Bad Movies

Israel was never a democracy for anyone. (Illustrative photo: flickr/ElvertBarnes

Israel's bad movie starts out as an historical drama with moral overtones. It's the story of Israeli democracy but, unfortunately, it has an illogical and misguided script. It begins with the premise that you can have a religiously exclusive democracy amidst a multi-religious population. Under these circumstances happy endings are impossible and the drama quickly turns to tragedy.

Final Act

The final act of this tragedy appears to be playing itself out before our eyes. It opened in 2009 with the second term of Prime Minister Netanyahu. He is a hard-line "Likudnik" determined to expand Israel to the Jordan River (if not the Potomac). That makes him an ally and supporter of the settler fanatics who represent today's version of Zionist fascists.

There is a correlation between the condition of Israeli democracy and the ambitions of Netanyahu's allies. As the settlements expand, Israeli democracy shrinks. This in turn is tied into the fact that the prime minister is determined to keep greater Israel demographically Jewish, and this means expansion must be coupled with ethnic cleansing. One can see this clearly in present Israeli policies in East Jerusalem as well as the violent harassment of Palestinians by settler thugs throughout the West Bank. Following logically from the flawed premise in the original script, this is a perfectly predictable ending for the story of modern Israel.

The drama now turning into tragedy has its peculiarly Jewish subplots. There have always been multiple expressions of Judaism. One has been the East European insular version born of acute persecution. This version expressed an inward tribal orientation that assigned the role of real or potential anti-Semites to all those who are non-Jews. Then there was the pre-1967 American version. This one was outward looking and held in high esteem the general principles of tolerance. Here the reasoning was that, as a minority, Jews were safest in a world where tolerance was a universal virtue. In Israel/Palestine it was the East Europeans who shaped the outlook of most Jewish citizens.

That paranoid outlook is certainly the one held by Netanyahu, but he inherited it from others of East European origin. He, and his supporters, are the heirs of Vladimir Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin. This is not to say that Israel's Labor Party heritage was not also insular and expansionist. After all David Ben Gurion was from Russian controlled Poland. The differences between the two groups are a matter of quantitative and not qualitative. However, it is Netanyahu and his coalition who control the Israeli government. They rule in the Knesset. And they are using their power to destroy not only the Palestinians but also those Israeli Jews who would defend the bygone American version of tolerant Judaism. One can only imagine that Netanyahu and his fanatics look upon these other Jews, who would make their peace with the Palestinians, as the Bolshevik fanatics once looked upon the Kronstadt sailors. They ultimately see them as dangerous traitors.

Just in the past few weeks the Knesset has spat out a number of bills aimed at restricting the voices of Jewish opponents and to make it more difficult for them to secure appointed offices. Part of a continuing line of similar legislation, these new potential laws represent scenes in the final act of this tragedy. Here are some highlights:

1. A bill to "ban political organizations in Israel from receiving donations of more than $5000 from foreign governments and other international groups." Peace groups such as Peace Now and human rights organizations such as B'Tselem, as well as others which are normally critical of the Israeli government would lose much of their funding under the new law.

2. Another bill in the pipeline would then tax at 45% all remaining income from foreign governments. Put together the two bills will have a "staggering" impact.

Yet, it will come as no surprise that individual donors, such as wealthy right-wing Zionists who give millions of tax free dollars to sustain the settler movement, are exempt from the new laws.

As noted, there are other laws as well that are causing concern. It is now a criminal offense in Israel to advocate a boycott of the country and its illegal settlements, or to mark the occurrence of the Nakba. There are bills pending that would make it easier to pack the Israeli supreme court with rightists and even to punish media outlets who dare to investigate the prime minister or his wife. Thus does Israeli democracy fade to black.

The Reviews

The argument on the part of the Netanyahu forces is that the money coming from foreign governments and organizations represents "meddling" in the internal affairs of Israel. Well the Israeli establishment should certainly know meddling when they see it. Their politicians and agents are no doubt the world's experts at meddling in the affairs of other countries, particularly the United States. Here, through the manipulation of large cash donations, they meddle away to their heart's content, to the predicable detriment of U.S. national interests in the Middle East. Simultaneously, these same Israeli politicians see no problem in receiving a minimum of $3 billion a year from the foreign government in Washington.

These new laws have a lot of Israelis upset, and not just those who are going to be directly impacted. The official opposition in Israel, the Kadima Party (ambitiously translated as the "forward" party) has suddenly taken it upon itself to warn the nation that democracy is in danger. Tzipi Livni, former foreign minister and now leader of the opposition (also rather infamous for her part in the "Cast Lead" invasion of Gaza), said that "this is an attempt to turn Israel into a dark...dictatorship." The ceremonial president of Israel, Shimon Peres, has declared that "these proposals deviate from the basis of democracy." Of course there is a good bit of hypocrisy in these protests. These dissenters never exercised their consciences over the suppression of the democratic rights of non-Jews. Nevertheless, the targeting of the rights of Jews, even tolerant ones, is "beyond the Pale." But that is what you get when you deny the rights of others. Sooner or later the process comes full circle and those in the in-crowd lose their rights too.

When the screen fades to black all that will be left of Israeli democracy is a facade, a democracy in name only. For many, however, that will be sufficient. It will certainly be sufficient for the Israeli politicians who, living wholly within their Zionist ideology, prize its commandments above all else. And it will suffice for the lobbyists and propagandists who must manage the image of the Zionist state so that those Americans who give money and make the policies can maintain the fantasy that Israel is "just like us." And finally, it will no doubt suffice for American Jewish congregants who do not want to be ostracized from synagogues run by businessmen whose only connection to "their people" comes from blindly supporting Israel.

Will it suffice for the rest of us? Hopefully not. Perhaps as the last act of this bad movie plays out many other reviews will come forth criticizing the media image of Israel as fraudulent, the product of half-truths running on to lies. That might take a bit of lobbying on the part of those who see this movie as a real disservice not only to Palestinians, but also to Jews. But take heart and remember what Will Rogers once said, "there is only one thing that can kill [bad] movies and that's education."

* 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.

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"Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven."
--H. L. Mencken

Voices among Arab protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria have been calling for "democracy".

Voices from Israel have falsely boasted that Israel has the only democracy in the Middle East.

Voices in the U.S. have praised American democracy as the ideal form of government.

What is it that these voices are urging? None of these voices is celebrating the same thing. Nothing they're exalting would be praiseworthy by the people.

Sound arguments can be made against any form of democracy. One need only view comedian Jay Leno when he interviews people on the street.

Leno asks questions that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge should be able to answer. The extent of the ignorance of the average public is perfect for a comedian, but disastrous for a democracy.

Winston Churchill once said, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

John F. Kennedy, obviously thinking about the average voter, said, "The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."

Returning to the voices for democracy, Arab protesters often don't know what it entails other than a constitution, a vote and representative voices in a parliament or congress.

Franklin D. Roosevelt warned, "Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education."

How many protestors that we've seen on television have the education needed to make wise choices either as voters or elected representatives?

What is the appeal of "democracy" to the masses? George Orwell had it right when he wrote:

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

The next voice - the voice of Israel, has long claimed its uniqueness as the only democracy in the Middle East.

Not by any reasonable definition of democracy can ethnic favouritism claim to be democratic. For Israeli Arabs, Israel behaves like an apartheid state.

Americans should have listened more closely to Woodrow Wilson who saw in the microcosm of his time the truth that has persisted in what Americans call democracy.

Early in the 20^th century, Wilson observed, "The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy."

The protests in America against Wall Street, now spreading around the country and the world, reflect the growing resistance of the masses to control by the wealthy.

Those bosses and their lobbyists control the Congress. The rich have bought the democracy. The Zionist lobby has significant control over the members of Congress.

Special interest groups have complete control over the media. Major newspapers, magazines, TV or radio stations dare not criticise Israel or vote against Zionist wishes.

Those who believe that democracy is the perfect form of government should examine closely what the people want, and then consider those desires next to Israel that's touted as the only form of democracy in the Middle East.

Consider the actual operation of democracy in America and the UK, where Zionists, representing foreign interests and lobbyists for the wealthy, control Congress and Parliament.

The world has known benevolent rulers who have done much better by their publics.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

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Pulitzer prize winning author, poet, and activist, Alice Walker, speaking at a press conference about why she will be on the "Audacity of Hope."

Drawing from her own experience of living under segregation and witnessing the solidarity in the Civil Rights Movement in America, she said, "when black people were enslaved for 300 years, it took a lot of people in the outside of our communities to help free us." Speaking about the American boat to Gaza, Walker said, "I am going to Gaza because my government has failed to understand or care about the Gazan people, but worse than that, it is ignorant of our own history in the United States."

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

Source: Democracy Now!

Also read "Alice Walker: Why I'm sailing to Gaza."

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Revolution in Egypt and Tunisia

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

"There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit."
--Napoleon Bonaparte

Two Arab Tyrants Down, Twenty to Go.

Freedom!! How sweet its sound, how delicious its taste, how musical its voice, how fresh its air, how aromatic its scent, how bright its sun, how bright and full its moon, how green its pastures, how sparkling its water, how beautiful its heaven decorated with the canvas of clouds, how irreversible its path, how glorious the death under its presence.

I thank God for the blessing to be alive to witness the birth of freedom in Tunis and Egypt. God willing freedom will ring throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

Within one month of each other Ben Ali in Tunis and Mubarak in Egypt fell, not by a military coup or assassination, but by millions of people from all walks of life, men and women, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, Muslims and Christians, the elderly and children, professionals and civil servants, even soldiers and police who abandoned their posts to join the greatest revolutions in Arab history.

The Arab youth in Tunis and Egypt have shown the world the civilized power of their conviction, their peaceful resistance, and their willingness to endure death and hardship to remove tyrants and invite freedom into their lives and lands. A new brighter sun of freedom arose upon the Qasbah Government Square in Tunis, only to glowingly rise again with warmth and comfort upon the Egyptian youth huddled in unity at Tahrir Square (Liberation Square) in Cairo. God answered the prayers of the oppressed and delivered His blessing of freedom to his beloved servants.

The majority of the Arab world is young, unemployed, and deprived of the basic necessities of life, a life of dignity, honor, and liberty. These young men and women are exposed through the internet, satellites, and cell phones to an outside world that has left them behind in their chained lives. All they want is freedom to choose and the opportunity for an education, job, shelter, marriage, and most of all, a life without fear.

No longer will the Arab youth ever tolerate being caged in their oppressive environment. These revolutions will surely spread to the entire Arab and Muslim world where from every mosque and church the clamor and call for freedom will emanate to the heavens calling for God's guidance and blessing to free them from bondage.

They will be silent no more.

The youth of Tunis and Egypt are now the guardians of their democracy in an Arab world deprived of freedom for centuries, from colonial imperialists to military and monarchial dictators. No external or internal military force can keep them from the destiny they paved with their blood and tortured bodies.

They are Generation "G"; Guardians of Freedom.

These Guardians will prevent their revolutions from slipping to the past; but will ensure its continued path to the future.

They are the generation who know not the word impossible, but are the youth of all things possible.

For almost a decade America has spent trillions of dollars and sent the most powerful military to Afghanistan and Iraq to spread "democracy"; only to fail and create more violence, terrorism, death, destruction, poverty, and more hatred of its policies.

Killer Drones don't spread democracy, people power does.

What America failed to do with might, young Tunisians and Egyptians accomplished in days without firing a shot; their only weapons were their will and dream for freedom in their homeland.

The world has fallen in love with respect and admiration with these most courageous, principled, internet savvy youth who brought down two powerful tyrants beloved by America, Israel, the European Union, and their fellow Arab dictators.

It's always been a shameful, embarrassing, and comedo-tragic spectacle to see 22 tyrants meet in the annual Arab League summit to out-American, out-Ionize Israel, and out-ego each other; delivering the same lies and promises since the creation of the Arab League in Cairo in 1945. All of them knew that everyone else, like themselves, is a CIA owned and Mossad infiltrated regime, yet they were fine with the status quo as long as they could embezzle hundreds of billions of their people's money.

For 66 years these murderous oppressive tyrants have not delivered one single beneficial program or project to benefit their impoverished, hungry, thirsty, unemployed, illiterate and sick populations.

Their enemies were their own faith, people, and enemies' identified by the United States and Israel. These genocidal occupiers of Arab and Muslim lands were the tyrant's best friends and protectors.

While the Egyptian youth were being killed by Mubarak's police in search of freedom, Dubai was hosting the "Dubai Desert Classic Golf Tournament" where Tiger Woods was among the players.

After the brilliantly organized and implemented revolutions in Tunis and Egypt, the young democrats in both nations must be vigilant and guard against the theft and manipulation of their successful revolutions. Many internal and external forces will coalesce to reinstate military dictatorships to serve their political, economic, and security interests. Both armies are patsies of the old tyrants and were lavished with billions of dollars to secure their loyalty.

The Military in both nations must never be allowed to seize, control, or prolong their rule under the guise of security from internal (such as the boogeyman "Muslim Brotherhood") or external threats. In fact, it is they who are the greatest threat to what millions of Tunisians and Egyptians accomplished and died for—a free democracy.

The Revolutions succeeded in overcoming the main obstacle of removing tyrants; now the real difficult work of constructing a democracy begins.

How extraordinary that the youthful democrats are already aware of this scenario and are holding the feet of the military to the fire. Don't let the fire be extinguished, but reinforce it with more voices and unrelenting demands.

If the youth can overthrow powerful iron fisted corrupt tyrants in weeks they can surely overcome anything.

Nothing to them is impossible anymore

The world is with you, so continue your march to total democracy in peace, patience, and prayer.

Allah Akbar.

* 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.

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Victory - Illustration by Carlos Latuff

Long live the revolution

By Christopher King * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Congratulations to the people of Europe in forcing their despotic ruler out. There is some distance to go but they are on the road to form a genuine democracy. Their army has done what is right and in fact it always hinted that it would remain neutral. It is acting in the fine tradition of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

It would be easy to contrast the Egyptian army’s identification with its people with those of Europe but this is not the time to do so. Suffice to say that the people’s achievement will send tremors through the ruling classes of Europe and America. As for the countries of the Middle East one can expect a considerable outflow of funds from their rulers to their Swiss bank accounts.

The French revolution sent shivers through every crowned head in Europe and drove a wave of reform everywhere of which Britain was unfortunately on the periphery. Let us see whether the people of Britain can learn from Egypt.

It is unfortunate that the United States, the self-proclaimed champion of freedom and democracy, can claim no credit in this case. Nor can the European Union. I shall say no more on such a happy occasion when Egypt has been an example to both the United States and Europe.

Those of us who believe in freedom and democracy share Egypt’s happiness. We again congratulate the people of Egypt not only on their extraordinary achievement, but also on the dignified and peaceful manner in which it was achieved. They will, with pride, tell their children and grandchildren of what they did on the streets and rightly so.

* Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK.

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• The US arms industry and the people’s revolt in Egypt

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.

Related posts:

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• Democracy, Bush-style, in the Gulf
• American Democracy: Pro-Israel Tweedledum And Tweedledee

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

Historical Precedent

By Bendib

Historical Need

The truth is that there has always been a gap between the interests of the general citizenry and interests as they take shape at the level of state policy. It is within that gap that secret diplomacy thrives. One can see this most clearly in the case of dictatorships. For instance, if you travel about the Middle East, say to Jordan or Egypt, everyone takes it for granted that there is no connection between the business of the people and the business of the state. The state is run by narrow elites who make policy according to their own needs and the public plays no role and is given little consideration. Its fate is to be lied to and manipulated. So, of course, those elites are going to operate from back rooms and behind censored media. The person on the street knows this to be so and accepts it because, if he or she protests, the "security" services will come after them. They will be charged with endangering the state or framed for some other crime. And their lives will be ruined.

But what about democracies? Well, the truth is that they too are run by political and economic elites whose interests are rarely the same as the general public. That is why, when the government uses the term "national interest," one should always be suspicious. When it comes to foreign policy this can be most clearly seen in the policies long adopted toward places like Cuba and Israel. A very good argument can be made that the policies pursued for decades by the US government toward these two nations is no more than product of special interest manipulation with no reference to actual national interest or well being. Indeed, in the former case it led to an illegal invasion of Cuba by US backed forces in 1961 and no doubt encouraged the Cubans to allow Soviet missiles on their territory in 1962. The latter has contributed to numerous disastrous actions on the part of the US in the Middle East out of which came the attack on September 11, 2001. None of this is in the interest of anyone other than the elites whose semi-secret machinations lead to the policies pursued.

The difference between dictatorships and democracies are ones of style and, in a democracy, the option to shift emphasis in terms of elite interests served, each time there is an election. Democratic elites have learned that they do not need to rely on the brute force characteristic of dictatorships as long as they can sufficiently control the public information environment. You restrict meaningful free speech to the fringes of the media, to the "outliers" along the information bell curve. You rely on the sociological fact that the vast majority of citizens will either pay no attention to that which they find irrelevant to their immediate lives, or they will believe the official story line about places and happenings of which they are otherwise ignorant. Once you have identified the official story line with the official policy being pursued, loyalty to the policy comes to equate to patriotism. It is a shockingly simple formula and it usually works. Given this scenario, Woodrow Wilson and his notion of open diplomacy represents an historical anomaly. When, in 1919, he arrived at Versailles for the peace conference the representatives of Britain, France and Italy thought him a hopeless idealist. And perhaps he really was.

Incompatibility with Democracy

Whether Wilson was or was not an idealist cannot affect the fact that secret diplomacy almost never represents the public interest. It cannot affect the fact that an honest assessment of secret diplomacy, an honest look at what most of the time it has historically wrought, leads to the conclusion that it is harmful. It often leads to unnecessary conflict and it undermines the democratic process because it denies the public's right to know what is being done in its name. And, in a democracy, it cannot be sustained without the help of massive state lying and propaganda.

So, what does that say about those American leaders railing against Wikileaks and crying for Julian Assange's head? Does it mean, to use Noam Chomsky's characterization, that they have a "deep hatred for democracy"? I doubt they have thought it out that far. Some of them, such as Sarah Palin, who wants Assange hunted down like Osama bin Laden (which means, I guess, hunted down ineffectively), Newt Gingrich, who likens Assange to an "enemy combatant," and Bill Kristol who wants the government to kidnap and then "whack" Assange, are personalities of the extreme right who essentially advocate the policies of dictators. It is not hard to identify these folks with a particular ideology and elite interest group. Others, like Senator Joseph Lieberman, have done their utmost to shut down Wikileaks through pressuring on-line operators such as Amazon who, until recently, have cooperated with the whistle blowing website. Lieberman has taken it upon himself to use his political clout to determine what the entire American population can and cannot know. Is Joe Lieberman doing all this for the public good? It is unlikely. He does declare, with a lot of righteous indignation, that the information Wikileaks has made public is "stolen." Yet, as Daniel Ellsberg has suggested, Julian Assange and Wikileaks are "serving our [American] democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country." In other words, Lieberman is on shaky legal grounds when he throws around a word like "stolen." But, I suspect he cares little about this and his real motivation is probably special interest driven. Given Liberman's history as an obsessive devotee of Israel, would he be so fixated on Wikileaks if the Zionist state was not embarrassingly involved in recent revelations?

Conclusion

Woodrow Wilson had it wrong about America. The United States is not a morally superior nation and its elites have always been just as corruptible and obsessed with secrecy as any in Europe. His plea for open diplomacy never had a chance on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. If Wilson's idealism was seriously wounded at Versailles, it was killed outright by the Republican majority in the Senate which refused to ratify the peace treaty he brought home. Why? Largely because of the desire to frustrate and ruin a Democratic president. Sound familiar?

Can one imagine circumstances in which diplomatic interaction necessities secrecy? I am sure one can. However, those circumstances should be exceptional. They should not constitute the norm. And, there should be clear criteria as to what constitutes such circumstances. Arriving at those criteria should be part of a widespread public debate over a seminal right– the right to know what your government is doing in your name. At this point you might ask, what widespread public debate? Well, the one that supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks are trying desperately to begin.

* 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.

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Religion And Democracy Are Incompatible, This Is Why We Learn History

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

"As more and more devout rural congregations across America were organized as political pressure groups, it didn't take long for extremist doctrines to be imposed and for cheap, dirty politics to move onto the pulpit."

Where to we start? Do we try to clear up the mythologies, alright we can simply call them lies, about the "founding fathers?" Hey, they were atheists! These were men from "The Age of Reason." This meant they rejected all religion as superstition. All this talk about Jefferson or Franklin being "theists" or trying to negotiate and "lawyer" some religion into the Constitution through the "back door" is simply pandering.

Divide and Conquer

All the talk about the constitution, federalism and America founded as a Christian state is a phony hustle, meant to play on one religion hating another. As more and more devout rural congregations across America were organized as political pressure groups, it didn't take long for extremist doctrines to be imposed and for cheap, dirty politics to move onto the pulpit.

Fear and hate have always been great political tools. Richard Nixon helped hone these failings with the help of a young and bellicose Donald Rumsfeld and his "sidekick" Dick Cheney. The "dynamic duo" of the Watergate years became the cheerleaders for the post 9/11 phobias. Where Nixon used class envy to divide and conquer, the new game is religious hate.

It was easy to take this model global. What had been a ploy to steal an election by Nixon became a political movement under Reagan and eventually a tool of global mayhem and endless wars. Now it appears Israel has taken the helm with the total failure of any American political movement to remain out of Zionist political control.

I have spent many meetings with Arabs and Israelis, chaired a few. They are cordial, productive and never demonstrate any of the conflicts spoken of in the press. People are people, business is business and intelligent and decent people of all religions hate the ignorant and destructive.

This is reality.

WRD's, Weapons of Religious Destruction

Religion and religious wars had destroyed Europe as religion and religious wars are destroying the world today. In America, in France, they saw it, pushed out the churches and the monarchs. What we forget, what we lie about, is that established churches were part of a monarchical system. The French Revolution was a revolution against, not just the monarchy but the Catholic Church which had impoverished the nation for centuries and led a holocaust of murder.

Religion had impeded civilization, science and human values and is doing so today more than ever. Religion used to be flat earth. Today it is "clean coal" and tax cuts for billionaires. Religious beliefs that used to follow "stupid" now chase bucks.

You don't have to burn a Koran or hunt down Afghan villagers for sport to be a religious nutcase.

Do we want to talk about the ethical argument? "Why do you go to church?"

"Without the bible, I wouldn't know how to act, I would blaspheme, kill, have sex with children, steal....treat homosexuals with dignity, love all humans equally...."

If I've heard this once, I have heard it a thousand times. Whenever a sex criminal that preys on children is caught, one of the first things logged into evidence is a bible. It is always "dog-eared"....well used with lots of underlining.

We learn history for a reason, or we used to. The French turned their churches into public toilets, barns, smashed statues, took the endless church lands in a frenzy of anger. The people of France lived like animals for centuries because of religion. Every state with an established church was the same, intolerance, brutality, massive taxation and it didn't stop in the Middle Ages. Over 50,000 people have come forward in the small nation of Ireland, sexually abused by the Church. The Church ran the schools, it ran public welfare organizations, even ran much of the government and everything it touched was stained with violence, injustice and bigotry.

Religion and Superstition

Americans have no idea how few people in Western Europe are Christians. A good guess is 10 to 15%. All they have to do is look around them, every day, and see where history took place. Religion was a nightmare for Europe, a holocaust that lasted centuries. Their rejection of religion is them saying, "never again."

With so much of the world's religious disruption supposedly about the hatred between Judaism and Islam, lets get real here. Most Israelis are atheists, most Jews are atheists. We all know this and, frankly, this is what I like most about Jews, what I respect most. These are educated people, scientists, thinkers. If they can't see it, touch it or prove it scientifically, legally, rationally, they don't believe it. You don't get all those Nobel Prizes for talking to dead people and howling at the moon.

The issues between Israel and others, more the United States than any Muslim country, even Iran, is about money, always has been. Jews were persecuted for two reasons, one tied to religious mythology written into what some call "gospels." A couple of minor points, it is impossible to prove in the remotest way that Jews were ever in Egypt for a minute and it is also even more impossible to learn anything about Christ, whether he was real or not or what he taught from reading gospels written for a "pagan" emperor, Constantine, and gleaned, edited and debauched by the Catholic Church.

This was 2000 years ago, Constantine was a monster, the church was corrupt and the Romans had become the most corrupt people on earth. Saying anything else is silly.

The other reason Jews were persecuted was because of money. There is history here, available to all. Learn it. It is still going on. You will ask yourself, "Why didn't they teach me this at school?" Europe depended on money for wars. Europe was in the business of murdering itself. We called this "feudalism." It was the 'dark ages.' People wore armor and beat each other to death with hammers for amusement. This was not a time to be proud of and certainly not a period to learn from.

Then again, Christianity, or what passed for it, had a few minor faults. The religion that Constantine personally designed, the one we have today, is a real piece of work. Talk about fear of burning Korans. The real fear is examining the roots of Christianity, how the Roman Empire excised everything of value and recreated a hierarchical religion of idolators and feudal warlords under the guise of Bishops, Cardinals and Popes.

These people burned every courageous and decent human they could get their hands on, burned them alive, and did so for centuries. These were the Christians. Religious conclaves that defined Christianity and selected which works were included in the bible were little more than political caucuses and the bible was seen as a party platform.

Would you believe anything they told you? The French and America's founding fathers knew better. Studies of early Christian history clearly show that a fabricated pagan religion repackaged to look something like Christianity, we will never know for sure, killed off the real followers of Christ. The original Christians were hunted down like animals and killed, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions.

They were called "heretics."

The real Christians weren't into money and power enough for the Romans and had to go. A church run by money hungry "bishops" and backed by military enforcers killed off Christianity.

Christians were hunted down and slaughtered until the 14th century with the last of them chased into the Pyrenees and burned alive by the hundreds. This is the not so secret history of Christianity. Next time you are in Southern France, drive the "Cathar Trail" and follow the last vestiges of Christianity as it fled the politicized state religion. If you want to be a Christian, learn about your religion, the real Christianity and who the real martyrs were.

Louis XIV, the "Sun King" worked hard to erase the last vestige of Christianity from history. It threatened his personal divinity.

This is why we learn history.

Today's Circus

Today's "flavor or the month" is Koran burning. Nobody would care, you can burn pretty-much anything you want, here in the US, flags, bibles, anything. The ACLU tells us that burning a Koran is a First Amendment right. Tell me this, why is this such a big deal? A Koran is not a holy book to a backwoods preacher in Florida, it is only paper. We know what is going on, an idiot, and we have millions of them in America, is screaming for attention.

The only reason he is getting attention is because the media needs something to talk about. Nobody is invading Iran, there is a news blackout on Gaza and Israel and nobody cares about Afghanistan. We tried to get some news recently out of WikiLeaks. When that didn't work, poor Julian Assange was accused of rape, in Sweden no less. Think about it. If you can sell that one, you can sell anything.

Oh, I forgot, Pakistan is giving billions of dollars to the Taliban. Last week, the Taliban was making billions selling drugs. Now we hear they get it from Pakistan.

Does Pakistan have billions to give? I have been there. Pakistan is broke. Anything left lying around is stolen by politicians, they would take food out of a rat's mouth. Money from Pakistan? Tell me another one.

What, exactly, would the "Taliban" do with money? There are no stores. They can't travel. They must be using it on the internet. Have we checked to see if the Taliban is buying everything with Paypal?

With their billions of dollars of aid from Pakistan, what is it that the Taliban buys? Do Taliban own things? An AK 47 costs $50 bucks. Since America "misplaced" 250,000 of them a couple of years ago, the only place you can sell one is at a gun show. Everyone in Afghanistan is given one, nearly at birth. A can opener is harder to find and more expensive.

Everyone else in the world has one.

Do this, go to an ATM, take out a few hundred dollars, if you still have that much, and head off into the most remote area you can still afford to drive to. Get out of the car, walk into the woods, desert, mountains. Take the money out of your pocket and try to spend it.

Welcome to Afghanistan.

Some Things Don't Make Any Sense

Let's take a minute to discuss Islam and terrorism. There wasn't any terrorism until the Palestine stuff. It started with the Jews against the British. This is history, lied about, suppressed but more than available. If Muslims were going to be angry at the west, it would have been about Britain, France and, later on, the United States, putting the "stooge" governments in place that enslaved them for decades.

They had been enslaved by the Turks for centuries anyway. If you don't know what that is about, rent Lawrence of Arabia. It is a great film, David Lean was a super director. It is history in a movie, watered down but somewhere to start from.

Learn history, please. Ignorance is embarrassing.

Those governments that Israel loves telling the world are corrupt dictatorships were put in power by us. They are as much our creation as Israel. We did it all. Do you think Jordan or Saudi Arabia were created by a "people's" revolt or Islamic fundamentalists?

There is one of those, it is Iran and nobody, not Russia, not China, certainly not America or Israel wants them around. Why? Is it because they have crazy Islamic laws?

Hey, they cut people's heads off every day in Saudi Arabia and nothing is said. If Iran threatens to stone someone, it hits the papers around the world. The whole thing is a game. Iran stones people, Israel blows up hospitals full of sick people, Americans shoot people in Afghanistan just to watch them bleed.

They world is screwed up. Funny thing, we hear all this but nobody ever threatens to fix any of it, they just love bitching about it.

What Are They Hiding?

Is this because two million Americans are sleeping in cars tonight because they have no homes? Two million Americans are sleeping in prison cells tonight also. Why is that? Why so many? For those of you living in America, have you noticed how short tempered people are getting? Some think it is the anger and alienation Americans feel during elections when faced with the prospect of voting for candidates everyone hates.

Hey, this is how democracy works, live with it or change it.

Why are people angry? Is it because they are broke, busted, no money, facing homelessness, starvation, no future?

Is the freakish sideshow, the religion game, hating homosexuals, burning Korans, imaginary terrorists, and the big spending Taliban, all entertainment to keep people from noticing that there is a real war.

There is real terrorism. Terrorism is stealing the future. The tool wasn't bombs, it isn't bombs, it isn't guns or extremists. The real terrorists own the newspapers, the television networks, the banks, the insurance companies, the hospitals, not just in America but all over the world. They are the phone company, the internet, the oil companies.

The real terrorism is corporate culture and organized crime. If you wonder why there are no candidates that talk about the real issues, why nothing is made in America, why corporations pay no taxes, why we fight war after war for no reason, the answer is simple.

Our government, along with Britain, Germany, Italy and so many others, are owned by corporations, banks, all slaves to a real international conspiracy that we call the "world economy." Al Capone would be ashamed of what we have done. Who pulls the strings?

Figure it out for yourself. It isn't hard. The first step is to turn off the television, the radio and to stop reading newspapers. Then check your internet habits. Are you reading websites like Newsmax or WorldNetDaily or FamilySecurityMatters?

Then, even your attempts to get around corporate brainwashing have been hijacked.

You won't find the truth in a church, mosque or synagogue. You won't find it easily. It won't make you feel better. The truth is a process of admitting that everything you have learned may be and probably is a lie. 95% of the great mysteries of life I have solved have been me buying in on delusion, accepting one cartoon reality for another.

How do we fix this? This is me trying.

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

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

In the five years since I became interested in the Palestinians, only two things of positive note have happened in the occupied territories.

The Palestinians held full and fair elections in 2006 to establish themselves as a democracy - and much good it did them.

And in Gaza these amazing people have resolutely survived a vicious land and sea blockade imposed by Israel and aided and abetted by the Western powers as soon as those elections put Hamas into government. They have resisted almost daily air strikes and armed intrusions for four years and courageously withstood the cowardly Israeli blitzkrieg of 20 months ago.

And during all that time they have endured unending barbarity and betrayal, which would have brought a lesser nation to its knees. They have come through.

I often wonder if the British could have clung on through the London blitz, which my family lived under, if they'd had nothing to fight with and nowhere to run and, in addition, they'd had to contend with Nazi tanks in the streets, thousands of checkpoints, Nazi rifle butts smashing down their front doors, and the foul stench of Nazi stormtroopers in their jackboots ransacking their homes and dragging off family members.

Palestinians have been put through that sort of mangle for decades. Death and misery still stalk their daily lives thanks to piss-poor Palestinian leadership and the international community's moral bankruptcy.

When Palestinians elected Hamas, sore losers Fatah set out to cause maximum trouble. The relentless pressures of occupation and bribery succeed in causing internal divisions and self-destruction. When an attempted coup was beaten off there were claims that Hamas "seized control" when it simply acted to enforce its legitimate authority.

With Palestine's internal squabbles continuing - even now - Yasser Arafat would be spinning under his mausoleum slab if he could see the depths to which his party has sunk.

Meanwhile, Israel's propaganda machine, unchallenged, churns out the lies that Western politicians and Western media feed on and broadcast in order to sustain the racist entity.

"Impossible to reach agreement with Israel"

Khalid Amayreh, writing in Desert Peace, describes how the Palestinian Authority's President Mahmoud Abbas is being pressed yet again by Washington to resume "seemingly futile" peace talks, while two of Fatah's veteran heavyweights speak out against any more concessions to the Obama administration.

Ahmed Qurei, a one-time aide to Arafat and a former prime minister of the PA, argued that, in view of Israel's refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 war, it was pointless to keep talking just for the sake of it. Nineteen years of talks had achieved nothing. "It seems utterly impossible to reach an agreement with Israel. Therefore, the Palestinian people must seek alternatives... Israel is not willing to end its occupation and allow for the creation of a viable Palestinian state."

He didn't say what the "alternatives" might be, which is a little unhelpful.

At the same time Nabil Amr, former Palestine Liberation Organization ambassador in Cairo, condemned the Abbas leadership as "vacillating, inconsistent, and unable to withstand external pressure". He also had harsh words for "the mantra of American pressure", which was designed to push the Palestinian people into submission or capitulation. "There are those among us who are trying to portray American pressure as if it were expedient to our interests," said Amr. Actually, Obama is no friend. He has become a coercer, even a bully, while Netanyahu is given a free hand to dictate the rules of the game.

OK, so not all Fatah people are useless.

But there's a gaping hole at the heart of the Palestinian Authority's battered credibility - quite apart from a sickening lack of integrity. It's their failure to understand that the war of words, if conducted effectively, is more important than the war of bullets. Israeli spin doctor Mark Regev and his team of lie-mongers would be easy meat for a Palestinian media outfit that was properly trained, alert and reasonably well resourced.

Alas, the Palestinian Authority refuses to gear up to meet the challenge. So the Israelis run rings round their victim - though not as much as they used to. The Zionist regime's "crapaganda" effort has been significantly blunted not by the Palestinian Authority, which remains paralytic, but the actions of student groups and other pro-Palestinian activists around the world, who are beginning to put the Israelis in their place.

It is hugely disappointing to friends and supporters that Ramallah's hot-shots have failed to put a coherent message across, supposing they actually had one. When I was writing my book (in 2006) I tried several times through London and Ramallah to arrange a meeting with Fatah bosses. They wouldn't even give me the time of day. They simply didn't care about communicating with the outside world. So I joined the growing multitude who wrote them off as a waste of space. Their antics since then have confirmed my assessment.

It is vitally important for Palestinian embassies in London and other key capitals to become a ready source of newsworthy material, and to proactively set the news agenda with spokespeople speaking clear and faultless English. Until this happens it will not be possible to engage the interest of mainstream media, and Palestinians will continue to lose the propaganda battle even though truth and justice are on their side.

Yes, we all know the British media are biased. But editors say they receive press releases from the London embassy "once in a blue moon", while the Israelis take the initiative on the news front and fall over backwards to make a reporter's life easy.

"We are not trained like the Israelis," I heard one senior PA man say. Exactly. That's the problem. The PA was offered media skills training some four years ago and turned it down. There may be murky reasons. It has been suggested that the PA, in its game of "footsie" with the US, was made to promise not to embarrass Israel publicly. This has given rise to suspicions that Palestinian ambassadors around the world are gagged by the regime in Ramallah and prevented from crossing swords with their blood-thirsty opponents. Why else would headquarters have left its London office, in particular, so woefully lacking in the skills and resources needed to make a proper impact at this important time?

I don't believe they are batting for Palestine at all. But that's just a personal opinion.

The wreckage of Gaza, the great suffering and the day-to-day air-strikes against its civilians - these ongoing crimes are allowed to be lost in the smoke and mirrors of Netanyahu's scheme to divert attention towards Iran.

Netanyahu briefs Western journalists on his outrageous programme of conquest, implying that Palestinians must accept settlements declared illegal under international law and insisting that Israeli "sovereignty" over Jerusalem cannot be questioned. The PA's media experts - if they had any - could make mincemeat of Israel's preposterous claims and reframe the occupation in a way that told the world the truth.

"A house divided cannot stand"

Ordinary working people from countries far away, who put their hands in their own pockets and bravely drove with Free-Gaza convoys or sailed with mercy-mission ships, have done far more for the Palestinian cause than the internationally-funded, natty-suited poseurs who have no democratic mandate but strut the international stage achieving - well, achieving what?

Fatah have done themselves (and others) irreparable damage. They have shot their bolt. How will they command respect in the foreseeable future?

Meanwhile, it is four-and-a-half years since the fateful day Hamas was elected to power. They may have been surprised and unprepared then, but there is no excuse for squandering such a heaven-sent opportunity now. If, as the Islamic resistance movement has said before, it is prepared to accept the reality of Israel behind the internationally-recognized pre-1967 borders, its much criticized Charter no longer has a place in Hamas diplomacy. Why hasn't it been consigned to the wastepaper basket of Palestinian history and replaced with something more constructive?

Hamas must do (within chosen limits, of course) whatever it takes to abolish its sinister image and make the rest of the world feel comfortable. It must erase its 'terrorist' reputation, whether justified or not.

It must remove obstacles to cooperation. It must take the wind out of Israel's and America's sails. In short, it must reinvent itself as a matter of urgency.

It must re-brand, open the door and make itself more approachable.

This wouldn't be difficult. Hamas's government team are well educated and competent. They have been tested like no other. Some are described as hardliners but they are not generally seen as Islamic extremists, and I heard no serious complaints from the Christian community when I was there. There is every reason to believe that the tradition of getting along together is still cherished despite the best efforts of "Christian" warmongers of the West to drive a wedge between Muslim and Christian.

It seems to me that if Western politicians can enthusiastically hobnob with rabid Zionists, ignore their war crimes and persistent lawlessness, and even wave the Israeli flag for them back in London and Washington, they should find it perfectly agreeable to sit down with not-so-rabid Islamists.

But how do we get to that point?

Two years ago a Palestine strategy group produced a report called "Regaining the Initiative - Palestinian Strategic Options to End Israeli Occupation" (PDF). Besides reminding Palestinians what their strategic objectives should be, it urged them "to seize their destiny in their own hands" by refusing to enter into peace negotiations unless the international community dealt first with issues relating to national self-determination, liberation from occupation, individual and collective rights, and enforcement of international law.

Only when these priorities were met could peacemaking and state-building begin.

First things first, right?

Secondly it spelled out the need for national unity. "A house divided against itself
cannot stand... Palestinian strategic action is impossible if the Palestinian nation is unable to speak with one voice or to act with one will."

Right again. Well-wishers like me shake their heads in disbelief at the ongoing disunity.

The report, which was funded by the EU, concluded by saying:

What Palestinians must be prepared to undertake is nothing less than a final and conclusive strategic battle with Israel... The main conclusion of the strategic review conducted by the Palestine Strategy Study Group is that Palestinians have more strategic cards than they think - and Israel has fewer.

If that's the case, the authors might consider turning their report into a fully-fledged action plan taking into account what has happened in the last two years and what might happen next if the paralysis continues, and making it a working document for the international community as well as the PA and Hamas to study.

Perhaps they have already done so.

But whoever rules in Palestine will never win any battles with Israel or the US without a proper media set-up and an effective communications strategy.

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

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For good or ill, change is coming to Egypt and Saudi Arabia soon

THE fate of the Arab world's two most important states lies in the hands of ageing autocrats. Hosni Mubarak, an 82-year-old air-force general who has ruled Egypt since 1981, is widely reported to be grievously ill. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who assumed the throne of the Arabs' richest country five years ago but has run the show for longer, is reckoned to be 86. The grim reaper will bring change in both places soon.

Maybe the old men will manage to control their succession. President Mubarak has been preparing the ground for his son, Gamal, to take over (see special report). King Abdullah's anointed successor, Crown Prince Sultan, one of his 18 surviving brothers, has long been poorly, but there are plenty more where he came from (see article). Decades of repression have ensured that the opposition is quiescent in Egypt and virtually inaudible in Saudi Arabia. But they have also made these countries vulnerable to violent disruption. Transition in autocracies often means instability.

The fate of these two countries matters to the West for two big reasons: energy and security. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been reliable, if flawed, allies. Should they stumble, the West's interests in the region will be imperilled. That is why those regimes need to be encouraged to liberalise their countries' economic and political systems further and turn them into places where change brings hope not fear.

What's wrong with them...

The problem of Arab governance is by no means confined to those big two. In the past few centuries the Arabs, once pre-eminent in a host of skills, from astronomy and algebra to architecture and engineering, have seen their societies stagnate and fester. Though blessed with natural resources, especially the oil that has enriched Arab dynasties and their subservient elites while often leaving the masses in penury, few Arab countries have seen their non-oil economies flourish or their people enjoy the public services or freedoms taken for granted elsewhere.

Of the Arab League's 22 members, not a single one is a stable and fully fledged democracy. Fragile but sophisticated Lebanon may come nearest, despite its lethal rivalries between sect and clan and failure to get a single national army to control all its territory (see article). Post-Saddam Iraq has had genuine multiparty elections but is mired in corruption, violence and sectarian strife. The Palestinians had a fair election in 2006 but the winners, the Islamists of Hamas, were not allowed to govern. A handful of other countries, such as Morocco and Kuwait, have multiparty systems, but monarchs still rule the roost. And where they have given way to republicans, new dynasties, such as Syria's today and Libya's probably tomorrow, still hold sway. Even sub-Saharan Africa has a better record of electoral freedom.

The rulers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, ancient as they are, have made improvements. Egypt's economy has belatedly begun to grow quite fast. The Saudi king is educating his people, even women-though he still won't let them drive a car. He has spent more than $12 billion creating just one new university near the Red Sea port of Jeddah, while pouring many more billions into ambitious projects, such as high-speed railways, that should benefit everyone. But the closed political systems of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the uncertainties of dynastic power-mongering and the corruption inherent in patronage-ridden autocracies still often leads to plotting at the top and frustration that could spill over into anger at the bottom. That becomes more likely as the internet, mobile phones and easier travel make people far less easy to control.

It would be naive to urge or expect either country to become a full-blooded democracy in a trice. Each could descend into chaos, winding up with a fundamentalist version of Islamist rule that would make the present regimes look cuddly by comparison. Many Egyptians, including reform-minded professionals, fear that the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, the unofficial opposition, would never relinquish power once they had won it at the ballot box. Sensible Saudis know that those who sympathise with their compatriot Osama bin Laden would impose an incomparably nastier regime than the present one, if given the freedom to do so.

All the same, the suppression of Egypt's Muslim Brothers, who have a large following, has been unwise as well as unjust. Thousands of them are in jail; many have been tortured. Leading Brothers repeatedly disavow violence and jihad, insisting that they, like Turkey's mild Islamists, would hold multiparty elections if they ever won power-and would graciously bow out if the voters told them to. Mr Mubarak must seek to draw the Brothers openly into the parliamentary and perhaps even ministerial fold, and test their sincerity, at first by giving them a chance to run local councils. And in the presidential election due next year, all the obstacles that make it nigh-impossible for a relative outsider, such as Mohamed ElBaradei, a former head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, to compete, should be swept away. As for the Saudis, their king should at least encourage his Allegiance Commission, an inner family body of some 35 princes that is meant to oversee the succession, to skip a generation rather than plod down the geriatric line of the surviving sons of the founding king.

...and what's to be done

Elections, though vital in the end, are not an early panacea. What the Arabs need most, in a hurry, is the rule of law, independent courts, freeish media, women's and workers' rights, a market that is not confined to the ruler's friends, and a professional civil service and education system that are not in hock to the government, whether under a king or a republic. In other words, they need to nurture civil society and robust institutions. The first task of a new Saudi king should be to enact a proper criminal code.

In the Arab lexicon, the concept of justice means more than democracy. In the end, you cannot have the first without the second. But the systems that now prevail in the Arab world provide for neither.

Source: The Economist

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By Dr David Morrison* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

19/01/10 - OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría and Israeli President, Shimon Peres.

The Roadmap for the Accession of Israel to the OECD Convention, adopted by the OECD Council in November 2007, states:

"The Council reaffirms that OECD Membership is committed to fundamental values, which candidate countries are expected to share. These fundamental values serve as the foundation of the likemindedness of OECD Members and have been expressed in various OECD Ministerial Communiqués.

"Accepting these values, along with the established body of OECD instruments, standards and benchmarks, is a requirement for membership.

"These fundamental values include a commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law and the respect of human rights, adherence to open and transparent market economy principles and a shared goal of sustainable development." ^[2]

Since the Government intends to support Israel's accession, we assume that the Government is of the opinion that Israel accepts the fundamental values that are a requirement for OECD membership, in particular, that it has "a commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law and the respect of human rights".

Does Israel respect human rights?

In the light of Government statements over recent years, we find it difficult to understand how this could be. For example, following Minister Martin's recent visit to Gaza, he wrote in the New York Times on 5 March 2010:

"I view the current conditions prevailing for the ordinary population as inhumane and utterly unacceptable, in terms of accepted international standards of human rights. ... I genuinely believe that the medieval siege conditions being imposed on the people of Gaza are unacceptable." ^[3]

In December last year, Minister Martin described Gaza as "an open prison" ^[4]. A year earlier, on 5 November 2008, he told the Dáil:

"The Government agrees with those who state that the effective isolation of Gaza constitutes collective punishment and is illegal under international humanitarian law." ^[5]

In stating that view, he was reiterating the view expressed by his predecessor, Dermot Ahern, earlier in the year on 11 March 2008 ^[6]. Presumably, they had in mind Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention that forbids an Occupying Power from applying "collective penalties" to people under occupation ^[7].

Given that Israel has tightened its blockade of Gaza in the interim, the Government can hardly have modified its view that Israel is guilty of collective punishment in breach of international humanitarian law.

In the light of this, we are at a loss to understand how the Government can be of the opinion that Israel is committed to "the respect of human rights", which is a requirement for membership of the OECD.

Other human rights violations

It is not as if this is the only Israeli action that casts doubt on Israel's commitment to "the respect of human rights".

Its plantation of nearly half a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is in breach of international humanitarian law, in this case, Article 49(6) of the 4th Geneva Convention – and there is no sign whatsoever that Israel intends to desist, despite continual demands from the international community, including Ireland, that it do so.

Its destruction of Arab property to make way for these settlements and the roads that service them (and the Wall) is in breach of Article 53 of the 4th Geneva Convention.

And on top of all this, which has been going on for more than 40 years, there is the myriad of human rights violations that took place in Gaza from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, as attested to by the UN Fact Finding Mission headed by Justice Goldstone ^[8].

Discrimination against Israeli Arabs

In addition, Arab citizens of Israel are systematically discriminated against in a variety of ways. A European Commission report on Israel dated May 2004 says so:

"The Arab minority, Muslim, Christian and Druze, makes up almost 20% of the Israeli population. Although the Declaration of Independence proclaims equality for citizens, Israeli legislation contains laws and regulations that favour the Jewish majority. ... As highlighted by an Israeli Commission report presented in 2003 ("Or Commission"), the Arab minority also suffers from discrimination in many areas including budget allocations, official planning, employment, education and health." ^[9]

Four years later, in April 2008, a Commission report on Israel's implementation of the European Neighbourhood Policy noted little progress in this area, saying that "the promotion and protection of the Israeli Arab minority did not advance significantly during the reporting period" ^[10].

In education, for example, a recent OECD report Israeli Child Policy and Outcomes states:

"... government spending per child is much lower in the Arab sector than in the Jewish sector. This financial gap is reflected in different ways: First and most directly, average spending per child in the Arab localities is estimated to be 36.8% lower than in Jewish localities." ^[11]

In employment, former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert told a parliamentary commission of inquiry on 11 November 2008:

"We have not yet overcome the barrier of discrimination, which is a deliberate discrimination and the gap is insufferable". ^[12]

He continued:

"... there are government agencies who employ a miniscule number of Israeli Arabs, among them the Bank of Israel and Israel Electric Company. There is no argument that there were ministries and offices that did not accept Arabs. It's terrible that there is not even one Arab employee at the Bank of Israel and at the Electric Company Arab workers represent less than one percent of all employees."

The overwhelming evidence is that Israel has little respect for the human rights of Palestinians either in the Occupied Territories or in Israel itself, yet the Government is apparently satisfied that Israel has fulfilled the requirement for OECD membership that it is committed to respect human rights.

Israel a pluralist democracy?

The other requirement for OECD membership is that Israel be committed to a pluralist democracy. While it is often said that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, we do not believe that this proposition is sustainable. How can a state that has ruled over millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967, without according them any say in the institutions that govern them, be described as a democracy? Only Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories can vote in Knesset elections. Surely, that demonstrates a 40-year record of contempt for democracy rather than a commitment to it and is akin to the voting system that operated in apartheid South Africa.

No other OECD state rules over millions of people who are excluded from the franchise. Israel should not be admitted under these circumstances.

Israel's accounts cover more than Israel

Another point: Israel's accession is set to go ahead even though Israel is in breach of the rules that the OECD applies for the presentation of national statistics – since its statistics cover, not just the territory west of the Green Line that is internationally recognised as belonging to Israel, but also the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The OECD Committee on Statistics has acknowledged the breach, but is nevertheless recommending that Israel be admitted to membership.

This is revealed in a leaked OECD report, titled Accession of Israel to the Organisation: Draft formal opinion of the Committee on Statistics ^[13]. The OECD normally insists that members adhere to the UN-approved standard for the presentation of national accounts, 1993 System of National Accounts (SNA), but the leaked report states plainly that "to the extent that economic activity is measured according to a criterion of nationality, Israel's data is at variance with one of the basic concepts of the SNA" (paragraph 19).

Israel should not be admitted while it is unwilling to present statistics in respect of economic activity within the territory that is internationally recognised as belonging to Israel. To admit Israel while its national statistics include the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank would give an international seal of approval to Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem and its colonisation of the West Bank. That should not be done.

(*)

For all of these reasons, and others, we believe the Government should reconsider its decision to support Israel's admission to the OECD.

References:
[1] http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=DAL20100421.XML&Page=1&Ex=2099#N2099
[2] http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2007doc.nsf/LinkTo/NT00004872/$FILE/JT03237381.PDF
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/05iht-edmartin.html
[4] http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/1221/mideast.html
[5] http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=DAL20081105.xml&Page=1&Ex=738#N738
[6] http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=DAL20080311.xml&Page=1&Ex=147#N147
[7] http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/6756482d86146898c125641e004aa3c5
[8] http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/12session/A-HRC-12-48.pdf
[9] http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/country/israel_enp_country_report_2004_en.pdf
[10] http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/progress2008/sec08_394_en.pdf
[11] http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2010doc.nsf/LinkTo/NT00000EBE/$FILE/JT03280340.PDF
[12] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1036798.html
[13] http://cryptome.org/israel-oecd.zip

* Dr David Morrison is is a writer on international affairs, specialising in Middle Eastern affairs. David is currently (2010) involved with Sadaka - Ireland Palestine Alliance (www.sadaka.ie). David is the former political officer of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

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

A question every voter should ask candidates in the coming UK general election

There can be few sights more pathetic than ex-ministers and chums of Tony Blair offering to use their government contacts to help influence policy on behalf of business clients.

"I'm like a cab for hire," said Stephen Byers when secretly filmed by a Channel 4 TV 'Dispatches' programme. Byers could be "hailed" for £3,000 to £5,000 per day.

And so a new expression was born into the sleazy world of Westminster: "political cabbing".

The latest revelations come only a few months after another Channel 4 'Dispatches' report, by Peter Oborne, showed how large numbers of MPs were stooging (or "cabbing") for Israel.

Mr Oborne reported that a majority of Conservative MPs and half the shadow cabinet are signed-up Friends of Israel, and £millions flow into the bank accounts of MPs and parties although only a fraction of these "contributions" are visibly accounted for. Sir Richard Dalton, a former British diplomat who served as consul-general in Jerusalem, observed: "I don't believe, and I don't think anybody else believes, these contributions come with no strings attached."

Mr Oborne showed how Labour and Conservative Friends of Israel take dozens of MPs on free trips to Israel, where they are guests of the Israeli government.

Few, if any, declare this interest when speaking in Parliament.

He showed how one of the Conservative Party's big donors has vested interests in illegal settlement development in the West Bank and in Bicom, an Israeli public affairs outfit, and how the party's leadership is subjected to foreign pressure.

What harm does "cabbing" for Israel do?

Large numbers of MPs (and many parliamentary candidates) are exposed to the Israel lobby's influence, and its message is carried through into parliamentary work causing great damage to our parliamentary democracy, harm to Britain's reputation throughout the world and risk to our security because a just solution in the Holy Land is prevented by such partisanship.

The majority of Conservative MPs and MEPs are Friends of Israel. The lobby also claims a very large number of Labour MPs and ministers. Membership is said to be a necessary step to high office.

The Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel website brazenly states that its first aim is to maximise support for the State of Israel within the party and Parliament, and develop and maintain a broad-based LDFI membership inside and outside of Parliament...

Conservatives Friends of Israel have a 'Fast Track' group for parliamentary candidates fighting target marginal seats. 



Senior Conservatives try to justify their support for the foreign military power by insisting that Israel is "a force for good in the world" and "in the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression - Israel's enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together".

This partisanship undermines a number of the Principles on which our standards in public life are founded. One of these requires holders of public office not to place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.

Nowhere is this disregard for principle more dramatically demonstrated than in the appointment of Israel flag-wavers to the chairmanship of our most important security bodies – the Intelligence & Security Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee and Defence Committee.

Prime minister Gordon Brown told Labour Friends of Israel that they were "one of the great influences on the whole of the Labour movement... I will continue to do what I can both to defend Israel and to protect the security of Israel's borders... I count myself not only a friend of Israel but someone who wants to support the future of Israel.... we will do everything that we can to work with Israel."

Conservative opposition leader David Cameron has said: "The belief I have in Israel is indestructible – and you need to know that if I become Prime Minister, Israel has a friend who will never turn his back on Israel."

Both leaders are patrons of the Jewish National Fund, an organisation with a sinister purpose.

Lobbying will be the "next political scandal", says Cameron blissfully unaware of the irony of his remark.

"Cabbing" to change the law and protect Israel's thugs

When Tzipi Livni, leader of Israel's main opposition party Kadima and foreign minister during the murderous blitzkrieg on Gaza civilians a year ago, recently cancelled a visit to Britain after an arrest warrant was issued against her by a British court, Israel complained that "we have to put an end to this absurdity, which is harming the excellent bilateral relations between Israel and Britain."

Gordon Brown responded by insisting that Livni was welcome and promising to change the law that allows British courts to issue warrants for war crimes suspects.

Foreign secretary David Miliband reinforced this by saying the British government was determined that arrest threats against visitors of Ms. Livni's stature would not happen again. "Israel is a strategic partner and a close friend of the United Kingdom. We are determined to protect and develop these ties," he said. "Israeli leaders - like leaders from other countries - must be able to visit and have a proper dialogue with the British government."

Livni is not even a serving minister. And far from apologizing for the slaughter of Gazans a year ago, this odious individual declared: "I would make the same decisions all over again." For decent people she is beyond the pale and unwelcome.

Nevertheless the attorney-general has told the world that the government intends to protect high-ranking Israeli officials from arrest in the UK. Speaking at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Baroness Scotland said Israeli leaders should not face arrest for war crimes under the law of universal jurisdiction. "The government is looking urgently at ways in which the UK system might be changed to avoid this situation arising again. Israel's leaders should always be able to travel freely to the UK."

Why? There can be no hiding place for those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, extra-judicial executions, war crimes, torture and forced disappearances.

States that are party to the Geneva Conventions – there are 194 of them, including Israel itself - are obliged to seek out and either prosecute or extradite those suspected of having committed "grave breaches" of the Conventions and "bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case."

The Geneva Conventions are treaties, solemnly entered into, that contain universal rules limiting the barbarity of war. "Grave breaches" means wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, the causing of great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and other serious violations of the laws of war. Israel is well practised in all of these.

Brown and Miliband, "cabbing" like fury, are happy to dismantle our obligations under international law in order to save their unsavoury friends and allow Israel's worst thugs to walk the streets of our capital.

"Cabbing" for Israel even extends to making light of the theft by Mossad agents of the passport ID of several British citizens in a mission to assassinate a Hamas operative in Dubai. It was not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Mr Miliband announced the expulsion of an unnamed individual on the Israeli embassy staff. This feeble slap on the wrist was not nearly enough to wipe the smirk off Ambassador Prosor's face.

George Galloway MP called for a more robust response - the closing of the embassy. "Every British citizen travelling in the Middle East has been endangered by the actions of Mossad operating from the Israeli embassy in London. Protecting British citizens abroad demands nothing less than closing that centre of espionage at home."

That's more like it.

Miliband's and Brown's friends are not my friends... or anyone else's as far as I can see. The idea that Israel and the gangsters who run it have any value to us as strategic partners, is a figment of their tiny imagination. George Washington's warning of years ago seems all the more appropriate today: "The nation which indulges towards another a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."

Who , if they had any integrity, would "cab" for a regime that thieves, murders, assassinates, carries out ethnic cleansing and shows utter contempt for international law, human rights, UN resolutions and the normal codes of human conduct?

Who would "cab" for a regime that, by using overwhelming military might, has systematically impoverished its neighbours and resorted to starvation tactics to make them submit?

Who, if they had a shred of honour, would "cab" for a regime whose leaders are wanted for war crimes?

Be warned, you parliamentary candidates, when you come a-knocking for my vote. The first question will be "Are you cabbing for Israel?"

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

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By Dr. Elias Akleh *

Election is a political tool that helps people to democratically elect their political representatives. Like any tool the benefits of election are determined by its use. Lately election has been employed to oppress people rather than serving them. Palestinian election is such a clear example.

We have seen elections being manipulated to install and impose in a government a certain group of people, who would enslave rather than serve the people. This happens even in the so-called most democratic country such as the U.S., where at least the last three elections had been manipulated for such a purpose.

Part of the American "War on Global Terror" has been the toppling, in one way or the other, of present political regimes in the Greater Middle East, as referred to by the administration, and the installation of new pro-American puppet regimes through manipulation of election. The American administration claimed that it is spreading freedom and democracy to other countries; and what is a better way of spreading democracy other than election.

The American administration accused Afghanistan of harboring Al-Qaeda terrorist group. So the G.I. boys were sent to topple down Afghanistan's regime and to install UNOCAL's Hamid Karzai as President in December 2004. Evidence of widespread fraud in last month's (September 09) Afghanistan election has been broadcasted all over the news media.

Similar events took place in Iraq. Under the false claims of developing WMD and supporting terrorism, the US attacked Iraq abolishing Saddam's Baath regime. American supervised election in Iraq in December 15, 2005 installed the pro-American Nouri al-Maliki puppet regime. Under the pretence of giving all Iraqi citizens, especially those living in Europe and the US, the opportunity to vote, special designated voting centers were built for those Iraqis to cast their votes. These votes, whether casted by real Iraqis or were fraudulent, had no doubt swayed the election into the pro-American direction.

War is only one way of imposing pre-arranged election onto a nation. Political pressure, propaganda, and financing the opposition to cause velvet revolutions are other ways of changing the result of an election. James Baker was sent to Georgia to arrange for a velvet revolution resulting in the election of Mikkhail Saakashvili in January 2004. In Lebanon the American Ambassador Michele Sison was more active than any Lebanese politician in supporting the March 14th Alliance financially and politically in the June 2009 election resulting in the appointment of the politically inexperienced pro-Western Saad Hariri as Prime Minister. Up till today the American meddling in the Lebanese affairs had caused the failure of forming a national-unity cabinet. This failure is aimed at giving the US, as well as France, the opportunity to offer their help to form the Lebanese cabinet.

Palestinian election is not different than the previously mentioned elections. In January 2005 a mockery election was played on the Palestinians through which Mahmoud Abbas was "elected" as the president. Tired and exhausted by the corruption and treachery of Abbas and his gang, Palestinians decided to play the election game and voted in January 2006 for Hamas to form the Legislative Council and the government. This came as an unexpected surprise to Abbas, Israel, and the US, who later on conspired to sabotage Hamas government and to topple it down (see Vanity Fair's "The Gaza Bombshell"). The democratically elected Hamas was declared a terrorist group, Israel imposed a siege on Gaza, and eventually perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity during its onslaught on Gaza last December 2008 to finish off Hamas government but unsuccessful.

The self-proclaimed democratic US, EU, and the fake only-democratic country; Israel, in the Middle East did not like the result of the democratically elected Palestinian government. So they opposed it.

After three years of violent opposition Hamas government survived and gained more popularity and support within occupied Palestine and in the rest of the Arab and Moslem World.

With the encouragement of the US, Israel, and some Arab regimes, Abbas decreed to hold presidential and legislative elections on 24th of January 2010. It is important to remember that according to the Palestinian constitution Abbas' presidency had expired last January 2009, and that he should be replaced by the head of the Legislative Council until new presidential election takes place. For the last ten months Abbas had violated the laws and the constitution by forcing himself into the presidency. All his decisions during this period including the election are unconstitutional and illegal.

Abbas' calling for election came in the wrong time and has served to draw attention away from Goldstone's report and from Israeli war crimes. Instead of concentrating efforts to take Israel to the International Criminal Court for its crimes, Abbas' call is sidetracking these efforts and attention towards illusive election. Instead of working on national reconciliation and unity Abbas is increasing Palestinian division.

Such election is aimed at neutralizing Hamas, and installing a new Palestinian government under the possible leadership of Muhammad Dahlan, who has been thrown back onto the political stage, and is been prepped for presidency. The new government is to give more concessions to Israel.

Election is meant to punish, to illegitimize, and to further isolate Hamas government for not signing the Egyptian sponsored reconciliation agreement after it was changed to give Abbas absolute power.

To guarantee the defeat of Hamas in any future election Abbas' security forces as well as the Israeli army have been arresting Hamas leaders in the West Bank and closing all its charitable institutions. Starving and murdering Palestinians in Gaza has been pointed to as the fate of West Bank Palestinians if they elect Hamas.

Election is a tool used to suppress Palestinian national interests. Palestinians in occupied Palestine are under occupation and under threat of violence and starvation. They do not have real freedom to elect representatives. There is no guarantee that election would not be manipulated by Israel and Abbas' Palestinian Authority. There are no guarantees that the results of election would be recognized and respected by Israel, US and EU. Previous experience; the fate of elected Hamas government, justifies such fears.

One important point that is purposely ignored is the fact that the Palestinian Authority should represent ALL Palestinians not just those under occupation. Palestinians in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Europe and the US also have the right to elect their representative. These Palestinians should have the opportunity to vote similar to the opportunity given to Iraqis in Diaspora to vote in 2005. Such opportunity is denied for the knowledge that Abbas' Fatah gang would certainly lose.

Palestinian election under the Israeli occupation is a big joke. It is meant to give the illusion of Palestinian freedom and autonomy, and to keep the people busy with something other than their legitimate resistance to the occupation. Palestinians can regain their country and assert their rights only by resisting the Israeli occupation and not by fake elections.

* 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.

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Iran Crisis - by Carlos Latuff

For the last three weeks the Western media had bombarded us with what they called the Iranian stolen election. They allege that the election was fraudulent and that the masses went into the streets of Tehran protesting the results and demanding new election. The Iranian government is described as fascist and oppressive and is responsible for the chaos in the streets. The opposition is described as reformists and democratic, who are peacefully demonstrating in the streets demanding justice and freedom.

This brings memories of similar previous Western media campaigns about elections in different countries around the world such as 2004 Georgia's election, 2002 Venezuela's election, 1992 Mongolias's election, 1991 Albania's election, and 1990 Bulgarian election just to name a few, where elections were described as stolen and the winning parties as oppressive of the, usually pro-American, alleged peaceful demonstrators in the streets demanding freedom and justice.

What is worth noting is the fact that none of the entire Western so-called Iran experts, who had strongly claimed that there was an obvious wide scale electoral fraud , had never provided any shred of evidence of such fraud. The lack of any evidence leads one to believe that such fraud accusations are only unsubstantiated accusations based on wishful thinking. They based their evaluation on what they claim the highly unlikely statistical probability that Ahmadinejad would have surpassed his opponents with almost 11 million votes (32%) margin. They denied the possibility of Ahmadinejad's wide popularity and successful campaigning.

Many had ignored the fact that democratic election is not new in Iran. Iran has a history of three decades of continuous unimpeded elections despite its war with Iraq, the imposed economic embargo, and the attacks of Western-supported terror organizations, such as Mujahideen el-Khalq, Jundullah, and Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, who carried a campaign of assassination of dozens of Iranian lawmakers among many other terror attacks. Iran has established a tradition of peaceful electoral orderliness, where elections are organized, monitored and counted by professionals including university professors, civil servants, and retirees.

None of the last thirty Iranian nationwide elections has been criticized by the West until today for obvious reason. Iran, under Ahmadinejad's leadership, has developed nuclear industry, strengthened its military forces, and confronted the American forces, who encircled Iran on all four directions as part of the American expansionist ambitions in the Middle East and South East Asia.

Ahmadinejad's victory came as a surprise to the West especially to the American administration, who expected his defeat. This expectation was based on American covert interventions in the Iranian affairs. It is an undeniable fact that the US has a long history of interference in the Iranian affairs. President Obama admitted to such interference in his Cairo speech in June 4th. Such intervention came in different forms. One mechanism came through what is called National Endowment for Democracy. This is a quasi-governmental agency funded by both the Congress and private organizations, whose main purpose is purportedly spreading freedom and democracy (causing regime change) in other countries by financially supporting foreign organizations sympathetic to the American foreign policy goals. This financial support, in the form of millions of Dollars and equipment, was given to oppositional groups in order to cause chaos and confrontation, especially in election time, to topple down the victorious, usually nationalist, parties, and to erect in their places pro-American governments. Such support was evident in Bulgaria, Albania, Mongolia, Haiti, Venezuela, and in Iran itself.

The National Endowment for Democracy has been active in Iran giving millions of American tax money to anti-governmental Iranian groups such as the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, who supports the National Movement of the Iranian Resistance, and hundreds of thousands of Dollars to the National Iranian American Council. Other money is used to cover the expenses of forming what is called scientific seminars, where Iranian figures are invited to attend, with all expenses paid. Mohammad-Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, had accused the US of using these scientific seminars as a front cover for political meetings, whose goal was to execute a "velvet revolution" in Iran. Last November Zarif explained that "when the Iranians attend these sessions, they realize they have gathered to discuss measures to topple the Iranian government".

In 2006 Condoleezza Rice, then the Secretary of State, requested $75 million fund to be spent on mounting the biggest ever propaganda campaign against the Iranian government. The fund was used to pay for radio and television programs broadcasted into Iran, and to provide scholarships to Iranian students to study in the US. The State Department had also created the Office of Iranian Affairs, with a branch in Dubai, to reach out to Iranian dissidents in their diaspora and to recruit them against the Iranian government. The implicit goal here is to indoctrinate Iranians to effect regime change from within.

With their decision to support terrorist Israel as the dominant nuclear (WMD) country in the Middle East the Western countries concentrated on depriving Iran from any nuclear technologies even a peaceful one. They directed all kinds of pressure, including political, economical and the threat of nuclear bombardment, on the Iranian government to shut down its nuclear facilities. The Iranian government, instead, hastened its nuclear program, bolstered its military, and improved its relationships with many other countries including the Gulf States.

Finally the American administration decided to follow Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.'s Operation Ajax example to effect regime change in Iran. Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. had financed, in 1953, two Iranian thug groups to create chaos in the streets of Tehran and fight each other in order to destabilize Mosaddeq's government.

ABC News reporters Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on May 23rd, 2007 that "The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert black operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News".

The London Telegraph, also, had reported on May 27th, 2007 that "Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple the theocratic rule of the mullah".

In the New Yorker, June 29th, 2008, Symour Hersh reported that "Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million Dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership".

President Obama had denied, though, any American interference into the Iranian election. Yet, without any harsh criticism to the Iranian government, he expressed his admiration of the courage of Iranian people, who took to the streets demanding freedom and justice. Obama's administration knows very well that it will, eventually, have to deal with Ahmadinejad's government.

Zionist Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona criticized Obama's soft approach and demanded tougher actions. Following Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu's promise, in his foreign policy speech June 4th, to form an international front against Iran, they called for tougher UN sanctions or other measures to put an "end to this tyrannical regime".

Israel, European countries (specifically British, French, and German), and the US do not really care about those courageous Iranian demonstrators, who have legitimate grievances against their government and aspire for more civil rights yet misguided about how to achieve them. In the eyes of the Western leaders these Iranian demonstrators are "useful idiots", who need to be sacrificed in order to achieve political gains.

All the Western politicians know very well that the Iranian government, similar to what all the Western countries had done throughout their history, will put an end to the chaos in the streets and maintain order. They also know very well that Iranian policies will not change, at least for now, whether Ahmadinejad, Moussavi, or any other leader forms the government. Similar to all the so-called democratic presidents of the world the Iranian President is a mere executer, rather than a drafter, of these policies.

The real goal of all this propaganda and disinformation war against Iran is to portray Ahmadinejad's government as an "election stealing illegitimate" government that the free world should not deal or negotiate with as Obama has intended to do.

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• Appeal Hearing of Iranian Bloggers
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• Israel denies entry to Muslim wife of Jewish Iranian immigrant

The world is allowing Israel to murder civilians, now it will allow it to keep its Palestinian citizens without representation in the Knesset. The only "democracy" in the Middle East? Or an Apartheid state on its continued path to ethnic cleansing?

Israel bans Arab parties from coming election

"Israeli Arabs enjoy full citizenship rights, but have suffered from discrimination and poverty for decades."

The decision does not affect Arab lawmakers in predominantly Jewish parties or the country's communist party, which has a mixed list of Arab and Jewish candidates. Roughly one-fifth of Israel's 7 million citizens are Arabs. Israeli Arabs enjoy full citizenship rights, but have suffered from discrimination and poverty for decades.

Arab lawmakers Ahmed Tibi and Jamal Zahalka, political rivals who head the two Arab blocs in parliament, joined together in condemning Monday's decision.

"It was a political trial led by a group of Fascists and racists who are willing to see the Knesset without Arabs and want to see the country without Arabs," said Tibi.

-Source: http://tinyurl.com/9q8dzu

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• For security reasons, Israel bans paper from Gaza schools
• Mohamed Khodr – The Hanukkah Massacre in Gaza: The Sacrificial Lamb to Israeli-American-Arab Interests
• Arab nations suspicious of Bush’s “democracy”