patriotism and his own struggle to put Palestine back on the map. Never in my life have I felt pity for and disappointment with such a man assigned to be a chief negotiator with such a pathetic childish dialogue skills.

The 20 years history of this Palestinian negotiating team has failed to show any success. They failed to gain even one inch of occupied land back despite all the major concessions they offered Israel. With such failure it is so shameful that such a team was never changed even once while the Israeli negotiating team has been changed so many times.

It is understandable that negotiations between a weak occupied nation and its stronger occupying power yields only surrender agreements. It is also known, in the case of Palestinians, that the other rich Arab governments are no longer providing enough financial support to the PA to survive, and had left them under the conditional financial mercy of the Quartet and especially the US. The PA is forced to obey the dictate of the American administration for fear of losing its financial and logistical support. It appears that PA and its negotiating team had sold their souls and are willing to betray their people in order to stay in their political positions that generate handsome income into their own pockets. It is extremely shameful that they are willing to meet with their enemy to strike shady cooperative deals rather than meeting with their Palestinian brothers in the democratically elected Hamas government for reconciliation. Honorable men would have resigned their positions, when under pressure, rather than giving in to unjust political pressure causing harm to their people.

What was also surprising, besides the PA's generous concession, is the degree to which the Israelis were unwilling to accept these concessions that might have led to some sort of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Israelis seem to accept nothing less than complete capitulation by the Palestinians to everything they demand up front. This cast a doubt about Israel's seriousness in achieving any type of peace agreement. If peace is what the Israelis aspire for, as they keep claiming, they would have accepted the Arab Peace Initiative that guarantees them the peace and the security they claim to fervently seek.

Israel has adopted the Zionist dream of Jewish-only great Israel and nothing less would satisfy them. Israel's unwilling to accept all the generous Palestinian concessions reveal their false claim that they do not have any Palestinian/Arab partner in peace. The fact is that Israeli government, itself, is not willing to be a peace partner with the Arabs.

What is very striking in the Papers is the role the American administration had played in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Successive American administrations had continuously exhibited extreme bias towards Israelis regardless of the crimes they commit. Such bias can be seen in the US vetoing every UN resolution against Israel, supporting and arming Israel in its 2006 war against Lebanon and its 2008/9 war against Gaza, sidelining Goldstone's Report incriminating Israel in war crimes, and defending Israeli piracy against the Gaza Humanitarian Flotilla. In fact the American administrations had been Israel's faithful lawyer and financer

As for the Palestinian side the American administrations had always applied political pressure to force them into surrendering more concessions. The administration has gone as far as violating its sacred calling and aspiration for supporting freedom and democracy when it opposed the Palestinian democratic choice of a Hamas government, and went as far as arranging for a coup against that government and supporting the illegal blockade of Gaza.

As for the plight of the Palestinian refugees the Palestine Papers revealed that the previous Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, had the audacity to offer the mass transfer of these refugees, as if they were cattle, to some Latin American countries such as Chile and Argentine, assuming the authority to force the refugees onto the citizens of these countries regardless of any ethnic conflict that would arise.

The US had obstructed PA to resort to UN Security Council to extract recognition of a Palestinian state and pressured the PA back into the fruitless negotiations under the claim that such negotiation is the only means of solving the conflict. The US had offered only lip service against the Israeli violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention of building settlements on usurped Palestinian land in the occupied territories but had done nothing to stop it. The least the US could do to enforce the international law in this regard is to withhold, or at least threaten to withhold, all financial aid to Israel that is being used to build such settlements and to subsidize housing for Israeli extremists.

The American administration is not an honest peace broker as they keep claiming; rather it is a very active partner in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

America's Worst Kept Secret

By Gordon Duff* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"MR. PRESIDENT, THE FIRST PLANE HAS HIT ON SCHEDULE"

An Israel film crew, found later to be Mossad agents, partied in the streets, having filmed the attacks. They couldn't control their joy in seeing thousands of Americans die. The equipment gathered up days in advance, cameras loaded the night before.

Hours before the attack, they began their drive, selecting the perfect spot, setting up their cameras and perhaps some other electronic equipment as well. Their rationale, "We were there to film the planes crashing into the World Trade Center."

"God bless us all," those news people are clever ones, prescient to a fault.

Nearly a decade later, rigged elections, phony wars, more CIA drug dealing, economic thievery beyond imagination, accusations of war crimes and more, so much more, faith has been lost in every American institution. Nothing can be trusted, least of all the American government.

The one truth stands out beyond all others. 9/11 was a combined operation between Israel's Mossad and rogue groups in America including the leadership of the White House, Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA. It is called a truth because this is where the evidence leads and with it public opinion.

If evidence can't all be destroyed and public opinion controlled then both evidence and public opinion can be "exiled." Thus, a news blackout for 9 years has descended over the US, blocking all reporting of alternative theories on 9/11 with the same vigor used to block questions about Israel's nuclear weapons.

It worked for the Soviet Union, will it work for America? Can a government and press alliance, only possible in a dictatorship, exile reality, sending it to a veritable Siberia, replacing it with myth?

Is the real America a dictatorship?

All rational judgement based on forensic evidence, testimony and documentation leads no other possible direction. It is science, it is law, it is reason. Any other assumption is myth, conspiracy theory but most of all, treason. There is little left in Washington anymore but treason, treason and silence.

Do Americans really believe this, is this how they think? If this is true, then why is nothing done, no general strikes, no marches on Washington? Is there also proof that Americans have lost so much confidence in themselves and each other that no change that isn't "Fox News approved" can hope to succeed?

Do Americans feel powerless and humiliated? Is this why so many troops returning from war are killing themselves?

It is estimated that the current "off year" elections will cost 1.2 billion dollars. Half of that money will come from sources tied to narcotics smuggling from Afghanistan and Mexico and much of the rest will be from arms, oil and insurance industries. The most powerful nation in the history of earth continues to fail in two areas, the endless stream of narcotics coming into America from Mexico and the massive seasonal increases in opium/heroin production in Afghanistan despite billion dollar "eradication" efforts.

This isn't conspiracy theory, it is fact.

With talk about Koran burnings organized by Fox News and how angry the world's 1.2 billion Muslims will be, we see that number again, why is the myth of 9/11, the staged attack on America by Israel and their paid Washington lackeys, so important to sell? Why is the American government so afraid of the American people, why if America is really a democracy?

There is a reason.

People simply don't believe the lies anymore. How do we know this? Did we read it in the papers or hear it on television. Think about it. "A poll today indicated that 74% of Americans no longer accept the findings of the 9/11 Commission." Actually, you will never hear that because we can't discuss the findings of the 9/11 Commission.

There was a report, one rescinded by most of the members, but the findings themselves were something else. Findings are facts, a "report" is what was said, not what was proven, not what was true, not even what was possible.

The Commission found that it had not been allowed to investigate properly, that evidence had been withheld and that crimes were committed by government and military leaders including, not only the destruction of evidence but perjured testimony. The findings of the 9/11 Commission were simple, they found evidence of a criminal conspiracy that prevented an honest investigation.

Those are the findings.

The findings were not published though they were announced, written of in books, articles, speeches were made but the findings are a problem. The findings "found" those that had empowered the Commission were criminals. Is it possible to define a conflict of interest more clearly than this?

How about the "court of public opinion." Let us define "public opinion." We know this, at one point, several years ago, 65% of Europeans believed that 9/11 was an "inside job," meaning that the Bush administration was complicit in the planning and execution of 9/11.

That number is much higher today, estimated at 80%.

The question, however, has never been asked in the United States. Do 65% of Americans believe that 9/11 is was an inside job? Maybe. I think the falling poll numbers of George W. Bush were always based on 9/11 and the belief by some Americans he was complicit. CBS followed Bush popularity ratings and found some startling evidence of a mysterious and inexplicable mistrust many Americans developed after 9/11 and the Iraq War began to fall apart. President Jimmie Carter left office with an approval rating twice that of Bush, even while Iranians held 52 Americans hostage.

(CBS) President Bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll showing Mr. Bush's final approval rating at 22 percent.

Seventy-three percent say they disapprove of the way Mr. Bush has handled his job as president over the last eight years.
Mr. Bush's final approval rating is the lowest final rating for an outgoing president since Gallup began asking about presidential approval more than 70 years ago.

The rating is far below the final ratings of recent two-term presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, who both ended their terms with a 68 percent approval rating, according to CBS News polling.

Recent one term presidents also had higher ratings than Mr. Bush. His father George H.W. Bush had an end-of-term rating of 54 percent, while Jimmy Carter's rating was 44 percent.

Harry Truman had previously had the lowest end-of-term approval at 32 percent, as measured by Gallup.
Views of Mr. Bush's popularity are highly partisan. Only 6 percent of Democrats approve of the job he has done as president, while 57 percent of Republicans approve. Eighteen percent of independents approve.
Interestingly, Mr. Bush also has the distinction of having the highest approval rating for a president, as well as the lowest.
In November 2008, just before the presidential election, only 20 percent approved of the job he was doing as president - the lowest of any president since Gallup began asking the question in 1938.
But Mr. Bush enjoyed a high approval rating of 90 percent - the highest of any president - following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

With total control of the press and the "Mission Accomplished" victory in Iraq under his belt, the execution of Saddam Hussein and the full and total backing of the oil, defense and financial sectors of the economy, the American people mistrusted Bush like no other person in their history.
There is no other explanation than 9/11. Bush popularity/disapproval ratings were tied to his personal credibility in two areas, Iraq and 9/11. There was no public outcry over the invasion of Iraq but there may well have been a public outcry over treason involving 9/11. There is no other explanation possible.

It isn't "conclusive proof" but it is certainly beyond reasonable doubt. No wonder the media in the United States avoids asking hard questions about 9/11.

With only most recent trends bringing Israeli complicity in the planning and execution to the forefront, the 'Dancing Israelis," the Larry Silverstein admissions and recent revelations of Mossad sponsored terrorism, empirical evidence of a strong public outcry against Israel doesn't exist. The same, however, can't be made for President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their closest associates and advisers.

Only one possible thing could bring a 90% approval rating down to 22%.

By 2009, 78% of Americans believed that President Bush was responsible for 9/11, either directly or indirectly. How many simply believe Bush was "asleep at the switch?" How many believe something more? Is the most common belief that he had foreknowledge and chose to do nothing?

Is the media frenzy, even to the point of endangering our troops in the field, a admission that 9/11 treason may blow America apart? Is this why President Obama has kept so many of the illegal Bush security protocols in place? Is this why a "kill switch" has been installed on the internet and a "conspiracy czar" has been appointed by President Obama, one who has openly stated"

"attempts by conspiracy theorists to tie Israel to 9/11 are the greatest security threats to the United States".....Cass Sunstein, Obama Regulatory Czar.

September 2001, 90% - January 2009, 22%

Were the numbers to have crashed when the economy tanked in 2007 it would be one thing. Bush was down in the 20% range in 2006. Were people to hate Bush as they did Nixon or see him as ineffective as they did with Carter, this could also be a rationale. Neither factor applies, there is little question of this. Even those who most strongly disapproved of Bush never found him indecisive.

What is clear is one thing and one thing only, trust, not just minor suspicions of lack of ability or political game-playing.

The suspicion is clear. A majority of Americans suspect President Bush may have been involved in treason.

Ask this question anywhere in the world, Europe, Canada, Latin America or the Middle East, even ask it in Japan. The truth, the only truth available to Americans, is that they are not that different than the rest of the world. America is not a nation of fools or dupes.

They are simply reported that way.

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

Illustration by David Klein

By George Bisharat* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Where is the Palestinian Mandela?" pundits occasionally ask. But after these latest Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington fail -- as they inevitably will -- the more pressing question may be: "Where is the Israeli de Klerk?" Will an Israeli leader emerge with the former South African president's moral courage and foresight to dismantle a discriminatory regime and foster democracy based on equal rights?

For decades, the international community has assumed that historic Palestine must be divided between Jews and Palestinians. Yet no satisfactory division of the land has been reached. Israel has aggravated the problem by settling roughly 500,000 Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, eliminating the land base for a viable Palestinian state.

A de facto one-state reality has emerged, with Israel effectively ruling virtually all of the former Palestine. Yet only Jews enjoy full rights in this functionally unitary political system. In contrast, Palestinian citizens of Israel endure more than 35 laws that explicitly privilege Jews as well as policies that deliberately marginalize them. West Bank Palestinians cannot drive on roads built for Israeli settlers, while Palestinians in Gaza watch as their children's intellectual and physical growth are stunted by an Israeli siege that has limited educational opportunities and deepened poverty to acute levels.

Palestinian refugees have lived in exile for 62 years, their right to return to their homes denied, while Jews from anywhere can freely immigrate to Israel.

Israeli leaders Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak have admitted that permanent Israeli rule over disenfranchised Palestinians would be tantamount to apartheid. Other observers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have said that apartheid has already taken root in the region.

Clearly, Palestinians and Israeli Jews will continue to live together. The question is: under what terms? Palestinians will no more accept permanent subordination than would any other people.

The answer is for Israelis and Palestinians to formalize their de facto one-state reality but on principles of equal rights rather than ethnic privilege. A carefully crafted multiyear transition including mechanisms for reconciliation would be mandatory. Israel/Palestine should have a secular, bilingual government elected on the basis of one person, one vote as well as strong constitutional guarantees of equality and protection of minorities, bolstered by international guarantees. Immigration should follow nondiscriminatory criteria. Civil marriage between members of different ethnic or religious groups should be permitted. Citizens should be free to reside in any part of the country, and public symbols, education and holidays should reflect the population's diversity.

Although the one-state option is sometimes dismissed as utopian, it overcomes major obstacles bedeviling the two-state solution. Borders need not be drawn, Jerusalem would remain undivided and Jewish settlers could stay in the West Bank. Moreover, a single state could better accommodate the return of Palestinian refugees. A state based on principles of equality and inclusion would be more morally compelling than two states based on narrow ethnic nationalism. Furthermore, it would be more consistent with antidiscrimination provisions of international law. Israelis would enjoy the international acceptance that has long eluded them and the associated benefits of friendship, commerce and travel in the Arab world.

The main obstacle to a single-state solution is the belief that Israel must be a Jewish state. Jim Crow laws and South African apartheid were similarly entrenched virtually until the eves of their demise. History suggests that no version of ethnic privilege can ultimately persist in a multiethnic society.

Israeli perspectives are already beginning to shift, most intriguingly among right-wing leaders. Former defense minister Moshe Arens recently proposed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israel annex the West Bank and offer its residents citizenship. Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin and Likud parliamentarian Tzipi Hotovely have also supported citizenship for West Bank Palestinians, according to the Haaretz. In July, Hotovely said of the Israeli government's policies of separation: "The result is a solution that perpetuates the conflict and turns us from occupiers into perpetrators of massacres, to put it bluntly."

Is one of these politicians the Israeli de Klerk? That remains to be seen. Gaza is pointedly excluded from the Israeli right's annexation debate. They still envision a Jewish state, simply one with a larger Palestinian minority. But their challenge to the two-state orthodoxy, which empirical experience has proven unrealistic, is healthy.

If Americans aspire to more than managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via perpetual and inconclusive negotiations, we should applaud this emerging discussion. Having overcome our own institutionalized racial discrimination, we can model the virtues of a vibrant, multicultural society based on equal rights. President Obama, moreover, would be a fitting emissary for this vital message.

* George Bisharat is a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestinian Studies.

By Khalid Amayreh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The prevailing disputation over the right of Muslim Americans to build a community centre and mosque a short distance from the site of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks has garnered plenty of headlines in the past few days. The controversy calls for an honest reappraisal of the precise position of Muslim Americans in the United States. The altercation has polarised US public opinion and raised tension in the Arab and Muslim world.

"It saddens me to think that people don't understand what building this mosque on hallowed ground really represents," pontificated Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, infamous running mate of 2008 Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain, and an iconic figure of the war-mongering neoconservatives and discredited Republican far-right.

Another icon of the bellicose right, Newt Gingrich, was quoted in Fox News as lambasting the construction of an Islamic centre "right at the edge of a place where, let's be clear, thousands of Americans were killed in an attack by radical Islamists."

The irony, wrote Anthony DiMaggio, author of Permanent War and who taught Middle East politics at Illinois State University, is that the brouhaha is "a manufactured controversy". DiMaggio dismissed the fracas a "racist uproar" and denounced the right-wing radio and television campaign in America for framing Islam as "radical, fundamentalist and a threat to national security".

Worse, US President Barack Obama was denigrated as a "closet Muslim terrorist" for publicly lending support to the construction of the Islamic centre so close as it is to Ground Zero in New York. "Obama is a non-citizen," his detractors contended. This latter accusation strikes at the very heart of the concept of citizenship rights and national identity.

The complexities of belonging cannot be relegated to the realm of academic treatises. The vast majority of Muslim Americans are law- abiding citizens intent on exercising their right to freely exercise the tenants of their own religion. This particular right lies at the heart of the perceiving identity -- including religious identity -- as a political problem in a nation that prides itself in the secular dispensation of its constitution and raison d'être.

Moreover, this particular fundamental right is in accordance with the First Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights that has constituted the foundation of American freedom for over 200 years. Be that as it may, religion from the inception of the US has been a major marker of identity.

Gender and race have traditionally been the key prerequisites of identity politics in the US. Since 9/11 religion has become the primary focus of political identity in the US. Shifting criterion for eligibility to a notion of "American belonging" is underway.

An African-American candidate has, theoretically at least, as much a chance of winning a presidential election as an Irish American. The possibility of a Muslim American winning a landslide victory in any presidential election in the near future is slim, to say the least.

The pertinent question is why? According to Moataz Abdel-Fattah, associate professor of Middle East Studies at Central Michigan University, Obama's comments must be viewed in context of the forthcoming congressional elections. The growing schism between conservatives and liberals in the US undermines the political stability of the country, the world's superpower. "The impediments to the rights of Muslims in the US tend to be cultural rather than political or legal. The curtailment of the freedoms of Muslims is two-fold. First, the theological bias of the Judeo-Christian tradition prevalent in the US perpetuates the myth that Islam is an exotic religion, alien to the American people and culture and there is a widespread belief that Mohamed is not a prophet".

"Moreover, Muslims tend to adopt more conservative lifestyles and rarely intermingle with non-Muslims. This insular aspect of Muslim culture in predominantly non-Muslim America, coupled with taboos on preaching Islam has traditionally worked to isolate Muslims in America and perpetrate stereotypes about Islam."

Abdel-Fattah, however, noted that one positive side effect of 9/11 was the increased curiosity of ordinary Americans about Islam. "I personally meet hundreds of people who ask me about Islam as a religion and there has been an increase in the number of Muslim faculty members at Michigan University. Indeed, Muslim Studies departments in institutions of higher learning have replaced the Black Studies departments as the new novelty in American academia."

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the American Muslim community was in disarray. Their reticence was only part of the problem. Into the breach stepped President Obama, the first African-American to hold America's top job. He was also the first US president whose father was a Muslim and whose sister is a practising Muslim. His middle name is Hussein.

It is not unusual for Americans to speak frankly about their presidents' foibles. Obama isn't quite the secular saint of legend. Nor is he a liberal per se. Obama's defence of building a Muslim community centre in lower Manhattan was applauded as a "brave step".

It is astonishing to recall how little was known publicly about Islam as a world religion, or about America's Muslims before 9/11.

Far from undermining the myth of Muslim Americans as fifth columnists, Muslims in America were dismissed as self-serving, conniving and exploitative.

This year, Eid Al-Fitr coincides with the ninth anniversary of 9/11. This brings the story up to date through the post-Bush years when the Obama administration set the tone of the new face of America. An African-American president of partially Muslim familial background led America from the front and championed the rights of the underdog, or so he was celebrated. "We understand that he wants to change the agenda. We also understand the constraints, tremendous pressures and limitations he must labour under," noted Abdel-Fattah. "Obama's message that America is not at war with Islam was well-received."

* Khalid Amayreh a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983.

Illustration by Pete Pasho: www.dollopsofirony.com

By Gordon Duff* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Whistleblower Or "Kapo Queen," American Censorship In High Gear

"I am in favor of the Zionist state. I would gladly kill Arabs, even slaughter them. I can't allow Arab lovers to ruin the perfect life I lead."....Eden Abergil

A "Kapo" was a Jew who served the Nazis, sometimes as administrators, but more often as thuggish camp police, even more brutal than the Nazi's themselves. Though over a million living in Israel claim to be "holocaust survivors," in reality only a few thousand survived the camps, many of them "Kapos." To help understand the absurdity of these "survivor" claims, we can examine another group from that era, American war veterans.

16 million Americans served in uniform during World War II. 292,000 were killed in the war. About one million survive today. The total Jewish population of countries controlled by Nazi Germany, prior to the holocaust according to the Jewish Virtual Library was 5, 811, 900. About one million survive today, we are told.

With so many Nobel Prize winners, mathematics is no longer Israel's strong suit. Neither is truth.

Whether discussing how many Palestinians were expelled, "liquidated" or imprisoned or how many tens of thousands of rockets Hamas has rained on Tel Aviv, with so few casualties, Israeli credibility is at an all time low. Eden Abergil has done as much as any Israeli citizen to bring that fact before the world, a young girl assigned to work as a Kapo in the Israeli "camp system." Is Abergil a victim, a humanitarian whistle-blower or a sociopathic Kapo torturer?

Oliver Lustig writes, in his Dictionary of the Camps:

"The Häftling (inmate) who was wearing on the left arm a black band on which it was written -KAPO- in Gothic letters of immaculate whiteness, was a chief...he could strike, beat, kill any Häftling who did not belong to the inner hierarchy of the camp...

Kapos were recruited from among sadists, from among the unscrupulous ones, who forgot they belonged to the human species, from among those who, faced with the alternative die or kill, preferred to kill. In order to prove their servility and to maintain their position as chiefs, they tried to surpass the SS-men in ferocity. The Kapos kit, beat, killed out of sadism or envy, out of the desire to assert themselves as chiefs or out fear of losing their function, out of hate of man or out of the mere pleasure to trample underfoot and torment the fellow men."

When CNN's Paula Hancocks reported the story, as is so often the case, both sides of the story were Israel. Hancock never asked why prisoners were blindfolded or about their fate. Hancock never asked what the job of camp "Kapo," how Eden Abergil and tens of thousands of other Israeli youths spend their national service, was like, the beatings, the humiliation and its obvious dehumanizing effect as was made clear by Abergil.

Was Eden Abergil a whistle-blower?

Was Abergil attempting to focus world attention on the 300,000 Palestinians who have "disappeared" over the past 60 years? Was she exposing the Israeli "gulag" system that may be holding up to 100,000 Palestinians prisoner? If this was her goal, CNN wasn't having any part of it. Not one question was asked about what her job was in the camps, how she felt about non-Jewish Israeli citizens. That came out later.

Eden Abergil, a 24 year old Israeli who recently finished her national service in the IDF, posted photographs on Facebook of herself with Palestinian torture victims. We have seen things like this before, of course, but last time it was Americans. We don't know how many photos we have or what acts they portray as CNN chose to show us only one, a depiction of Abergil mugging for the camera before a backdrop of blindfolded and "tie-wrapped" elderly Palestinian civilians.

When questioned by the Haaretz News Service in Israel, Abergail said:

I am in favor of the Zionist state. I would gladly kill Arabs, even slaughter them. I can't allow Arab lovers to ruin the perfect life I lead.

Abergil told CNN that she has received numerous death threats, many from her neighbors in Israel and has requested police protection. The question is, did Eden Abergil go on worldwide media proclaiming to be a murderous sociopath out of bad judgement or is this a clever attempt at depicting the IDF as torturers and war criminals? Now we have hundreds of similar photos going up from dozens of former IDF "kapos."

Abergil's photos are the first to come out of the camp system in Israel, known for its torture, summary executions, starvation and daily brutality. Little is known or has been reported in the west about the 60 year program of ethnic cleansing or the nature of Israel's apartheid state and system of racial and religious laws that openly discriminate against Christians and Muslims.

Comments by fellow Israeli's made on Abergil's Facebook page referred to photographs of the "chunky" former IDF "Kapo Queen" taken with torture victims as "sexy."

Abergil has raised, not only the ire of fellow Israeli's but military officials in Israel as well. With Israel's role in pushing America into a war with Iran coming under increasing attack and their role in falsifying intelligence leading to the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain, the legitimacy of the "Jewish only" Zionist state in Israel has never been under wider pressure around the world.

With Israeli terrorist and serial killer, Elias Abuelazam being pulled off a flight from Atlanta to Tel Aviv and the recent failure by Israel to address the killing of between 9 and 16 unarmed civilians on the Mavi Marmara, the theft of millions in personal items and the illegal detention of up to two dozen peace activists seized in international waters, Israel's credibility, even while exercising "veto power" over unfavorable stories in the British and American press, is at an all time low.

In Britain, a website has been established, British Propaganda Corporation, not only spoofing the BBC, but highly critical of what is said to be virtual total Israeli control of all media outlets in Britain, including and especially the state run news service, the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Current population estimates put the number of displaced Palestinians at 6 million with those in temporary camps estimated by Israel at 400,000 and by other sources at between 700,000 and 980,000. Each year, new Israeli condominium projects displace thousands more, adding to the figures given. To this mix, we add nearly 1 million "guest workers" who, with their families, are also virtual refugees, "stateless persons" subject to expulsion at any time as with Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Managing this process, the destruction of tens of thousands of homes, a vast camp system, surveillance of not only Muslims in Palestine but the entire Jewish population as well, is a vast bureaucracy largely financed by the United States. Young Jews, many of them Americans, serve in the IDF, some of them as part of this system. Some of the daily tasks performed are not only inhumane and demeaning but, technically, criminal acts subject to punishment according to international convention.

Perhaps what we are told is right, all Muslims are extremists and must be cleansed from Israel in order to maintain the purity of the Jewish race, as touted in recent scientific studies quoted in the New York Times.

"The surveys provide rich data about genetic ancestry that is of great interest to historians. "I'm constantly impressed by the manner in which the geneticists keep moving ahead with new projects and illuminating what we know of history," said Lawrence H. Schiffman, a professor of Judaic studies at New York University.

One of the surveys was conducted by Gil Atzmon of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Harry Ostrer of New York University and appears in the current American Journal of Human Genetics. The other, led by Doron M. Behar of the Rambam Health Care Campusin Haifa and Richard Villems of the University of Tartu in Estonia, is published in Thursday's edition of Nature."

The studies along with extensive and continual mathematical documentary proof of 6 million Jewish deaths during the holocaust are used as justification for Israel's "junkyard dog" foreign policy, arms dealings with rogue states like Libya, South Africa and North Korea and their policies of ethnic cleansing. Much of the impetus for "revisionist" history, those advocating a reassessment of the holocaust after declassified documents have brought some traditionally accepted dogma into doubt, has been the desire to "disarm" Israels dependence on the holocaust to justify policies against the Palestinians that parallel many aspects of Germany's persecution of the Jews under Hitler.

Thus, we may have Eden Abergil, not as a Zionist "nutcase" but exposing, perhaps unsuccessfully, what no media organization will speak of. Those men on the bench, those prisoners, so many thousands arrested, detained, questioned, worse, and none ever released.

Where do they go?

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.