"Liberty, Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name."
--Madame Roland, French Revolution, on her way to the Guillotine

Much like Gandhi's Salt March in India in 1930 the "March of Life" in Yemen began in the besieged bombed southern city of Taiz with tens of thousands of men, women, and children, walking for five days to the northern capitol city of Sana to protest the illegal immunity given the blood and money thirsty tyrant, President Ali Abdullah Saleh by the U.S. – Saudi Plan.

The plan calls for a transfer of power from Saleh to his vice president while he remains in power for three months. Yemen's population wholeheartedly rejects this appeasing plan. Saleh is a chronic liar who has never lived up to any promise or agreement he's ever made or signed, much life all of Israel's prime ministers.

Upon arriving in Sana the peaceful March of Life became the "March of Death", when the exhausted protesters were met by the murderous Republican Guard led by Saleh's son, who opened fire on the protesters killing at least 13 and wounding scores of civilians.

In keeping with America's blind support of Arab dictators, the Jewish American Ambassador to Yemen, Gerald Felerstein, held a press conference at the U.S. Embassy (even prior to the arrival of the March to the capitol Sana) arrogantly and obnoxiously warning that this March "is aimed to cause chaos and violence...it seems to have the intention not to carry out a peaceful march...and will provoke a violent response by the security forces."

These shocking remarks earned the Ambassador and the U.S. the scorn and hatred of the Yemeni population who've always known that Saleh is an American mole and puppet.

Like Saleh, President Obama, the Sultan of Drone massacres in the Arab and Muslim world. has betrayed his every promise as well as having shred the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the civil liberties of the American people.

He has shown the world that he is a spineless leader who if opposed immediately caves in. A man apparently suffering from an inferiority complex to those in power whether in Corporate America, Congress, the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, special interests, the media; and most especially to Israel that slapped him back into kosher coherence and submissiveness more so than any previous American President.

From left: Ali Abdullah Saleh, Obama, Hillary Clinton and Gerald Feierstein

As a coddler of murderous Arab tyrants he's been late and conflicted to act courageously and forcefully to support the Arab Spring that seeks freedom from tyranny and free democratic governments.

In an inexplicable slap to American interests in Yemen, Obama has stupidly invited Saleh to come to the U.S. under the pretense of medical treatment; making the U.S. a state that harbors terrorists turning the Bush Doctrine of attacking States that harbor terrorists on its head.

What on earth would prompt Obama to harbor and coddle this terrorist and allow him entry into the United States?

The answer my friend is the alleged "war on terror" that has justified America's wars and total support of dictators. As long as these tyrants purportedly are fighting a real or imagined anti-American "terror" group, they are free to annihilate their people while keeping their rule and stolen treasures under American protection.

If you kill "them", you are a U.S. ally, thereby entitled to billions of tax dollars, weapons, international protection, and be hailed as a freedom fighter.

To America, Saleh's value lies in his alleged fight against "Al Qaeda."

Hilary Clinton became the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit Yemen in early January 2011, just two weeks prior to the uprising. She outlined the reason behind America's support for Saleh the murderer.

She said:

"We face a common threat posed by the terrorists and al-Qaeda... I want to be frank about the fact that there are terrorists operating from Yemen's territory today...stopping these threats would be a priority for any nation, and it is a priority for us."

Hence, the lives of billions of civilians on this planet are simply collateral damage to western imperialistic thirst and greed for natural resources found under the feet of the dark people, no more so than the oil beneath Arab feet.

America thinks with its guns; not its mind, and certainly not its heart.

Obama should retain some honor and dignity for himself and his country by refusing to allow Yemen's terrorist, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, to enter this nation.

Rather he should refer him to the International Criminal Court for prosecution of his war crimes. But that would mean America truly believes in the sanctity of life, human rights, and justice; virtues belied by its addiction to war and oil.

American can ill afford to lose the Arab and Muslim world due to its blind adoption of Israel's policies of constant war and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians as well as its support of Arab dictators.

Past and future American Presidents in their stupefying short term foreign policy in the Arab/Muslim world will make the prophecy of a "Clash of Civilizations" a reality; and such a conflict can only lead to the demise of the American-Israeli-European imperial hegemony.

President Obama, for the sake of your legacy, America's national interests, American values of freedom and justice, you must reject Saleh's entry into this country. He deserves prison not a suite in a New York City Hotel.

* 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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American Presidents: Romancing A Stone

An American past in an Israeli future for an ever present and brutal occupation

Happy Christmas Mr President or may I call you Barack this Yule Tide? As you know "Christmas is the day that holds all time together" (Alexander Smith) certainly as you rustle through your Christmas stocking and wrestle with your conscience perhaps to find as you dig deep in both and past 'hegemonic imperatives' an olive twig or a so-called 'peace process'? Perhaps not. But as you dig, can you hear the whispers? No. They are not the whispers from the Presidents of Christmas past, we will come to them; no? You are not listening attentively Mr President; that's because you've been genuflecting on the Christmas message of that other great statesman Prime Minister Netanyahu, "we are living in a time of great uncertainty and instability in the Middle East and Israel, throughout this instability, remains a beacon of religious freedom and pluralism." Wow. On what rock is Israel built and how Netanyahu bestrides it as America holds it, for "As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser" (Plato). And which is which?

No Mr President the whispers are coming from the stones of Palestine and Israel and they do "cry out" for past Presidents have remained quiet behind lofty rhetoric and where are they now? "It was [is] the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."(Dickens). You're a "keen student of history" Mr President what about the human condition and the children lost to a sordid history created by Israel and paid for by American tax dollars? Below are some of their names, the stone told me to tell you their names. God Bless you and God Bless America. Which way are you going?

Remember these Children Mr President:

• "Yael Ohana, 11, of Hamra settlement, killed by Palestinian gunfire while in her home. 6 February 2002."
• "Fadi Tayseer al-Azazi, 16, of Rafaha, Gaza, killed by IDF shelling to his chest. 6 February 2002."
• "Total Israeli Deaths since September 2002," 125 children."
• "Total Palestinian Deaths since September 2002," 1470 children. ^[1]

The Stoned

The American stone cast, that gave rise to the ripples that became the waves that is the American Israeli tsunami that engulfs Palestine today, was even in the beginning unusually dense, in the sense obtuse. Quarried and romanced in the USA this stone was to be formed, scuffed then ruthlessly scored by matchless Zionist discontent and ambition, tossed, retrieved, polished and tossed again by successive American Presidents into the same murky American Zionist Israeli foreign policy sea. The rising waves, Israeli aggression and ambition, supported by Zionist America and Presidential weakness, merciless waves beating against the blameless lives of countless Palestinian children past and present and their valiant resistance through the lengthening shadows and dark hours of a brutal occupation as the international community crept decade after supine decade to rectify this grave and ongoing crime against humanity with all the energy of a sloth on diazepam.

American Presidential rhetoric the becoming edict that led to endless Israeli atrocities "unlawful Israeli behaviour [supported by US Aid] that start[ed] out as "facts" have over time been transformed into "conditions", or in the words of the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, "subsequent developments" that are treated [unlawfully] as essentially irreversible." Moreover, "USAID and American taxpayers [are] financing, and thereby further entrenching, the Israeli de facto annexation of the West Bank." (Richard Falk, UNHRC, 16^th Session, Agenda Item 7, A/HRC/16/72, 10 January 2011), and the ruinous blockade and the deaths of Palestinian children.

For these two states America and Israel have been / are up to no good; are, in this criminality together, up to their necks "because everything that Israel does is done up to the limits that the United States supports and authorizes. So it's U.S. Israeli atrocities." (Noam Chomsky, Power And Terror). America and Israel justifying, "represent[ing] the institutionalization of a system of power in which justice is inoperative and its perversion hidden in clouds of rhetoric and obfuscation." and where, "The rule of law implicitly applies only to others." (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson)

Successive American and Israeli Administrations, each, an apostate to the other: "See!" he said to all the people "This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God." Joshua 24:27.

All the Presidents then

President John Adams, his mind high on effulgent heroic, saw conquest, envisioning Mordeca Manue Noah in 1819 "Marching with them [the Israelites] into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the Dominion of it". An "independent nation" thought John Quincy Adams, because, they deserved declared Abraham Lincoln a "leg up". All saw the stone that would be a rock and declared it an American good. And the die and the dying in the stone were cast. Time then, wrapped around the stone, ran through it, became beloved in an American Hegemonic Zionist dream warping space and time, imprisoning Palestinians in a boxed 'continuum'. An American red hot wax seal legitimising the continuum making it 'official' in 1948 as the Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the stealing bit by bit of 'Mandated Palestine' had begun and in ferocious fashion. The Israeli aggression rewarded with a hundred thousand US dollars in 1949 and Israel's aggression rewarded with billions of dollars in 2011.

The Children of Palestine in 1948 were standing in an American Israeli wind tunnel they are standing in it today. And as we come back from the future and indeed as we move from the past to the present, we see the pernicious results of successive Presidential and illegal leg ups the art of hubris and a continuum of failure. Here then an American Presidential Israeli nightmare and the subtitles of the Palestinian river of suffering that runs through it:

• "14^th November 2011, Israeli aircraft attacked a small naval post building in North Gaza district. As a result, one police officer was killed and ten persons were injured, including one woman and six police officers."
• "In 2009 in North Gaza, Gaza, Dair El Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, 1061 Palestinians lost their lives to Israeli aggression. In the Gaza strip in that same year, 323 children and 104 women were killed by the occupying forces." ^[2]

Remember this Child Mr President:

• "Basel Muhammad Nafe abu-Edwan, 14 killed by an unexploded IDF ordinance while he and his brother were herding sheep near their home." Died 27th January 2011. ^[3]

The stone was picked up and skimmed across the surface of the brimming Zionist sea by the deft wrist of Woodrow Wilson 3^rd of March 1919 in reaction to the Balfour Declaration, the text of which was presented to him for approval before publication, "The allied nations with fullest concurrence of our government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundation of a Jewish commonwealth." Then President Warren G. Harding grabbed the stone from the Zionist air stating, "The Hebrew people restored to their historic national home," would enter a "new and yet greater phase of their contribution to the advance of humanity."

• "Number of houses demolished in Gaza strip, since the beginning of the intifada until the end 2009. North Gaza, houses 5399, residents, 54900. Gaza houses, 7060, residents,73149. Dair El Balah, houses 1004, residents, 8925. Khan Younis, houses, 1596, residents, 12247. Rafah, houses, 3774, residents, 32284. Total houses 18833, Total residents, 181505."
• "The number of damaged water wells. North Gaza, 120. Gaza, 154. Dair El Balah, 62. Khan Younis, 23. Rafah, 14. Total, 373."
• "2008 Women and children killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. Children, 107, women, 23." ^[4]

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Shiran Ismail Abdullah abu-Shawareb 11, of Nuserat refugee camp, Gaza died of heart problems at Nasr paediatric Hospital in Gaza, which lacked necessary equipment, after Israel denied her entry for medical treatment. Doctors had requested transfer to an Israeli hospital on Dec. 27 [2010] On Jan. 10, believing permission for a transfer had been granted, Shiran's father took her to the Erez checkpoint where Israel again denied her entry." Died 15^th January 2008 ^[5]

The stone retrieved by Coolidge was polished with expressed "sympathy with the deep and intense longing which finds such fine expression in the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine." then caressed in short sighted rhetoric by President Hoover who as other Presidents before and after him couldn't see around histories sharp corner or dint want to saying 1932, "I am interested to learn that a group of distinguished men and women is to be formed to spread knowledge and appreciation of the rehabilitation which is going forward in Palestine under Jewish auspices."

• "Number of damaged industrial establishments by IOF's, in 2006 19, 2005 7, 2004 86, 2003 77."
• "Number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza strip; 2006 531, 2005 99, 2004 646, 2003 398."
• "Number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza strip (women, children) 2006 children 115, women 34, 2005 children 32, women 1, 2004 children 156, women 10, 2003 children 81, women 17." ^[6]

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Muhammad Jaber hassan Adila Said, 15, of osreen, near Nablus, killed by IDF gunfire to his chest." January 2004. ^[7]

Franklin Roosevelt viewed the stone empathetically, could feel its vital pulse, perhaps he had a pet name for the stone perhaps it was ineluctable? Or was it inexorable he had in mind as he sat to write to Senator Tydings on October 19, 1938 as The Nakba loomed. "I have on numerous occasions, as you know, expressed my sympathy in the establishment of a National Home for the Jews in Palestine and, despite the set backs caused by the disorders there during the last few years, I have been heartened by the progress which has been made and by remarkable accomplishments of the Jewish settlers in that country."

• "Number of Palestinians killed by Israel occupying forces in the Gaza Strip, 2003 North Gaza 89, Gaza 118, Dair El Balah 75, Khan Younis 42, Rafah 72."
• "Palestinians killed by Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza strip (women children) 2002 children 94, women 25, 2001 children 69, women 4, 2000 children 38 women 0." ^[8]

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Muhammad Jamal Muhammad al-Durrah, 12 of Burejj refugee camp, Gaza, killed by IDF gunfire to his chest as his father tried to protect him during a demonstration at Netzarim Junction." ^[9]

Then shining with Zionist zeal, it was to morph into a rock in 1948 enfolded in to Israel's emboldened clenched fist, and as the British looked the other way, smashed Palestine leaving Palestinians between it and a hard place, supported by intellectuals with nothing in their heads but the propaganda they were fed, and a Presidential endorsement. Eleven minutes after Israel's proclamation of independence President Harry Truman declared, "I had faith in Israel before it was established; I have faith in it now." He further said in 1952 "I believe it has a glorious future before it- not just another sovereign nation, but an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization."

• "The majority of these [Palestinian] children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four percent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers".(Catherine Cook)

Remember these children Mr President:

• "Ophir Rahum, 16, of Ashkelon, killed by Palestinian gunfire in al-Birah after being led to believe he was meeting an internet acquaintance, 17^th January 2001."
• "Omar Farouq Khaled 11,of al-Bireh, died of head wounds sustained Jan.7 2001 from IDF gunfire during a demonstration." ^[10]

And after 1948, a Presidential stream of consciousness compounding the problem for Palestine with unquestioning and ever increasing aid for Israel's gluttony, her voracious appetite to oppress and appropriate, and kill those who would thwart her:

Eisenhower: "our forces saved the remnant of the Jewish People of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn Israel. Kennedy: "Israel was not created to disappear- Israel will endure and flourish." Nixon: "The United States stands by its friends. Israel is one of its friends Peace can be based only on agreement between parties and agreement can only be achieved only through negotiations between them. The United States will not impose the terms of peace. [But] The United States is prepared to supply military equipment necessary to support the efforts of friendly governments, like Israel's to defend the safety of their people." Carter: "a few days ago in a conversation with about 30 members of the House of Representatives, I said that I would rather commit suicide than hurt Israel." President Regan: Israel exists; it has a right to exist in peace behind secure and defensible borders; and it has a right to demand of its neighbours that they recognize those facts." Bush Sr: "The friendship, the alliance between the United States and Israel is strong and solid, built upon a foundation of shared democratic values." Clinton: "The United States admires Israel for all that it has overcome and for all it has accomplished." And President George W. Bush: "Israel is a small country that has lived under threat throughout its existence. At the first meeting of my National Security Council, I told them a top foreign policy priority is the safety and security of Israel."

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Sara Abdul-Azim Abdul-Haq Hasan, 18 months, of Sarah, near Salfit, killed by Israeli settler gunfire to her head while riding with her father in a car. 1^st October 2000." ^[11]

And last but not the least short sighted lacking historical memory, also will as did the others President Barack Hussein Obama: "The American people and the Israeli peoples share a faith in the future and believe that democracies can shape their own destinies and that opportunities should be available to all. Throughout its own extraordinary history, Israel has given life to that promise."

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Haitham Ahmad Mustafa Maruf, 13 of Beit Lahiya, Gaza, died in Shifa Hospital, Gaza, of wounds sustained from an IDF drone attack while working on his family farm 29 August 2011." ^[12]

[1] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[2] http://www.mezan.org/en/messege.php?view=losesen

[3] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[4] http://www.mezan.org/en/details.php?id=12933&ddname=IOF&id2=9&id_dept=9&p=center

[5] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[6] http://www.mezan.org/en/details.php?id=12933&ddname=IOF&id2=9&id_dept=9&p=center

[7] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[8] http://www.mezan.org/en/details.php?id=12933&ddname=IOF&id2=9&id_dept=9&p=center

[9] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[10] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[11] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[12] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

* Clive Hambidge is Human Development Director at Facilitate Global. He can be contacted at: clive.hambidge@facilitateglobal.org

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• American Perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Introduction

After suffering major military and political defeats in bloody ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, failing to buttress long-standing clients in Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia and witnessing the disintegration of puppet regimes in Somalia and South Sudan, the Obama regime has learned nothing: Instead he has turned toward greater military confrontation with global powers, namely Russia and China. Obama has adopted a provocative offensive military strategy right on the frontiers of both China and Russia.

After going from defeat to defeat on the periphery of world power and not satisfied with running treasury-busting deficits in pursuit of empire building against economically weak countries, Obama has embraced a policy of encirclement and provocations against China, the world's second largest economy and the US's most important creditor, and Russia, the European Union's principle oil and gas provider and the world's second most powerful nuclear weapons power.

This paper addresses the Obama regime's highly irrational and world-threatening escalation of imperial militarism. We examine the global military, economic and domestic political context that gives rise to these policies. We then examine the multiple points of conflict and intervention in which Washington is engaged, from Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond. We will then analyze the rationale for military escalation against Russia and China as part of a new offensive moving beyond the Arab world (Syria, Libya) and in the face of the declining economic position of the EU and the US in the global economy. We will then outline the strategies of a declining empire, nurtured on perpetual wars, facing global economic decline, domestic discredit and a working population reeling from the long-term, large-scale dismantling of its basic social programs.

The Turn from Militarism in the Periphery to Global Military Confrontation

November 2011 is a moment of great historical import: Obama declared two major policy positions, both having tremendous strategic consequences affecting competing world powers.

Obama pronounced a policy of military encirclement of China based on stationing a maritime and aerial armada facing the Chinese coast – an overt policy designed to weaken and disrupt China's access to raw materials and commercial and financial ties in Asia. Obama's declaration that Asia is the priority region for US military expansion, base-building and economic alliances was directed against China, challenging Beijing in its own backyard. Obama's iron fist policy statement, addressed to the Australian Parliament, was crystal clear in defining US imperial goals.

"Our enduring interests in the region [Asia Pacific] demands our enduring presence in this region ... The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay ... As we end today's wars [i.e. the defeats and retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan]... I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority ... As a result, reduction in US defense spending will not ... come at the expense of the Asia Pacific" (CNN.com, Nov. 16, 2011).

The precise nature of what Obama called our "presence and mission" was underlined by the new military agreement with Australia to dispatch warships, warplanes and 2500 marines to the northern most city of Australia (Darwin) directed at China. Secretary of State Clinton has spent the better part of 2011 making highly provocative overtures to Asian countries that have maritime border conflicts with China. Clinton has forcibly injected the US into these disputes, encouraging and exacerbating the demands of Vietnam, Philippines, and Brunei in the South China Sea. Even more seriously, Washington is bolstering its military ties and sales with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, as well as increasing the presence of battleships, nuclear submarines and over flights of war planes along China's coastal waters. In line with the policy of military encirclement and provocation, the Obama-Clinton regime is promoting Asian multi-lateral trade agreements that exclude China and privilege US multi-national corporations, bankers and exporters, dubbed the "Trans-Pacific Partnership". It currently includes mostly smaller countries, but Obama has hopes of enticing Japan and Canada to join ...

Obama's presence at the APEC meeting of East Asian leader and his visit to Indonesia in November 2011 all revolve around efforts to secure US hegemony. Obama-Clinton hope to counter the relative decline of US economic links in the face of the geometrical growth of trade and investment ties between East Asia and China.

A most recent example of Obama-Clinton's delusional, but destructive, efforts to deliberately disrupt China's economic ties in Asia, is taking place in Myanmar (Burma). Clinton's December 2011 visit to Myanmar was preceded by a decision by the Thein Sein regime to suspend a China Power Investment-funded dam project in the north of the country. According to official confidential documents released by WikiLeaks the "Burmese NGO's, which organized and led the campaign against the dam, were heavily funded by the US government"(Financial Times, Dec. 2, 2011, p. 2). This and other provocative activity and Clinton's speeches condemning Chinese "tied aid" pale in comparison with the long-term, large-scale interests which link Myanmar with China. China is Myanmar's biggest trading partner and investor, including six other dam projects. Chinese companies are building new highways and rail lines across the country, opening southwestern China up for Burmese products and China is constructing oil pipelines and ports. There is a powerful dynamic of mutual economic interests that will not be disturbed by one dispute (FT, December 2, 2011, p.2). Clinton's critique of China's billion-dollar investments in Myanmar's infrastructure is one of the most bizarre in world history, coming in the aftermath of Washington's brutal eight-year military presence in Iraq which destroyed $500 billion dollars of Iraqi infrastructure, according to Baghdad official estimates. Only a delusional administration could imagine that rhetorical flourishes, a three day visit and the bankrolling of an NGO is an adequate counter-weight to deep economic ties linking Myanmar to China. The same delusional posture underlies the entire repertoire of policies informing the Obama regime's efforts to displace China's predominant role in Asia.

While any one policy adopted by the Obama regime does not, in itself, present an immediate threat to peace, the cumulative impact of all these policy pronouncements and the projections of military power add up to an all out comprehensive effort to isolate, intimidate and degrade China's rise as a regional and global power. Military encirclement and alliances, exclusion of China in proposed regional economic associations, partisan intervention in regional maritime disputes and positioning technologically advanced warplanes, are all aimed to undermine China's competitiveness and to compensate for US economic inferiority via closed political and economic networks.

Clearly White House military and economic moves and US Congressional anti-China demagogy are aimed at weakening China's trading position and forcing its business-minded leaders into privileging US banking and business interests over and above their own enterprises. Pushed to its limits, Obama's prioritizing a big military push could lead to a catastrophic rupture in US-Chinese economic relations. This would result in dire consequences, especially but not exclusively, on the US economy and particularly its financial system. China holds over $1.5 trillion dollars in US debt, mainly Treasury Notes, and each year purchases from $200 to $300 billion in new issues, a vital source in financing the US deficit. If Obama provokes a serious threat to China's security interests and Beijing is forced to respond, it will not be military but economic retaliation: the sell-off of a few hundred billion dollars in T-notes and the curtailment of new purchases of US debt. The US deficit will skyrocket, its credit ratings will descend to 'junk', and the financial system will 'tremble onto collapse'. Interest rates to attract new buyers of US debt will approach double digits. Chinese exports to the US will suffer and losses will incur due to the devaluation of the T-notes in Chinese hands. China has been diversifying its markets around the world and its huge domestic market could probably absorb most of what China loses abroad in the course of a pull-back from the US market.

While Obama strays across the Pacific to announce his military threats to China and strives to economically isolate China from the rest of Asia, the US economic presence is fast fading in what used to be its "backyard": Quoting one Financial Times journalist, "China is the only show [in town] for Latin America" (Financial Times, Nov. 23, 2011, p.6). China has displaced the US and the EU as Latin America's principle trading partner; Beijing has poured billions in new investments and provides low interest loans.

China's trade with India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan and Vietnam is increasing at a far faster rate than that of the US. The US effort to build an imperial-centered security alliance in Asia is based on fragile economic foundations. Even Australia, the anchor and linchpin of the US military thrust in Asia, is heavily dependent on mineral exports to China. Any military interruption would send the Australian economy into a tailspin.

The US economy is in no condition to replace China as a market for Asian or Australian commodity and manufacturing exports. The Asian countries must be acutely aware that there is no future advantage in tying themselves to a declining, highly militarized, empire. Obama and Clinton deceive themselves if they think they can entice Asia into a long-term alliance. The Asian's are simply using the Obama regime's friendly overtures as a 'tactical device', a negotiating ploy, to leverage better terms in securing maritime and territorial boundaries with China.

Washington is delusional if it believes that it can convince Asia to break long-term large-scale lucrative economic ties to China in order to join an exclusive economic association with such dubious prospects. Any 'reorientation' of Asia, from China to the US, would require more than the presence of an American naval and airborne armada pointed at China. It would require the total restructuring of the Asian countries' economies, class structure and political and military elite. The most powerful economic entrepreneurial groups in Asia have deep and growing ties with China/Hong Kong, especially among the dynamic transnational Chinese business elites in the region. A turn toward Washington entails a massive counter-revolution, which substitutes colonial 'traders' (compradors) for established entrepreneurs. A turn to the US would require a dictatorial elite willing to cut strategic trading and investment linkages, displacing millions of workers and professionals. As much as some US-trained Asian military officers, economists and former Wall Street financiers and billionaires might seek to 'balance' a US military presence with Chinese economic power, they must realize that ultimately advantage resides in working out an Asian solution.

The age of Asian "comprador capitalists", willing to sell out national industry and sovereignty in exchange for privileged access to US markets, is ancient history. Whatever the boundless enthusiasm for conspicuous consumerism and Western lifestyles, which Asia and China's new rich mindlessly celebrate, whatever the embrace of inequalities and savage capitalist exploitation of labor, there is recognition that the past history of US and European dominance precluded the growth and enrichment of an indigenous bourgeoisie and middle class. The speeches and pronouncements of Obama and Clinton reek of nostalgia for a past of neo-colonial overseers and comprador collaborators – a mindless delusion. Their attempts at political realism, in finally recognizing Asia as the economic pivot of the present world order, takes a bizarre turn in imagining that military posturing and projections of armed force will reduce China to a marginal player in the region.

Obama's Escalation of Confrontation with Russia

The Obama regime has launched a major frontal military thrust on Russia's borders. The US has moved forward missile sites and Air Force bases in Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Spain, Czech Republic and Bulgaria: Patriot PAC-3 anti-aircraft missile complexes in Poland; advanced radar AN/TPY-2 in Turkey; and several missile (SM-3 IA) loaded warships in Spain are among the prominent weapons encircling Russia, most only minutes away from it strategic heartland. Secondly, the Obama regime has mounted an all-out effort to secure and expand US military bases in Central Asia among former Soviet republics. Thirdly, Washington, via NATO, has launched major economic and military operations against Russia's major trading partners in North Africa and the Middle East. The NATO war against Libya, which ousted the Gadhafi regime, has paralyzed or nullified multi-billion dollar Russian oil and gas investments, arms sales and substituted a NATO puppet for the former Russia-friendly regime.

The UN-NATO economic sanctions and US-Israeli clandestine terrorist activity aimed at Iran has undermined Russia's lucrative billion-dollar nuclear trade and joint oil ventures. NATO, including Turkey, backed by the Gulf monarchical dictatorships, has implemented harsh sanctions and funded terrorist assaults on Syria, Russia's last remaining ally in the region and where it has a sole naval facility (Tartus) on the Mediterranean Sea. Russia's previous collaboration with NATO in weakening its own economic and security position is a product of the monumental misreading of NATO and especially Obama's imperial policies. Russian President Medvedev and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mistakenly assumed (like Gorbachev and Yeltsin before them) that backing US-NATO policies against Russia's trading partners would result in some sort of "reciprocity": US dismantling its offensive "missile shield" on its frontiers and support for Russia's admission into the World Trade Organization. Medvedev, following his liberal pro-western illusions, fell into line and backed US-Israeli sanctions against Iran, believing the tales of a "nuclear weapons programs". Then Lavrov fell for the NATO line of "no fly zones to protect Libyan civilian lives" and voted in favor, only to feebly "protest", much too late, that NATO was "exceeding its mandate" by bombing Libya into the Middle Ages and installing a pro-NATO puppet regime of rogues and fundamentalists. Finally when the US aimed a cleaver at Russia's heartland by pushing ahead with an all-out effort to install missile launch sites 5 minutes by air from Moscow while organizing mass and armed assaults on Syria, did the Medvedev-Lavrov duet awake from its stupor and oppose UN sanctions. Medvedev threatened to abandon the nuclear missile reduction treaty (START) and to place medium-range missiles with 5 minute launch-time from Berlin, Paris and London.

Medvedev-Lavrov's policy of consolidation and co-operation based on Obama's rhetoric of "resetting relations" invited aggressive empire building: Each capitulation led to a further aggression. As a result, Russia is surrounded by missiles on its western frontier; it has suffered losses among its major trading partners in the Middle East and faces US bases in southwest and Central Asia.

Belatedly Russian officials have moved to replace the delusional Medvedev for the realist Putin, as next President. This shift to a political realist has predictably evoked a wave of hostility toward Putin in all the Western media. Obama's aggressive policy to isolate Russia by undermining independent regimes has, however, not affected Russia's status as a nuclear weapons power. It has only heightened tensions in Europe and perhaps ended any future chance of peaceful nuclear weapons reduction or efforts to secure a UN Security Council consensus on issues of peaceful conflict resolution. Washington, under Obama-Clinton, has turned Russia from a pliant client to a major adversary.

Putin looks to deepening and expanding ties with the East, namely China, in the face of threats from the West. The combination of Russian advanced weapons technology and energy resources and Chinese dynamic manufacturing and industrial growth are more than a match for crisis-ridden EU-USA economies wallowing in stagnation.

Obama's military confrontation toward Russia will greatly prejudice access to Russian raw materials and definitively foreclose any long-term strategic security agreement, which would be useful in lowering the deficit and reviving the US economy.

Between Realism and Delusion: Obama's Strategic Realignment

Obama's recognition that the present and future center of political and economic power is moving inexorably to Asia, was a flash of political realism. After a lost decade of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in military adventures on the margins and periphery of world politics, Washington has finally discovered that is not where the fate of nations, especially Great Powers, will be decided, except in a negative sense – of bleeding resources over lost causes. Obama's new realism and priorities apparently are now focused on Southeast and Northeast Asia, where dynamic economies flourish, markets are growing at a double digit rate, investors are ploughing tens of billions in productive activity and trade is expanding at three times the rate of the US and the EU.

But Obama's 'New Realism' is blighted by entirely delusional assumptions, which undermine any serious effort to realign US policy.

In the first place Obama's effort to 'enter' into Asia is via a military build-up and not through a sharpening and upgrading of US economic competitiveness. What does the US produce for the Asian countries that will enhance its market share? Apart from arms, airplanes and agriculture, the US has few competitive industries. The US would have to comprehensively re-orient its economy, upgrade skilled labor, and transfer billions from "security" and militarism to applied innovations. But Obama works within the current military-Zionist-financial complex: He knows no other and is incapable of breaking with it.

Secondly, Obama-Clinton operate under the delusion that the US can exclude China or minimize its role in Asia, a policy that is undercut by the huge and growing investment and presence of all the major US multi-national corporations in China, who use it as an export platform to Asia and the rest of the world.

The US military build-up and policy of intimidation will only force China to downgrade its role as creditor financing the US debt, a policy China can pursue because the US market, while still important, is declining, as China expands its presence in its domestic, Asian, Latin American and European markets.

What once appeared to be New Realism is now revealed to be the recycling of Old Delusions: The notion that the US can return to being the supreme Pacific Power it was after World War Two. The US attempts to return to Pacific dominance under Obama-Clinton with a crippled economy, with the overhang of an over-militarized economy, and with major strategic handicaps: Over the past decade the United States foreign policy has been at the beck and call of Israel's fifth column (the Israel "lobby"). The entire US political class is devoid of common, practical sense and national purpose. They are immersed in troglodyte debates over "indefinite detentions" and "mass immigrant expulsions". Worse, all are on the payrolls of private corporations who sell in the US and invest in China.

Why would Obama abjure costly wars in the unprofitable periphery and then promote the same military metaphysics at the dynamic center of the world economic universe? Does Barack Obama and his advisers believe he is the Second Coming of Admiral Commodore Perry, whose 19^th century warships and blockades forced Asia open to Western trade? Does he believe that military alliances will be the first stage to a subsequent period of privileged economic entry?

Does Obama believe that his regime can blockade China, as Washington did to Japan in the lead up to World War Two? It's too late. China is much more central to the world economy, too vital even to the financing of the US debt, too bonded up with the Forbes Five Hundred multi-national corporations. To provoke China, to even fantasize about economic "exclusion" to bring down China, is to pursue policies that will totally disrupt the world economy, first and foremost the US economy!

Conclusion

Obama's 'crackpot realism', his shift from wars in the Muslim world to military confrontation in Asia, has no intrinsic worth and poses extraordinary extrinsic costs. The military methods and economic goals are totally incompatible and beyond the capacity of the US, as it is currently constituted. Washington's policies will not 'weaken' Russia or China, even less intimidate them. Instead it will encourage both to adopt more adversarial positions, making it less likely that they lend a hand to Obama's sequential wars on behalf of Israel. Already Russia has sent warships to its Syrian port, refused to support an arms embargo against Syria and Iran and (in retrospect) criticized the NATO war against Libya. China and Russia have far too many strategic ties with the world economy to suffer any great losses from a series of US military outposts and "exclusive" alliances. Russia can aim just as many deadly nuclear missiles at the West as the US can mount from its bases in Eastern Europe.

In other words, Obama's military escalation will not change the nuclear balance of power, but will bring Russia and China into a closer and deeper alliance. Gone are the days of Kissinger-Nixon's "divide and conquer" strategy pitting US-Chinese trade agreements against Russian arms. Washington has a totally exaggerated significance of the current maritime spats between China and its neighbors. What unites them in economic terms is far more important in the medium and long-run. China's Asian economic ties will erode any tenuous military links to the US.

Obama's "crackpot realism", views the world market through military lenses. Military arrogance toward Asia has led to a rupture with Pakistan, its most compliant client regime in South Asia. NATO deliberately slaughtered 24 Pakistani soldiers and thumbed their nose at the Pakistani generals, while China and Russia condemned the attack and gained influence.

In the end, the military and exclusionary posture to China will fail. Washington will overplay its hand and frighten its business-oriented erstwhile Asian partners, who only want to play-off a US military presence to gain tactical economic advantage. They certainly do not want a new US instigated 'Cold War' dividing and weakening the dynamic intra-Asian trade and investment. Obama and his minions will quickly learn that Asia's current leaders do not have permanent allies - only permanent interests. In the final analysis, China figures prominently in configuring a new Asia-centric world economy. Washington may claim to have a 'permanent Pacific presence' but until it demonstrates it can take care of its "basic business at home", like arranging its own finances and balancing its current account deficits, the US Naval command may end up renting its naval facilities to Asian exporters and shippers, transporting goods for them, and protecting them by pursuing pirates, contrabandists and narco-traffickers. Come to think about it, Obama might reduce the US trade deficit with Asia by renting out the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Straits, instead of wasting US taxpayer money bullying successful Asian economic powers.

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

Related posts:

• Chickens come home to roost: US technology goes to North Korea via Israel and China
• Israel provides military aid to the Myanmar military regime
• The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning

When new recruits join British Petroleum (BP) they are fed romantic tales about how the company came into being.

William Knox D'Arcy, a Devon man, studied law and, after emigrating to Australia, made a fortune from the Mount Morgan gold-mining operations in the 1880s. Returning to England he agreed to fund a search for oil and minerals in Persia and negotiations with the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar began in 1901. A sixty-year concession to explore for oil gave D'Arcy the oil rights to the entire country except for five provinces in northern Iran. The Iranian government would receive 16 percent of the oil company's annual profits.

Mozzafar ad-Din, seldom consulted on matters of state by his father, was naive in business matters and unprepared for kingship when the time came. He borrowed heavily from the Russians in order to finance his extravagant personal lifestyle and the costs of the state, and in order to pay off the debt, he signed away control of many Iranian industries and markets to foreigners. The deal D'Arcy cut was too sharp by far and would eventually lead to trouble.

He sent an exploration team headed by geologist George B Reynolds. In 1903 a company was formed and D'Arcy had to spend much of his fortune to cover the costs. Further financial support came from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil in return for a large share of the stock.

Drilling in southern Persia at Shardin continued until 1907 when the search was switched to Masjid-i-Souleiman. By 1908 D'Arcy was almost bankrupt. Reynolds received a last-chance instruction: "Drill to 1,600 feet and give up." On 26 May, at 1,180 feet, he struck oil.

It was indeed a triumph of guts and determination. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was soon up and running and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan. But the company was in trouble again by 1914. The golden age of motoring had not yet arrived and the industrial oil markets were sewn up by American and European interests. The sulphurous stench of the Persian oil, even after refining, ruled it out for domestic use, so D'Arcy had a marketing problem.

Luckily, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was an enthusiast for oil and wanted to convert the British fleet from coal, especially now that a reliable oil source was secured. He famously told Parliament: "Look out upon the wide expanse of the oil regions of the world!" Only the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company, he said, could protect British interests. His resolution passed and the British Government took a major shareholding in the company. Just in time too, for World War I started a few weeks later.

During the war the government seized the assets of a German company calling itself British Petroleum in order to market its products in Britain. Anglo-Persian acquired the assets from the Public Trustee complete with a ready-made distribution network with hundreds of depots, railway tank wagons, road vehicles, barges and so forth. This enabled Anglo-Persian to rapidly expand sales in petroleum-hungry Britain and Europe after the war.

In the inter-war years Anglo-Persian profited handsomely from paying the Iranians a measly 16 per cent , and an increasingly angry Iran tried to renegotiate the terms. Getting nowhere, the Iranians cancelled the D'Arcy agreement and the matter ended up at the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement for the Iranians but still didn't amount to a square deal.

Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddeq, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year cover for 1951.

Iran's small share of the profits became a big issue and so did the treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 withdrew their labour in 1946 and the strike was violently put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951 Anglo-Iranian declared £40 million profit after tax but gave Iran only £7 million. Meanwhile Arabian American Oil was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis. Calls for nationalisation were intensifying.

Iran nationalised its oil to achieve economic and political independence and combat poverty

In March 1951 the Iranian Majlis and Senate voted to nationalise Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran's oil industry since 1913 under terms disadvantageous to Iran. Respected social reformer Dr Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister the following month by a 79 to 12 majority. On 1 May Mossadeq carried out his government's wishes, cancelling Anglo-Iranian's oil concession due to expire in 1993 and expropriating its assets.

His explanation, given in a speech in June 1951 (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525), ran as follows...

Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries... have yielded no results this far. With the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people. Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced. Once this tutelage has ceased, Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.

The Iranian state prefers to take over the production of petroleum itself. The company should do nothing else but return its property to the rightful owners. The nationalization law provides that 25 per cent of the net profits on oil be set aside to meet all the legitimate claims of the company for compensation...
It has been asserted abroad that Iran intends to expel the foreign oil experts from the country and then shut down oil installations. Not only is this allegation absurd; it is utter invention...

For this he was eventually removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death.

In the meantime Britain orchestrated a world-wide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran's stirling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. It even considered invading. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins. Attempts by the Shah to replace Mossadeq failed and he returned with more power, but his coalition was slowly crumbling under the hardships imposed by the British blockade.

At first America was reluctant to join Britain's destructive game but Churchill let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into Russia's arms at a time when Cold War jumpiness was high. It was enough to get America's new president, Eisenhower, on board and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down

Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran.

The Shah fled to Rome. When it was judged safe to do so he returned on 22 August 1953. Mossadeq was arrested, tried, convicted of treason by the Shah's military court and sentenced to death.

Mossadeq remarked ...

My greatest sin is that I nationalised Iran's oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world's greatest empire... With God's blessing and the will of the people, I fought this savage and dreadful system of international espionage and colonialism.

I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.

The sentence was later commuted to three years' solitary in a military prison, followed by house arrest until he died on 5 March 1967. Mossadeq's supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed.

Zahedi's new government soon reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion's share - 40 per cent going to Anglo-Iranian. The consortium agreed to share profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but, tricky as ever, refused to open its books for inspection or verification by Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954.

A grateful US massively funded the Shah's government, including his army and secret police force, SAVAK.

The West's fun came to an abrupt halt with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the book closed on a chapter in British enterprise that started heroically, turned nasty and ended in tears.

The US is still hated today for reinstating the Shah and his vicious SAVAK, and for demolishing the Iranians' democratic system of government, which the Revolution unfortunately didn't restore. Britain, as the instigator and junior partner in the sordid affair, is similarly despised.

On top of that, Iran harbours great resentment at the way the West, especially the US, helped Iraq develop its chemical weapons arsenal and armed forces, and how the international community failed to punish Iraq for its use of chemical weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. The US, and eventually Britain, tilted strongly towards Saddam in that conflict and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

This is how John King, writing in 2003 , summed it up...

The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam's army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was know that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked UN censure of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.

Which brings us to today... Why are we hearing non-stop, loud-mouthed sabre-rattling against Iran when we should be extending the hand of friendship and reconciliation?

David Cameron (b. 1966) wasn't even a twinkle in his father's eye when Britain crushed Iran's democracy, and was probably carousing with his Bullingdon Club pals at Oxford while Iranians were dying in their thousands from Saddam's poison gases. What does he know?

William Hague (b. 1961) seems similarly oblivious to the dirty tricks previous British foreign secretaries pulled on Iran.

Obama (b. 1961)? He was a community organiser in Chicago while the Iranians were being mustard-gassed by chemicals his country supplied to Saddam. What does he know?

As for Mrs Clinton (b. 1947), she's old enough to know better.

So why are they demonising Iran instead of righting the wrongs? Why not live and let live?

Because the political establishment is still smarting.

They are the new-generation imperialists, the political spawn of those Dr Mossadeq and many others struggled against.

They haven't learned from the past, and they won't lift their eyes to a better future. It's so depressing.

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

Related posts:

• Demonizing Iranian Democracy
• Dr. Stephen Sniegoski – Will Obama Opt for War on Iran?
• Iran’s Jews not for sale

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

What do you call a country that persecutes occupied people and one-fifth of its own population for not being Jewish? An illegal occupier for over 44 years, suffocating over 1.6 million Gazans under siege! A nation practicing torture, persecution, and racism as official policies! A modern day Sparta, glorifying wars and violence!

A country spurning rule of law principles! An unparalleled regional state terrorist! A nuclear armed global threat! A society of extreme social inequality! A nation with no legitimacy for all of the above reasons, besides having stolen another people's nation violently!

It's called Eretz Yisrael - Israel, a nation where thousands of fed up Jews vote with their feet and leave regularly. Like America, Israel isn't fit to live in. One day perhaps that will be its epitaph.

Many Jews and analysts believe Zionism is destroying Judaism. In his book "Overcoming Zionism," Joel Kovel explained how it fosters "imperialist expansion and militarism (with) signs of the fascist malignancy," adding that it turned Israel "into a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses."

Author Alan Hart calls Zionism "the real enemy of the Jews," an ideology contemptuous of moral and ethical principles. Others call it corrosive, destructive, racist, extremist, undemocratic and hateful, espousing violence, not peaceful coexistence.

Nations living by the sword in the end die by it. Israel and America aren't exceptions. They've, in fact, partnered on a self-destructive mission, perhaps taking planet earth with them before they're through.

Daily snapshots make the case. Multiple US wars rage, spending trillions of badly needed dollars waging them, besides diverting billions more annually to support Israel's out-of-control militarism. They endanger every other nation and their own, at the same time sacrificing homeland needs.

Lawless, corrupt and dysfunctional barely describe what some call a blight on humanity, threatening it by its presence with its Washington paymaster/partner.

In mid-August, one of its prominent rabbis, Yosef Elitzur, co-author of the controversial book "The King's Torah," was denied UK entry for advocating discrimination against gentiles and killing them. The book states:

"Anywhere where the presence of a gentile poses a threat to Israel, it is permissible to kill him, even if it a righteous gentile who is not responsible for the threatening situation."

In January 2010, co-author Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, head of a prominent yeshiva in the West Bank Yitzhar settlement, was arrested for torching a Palestinian Yasuf village mosque. Later, however, he was released uncharged.

In August 2010, Elitzur was also arrested for his advocacy of violence, though he, too, was released and charges against him quietly dropped.

However, their extremism isn't unique. On August 19, 2010, Ynet News said "(d)ozens of rabbis, educators, public figures and right-wing activists attended" a rally for Rabbis Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef "who refused to report for police questioning over their endorsement of" Elitzur and Shapira's book.

Senior rabbis support them, believing it's OK to kill non-Jews, a shocking indictment of what too many in Israel believe, including top officials.

It plays out daily in real time, including on August 16 when Israeli soldiers shot and killed a mentally disabled child, 400 meters inside the border separating Israel from Gaza, east of Deir al-Balah. In fact, 10 bullets struck his head and chest. He never had a chance.

Israeli radio merely said soldiers observed someone approaching the security fence, opened fire and shot him.

The same day, other shelling and shooting incidents occurred, killing one man and seriously wounding two others in Gaza City. In addition, another man and a child were wounded in Khan Yunis and Rafah in southern Gaza.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) called these incidents "part of a series of war crimes (regularly) committed by" Israeli forces in Occupied Palestine, reflecting the "total disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians."

When state-sponsored violence is institutionalized, is it surprising that perhaps many prominent Israelis (including influential rabbis) endorse racism and killing non-Jews!

What better example of a sick society, deserving universal condemnation, especially by righteously indignant Jews wanting no part of what's so lawlessly repugnant. In fact, growing numbers of Jews and others understand what's happening and reject it.

Numerous daily examples highlight the problem. On August 18, Haaretz covered several, including Netanyahu again refusing to apologize to Turkey for murdering nine of its citizens during the infamous May 2010 Mavi Marmara attack in international waters.

At the time, universal outrage condemned it. In contrast, Israeli officials, like their Washington counterparts, believe they never have to say they're sorry, even when caught red-handed and denounced.

A second Haaretz article quoted Netanyahu's outgoing director general, Eyal Gabai, saying "(t)he current government will not deliver Israelis a welfare state," despite weeks of mass protests across Israel demanding it, wanting years of social injustice reversed.

Combined, neoliberalism and Zionism are suffocating Israel, a topic an August 18 Gideon Levy commentary addressed titled, "Israel's swinish Zionism ought to be stopped," saying:

As an MK, Shimon Peres coined the term "swinish capitalism," referring to then finance minister Netanyahu. "It's worth remembering that there is also swinish Zionism," Levy added.

"Swine are insatiable....gorg(ing) themselves until they die." Capitalism and Zionism are no different. What began as a national movement to establish a Jewish homeland ended up "caus(ing) grave injustice to the previous inhabitants of the land...." And for years, it's neoliberal version has been harming Jews.

Perhaps if Zionism "stop(ped)....reined in its lust and greed, atoned for the original injustices in 1948 and changed direction, it would have become an admired movement." Because it didn't, "Israel is only beginning to pay the price."

Many of Israel's wealthy "also started out well....But here too," their appetite proved insatiable. The time of reckoning has arrived. People want redress. "The word 'tycoon' has become a curse and 'wealthy' has nearly become despicable."

Today a new awakening is emerging. Israel's wealthy are "beginning to pay the price." Zionism so far escaped. Calling it swinish is heretical.

"But when the time for the reckoning comes we'll ask: Why didn't we stop (it) in time," especially its reliance on violence, occupation, racism, social injustice, and lawlessness.

Policies that extreme can't go on forever, and won't! Not in Israel, America or anywhere!

A Final Comment

On August 18, Maan News reported two shooting attacks on buses near Eilat, Israel, killing at least seven and injuring dozens more. Israel's Channel 10 said three militants armed with Kalashnikovs opened fire on one bus from a car.

A second incident occurred near Netafim, Israel, injuring others. In addition, an explosive device wounded more.

"Assailants also attacked a second bus and a car soon after," according to Al-Arabiya, killing five.

"In a third incident, mortars were reportedly fired at Israeli forces near the southern border causing injuries, although initial reports were ambiguous about" their origin.

Israel's knee-jerk reaction came as expected, Defense Minister Ehud Barak blaming Hamas, saying "(w)e will exhaust all measures against the terrorists."

Senior Hamas official Salah Bardawil rejected Barak's accusation, saying Israel, ahead of another Gaza attack, blamed Hamas and other Gaza groups to deflect attention from its own internal problems.

Since mid-July, unprecedented numbers of Israelis have rallied for social justice so far denied. It thus begs the question whether these attacks may have been a false flag diversions, to focus attention on "terrorist" threats, not economic hardship.

So far, the identity of attackers is unknown. Nonetheless, Haaretz said "Israeli Defense Forces struck targets in (Gaza) Thursday evening, hours after the earlier incidents."

Reports indicate at least six killed, others injured. Giving no details, Israel confirmed the strikes, saying operations were underway in southern Gaza.

Explaining nothing about daily atrocities US forces commit against innocent civilians in multiple wars, Hillary Clinton "condemn(ed) today's attacks in southern Israel and all acts of terrorism in the strongest terms," calling them "brutal" and "cowardly."

As expected, she added that America "stand(s) by Israel as our friend, partner, and ally - now and always," omitting mention of their state-sponsored terrorism against victims unable to fight back.

What better description of two global bullies, rogue state sponsors of intimidation, terror and torment as standard operations. Calling them democracies is ludicrous and offensive.

* 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:

• Netanyahu’s War on Gaza
• Corrupt analogy: exposing israel’s attempts to equate the Palestinian refugee plight with Jewish immigrants from the Arab world
• Gaza Over & Over..

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

The Honorable President of the United States Barak Obama
The Honorable Secretary of State Hilary Clinton
The Honorable Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon
The Honorable President of the General Assembly Joseph Deiss
The Honorable Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Sperry
The Honorable Director of UNRWA Chris Guiness
The Honorable President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek
The Honorable High Representative of the E.U. for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton
The Honorable Acting Head of the EU Delegation to the U. N. Pedro Serrano
The Honorable Ambassadors of the U.N. Security Council
The Honorable Ambassadors and Representatives of Palestine

"May the United Nations ever be vigilant and potent to defeat the swallowing up of any nation, at any time, by any means-by armies with banners, by force or by fraud, by tricks or by midnight treachery."
--Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

The Palestinian Authority plans to submit a resolution to the U.N. Security Council to approve and recommend to the U.N. General Assembly the recognition and admission of a Palestinian State that will represent close to 11 million Palestinians made refugees by the west, the U.N., Zionist terrorism (see Report submitted to Dr. Ralph Bunch, U.N. Mediator for Palestine titled: 'A Summary of Zionist terrorism in the Near East-1944-1948" documenting 259 acts of Terrorism against the British, American and Arab populations and the amply documented Israeli crimes against their humanity and land. (Recall the shelved Goldstone Report discredited by Israel and the U.S.)

This September is the moment of truth for the United Nations Security Council and the U.N. General Assembly, despite the threatened U.S. veto.

Members of both the Security Council and General Assembly are presented with a most unique of historical opportunities that rarely resurrect themselves to right a historical wrong and tragedy inflicted upon the Palestinian people living in refugee camps in the most deplorable misery in and out of their native land.

This opportunity can redeem the United Nations in the eyes of billions of people around the world who've lost hope and trust in the organization. It is a glorious opportunity to fulfill the divine and human mandate that all people are equal in the eyes of God and humanity and are endowed from birth to live in liberty, independence, with guaranteed human rights, and free from the subjugation and oppression by any other people or nation.

Does the world have the courage of its conviction, the will, the honesty of thought and compassion of heart for once to defy Israel and its American benefactor and declare its independent vote to support a besieged, brutalized, and occupied people who yearn to join the community of nations as a people living in dignity and honor in a State they call their own?

To the majority of the world nothing less than the very credibility and relevance of the United Nations is at stake regarding the rightful recognition and admission of a Palestinian State into the fold of U.N. membership.

A failure to do so will further inflame a world already unhappy with the minimal role and influence of the United Nations, perceiving it as solely an extended arm of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy. In the Arab and Muslim world undergoing dramatic and rapid changes such a failure will seal any future role of the U.N. in the region and will exponentially inflame animosity against the U.S. and Israel.

Now is not the time for the U.S. and the Security Council to continue the policy of surrendering to Israel's demands and its constant ironic proclamation of an "existential threat" that arises from a stone in a Palestinian child's hand as he faces the most modern American tank in Gaza.

Now is the Audacity for Hope and Courage for a world to make its post-colonial voice heard that the surest way to world peace is a Free Independent Palestine.

A Jew from the depth of Latin America's jungle can immigrate to Israel and automatically become an Israeli citizen, but a Palestinian living in his native land is denied by Israel and the United Nations of being a citizen in his own state.

This is the greatest injustice of our time and the world can no longer afford, nor accept and surrender the fate of millions of Palestinian families to Israel's whims, brutal military occupation, and war crimes such as was committed in Gaza in 2008-2009.

How shocking that for decade's the world has simply acclimated itself to accepting Israel's occupation as a de facto existence for the Palestinians and swallowing in whole any justification Israel presents for its rule over a people in their own land.

While Israel's influential tentacles reach all western governments the most active, moral and just opposition to Israel's policies arise from its own citizens and conscientious Jews around the world, the far majority of whom are not associated with the powerful wealthy minority that constitute the Israel Lobby.

A powerful example of an Israeli's view on the illegality and immorality of Israel's occupation comes from Israel's former Attorney General, Michael Ben-Yair, in his article in Haaretz titled "The War's Seventh Day", March 3, 2002. He wrote:

"We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one - progressive, liberal - in Israel; and the other - cruel, injurious - in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day."

How shameful for the world that it accepts Israel's mythological narrative that justifies the four year total siege of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, the world's largest open air prison, which the U.N. calls a "humanitarian catastrophe", allowing Israel to prevent even a Flotilla of food and medicines to hungry malnourished children.

No nation but Israel can get away with such war crimes and not be held accountable for its policies. On the contrary in many western governments it is praised for its tolerance, patience, care not to harm civilians by the "most moral army in the world", and democratic values.

Israel and soon the U.N. Security Council will recognize the new State of Southern Sudan to be the 193rd member of the U.N., but the Palestinians are denied that same right because Israel has succeeded in dehumanizing, demonizing, marginalizing them, manipulating the media narrative, and denying their very humanity, even their very existence as Gold Meir proclaimed.

What will the world body decide on the issue of a Palestinian State? Will it continue to succumb to the Israeli-American threats or will the nations of the world bestow upon the Palestinians the same rights, recognition, and privileges every member of the United Nations enjoys.

The real question is not should the Palestinians be admitted to the United Nations, but should be, is Israel a legal member of the United Nations given its defiance of U.N.G.A. Resolution 273 that allowed Israel's conditional admission based on its acceptance of U.N.G.A. Resolutions 181 and 194 and its obligations under the U.N. Charter? The answer is NO. But, this is Israel, it was admitted nevertheless.

Here's just one of the countless U.N.G.A. Resolutions, 38/180 of December 19, 1983, that emphatically answers that question in the negative.

"Recalling Security Council resolution 497 (1981) of 17 December 1981,
Reaffirming its resolutions 36/226 B of 17 December 1981, ES-9/1 of 5 February 1982 and 37/123 A of 16 December 1982,
Determines once more that Israel's record, policies and actions confirm that it is not a peace-loving Member State, that it has persistently violated the principles contained in the Charter and that it has carried out neither its obligations under the Charter nor its commitment under General Assembly resolution 273 (III) of 11 May 1949"

Any other U.N. member state that has repeatedly violated the U.N. Charter and hundreds of U.N. Resolutions would be considered for expulsion, but this is Israel, a nation above the laws of mankind.

Ariel Sharon stated the governing principle of the Jewish only State when it comes to its accountability to International Law. He said (BBC: March 25, 2011)

"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial"

Netanyahu's remarks during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, 2009 bashing the U.N. for not standing up against Iran more accurately applies to the U.N. should it incredulously reject the Palestinian people's right to an independent State of their own

"Have you no shame? Have you no decency?"

Perhaps the famed British historian Arnold Toynbee most aptly described the western infatuation with Israel and the hidden brutality it inflicts upon millions of innocent Palestinians.

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

May God guide you as members of the U.N. Security Council and guide the General Assembly to do right by a population who lost lives and land due to the very actions of the United Nations to legitimize the State of Israel in Palestine.

To a Free Palestine. Amen.

Note from Author:

This article will be sent as a letter to the persons addressed above. Please consider writing the U.N. Security Council as soon as possible urging them to live up to the founding principles of the U.N. and their convictions as governments and peoples that all mankind deserves to live free from subjugation and occupation in an independent nation they call home.

Thank you for caring and supporting the Palestinian people as they struggle to emerge from the most brutal of military occupations.

* 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.

Related posts:

• The Audacity to Recognize a Palestinian State is Now
• The Palestinian Authority’s historic mistake – and opportunity
• Today is the 58th anniversary of the Nakba, or the “Catastrophe”

By James M. Wall * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

We need look no further than the politics of the state of Israel to see what extremist religion can do with power. The Tea Party in the US, which will determine the winner of the presidential Republican nominating process, is ready to show the world that God wants a final say in US political decision-making.

The Tea Party has emerged as a carbon copy of ultra right wing Zionist forces in Israel. The Tea Party and right-wing political Zionism share a single-minded religious worldview that religious ideology can, and should, exercise absolute control over its citizens.

On June 3-4, at Ralph Reed's annual Faith and Faithful gathering in Washington, speakers praised God and Israel in equal measure. Only a few weeks had passed since the leader of a foreign nation came to Washington at the request of Congress.

That leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, showed Americans how to combine religious ideology with political power. The peoples' representatives cheered mightily to demonstrate their loyalty to a foreign nation operating under a religious ideology that served the interests of political power.

Roy Reed invited Republican presidential aspirants to speak to his organization of Christian faithful. Sure, they were also there to talk politics. But their politics are inseparable from their ideological devotion to the modern state of Israel.

Philip Giradi discovered how closely Reed's speakers adhered to the script of political power and religion.

Support for Israel was on the menu du jour in nearly every speech and for every panel. It dominated the conference. One panel had as its subject "Israel: surrounded yet undaunted in the face of evil."

Michele Bachmann

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's oddly named Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, spoke for fifteen minutes about Israel, saying "If we want God to bless America, then we have to bless the Jews. God gave that land to his chosen people forever. That issue is settled by God almighty...Michele Bachmann produced a standing ovation when she cited a "shocking display of betrayal of our greatest friend and ally Israel." She added "I stand with Israel...President Obama...does not speak for us on the issue of Israel."

The Reed gathering was just one of several recent Washington displays of love for Israel. Soon we will know what impact that love will have on two major international events.

The first is the arrival of a flotilla of peace-oriented ships off the coast of Gaza. The second is the September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly where Palestinians will seek admission, as a state, to the UN General Assembly.

The last effort of a flotilla to breach the blockade of Gaza led to the deaths of nine passengers, May 10, 2010. One of the passengers killed by the Israeli military was Furkan Dogan, who held dual Turkish-US citizenship. There was no official American objection to any of the killings, including that of Dogan, who was born in Troy, New York.

One year and one month after the Israeli raid that killed nine passengers in May, 2010, a much larger flotilla sails this week to Gaza.

Ali Abunimah, writing about the flotilla in the Electronic Intifada, was dismayed by Hillary Clinton's response:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to lay the ground – indeed almost provide a green light – for an Israeli military attack on the upcoming Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which will include the US Boat to Gaza.

Among the passengers aboard the American boat will be 87-year old Kindertransport survivor Hedy Epstein, and author and poet Alice Walker. In all it is expected that about 10 ships, carrying 1000 people from over 20 countries will take part.

Here's what Clinton said in remarks at the State Department on 23 June:

"Well, we do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza. Just this week, the Israeli Government approved a significant commitment to housing in Gaza. There will be construction materials entering Gaza and we think that it's not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves."

Clinton must know that Gaza is not part of what any country recognizes as 'sovereign' Israeli territory, and therefore neither are Gaza's territorial waters. Any boats entering Gaza's waters would not in fact be entering 'Israeli waters' as Clinton claimed."

Clinton's attitude toward the flotilla does not portend a favorable US response when Palestinian UN membership comes before the General Assembly in September.

If the GA does vote to refer the membership issue to the Security Council, the US will most likely veto the proposal. The US has no veto in the General Assembly, which is why Israel is working feverishly to persuade European Union nations to vote against the proposal in the GA, and to put pressure on smaller nations to vote against it.

Meanwhile, while the flotilla heads to Gaza waters and diplomats face the September vote, Prime Minister Netanyahu holds three trump cards, any one of which would derail any future peace agreement.

First Card: Israel will not negotiate in any forum with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas. Since there can be no Palestinian government that does not include Hamas, negotiations are impossible.

Second Card: Netanyahu insists there can be no "right of return" for Palestinian refugees who wish to move to, or be compensated for, former Palestinian land in what is today the state of Israel. No Palestinian leader could survive as a leader if he or she gives up that right before any final negotiations begin.

The right of the return of refugees is codified in international law. It is also one of those sacred rights symbolized by the keys retained in Palestinian homes wherever Palestinian refugees currently live.

Third Card: Israel will not negotiate with the PA until it recognizes Israel as a "Jewish State". This is the card Uri Avnery has correctly dismissed as "nonsense". This demand for a "Jewish state" was not a part of any Palestinian-Israeli negotiation until it was introduced into the conversation in 2007.

Yonatan Touval was a senior policy analyst with the Geneva Initiative, an Israeli nonprofit organization, when he wrote in a New York Times op ed column, May 12, 2009:

While the demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist was unique (after all, it is non-states that customarily seek such recognition from already existing states), the more recent demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state is dangerous. It must be resisted by those who care about Israel's long-term strategic interests.

Israel's leaders had never sought such recognition from any party, friend or foe. The 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, which Begin signed, only expresses mutual recognition of the "sovereignty," "integrity" and "political independence" of both parties. The peace treaty with Jordan that Yitzhak Rabin concluded in 1994 uses the same language. No mention of Israel's Jewishness appears in either treaty.

In fact, it was only on the eve of the Annapolis conference in November 2007 that then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert first trotted out the Jewish card, conditioning his participation on Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Fortunately, the international community did not respond and Olmert abandoned his demand.

Not only is this recent addition to Israel's demands without precedent in the international community, it also ignores the fact that 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs live as citizens within the boundaries of Israel.

In their book, Israel's Palestinians: The Conflict Within, Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman write (page 19):

All too often, people are completely unaware of the large number of non-Jewish citizens of Israel–around 1.8 million people–who make up a quarter of the country's total population of 7.5 million. One in four Israelis, in other words, are not Jewish.

The vast majority of this significant non-Jewish population are Arabs, who at the end of 2009 numbered 1,526,000, more than 20 percent of Israel's population.

Pelig is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College and servesas a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC., His co-author, Dov Waxman, is associate professor of Political Science at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Their book is a rich resource for information on "Israel's Palestinians", the designation, by the way, preferred by Palestinian citizens of Israel instead of the official Israeli government terms, "Arab Israelis" or "Israeli Arabs".

Peleg and Waxman write specifically on the impact that defining Israel as a Jewish state, would have on Israel's Palestinians. They resist it. According to the authors, "The redefinition of the state has become the central demand of the Palestinian minority [within Israel]."

As the state's Jewish identity has become a major point of contention domestically, it has also been inserted into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by Prime Minister Netanyahu's insistence that the Palestinian Authority officially recognize Israel as a Jewish state in a final peace agreement.

Such recognition, however,is unlikely to be granted against the objections of the Palestinian minority in Israel–underlining the connection that we emphasize in this book between Israel's external and internal Palestinian problems.

President Obama grew up as a member of a minority community. Existentially, morally, and intellectually, he knows that the rights of a minority must be respected in a democracy, if that democracy ever expects to become "a state for all its citizens".

* James M. Wall is currently a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois. From 1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine. Jim launched personal blog April 24, 2008.

The picture of Prime Minister Netanyahu is from the Palestinian Ma'an News Service. The picture of Michele Bachmann is from the New York Times.

Related posts:

• Netanyahu’s War on Gaza
• Message to Congress: Take a Slow Boat to Gaza [Satire]
• Gaza Freedom March Set for Minneapolis on Dec. 30 and for Gaza on Dec. 31

By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The incredible arrogance of David Harris of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) would pass as a sick joke if his readers didn't take his pronouncements so seriously.

In his latest, AJC welcomed the UN Human Rights Council's decision to appoint a special rapporteur to investigate human rights in Iran.

Harris lauds "AJC, which has called for stronger UN action on Iran, especially since the stolen presidential elections in 2009..."

What do the 2009 presidential elections have to do with human rights violations alleged by Harris?

Who does Harris think he is to decide that the presidential elections of any country other than Israel were stolen?

Harris "applauded the US administration's role in working with other governments to approve the measure by a vote of 22 to 7, with 14 abstentions. The resolution was co-sponsored by the U.S. and Sweden.

When was the last time that the UN Security Council or General Assembly or Human Rights Council passed a resolution calling for a human rights investigation of Palestinians in Israel?

"We salute Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Ambassador Eileen Donahoe in Geneva for helping spearhead this landmark action by the UN Human Rights Council," hails Harris.

It's difficult to imagine how Hillary Clinton or Ambassador Donahoe sleep at night after US indulgence of Israel's gross violations of human rights for years.

It's a relatively recent role for women to be selectively sympathetic toward brutes and bullies. Margaret Thatcher, Madelyn Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Susan Rice, seem to have excessive testosterone acting like unbridled male thugs.

Praising the Human Rights Council for yielding to Israeli/American wishes to divert attention from Israel's gross violations, Harris gloats:

"Following the recent suspension of Libya's membership in the Human Rights Council, this vote on Iran conveys another strong message that the Geneva-based body is beginning to wake up from its lethargy and look seriously at some significant violators of human rights, such as Libya and Iran."

This praise, coming from a cheerleader for a country that prides itself on murdering American peace activist Rachel Corrie with a tractor!

This celebration of human rights from a country that happily rolls its Murkava battle tanks toward kids whose defensive weapons are stones!

This arrogance from an American voice for Israel that purposely withheld intelligence of the terrorist bombing of the US marine barracks in Lebanon killing 241 Americans.

This sweeping under the carpet of the continuing human rights violations against 1,657,155 million in Gaza, capped off by Operation Cast Lead.

This pretence at ignoring the totally unwarranted destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure with constant airstrikes in 2006.

A year ago, a number of countries walked out of the Human Rights Council when Iran had the audacity to criticise Israel.

About this latest sick gratuity to Israel, Harris boasts "American leadership has been critical to this change."

Then Harris sneers, "The resolution on Iran marked the first time since the Council was created in 2006 that it has appointed an investigator with a mandate to monitor and report on a specific country."

It couldn't possibly escape Harris's notice that the Human Rights Council should have appointed such an investigator to monitor and report on Israel years ago.

Harris and his cronies at the AJC have been working the same charade for years: when the rest of the world focuses on Israeli intransigence, Harris shifts attention to Egypt or Libya or Iran.

When Palestinians are starving or being murdered in Gaza, Harris writes about Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist clients of Iran.

The US should appoint Harris propaganda minister, a title last held by his precursor Herr Joseph Goebbels.

* 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.

Related posts:

• Israel’s US propaganda machine at work
• Bibi Back at the White House – The Consistency of Israeli Duplicity Comes Ever More Clearly into Focus – by Jeff Gates
• US Ambassador’s bid to get Falk sacked from UN opens a can of worms

By Stephen M. Walt* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Yaser Ahmad

Last Friday the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council Resolution condemning Israel's continued expansion of settlements in the occupied territory of the West Bank. The resolution didn't question Israel's legitimacy, didn't declare that "Zionism is racism," and didn't call for a boycott or sanctions. It just said that the settlements were illegal and that Israel should stop building them, and called for a peaceful, two-state solution with "secure and recognized borders. The measure was backed by over 120 countries, and 14 members of the security council voted in favor. True to form, only the United States voted no.

There was no strategic justification for this foolish step, because the resolution was in fact consistent with the official policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson. All of those presidents has understood that the settlements were illegal and an obstacle to peace, and each has tried (albeit with widely varying degrees of enthusiasm) to get Israel to stop building them.

Yet even now, with the peace process and the two-state solution flat-lining, the Obama administration couldn't bring itself to vote for a U.N. resolution that reflected the U.S. government's own position on settlements. The transparently lame explanation given by U.S. officials was that the security council isn't the right forum to address this issue. Instead, they claimed that the settlements issue ought to be dealt with in direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and that the security council should have nothing to say on the issue.

This position is absurd on at least two grounds. First, the expansion of settlements is clearly an appropriate issue for the security council to consider, given that it is authorized to address obvious threats to international peace and security. Second, confining this issue to "direct talks" doesn't make much sense when those talks are going nowhere. Surely the Obama administration recognizes that its prolonged and prodigious effort to get meaningful discussions going have been a complete bust? It is hard to believe that they didn't recognize that voting "yes" on the resolution might be a much-needed wake-up call for the Israeli government, and thus be a good way to get the peace process moving again? Thus far, all that Obama's Middle East team has managed to do in two years is to further undermine U.S. credibility as a potential mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, and to dash the early hopes that the United States was serious about "two states for two peoples." And while Obama, Mitchell, Clinton, Ross, and the rest of the team have floundered, the Netanyahu government has continued to evict Palestinian residents from their homes, its bulldozers and construction crews continuing to seize more and more of the land on which the Palestinians hoped to create a state.

Needless to say, the United States is all by its lonesome on this issue. Our fellow democracies -- France, Germany, Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Colombia -- all voted in favor of the resolution, but not the government of the Land of the Free. And it's not as if Netanyahu deserved to be rewarded at this point, given how consistently he has stiffed Obama and his Middle East team.

For more on this latest sad chapter in the annals of American Middle East diplomacy, see M.J Rosenberg here and here, the Magnes Zionist here and here, and Gideon Levy here.

As these commentators recognize, the real reason for Obama's misguided decision was the profound influence of the Israel lobby. Indeed, few observers have missed this simple and obvious fact. One can only conclude that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's repeated claims that they are "friends of Israel" and devoted to its security are nothing more than empty, politically expedient rhetoric. Whatever they may say, the policies they are pursuing -- including this latest veto -- are in fact harmful to Israel's long-term future. The man who declared in Cairo on June 4, 2009 that a two-state solution was "in the "Israel's interest, the Palestinians' interest, America's interest, and the world's interest" must have changed his mind, because his actions ever since have merely hastened the moment when creating two viable states will be impossible (if that is not already the case). Then remember what former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in 2007, "if the two-state solution fails, Israel will face a South African style struggle for political rights." And "once that happens," he warned, "the state of Israel is finished."

If Obama were a true friend of Israel, in short, he'd be doing whatever he could to keep it from expanding its ruinous occupation and making the Zionist vision unsustainable. And given that Congress remains hopeless on this issue, he could have shown he was a true friend by instructing his U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, to vote for the resolution, as a diverse array of foreign policy experts had suggested. He would also have devoted some portion of his first two years in office to explaining to the American people why some "tough love" was needed on both sides (i.e., not just the Palestinians), and he would have recruited America's democratic allies in a genuine effort to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a fair and stable end. Had he done these things, most Americans would have supported him. Instead, his lame actions are just enabling the occupation, and for the most cynical domestic political reasons (like safeguarding his re-election prospects in 2012). Even worse, he did it at a moment when the Arab world is in ferment, and when the voice of the Arab street is beginning to be heard. But instead of aligning itself with international law, basic principles of justice, and its own stated position, the Obama administration caved. Again.

If the United States hopes to be on the right side of history, it is time to start thinking about what its policy should be when everybody finally acknowledges that "two states for two peoples" is no longer a practical possibility. This is going to happen sooner or later, and anyone who is still advocating for a two-state solution at that point is going to sound like an ignorant fool. Not because of the flaws in that option, but simply because it will be impossible to implement. What alternative solution will the president and secretary of state support then? Ethnic cleansing? A binational, liberal democracy in which all inhabitants of Israel/Palestine have equal civil and political rights? Or permanent apartheid, in the form of disconnected Palestinian Bantustans under de facto Israeli control? That awkward reality may not be apparent while Obama is president (which is probably what he is hoping), but it will be a damning legacy to leave to his successor, as well as a tragedy for two peoples who have already known more than their share.

Postscript: Some readers may think I am being too defeatist here, and they might cite in evidence Bernard Avishai's New York Times Magazine essay detailing the alleged "near-miss" peace talks between Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Avishai's account portrays the two leaders as close to a deal and suggests that it would not be that hard to resurrect a similar deal today. It's an interesting article, but there are at least four problems with his optimistic account. First, Olmert was the lamest of lame ducks by 2008, because he was due to be indicted on corruption charges and everyone knew it, so the talks themselves were something of a side-show. Second, even had this not been the case, it is by no means clear that Olmert could have sold the Israeli public on the proposed deal. Third, it is not even clear that the two sides were that close to an agreement, given Olmert's insistence that Israel could not withdraw from Ariel and Maale Adumim (two settlement blocs that thrust deep inside the West Bank). Fourth, and probably most important, political trends in Israel are headed the other way (among other things, Avigdor Lieberman wasn't foreign minister back then), which makes the Olmert/Abbas talks even less relevant. For excellent critical responses to Avishai's piece, see Noam Sheizaf, Matthew Taylor, and Ilene Cohen.

* Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

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• Alan Sabrosky – The Dishonest Broker In The White House
• White House Correspondent Helen Thomas-A Casualty of Zionist Duplicity
• Bibi Back at the White House – The Consistency of Israeli Duplicity Comes Ever More Clearly into Focus – by Jeff Gates

Illustration By Carlos Latuff

By Alan Hart * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

For many years I believed that Israel's leaders have no equals in the business of saying one thing and doing another. But Mubarak has proved me wrong. He went on television to tell Egyptians that he would be staying on for some months because only he could restore stability and set the stage for it to continue after he stepped down. Hours later his thugs were leading a violent attack on the peaceful, pro-democracy protesters in Cairo's Tahrer square.

To his credit Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron was the first Western leader prepared to indicate that he was not fooled. With UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at his side, he stepped out of Number 10 Downing Street to say that if the "regime" in Cairo was "sponsoring or tolerating" the violence, it was "despicable" and that such action was completely unacceptable.

To their credit the BBC's World Service rolling television news presenters and reporters were asking the right questions about who was behind the violence from almost the moment it started. With a little time for reflection, Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen delivered an excellent report in which he said the following. "The pro-Mubarak demonstrations were well organised, not spontaneous. Numbered buses unloaded supporters. Many placards looked as if they had been made by professional sign writers." This report also had a pro-democracy campaigner saying, "Mubarak will destroy the whole nation before he goes." The report concluded with Jeremy, close up to camera, commenting, "He won't go quietly."

Eventually U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on the same page as Britain's Cameron. She telephoned Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's new vice-president (the Egyptian police state's intelligence chief for two decades and who was/is regarded by Israel's Mossad as a colleague in common cause). Clinton condemned the violence and said people had to be called to account for what was "a clear attempt to intimidate the protesters." She also told Suleiman the transition to a more democratic society had to start "now". (When reporters subsequently asked what "now" meant, a spokesman replied, "Yesterday").

Off-the-record, Western diplomats seemed to be in no doubt that the violence was led by some of Mubarak's state security agents including policemen with their uniforms off. Unfortunately for the regime, some forgot to discard their ID cards and they were found on the thugs when they were grabbed and searched by pro-democracy campaigners.

The Mubarak regime's strategy was (and at the time of writing still is) to discredit the pro-democracy campaigners by causing Egyptians to have an overwhelming fear of insecurity, and thus an inclination to side with the regime on the grounds that ending the anti-Mubarak protests is essential if stability is to return and be maintained.

What of Mubarak himself? I imagine he believes that if he can see off the protestors, he can use the time he thinks he has left in power to create a new order that will carry on when he is gone from where his old one left off. That is most certainly the outcome Netanyahu & Co want. So they must have been delighted when Mubarak or somebody in his inner circle (government or party) gave the system's thugs the greenlight for what Mohamed ElBaradie rightly called a "criminal act".

In theory it's now Egypt's generals who will decide when Mubarak goes. The problem is that many of them are deeply corrupt, and few if any will relish the idea of being the one who tells him that his time is up.

It might take a telephone call from Obama to one of them to make it happen.

If it doesn't happen, Egypt might be heading on what remains of Mubarak's long watch for economic collapse and complete chaos, even something approaching civil war. (I don't think the lady who told the BBC's Jeremy Bowen that Mubarak will destroy everything before he goes would necessarily be proved right by events. But she could be).

Footnote

A short while ago an anti-Zionist Jewish friend called to ask what I think the Mossad is up to at the moment. I said I thought it was not impossible that some of its best are in Cairo advising the Mubarak regime on what has to be done if its life is to be extended. I also said I thought it was highly probable that Mossad agents and assets deep inside the intelligence, military and political institutions of other key Arab states were assisting their rulers to formulate counter-democracy strategies.

* Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East. Author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs on www.alanhart.net and tweets on www.twitter.com/alanauthor

Related posts:

• The Downfall of Mubarak of Egypt
• OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT MUBARAK FROM THE GAZA FREEDOM MARCH
• President Clinton and now Obama – Who the bleep (actually it was f***) does Netanyahu think he is?

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

By Yvonne Ridley * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

As people across Egypt continued resisting and rising against the brutal dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak it is quite clear they will not stop until he goes.

Quite clear to everyone, that is, apart from the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who is so out of touch with what is happening on the ground you have to wonder who on earth is advising her.

She appears to have no idea of the burning resentment and hatred held towards America among the ordinary men and women of Egypt. More than 100 have paid the blood price, so far, for standing up to the US-backed tyrant Mubarak and two thousand others are injured.

It has been lost on no one that the empty shell casings from live ammunition and gas cannisters, which litter Tahrir Square and other streets across Egypt, were provided by the United States of America.

The "Made in the USA" empty shell casings tell their own story not just of the innocents they have killed, but of their origins and of America's deadly legacy of unwelcome foreign interference in the region.

The Egyptian people have been fed propaganda for 30 years, their evening news on state TV is sanitized and censored and many have been afraid to speak out freely under the US-backed dictatorship of Mubarak.

But do not for one minute think the Egyptian people are stupid – sadly the US has once again completely misread and underestimated an entire population.

These demonstrations are as much a protest against US meddling in their affairs as they are against the Mubarak regime.

Despite all of this Clinton showed not one ounce of compassion or humility when she made her latest blundering speech.

With the sensitivity of a bull in a china shop, she called for an orderly transition but only after heaping praise on the Mubarak government which has "made and kept peace with Israel, avoiding violence, turmoil and death in the region".

She told ABC News:"Democracy, human rights and economic reform are in the best interests of the Egyptian people." These are the same people her own government ignored as they continued to fund and back Mubarak with billions of US taxpayers' dollars over the decades.

The BBC's North America editor Mark Mardell says Clinton's comments are a sign that the Obama administration is edging towards accepting, if not openly endorsing, an end to Mubarak's rule. The truth is, Mark, the Egyptian people do not want any more US interference – they do not want any more American weapons being used against them. America has no interest in the people of Egypt. Its only concern is for the man-made-pariah state next door – Israel.

Clinton has been so out of step since this whole turmoil began to erupt. Both she and Obama remained completely silent for four whole weeks as scores of Tunisians died in that uprising and it was only when their man, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali took flight that they condemned his brutality.

When Egypt threatened to kick off, Clinton said assuredly that the country was "stable". That was a week ago and as she is beginning to learn, a week is a long time in politics. She says she wants democracy – but what sort of democracy Hillary? The sort that sees another tyrant take power? Or are you really going to let the people decide?

And by the way, the people are beginning to rise and resist right across the Maghreb, throughout the Middle East and Asia. US foreign policy has turned America into the most hated country in the world and if Washington really told Americans the truth, I know the millions upon millions of decent US citizens would be horrified by what is being done in their name.

But the truth is the American people are kept well away from the truth and are among the least informed people in the world today.

Few Americans have any idea that this and the previous Bush administrations do not want democracy in the region. In fact, they have collectively punished the people of Gaza for exercising their democratic right by voting for a Hamas-dominated government.

This has not been lost on the Egyptian people Hillary who, by the way, have a great love for Palestine, a place in their heart, for Gaza, and an even deeper hatred and mistrust for the brutal Zionist state, which really does threaten peace and stability in the region.

As I write this F16 fighter jets and attack helicopters, made in America, are flying overhead in Cairo to try to intimidate the Egyptian people. Too late – there isn't an army in the world that can beat this peoples' army. Their fear has gone.

Your ill-informed advisers won't tell you this, Hillary, but I hate to see an empowered female make such a prat of herself, so here's a piece of advice. The time has come when you really must step back and take a vow of silence. Every time you open your mouth you are looking and sounding even more stupid than the female presenter on Egyptian state TV who assures us all is at peace with the world and the streets of Egypt are empty and calm.

* Yvonne Ridley is one of the founders of Viva Palestina and European President of the international Muslim Women's Union

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Illustration by Carlos Latuff

Anna Lekas Miller * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

To hear them talk, Western governments would love nothing more than an unrelenting indigenous Arab people's-led uprising against their corrupt dictatorships. Yet, when hundreds of thousands of Tunisians, Algerians, Egyptians, and Yemenis suddenly started revolting in the streets, risking very real threats of further repression, arrest, and even death, Washington seemed hesitant to acknowledge the political significance of the riots. How could they pass up such a golden opportunity to showcase them as an outstanding role model for those Iraqis and Afghanis who just can't get the hang of democracy no matter how much we spend our hard-earned tax dollars shoving it down their throats?

Oh, right. It doesn't quite work like that when the United States is in cahoots with the oppressive dictatorships in question.

Meet Tunisia. Tunisia is a post-colonial perfect child, boasting beautiful sandy beaches, eternally perfect weather, and many prestigious international conferences every year. It is the ideal French vacation spot, just Francophone enough to be the perfect once-colonized protégé, and just exotic enough to provide a cost-effective vacation of couscous and tourist-supported "authentic" souks. As far as diplomatic relations with the United States are concerned, former president and dictator of twenty-three years Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali graciously offered secret detention facilities [PDF] to aid the war on terror, clearly making his country the ideal, "Modern Arab State." As far as diplomatic relations with the United States are concerned, former president and dictator of twenty-three years Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali graciously offered secret detention facilities to aid the war on terror, clearly making his country the ideal, "Modern Arab State."

Both the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) praise Tunisia as an "economic model" for North Africa and the Arab world. In this instance, their definition of an "economic model" is a liberalized, secular country that emulates the western "free market model." It also means that all businesses controlled by a power hungry, corrupt elite and unemployment affects more than half of the population including two in every five people with advanced degrees.

Keeping with the theme of being the ideal, secular, liberalized, "Modern Arab State," Tunisia under Ben Ali has also classified by Reports Without Borders as one of the five most repressive states in the world. Like a proud, adoring parent, the United States once again let it slide. As long as a corrupt dictator cooperates with NATO and AFRICOM, what are a few unwarranted journalist arrests and a little Internet censorship?

Tunisia may be a charmingly kleptocratic "economic model" for the Arab world, but in the grand geopolitical scheme, it is merely another pawn with a torture facility. Egypt, on the other hand, is another story.

Meet Egypt. Egypt is an oil-rich, profoundly important geopolitical player. Almost eight per cent of total world trade passes through the Suez Canal making Egypt crucial in the oil trade. Like in Tunisia, the Egyptian economic system is liberalized and oriented around the free market, thus making their inevitable and rampant corruption completely legitimate in the eyes of the United States. In addition to being strategically important and rich in natural resources, Egypt has a peaceful relationship with Israel, and thus weighs heavily in negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In short, Egypt is modern, secular, and key to controlling the United States government's two favorite things: oil and Israel.

Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak's fall would most likely put the leadership in the hands of someone far less sympathetic to United States interests.

It was no accident that although Barak Obama's "State of the Union" fell on January 25th –the infamous day that Egypt erupted in its first round of successive protests inspired by Tunisia, Obama acknowledged the Tunisians, but not the Egyptians. On that same day, Hillary Clinton claimed that Mubarak's regime was "stable," while urging the Egyptian government to accept the changes, unblock social media sites, and support peaceful protests. In reality, though this reads as though Clinton is sympathetic to the demands of the Egyptian people, she is clinging to Egypt as an international ally for as long as she can.

While Barack Obama was waxing eloquently on the United States' role in promoting democracy, Egyptian police were attempting to quench a peoples' uprising with American-made tear gas. Egyptians were simply doing whatever it takes to "win the future."

Most American media has carefully negotiated their protest coverage by highlighting the triumphalism of social media, rather than the triumphalism of the protestors themselves. Instead of focusing on how thousands of people were inspiring one another in the streets, vowing to risk their lives and reputations until their government fell, a disproportionate amount of reporting focuses on how tech savvy protestors used third party clients or proxy servers to access Twitter or Facebook or how streams of tweets with the "#jan25" hashtag were being produced. In many instances, it was these proxy servers and Twitter hashtags that brought the news of police brutality and citizen bravery to the international community rather than the reported media itself.

Protests halfway around the world have taught us volumes about our own "democracy." Though Barack Obama throws an obligatory bone to the victorious Tunisians as his administration carefully skates around the Egypt issue, two decades of undying support for these two dictators makes our governments' democratic façade more and more transparent. After all, following the logic that a country that has been declared a "war zone" of tear gas, police brutality, and revolt is "stable," one could most likely convince themselves that a corrupt regime that is compliant with our national interests is not to be taken seriously.

Perhaps the time has come for the Arab world to shove some of their democracy down our throats.

* Anna Lekas Miller is a writer, student, and activist who has caused trouble in the streets and written things from San Francisco to Paris, but is now happily settled in New York City. You can follow her on twitter @agoodcuppa.

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

When diplomatic sources revealed that the United States was abandoning efforts for an Israeli settlement freeze, many surely did not know whether to laugh or cry. The first two years of U.S.-Israeli relations under the Obama administration has been a debacle. For the next two, what is learned from that failure, and how it's applied, will be of utmost importance.

The failure to get a freeze is not only about the settlements - a colonial enterprise expanding on occupied Palestinian territory that a new Human Rights Watch report called a "two-tier system" that is both "separate and unequal"- but also a test of America's commitment to evenhanded mediation. So-called core issues, including the return of Palestinian refugees and the disposition of Jerusalem, are every bit as difficult as the settlements, maybe more. But obtaining the freeze was a tone-setter, one that would have shown that the U.S. could fairly enforce obligations by both parties.

This didn't happen. Instead, during the earlier, temporary 10-month freeze, the Israeli settlements were still being expanded - only new-home construction was frozen - and settlements around Jerusalem were accelerated.

When the Oslo peace process began - a process that was based on the principle of a two-state solution - there were 200,000 settlers in occupied Palestinian territory. Over the years, as Israel has claimed it sought peace, it increased the number of colonists to well over 500,000 today, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics.

No legitimate Palestinian leader can negotiate with Israel while it continues to colonize Palestinian land.

The U.S. strategy began to fail when it expected the Israelis to freeze settlements upon request. What the Obama administration apparently didn't realize was that Israel would not change its behavior without an incentive. When that finally became clear, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made an offer that amounted to a bribe.

Generally, the incentive to rectify bad behavior in the international community - behavior like expanding settlements despite road map obligations and international law - is delivered by sticks, not carrots. But the deal offered to Israel, which included billions of dollars' worth of advanced F-35s in exchange for a 90-day freeze, was all carrot and no stick.

And it didn't work. Despite American prostrations, the Israelis continued with settlement expansion, and provocative announcements about settlements around Jerusalem were made just as the offer was reported. All hope for a freeze disintegrated.

The message this sent to Palestinians was that the United States was simply incapable of being an evenhanded broker. The U.S. never misses an opportunity to reward bad Israeli behavior, and Israel never misses an opportunity to squeeze its principal world ally.

Ultimately, we discovered that Israel's near-insatiable desire for American carrots is outweighed only by its insatiable desire to colonize Palestinian land.

Will Washington learn from this and apply the lessons in the next stage of mediating this conflict?

The Obama administration should not expect the Israelis to do anything without pressure, and this pressure - economic, diplomatic - has to be real, tangible and biting. A brazen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, undoubtedly emboldened by what he and his right-wing coalition view as a victory in a standoff with President Obama, needs to be presented with a decisive and harsh response to Israel's bad behavior.

Some suggest that abandoning a freeze gives the United States an opportunity to put forward its own plan. But if Washington couldn't muster the strength or the will to press Netanyahu on settlements, can anyone believe it can press the Israelis to accept a deal on the rest of the core issues? It's highly unlikely.

The biggest mistake the United States has made in the last two years was not its focus on settlements but its failure to use leverage to get the Israelis to stop building them.

Has Washington learned the lesson? Perhaps the answer came earlier this month when Clinton delivered a major policy speech at the Brookings Institution. Though she expressed her frustration with the peace process, she didn't signal any change in the U.S. approach. Clinton's message can be summed up succinctly: We will keep doing what we have done and hope for a better outcome.

At a moment when the world needed to hear a change in direction, we instead were told that the United States is committed to repeating the same failed policies of the past. This is precisely why Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil recently determined they wouldn't wait for the bankrupt American-led process and recognized the state of Palestine.

America's political response? Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village) rushed a resolution to the House floor expressing opposition to such declarations of Palestinian statehood. The resolution, which passed, is a timely reminder of the increasing gap between Washington and the international community on this issue.

If there is no change in the U.S. approach to Israeli violations, no one will take this administration seriously: not the Israelis, certainly not the Palestinians, and presumably not the international community. Who can blame them?

* Yousef Munayyer is the Executive Director of the Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center.

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By Philip Giraldi * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Call me Saul on the road to Damascus. I have seen the light. As a former intelligence officer, I was initially appalled at the leak of a quarter of a million classified documents by someone who had responsibility for protecting them. I was highly skeptical of the entire WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning saga but following the leaks has convinced me that there is a lot of material that deserves a public airing to demonstrate to the American people how Washington is pursuing a senseless policy almost everywhere in the world. I have been particularly mortified in reading the accounts of meetings of US Ambassadors and Undersecretaries of State with their foreign counterparts, encounters revealing an unbelievable arrogance derived from the Bush Administration dictum "you are either with us or against us." Persian King of Kings Darius addressing his satraps could not do it any better.

The WikiLeaks plus Manning story has truly revealed that the US government will do anything necessary to silence its critics, legally or illegally. The way in which it is orchestrating a highly questionable international effort against both WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is despicable. There exists a sharp divide between those who believe government secrets should always be protected at all costs and those who believe that secrecy in government exists only to conceal official misbehavior. Obviously there is a middle ground hidden somewhere between the two, but those who favor the narrative that accepts that there is a nefarious government in Washington ruthlessly manipulating a world empire have pretty much gotten it right. The documents and the Obama Administration behavior together tell the tale.

There is an enormous amount of hypocrisy in those who are defending the government’s right to over-classify and deny access to the information that has been used to justify going to war, among other crimes. Insiders in government have no qualms about abusing classified information as long as it suits their purposes. Dick Cheney used insider secret information to "out" CIA officer Valerie Plame to punish her husband. The White House leaked intelligence that turned out to be bogus to Judith Miller at the New York Times to make the case for going to war against Iraq. George Tenet, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote a book called In the Eye of the Storm, which earned him in excess of $4 million. He worked in a SCIF (which stands for sensitive compartmented information facility) run by the defense and intelligence contractor SAIC and had access to all of his classified "papers" to help him write the book. Bear in mind that he was retired, with no official status at the time, was writing something for profit, and was using freely provided government resources to turn a buck. There was apparently no problem in his using classified material.

Unauthorized release of classified information and what becomes of it was also the focus in the trial that was terminated in May 2009 of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, AIPAC employees who passed sensitive intelligence to Israeli government officials and to Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post. The very same people at the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard who are now calling on the federal government to declare war on WikiLeaks and to summarily execute Julian Assange were at that time complaining about the fact that Rosen and Weissman had been charged with a crime because "everyone" passes around classified information in Washington. Particularly to Israel, which is okay because it is an ally (which, in fact, it is not). Apparently the talking heads at the Wall Street Journal believe it is all right to trust classified information to the kleptocrats in Tel Aviv but not to the American public, which has been footing the outrageous bill for the bloated and ineffective intelligence and diplomatic communities during the past ten years. Newt Gingrich meanwhile is calling Assange, who has threatened no one, a "terrorist." By that standard what should he call former officials like Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz who started a war that has killed hundreds of thousands?

Specialist Manning is undeniably a whistleblower, though the government will try to portray him as someone engaged in espionage. Whistleblowers should be encouraged as a check on irresponsible government and should be protected by law when they reveal something that is either illegal or unconstitutional. Government is intrinsically opposed to such transparency, recently and increasingly using the states secret privilege to deny whistleblowers their day in court. Daniel Ellsberg did the right thing when he published the Pentagon Papers about Vietnam. Sibel Edmonds did likewise when she revealed details of foreign espionage and influence buying in the United States. Stories about CIA torture, renditions, and secret prisons as well as accounts of Army thrill killings and the goings on at Abu Ghraib all originated as leaks and were needed to reveal the war crimes being committed by the US government in its hideous "global war on terror."

Contrary to the message emanating from the chattering media, WikiLeaks has embarrassed many but it has neither killed nor endangered anyone. Washington’s relationships with most foreign nations are based on mutual interests and they will continue in spite of concerns expressed by Hillary Clinton and others. And the positive far outweighs any potential negatives. When WikiLeaks revealed how US helicopter crews had recklessly targeted and killed civilians in Iraq, a story originating with Manning, it was a good leak, showing just how dirty and amoral the American initiated war in Iraq had become. Likewise, its release of bundles of documents relating to the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan served a good purpose in revealing that the US government was lying about both wars and ignoring its own intelligence analysis to continue to blunder around like a blind elephant in a small room. As the documents continue to appear they tell a tale of how the American empire is run and how, like an iceberg, most of it is concealed beneath the surface, hidden from public view. Manning took it upon himself to release the hundreds of thousands of secret papers, reportedly because of his belief that the diplomatic documents expose "almost criminal political back dealings" and explain "how the first world exploits the third, in detail." He was right to do so. The American juggernaut must be stopped and the transparency provided by Manning and other whistleblowers is the best weapon to accomplish that.

My only remaining concern continues to be the possibility that WikiLeaks itself has an agenda beyond exposing the machinations of an essentially duplicitous government. If it does that will presumably emerge eventually, but for the present WikiLeaks is providing a necessary service. I do not know if Julian Assange is working for any intelligence service, as has been alleged in some circles. It does seem to me that the release of documents so far has been selective, but perhaps as more of them surface that impression will vanish. I have heard that the newly formed US cyber command aided by the Israelis is behind the hacking campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its servers, particularly ironic as President Barack Obama has several times extolled the freedom of the internet. Apparently that is only true if it is hosting criticism of Iran or China.

The United States should not be mounting a huge international campaign to silence WikiLeaks, nor will it be successful. Nor should it attempt to "regulate" the internet, which is the inevitable next step. And the attempts to personally punish Assange, which might succeed, are a measure of how low America and its allies in Europe and Australia have sunk. He has broken no law even in an age of Patriot Acts and Military Commissions and the charges against him in Sweden appear to be a set-up. Once upon a time there was a rule of law in the United States and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, but no longer. Ultimately WikiLeaks will rise and fall based on its credibility and its ability to tell stories that are being suppressed elsewhere and that the public believes should be heard. WikiLeaks must be allowed to speak.

* Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest. His "Deep Background" column appears every month exclusively in The American Conservative.

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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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