Posts Tagged ‘America’

Newer Entries »

In America Fear Rules

June 11, 2009

Who Spent All That Money For What?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | Counterpunch, June 10, 2009

The power of irrational fear in the US is extraordinary.  It ranks up there with the Israel Lobby, the military/security complex, and the financial gangsters.  Indeed, fear might be the most powerful force in America.

Americans are at ease with their country’s aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, which has resulted in a million dead Muslim civilians and several million refugees,  because the US government has filled Americans with fear of terrorists.  “We have to kill them over there before they come over here.”

Fearful of American citizens, the US government is building concentration camps, apparently all over the country.  According to news reports, a $385 million US government contract was given by the Bush/Cheney Regime to Cheney’s company, Halliburton, to build “detention centers” in the US. The corporate media never explained for whom the detention centers are intended.

Most Americans dismiss such reports.  “It can’t happen here.”  However, In northeastern Florida not far from Tallahassee, I have seen what might be one of these camps.  There is a building inside a huge open area fenced with razor wire.  There is no one there and no signs.  The facility appears new and unused and does not look like an abandoned prisoner work camp.

What is it for?

Who spent all that money for what?

There are Americans who are so terrified of their lives being taken by terrorists that they are hoping the US government will use nuclear weapons to  destroy “the Muslim enemy.”  The justifications concocted for the use of nuclear bombs against Japanese civilian populations have had their effect.  There are millions of Americans who wish “their” government would kill everyone that “their” government has demonized.

When I tell these people that they will die of old age without ever seeing a terrorist, they think I am insane. Don’t I know that terrorists are everywhere in America?  That’s why we have airport security and homeland security.  That’s why the government is justified in breaking the law to spy on citizens without warrants.  That’s why the government is justified to torture people in violation of US law and the Geneva Conventions.  If we don’t torture them, American cities will go up in mushroom clouds.  Dick Cheney tells us this every week.

Terrorists are everywhere.  “They hate us for our freedom and democracy.”  When I tell
America’s alarmed citizens that the US has as many stolen elections as any country and that our civil liberties have been eroded by “the war on terror”  they lump me into the terrorist category.  They automatically conflate factual truth with anti-Americanism.

The same mentality prevails with regard to domestic crime.  Most Americans, including, unfortunately, juries, assume that if the police make a case against a person and a prosecutor prosecutes it, the defendant is guilty.  Most Americans are incapable of believing that police or a prosecutor would frame an innocent person for career or bureaucratic reasons or out of pure meanness.

Yet, it happens all the time.  Indeed, it is routine.

Frame-ups are so routine that 96 per cent of the criminally accused will not risk a “jury of their peers,” preferring to negotiate a plea bargain agreement with the prosecutor. The jury of their peers are a brainwashed lot, fearful of crime, which they have never experienced but hear about all the time.  Criminals are everywhere, doing their evil deeds.

The US has a much higher percentage of its population in prison than “authoritarian” countries, such as China, a one-party state.  An intelligent population might wonder how a “freedom and democracy” country could have incarceration rates far higher than a  dictatorship, but Americans fail this test.  The more people that are put in prison, the safer Americans feel.

Lawrence Stratton and I describe frame-up techniques in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. Police and prosecutors even frame the guilty, as it is easier than convicting them on the evidence.

One case that has been before us for years, but is resolutely neglected by the corporate media, whose function is to scare the people, is that of Troy Davis.

Troy Davis was convicted of killing a police officer.  The only evidence connecting him to the crime is the testimony of “witnesses,” the vast majority of whom have withdrawn their testimony.  The witnesses say they testified falsely against Troy Davis because of police intimidation and coercion.

One would think that this would lead to a new hearing and trial.  But not in America.  The Republican judicial nazis have created the concept of “finality.”  Even if the evidence shows that a wrongfully convicted person is innocent, finality requires that we execute him.  If the convicted person is executed, we can assume he was guilty, because America has a pure justice system and never punishes the innocent.  Everyone in prison and everyone  executed is guilty.  Otherwise, they they wouldn’t be in prison or executed.

It is all very simple if you are an American.  America is pure, but other countries, except for our allies, are barbaric.

The same goes for our wars.  Everyone we kill, whether they are passengers on Serbian commuter trains or attending weddings, funerals, or children playing soccer in Iraq, is a terrorist, or we would not have killed them. So was the little girl who was raped by our terrorist-fighting troops and then murdered, brutally, along with her family.

America only kills terrorists.  If we kill you, you are a terrorist.

Americans are the salt of the earth.  They never do any wrong.  Only those other people do.  Not the Israelis, of course.

And police, prosecutors, and juries never make mistakes.  Everyone accused is guilty.

Fear has made every American a suspect, eroded our rights, and compromised our humanity.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, imperialism, torture, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war, war crimes, warmongers | Leave a Comment »

Israel stands ready to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites

April 19, 2009

The Times, UK, April 18, 2009

Bushehr nuclear power plant, dome in top center, in Bushehr, Iran

Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem

The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.

“Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,” one senior defence official told The Times.

Related Links

Officials believe that Israel could be required to hit more than a dozen targets, including moving convoys. The sites include Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges produce enriched uranium; Esfahan, where 250 tonnes of gas is stored in tunnels; and Arak, where a heavy water reactor produces plutonium.

The distance from Israel to at least one of the sites is more than 870 miles, a distance that the Israeli force practised covering in a training exercise last year that involved F15 and F16 jets, helicopters and refuelling tankers.

The possible Israeli strike on Iran has drawn comparisons to its attack on the Osirak nuclear facility near Baghdad in 1981. That strike, which destroyed the facility in under 100 seconds, was completed without Israeli losses and checked Iraqi ambitions for a nuclear weapons programme.

“We would not make the threat [against Iran] without the force to back it. There has been a recent move, a number of on-the-ground preparations, that indicate Israel’s willingness to act,” said another official from Israel’s intelligence community.

He added that it was unlikely that Israel would carry out the attack without receiving at least tacit approval from America, which has struck a more reconciliatory tone in dealing with Iran under its new administration.

An Israeli attack on Iran would entail flying over Jordanian and Iraqi airspace, where US forces have a strong presence.

Ephraim Kam, the deputy director of the Institute for National Security Studies, said it was unlikely that the Americans would approve an attack.

“The American defence establishment is unsure that the operation will be successful. And the results of the operation would only delay Iran’s programme by two to four years,” he said.

A visit by President Obama to Israel in June is expected to coincide with the national elections in Iran — timing that would allow the US Administration to re-evaluate diplomatic resolutions with Iran before hearing the Israeli position.

“Many of the leaks or statements made by Israeli leaders and military commanders are meant for deterrence. The message is that if [the international community] is unable to solve the problem they need to take into account that we will solve it our way,” Mr Kam said.

Among recent preparations by the airforce was the Israeli attack of a weapons convoy in Sudan bound for militants in the Gaza Strip.

“Sudan was practice for the Israeli forces on a long-range attack,” Ronen Bergman, the author of The Secret War with Iran, said. “They wanted to see how they handled the transfer of information, hitting a moving target … In that sense it was a rehearsal.”

Israel has made public its intention to hold the largest-ever nationwide drill next month.

Colonel Hilik Sofer told Haaretz, a daily Israeli newspaper, that the drill would “train for a reality in which during war missiles can fall on any part of the country without warning … We want the citizens to understand that war can happen tomorrow morning”.

Israel will conduct an exercise with US forces to test the ability of Arrow, its US-funded missile defence system. The exercise would test whether the system could intercept missiles launched at Israel.

“Israel has made it clear that it will not tolerate the threat of a nuclear Iran. According to Israeli Intelligence they will have the bomb within two years … Once they have a bomb it will be too late, and Israel will have no choice to strike — with or without America,” an official from the Israeli Defence Ministry said.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Iran, warmongers, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

The Absurdity of Spending US Tax Dollars on Israel

March 31, 2009

Paul J. Balles argues that if enough ordinary Americans “feel the pinch and connect the dots between their own financial losses and America’s continued unbridled support of Israel’s devastating war machine, Israel could be forced to make peace with the Palestinians”.

By PAUL J. BALLES | South Lebanon, March 31, 2009

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once quipped that a person is not conscious of his or her little toe until the shoe pinches. Likewise, one typically is not conscious of an event or situation that can have great impact on one’s life until it has a direct affect.

In an article I wrote in September 2007 on “Overcoming the apathy, fear and listlessness of Americans“, I pointed out that, “liberties and freedoms may be squeezed … but until ‘the shoe pinches’, the squeezing won’t hurt most people enough to get them to act”. In short, most people pay little, if any, attention to politics, social issues, environmental problems, economic concerns or military events until they hurt directly.

The things that are now painfully connected to the recent financial crisis in America include health care costs that people are unable to meet, home foreclosures, job losses, excessive credit debt and loss of pay.

Is it possible that an economic catastrophe in America might have a surprisingly positive effect? An article by Jane Stillwater entitled “Our dual-citizenship Congress” suggested an unforeseen result that could be very good for the whole world.

First, Jane’s article reveals that the shoe is pinching ordinary Americans. She writes:

I turned on the television last night and listened to the local news anchor tell me, “The State of California is currently facing bankruptcy.” I live in California.

This is not good news. Plus California’s jobs are drying up, homes are being foreclosed on, stores are going out of business, schools are laying off teachers, banks are eliminating branches. The eighth-largest economy in the world is about to tank. Boy could we use some financial help from the feds.

Then, after asking, “But will we get it?” she concludes, “Probably not.” While California and other states are not receiving bailouts like the banks that will help ordinary people, Jane concludes:

But Congress still continues to enthusiastically pour billions of our taxpayers’ dollars into the Israeli economy each year. What’s with that? Do our Congressional representatives hold dual citizenship with the United States and Israel or what? When are they going to stop voting pork for Israel and start voting bailout money for CA?

Are we Californians going to have to start firing Qassam rockets at Washington to get their attention or what?

After getting Jane’s permission, I sent her article to my Congressman and cc’d it to everyone I know in California. The next day, I received several comments that echoed Jane’s complaint. Why are we continuing to send US taxpayer money to support Israel’s slaughter of innocents in Gaza while we don’t have enough money to support our own economy?

My daughter wrote, “It infuriates me to think that they are spending our tax $$$ for Israel instead of our own country and state. Yes, we are feeling the pain of it too!”

Her husband, a fire captain in Southern California, has just lost 10 per cent of his pay due to the governor’s budget cuts.

How can this possibly have a positive outcome? The economic crisis in both state and federal budgets has already pinched many shoes. Americans are very upset at the damage done to their financial conditions.

If enough people feel the pinch and connect the dots between their own financial losses and America’s continued unbridled support of Israel’s devastating war machine, Israel could be forced to make peace with the Palestinians.

How could that happen? Israel would no longer be able to ignore the Arab peace initiative first proposed in 2002 that offers pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from lands captured in 1967.

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Peace Movement, USA, warmongers, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

American Christian Support for Killing Iraqis

February 8, 2009

by Jacob G. Hornberger| The Future of Freedom Foundation, Feb 6, 2009

Among the things about the Iraq War that I have never been able to understand is how American Christians have been able, in good conscience, to support this war. After all, no one can deny that neither Iraq nor the Iraqi people ever attacked the United States. That makes the United States the aggressor — the attacker — in this particular conflict. How could American Christians support the killing of Iraqis in such a war of aggression? How could they reconcile this with God’s sacred commandment, Thou shalt not murder.

One possibility is that Americans initially viewed the Iraq War as one of self-defense. Placing their trust in their president and vice-president, they came to the conclusion that Iraq was about to unleash WMDs on American cities. Therefore, they concluded, America had the right to defend itself from this imminent attack, much as an individual has the moral right to use deadly force to defend his life from someone who is trying to murder him.

But once the WMDs failed to materialize, American Christians did not seem to engage in any remorse or regret over all the Iraqis who had been killed in the invasion. It was all marked up as simply an honest mistake. At the same time, hardly anyone called for a formal investigation into whether the president and the vice president had intentionally misled Americans into supporting the war based on bogus exaggerations of the WMD threat.

After the WMDs failed to materialize, American Christians had an option: They could have called for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops. Instead, they did the exact opposite. They supported the continued occupation of Iraq, with full knowledge that U.S. troops would have to continue killing Iraqis in order to solidify the occupation.

That’s when Christians began supporting a new rationale for killing Iraqis: that any Iraqi who resisted the U.S. invasion or occupation was a terrorist and, therefore, okay to kill. Since terrorists were bad people, the argument went, it was okay to support the killing of Iraqis who were resisting the invasion and occupation of their country.

Yet, rarely would any Christian ask himself the important, soul-searching questions: Why didn’t Iraqis have the moral right to resist the invasion and occupation of their country, especially if that invasion and occupation had been based on a bogus principle (i.e., the WMD threat)? Why did their resistance convert them into terrorists? Why did U.S. troops have the moral and religious right to kill people who were defending their country from invasion and occupation?

Instead, people in Christian churches all across the land simply just kept “supporting the troops.” I suspect part of the reasoning has to do with the mindset that is inculcated in public schools all across the land — that in war, it’s “our team” vs. “their team,” and that Americans have a moral duty to support “our team,” regardless of the facts.

Among the most fascinating rationales for supporting the killing of Iraqis that American Christians have relied upon has been the mathematical argument. It goes like this: Saddam Hussein would have killed a larger number of Iraqis than the U.S. government has killed in the invasion and occupation. Therefore, the argument goes, it’s okay to support the invasion and occupation, which have killed countless Iraqis.

But under Christian doctrine, does God really provide for a mathematical exception to his commandment against killing? Let’s see how such reasoning would be applied here at home.

Let’s assume that the D.C. area is besieged by two snipers, who are killing people indiscriminately. Let’s assume that they’re killing people at the rate of 5 per month. That would mean that at the end of the year, they would have killed 60 people.

One day, the cops learn that the two snipers are parked in a highway rest area. There are also 25 other people there, all Americans, men, women, and children, and all innocent.

The Pentagon offers to drop a bomb on the parking lot, which would definitely snuff out the lives of the snipers. The problem is that it would also snuff out the lives of the other 25 people.

Under Christian principles, would it be okay to drop the bomb? I would hope that most Christians would say, No! As Christians, we cannot kill innocent people even if by doing so, we rid the world of those snipers. If we cannot catch the snipers except by dropping the bomb, then we simply have to let them get away. God does not provide a mathematical justification for killing innocent people.

Yet, isn’t that precisely the mathematical analysis that has been used by Christians to justify their support for the killing of Iraqis. What’s the difference?

In their blind support for “our team” and for “supporting the troops” in Iraq, American Christians seem to have forgotten an important point about government and God: When the laws or actions of one’s government’s contradict the laws of God, the Christian has but one proper course of action — to leave behind the laws of man and to follow the laws of God.

Hornberger’s Blog Archives


Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Iraq, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

The Illusion of Sovereignty

September 28, 2008

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich | Information Clearing House, Sep 28, 2008

Perhaps sovereignty is relative; how else can one explain the subjugation of the most powerful industrial nations to the will of another while under the delusion of independence, national interest, democracy, and even capitalism? A single country, Israel and its powerful lobby AIPAC have altered the course of history in America and by extension, the rest of the world.

In order to understand the argument being made and the power of manipulation of this extraordinary group, one must revisit the Arab economic boycott of Israel dating back several decades. To defeat the boycott, the Israeli lobby went into full gear and argued before the House that the Arab boycott constituted “a harassment and blackmailing of America, an interference with normal business activities … that the boycott activities were contrary to the principles of free trade that the United States has espoused for many years … and the Arab interference in the business relations of American firms with other countries is in effect an interference with the sovereignty of the United States.”i Bowing to AIPAC, the US adopted and enforced comprehensive anti-boycott legislation which Jimmy Carter signed into law in 1977. The law called for fines to be levied on American companies which cooperated with the boycott.

However, in spite of pressure from the Lobby, Congress refused to enforce sanctions on the Arab League on the grounds that “extraterritorial measures that impermissibly impinge on the sovereignty of other nations”ii was not acceptable. Yet in an about face, America has yielded its own sovereignty and has demanded other nations subjugate theirs and impose sanctions on Iran. Surely one must wonder what made the United States bow to the Israeli demands and impinge on the sovereignty of Japan as an example when it had to forgo its exclusive rights to develop part of Iran’s Azadegan oil field, the country’s largest in compliance with the Iran-Libya Sanction Act (ILSA).

For not only is it believed that AIPAC wrote the ILSA, but today, using their foot soldier, the neocon influenced US government, it is holding the United Nations hostage as three rounds of illegal sanctions have been passed against Iran with a recent House approved tougher sanctions bill iii as Iran pursues nuclear technologies that are put in the service of humankind on every continent. Surely those whose lust for power blindly led them to office must come to realize that their power is an illusion for the reins are held by another. They are the puppets and the Lobby and the neoconservatives the puppeteers. Should we not question how we got to this point in our history?

Was it the power of the vote or the ally’s treachery? In the 60’s and 70’s while the Lobby was asking for American sacrifice, Israel was busy betraying America. Within the CIA as elsewhere in the intelligence community, there is a “widespread belief” that in the 1960s Israeli intelligence spirited about two hundred pounds of weapons- grade uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania. John Hadden, a former CIA station chief in Tel Aviv, states that NUMEC was an “Israeli operation from the beginning.” The NUMEC case was investigated by the GAO and the House Interior Committee in 1978, but their reports have never been declassified”. Lyndon Johnson who was the first of a string of administrations to bury the NUMEC affairiv, not only covered up the report but it would seem as if the audacity of their act merited further cover up – the killing of American servicemen on board the Liberty by Israelis.v To their credit, the Israelis, confident that they could do as they pleased with American administrations, smuggled 810 krytons to Israelvi (krytons can be used for electronic triggers for nuclear weapons). Not long after this outrageous thievery, Ronald Reagan punished Iran by reinstating trade sanctions (Exec. Ord. No.12613) (first imposed by Carter and lifted in accordance to the Algiers Accords). It would seem that the trend for punishing other nations for Israel’s dangerous betrayal continues.

On every continent nuclear technology is being made available to promote progress. In South America, nuclear technology is being used to map underground aquifers, so that water supplies can be managed sustainably. The Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI) which was changed to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) because of the negative connotations associated with the word nuclear in the late 1970’s would be explored to diagnose and treat patients. In Vietnam farmers plant rice with greater nutritional value that was developed with IAEA assistance – rice is also the staple food of Iranians. Within the next few years (estimates are 10-25 years) over 2 billion people will be without drinking water. Research in desalination technology initiated in 1970 using Advance Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) will make salt water drinkable. These are the components of nuclear technology that are the fundamentals of ‘Atoms for Peace’. These are the inalienable rights of Iran under Article IV for which it is being sanctioned.

AIPAC had previously contended that the Arab boycott constituted “a harassment and blackmailing of America…..”, yet today, with all nations blackmailed by a country that has an illegal nuclear arsenal capable of unimaginable destruction, a country which has no regard for international law and norms or loyalty, is demanding that sanctions be imposed on Iran for pursuing its inalienable right within the framework of the NPT.
“What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.” – Hannah Arendt

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups. She is a peace activist and political analyst.

1 – H. Alikhani, Sanctioning Iran, Anatomy of a Failed Policy, New York, 2000, p.321

2 – Alikhani (2000), p.312.

3 – http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080927/ap_on_go_co/iran_sanctions

4 – Duncan L.Clarke, “Israel’s Economic Espionage in the United States”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4. (Summer, 1998), pp. 20-35.Quoted in Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, pp. 78-81., also Hersh, The Samson option’, pp. 188-89, 242; Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 197-98., and Interview, congressional source, Washington, D.C., August 1994.

5 – http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17901.htm

6 – “Israelis Illegally Got U.S. Devices Used in Making Nuclear Weapons,” NewYork Times, 16 May 1985

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, US policy, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: The Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

September 22, 2008

Robert Weitzel, Sep 21, 2008

Mention 9/11 to most Americans and the two numbers are considered sufficient to give meaning to that day. But mention 9/12, the day after when “terror” became our national mantra and the “smoking gun” brandished by a neocon-infested administration for its devilish designs in the Middle East and the numbers are meaningless beyond the platitudinous, “they hate our freedoms” and “God Bless America.”

Such platitudes, hawked ad nauseam by TV “faith-healers” and political snake oil peddlers, may act as a balm to soothe a body politic traumatized by the attacks on 9/11, but they do not explain—only obfuscate—the real causes that brought terror to our “blessed shores.”

Like many Americans on the seventh anniversary of 9/11, I turned to the Bible for an answer, a problematic move for an atheist such as myself. Predictably, I went straight to verse 9:11 in the Book of Revelation—the Bible’s most terror filled text—and found a short blurb about Abaddon the Destroyer; admittedly, an interesting coincidence, but not a “big picture” explanation.

However, thanks to Providence or serendipity, the very next verse, 9:12, was a godsend: “One terror now ends, but there are two more coming.”

Considering the last seven years, plagued to biblical proportion as they have been by the Bush administration’s criminal domestic and international response to 9/11, no prophet is needed to give meaning to the first half of Rev 9:12, while only a cursory vita review of the Republican and Democratic vice presidential candidates is needed to illuminate the rest of the verse.

John McCain will be the oldest man ever elected as a first-term president. He is also the fellow who made an enemy of the religious right in 2000 when he blasted them for “the evil influence that they exercise over the Republican Party.” McCain needs youth and sex appeal and religious right muscle to prevail. He needs Sarah Palin . . . who happens to be an “end times” fundamentalist.

Barack Obama will be the first “black” man ever elected president. He is young and inexperienced in foreign affairs. He is also not polling well among influential older white voters. Obama needs age and white hair and foreign policy muscle to prevail. He needs Joseph Biden . . . who happens to be a self-professed Zionist.

Behold the twin “terrors” of the Holy Land: a sexy fundamentalist and a white-haired Zionist.

Introducing Governor Palin to Master’s Commission graduates, a youth ministry whose vision is to “see young men and women who are not afraid to lead and are violent in their pursuit of righteous,” Ed Kalnins, pastor of the Wasilla Assembly of God church where Palin was baptized, told the audience that she is the “real deal.”

Pastor Kalnins is the same guy who believes that certain parts of the world are controlled by demons—guess which parts—and preaches an “end times” theology, the radical fundamentalist belief that the corruption of the Holy Land, that would be Muslims, Jews, sundry heretics and unbelievers, must be purified by God’s cleansing fire before the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ can occur.

Knowing Palin is the “real deal” and that several of the churches she’s attended are associated with the likes of Christians United for Israel, a right-wing “end times” organization dedicated to leading the charge to Armageddon (beginning with the nuking of Iran), odds are good Palin embraces this apocalyptic vision.

Frederick Clarkson, author of “Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy” recently told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, “[Palin’s] well-documented belief that she’s living in the “end time” . . . and her interpretation of the Book of Revelation may be driving her public policy and particularly her foreign and military policy views.”

Palin clarified one of her foreign and military policy views for the Master’s Commission graduates by assuring them that the invasion of Iraq was “a task from God.” For a would-be vice president this policy view, one first held by medieval Crusaders as they whacked off Muslim heads, is a real diplomatic nonstarter for the 325 million Arabs living in the Middle East, not to mention the billion-plus Muslims worldwide.

But the mother of all diplomatic nonstarters among Middle East Arabs is a comment Joseph Biden, the current chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Obama’s would-be foreign policy advisor, made during an interview with the Jewish-American cable network, Shalom TV, “I am a Zionist.”

Having a declared Zionist as the vice president of Israel’s most ardent—to the point of irrational—ally waves a shoe in the face of Arabs who are convinced (rightly or wrongly) that Zionism’s ultimate goal is to fulfill the 3000-year-old biblical mandate in Genesis 15:18 to reclaim the land between the Nile and Euphrates rivers as Eretz Yisrael, a territory that includes all or part of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, a slice of Turkey and upwards of 160 million Arabs.

Considering the brutal tactics used by a succession of right-wing Israeli governments—backed by U.S. dollars and military hardware—to secure the Vermont-sized “Eretz Yisrael-lite,” it’s little wonder that Arabs living within the biblical boundaries of Eretz Yisrael feel terrorized by Israel’s chutzpa and its 200 nuclear warheads and have long since elevated their terror alert to blood red.

Keep in mind that when a terrorized people lack a superpower ally and more sophisticated means, their only recourse is to throw stones or strap explosives to their backs or pack suitcases with mini-nukes and deadly microbes or hijack airliners with box cutters and visit their enemy’s “blessed shores” This is not to excuse it. This is not to condone it. This is to explain it.

Come November Americans will choose one of two “terrors” (since our political system allows only two choices): the Middle East in flames to fulfill a biblical “end times” prophecy or the Middle East in flames to secure a biblical Eretz Yisrael. Either way, 325 million Arabs will have an answer that will undoubtedly send a twinge of terror, and most likely rage, down many a “radicalized” spine.

If the Bible or patriotic platitudes or political snake oil continue to be the extent—or sincerity—of our search for understanding the cause of 9/11, we will sooner than later have two more numbers of national significance and another annual occasion for remembering and mourning.


Biography: Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, US policy, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Who Is Wrecking America?

September 5, 2008

By Paul Craig Roberts | Information Clearing House, Sep 3, 2008

Does the liberal-left have a clue? I sometimes think not.

In his book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?,” Thomas Frank made the excellent point that the Karl Rove Republicans take advantage of ordinary’s people’s frustrations and resentments to lead them into voting against their best interest.

Frank’s new book, “The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule,” lacks the insight that distinguished his previous book. Why does Frank think that conservatives or liberals rule?

Neither rule. America is ruled by organized interest groups with money to elect candidates who serve their interests. Frank’s book does not even mention the Israel Lobby, which bleeds Americans for the sake of Israeli territorial expansion. Check the index. Israel is not there.

Does Frank think that rapture evangelicals are conservative, that Christian Zionists are conservative? If so, where did he learn his theology?

Frank can’t tell the difference between Ronald Reagan and Cheney/Bush. He conflates the collection of opportunists and fanatics that comprise the Bush Party with the Reagan conservatives who ended stagflation and the cold war. The adventurer, Jack Abramoff, is Frank’s epitome of a conservative. Abramoff is the most mentioned person in Frank’s story. In Frank’s view, conservatives are out to ruin everyone except the rich.

But it was the Clinton administration that rigged the Consumer Price Index in order to cheat retired people out of their Social Security cost of living increases.

It was the Clinton administration that vanished discouraged workers from the unemployment rolls.

It was the Clinton administration that wrecked “effective government” by encouraging early civil service retirements in order to make way for quota hires.

Why doesn’t Frank know that the “Reagan deficit” was due to the collapse of inflation below the forecast, thus reducing the flow of inflated revenues into the government’s budget, whereas the Bush deficit is a result of what Nobel Democrat economist Joe Stiglitz has calculated to be a $3 trillion dollar war in the Middle East?

Frank doesn’t want to know. Like so many fighting ideological battles, he just wants to damn “the enemy.”

But who is Frank’s enemy? He calls them “conservatives.” But the Bush regime is a neoconservative regime. Neoconservatives, despite the name, are not conservatives. They have taken over formerly conservative publications, think tanks, and foundations and driven out the conservatives.

Neoconservatives are in the tradition of the French Jacobins of the 18th century. Having had the French Revolution, the revolutionaries thought that they should take it to all of Europe. Napoleon exercised French hegemony over Europe. The American neocons desire American hegemony over the world.

The true American conservative does not believe in foreign wars. In US history, conservatives were derided by liberals as “isolationists.”

There is nothing conservative about launching wars of aggression on the basis of lies and deception in order to control the direction of oil pipelines and to enhance Israeli territorial expansion.

Frank misses all of this.

And what a pity that is. A false conservative-liberal fight distracts attention from the growing police state that is destroying civil liberties for all Americans. It obscures the real motives of policies in behalf of special interests that are leading to nuclear confrontation with Russia and China.

What is wrecking America is not conservatives, but a neoconservative ideology of US hegemony.

What is wrecking America is the “impeachment-is-off-the-table” twins, Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers.

What is wrecking America is the Democratic Party, which was put in control of the House and Senate in the 2006 congressional elections to stop the gratuitous wars and gestapo police, but, instead, has continued to cooperate with the Cheney/Bush regime in behalf of war and police repression, such as we witnessed at the Republican National Convention.

Frank’s book, “The Wrecking Crew” falls into the scapegoat category of blaming the innocent and irrelevant. The Democrat Party could impeach Cheney/Bush and cut off funding for the wars and corrupt military contracts. But they do nothing and get a free pass from Frank.

“The Wrecking Crew” does have one virtue. Frank shows that the Republicans have spawned a new generation of brownshirts that lust to imprison, torture, and kill people. These ignorant bloodthirsty thugs see enemies everywhere and fervently desire to nuke them all. The Republican brownshirts are equally willing to kill American critics of the Bush regime as to kill Taliban and al Qaeda.

The latest “enemy” is Russia. The Bush regime, complicit in its Georgian puppet’s war crimes against South Ossetia, is attempting to hide its responsibility for ethnic cleansing by demonizing Russia. With every threat the Bush regime issues against Russia, the war drums beat louder. Yet, the print and TV media and Democratic Party have jumped on the war wagon.

The rapture evangelicals and the neocons are euphoric at the prospect of nuclear war. Frank’s misguided barrage at conservatives, who are a brake on war and the police state, hastens end times.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, USA | Leave a Comment »

MIDEAST: Arabs Despair of U.S. Even More

August 1, 2008

Analysis by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Jul 31 (IPS) – For decades, the U.S. has jealously guarded its role of sole arbiter of the Arab-Israeli dispute. In light of recent shows of support for Israel by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama, however, many Arabs fear that Zionist influence on the U.S. body politic — across the political spectrum — has made the notion of ‘U.S. even-handedness’ a contradiction in terms.

“When it comes to the Middle East conflict, the Arabs no longer see any difference between Republicans and Democrats,” Ahmed Thabet, political science professor at Cairo University told IPS. “Both parties vie with one another in expressing total support for Israel.”

In a speech before Israeli parliament in May, U.S. President George W. Bush went further than any of his predecessors in voicing praise for the self-proclaimed Jewish state. Referring to Israelis as a “chosen people”, Bush pledged Washington’s unwavering support against Israel’s traditional nemeses, including Iran and resistance parties Hamas and Hezbollah.

In statements heavy on “Judeo-Christian” religious references, Bush went on to describe Washington’s alliance with Israel as “unbreakable”.

Similar sentiments have been echoed by Bush’s would be Republican successor, Senator John McCain, who has also pledged “eternal” U.S. support for Israel.

“Israel and the U.S. must always stand together,” McCain declared before the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in early June. “We are the most natural of allies. And, like Israel itself, that alliance is for ever.”

Calling Israel “an inspiration to free nations everywhere,” McCain barely addressed longstanding Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Like Bush, he denounced regional actors opposed to Israel’s occupation of Arab land, referring to Hamas as “the terrorist-led group in charge of Gaza.”

Neither Bush nor McCain so much as mention — let alone criticise — Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinian populations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This treatment includes frequent military assaults often targeting civilians, the use of ‘targeted assassinations’, the ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip (which has brought that territory to the brink of starvation), continued construction of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land, and the forced removal of non-Jewish, Arab inhabitants from the city of Jerusalem.

Arab analysts, meanwhile, express little surprise at such blatant pro-Israel bias, coming as it does from a political party thoroughly influenced by the so-called “neo-conservative” movement, of which Israeli ascendancy is a central tenet.

More disturbing to Arab critics of U.S. policy is the fact that Democratic presidential contenders have shown just as much zeal for Israeli supremacy as their Republican rivals.

In his own speech to AIPAC in early June, Obama stressed the need for a “more nuanced” approach to U.S. Middle East peacemaking. He stunned many, however, when he went on to state that Jerusalem would “remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

Although Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967, its claim to the city has never been recognised by the international community. Officially, the status of Jerusalem — which Palestinians also want as capital of their future state — is supposed to be determined in long-awaited “final status” negotiations.

Continued . . .

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Palestine, US policy, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Time To Exit The Empire Game

July 28, 2008

By Patrick J. Buchanan | WorldNetDaily, July 25, 2008

As any military historian will testify, among the most difficult of maneuvers is the strategic retreat. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, Lee’s retreat to Appomattox and MacArthur’s retreat from the Yalu come to mind. The British Empire abandoned India in 1947 – and a Muslim-Hindu bloodbath ensued.

France’s departure from Indochina was ignominious, and her abandonment of hundreds of thousands of faithful Algerians to the FALN disgraceful. Few American can forget the humiliation of Saigon ’75, or the boat people, or the Cambodian holocaust.

Strategic retreats that turn into routs are often the result of what Lord Salisbury called “the commonest error in politics … sticking to the carcass of dead policies.”

From 1989 to 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and breakup of the USSR, America had an opportunity to lay down its global burden and become again what Jeane Kirkpatrick called “a normal country in a normal time.”

We let the opportunity pass by, opting instead to use our wealth and power to convert the world to democratic capitalism. And we have reaped the reward of all the other empires that went before: a sinking currency, relative decline, universal enmity, a series of what Rudyard Kipling called “the savage wars of peace.”

Yet, opportunity has come anew for America to shed its imperial burden and become again the republic of our fathers.

The chairman of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party has just been hosted for six days by Beijing. Commercial flights have begun between Taipei and the mainland. Is not the time ripe for America to declare our job done, that the relationship between China and Taiwan is no longer a vital interest of the United States?

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government wants a status of forces agreement with a timetable for full withdrawal of U.S. troops. Is it not time to say yes, to declare that full withdrawal is our goal as well, that the United States seeks no permanent bases in Iraq?

On July 4, Reuters, in a story headlined “Poland rejects U.S. missile offer,” reported from Warsaw: “Poland spurned as insufficient on Friday a U.S. offer to boost its air defenses in return for basing anti-missile interceptors on its soil. …

“‘We have not reached a satisfactory result on the issue of increasing the level of Polish security,’ Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a news conference after studying the latest U.S. proposal.”

Tusk is demanding that America “provide billions of dollars worth of U.S. investment to upgrade Polish air defenses in return for hosting 10 two-stage missile interceptors,” said Reuters.

Reflect if you will on what is going on here.

By bringing Poland into NATO, we agreed to defend her against the world’s largest nation, Russia, with thousands of nuclear weapons. Now, the Polish regime is refusing us permission to site 10 anti-missile missiles on Polish soil, unless we pay Poland billions for the privilege.

Has Uncle Sam gone senile?

No. Tusk has Sam figured out. The old boy is so desperate to continue in his Cold War role as world’s Defender of Democracy he will even pay the Europeans – to defend Europe.

Why not tell Tusk that if he wants an air defense system, he can buy it; that we Americans are no longer willing to pay Poland for the privilege of defending Poland; that the anti-missile missile deal is off. And use cancellation of the missile shield to repair relations with a far larger and more important power, Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Consider, too, the opening South Korea is giving us to end our 60-year commitment to defend her against the North. For weeks, Seoul hosted anti-American protests against a trade deal that allows U.S. beef into South Korea. Koreans say they fear mad-cow disease.

Yet, when a new deal was cut to limit imports to U.S. beef from cattle less than 30 months old, that too was rejected by the protesters. Behind the demonstrations lies a sentiment of anti-Americanism.

In 2002, a Pew Research Center survey of 42 nations found 44 percent of South Koreans, second highest number of any country, holding an unfavorable view of the United States. A Korean survey put the figure at 53 percent, with 80 percent of youth holding a negative view. By 39 percent to 35 percent, South Koreans saw the United States as a greater threat than North Korea.

Can someone explain why we keep 30,000 troops on the DMZ of a nation whose people do not even like us?

The raison d’etre for NATO was the Red Army on the Elbe. It disappeared two decades ago. The Chinese army left North Korea 50 years ago. Yet NATO endures and the U.S. Army stands on the DMZ. Why?

Because, if all U.S. troops were brought home from Europe and Korea, 10,000 rice bowls would be broken. They are the rice bowls of politicians, diplomats, generals, journalists and think tanks who would all have to find another line of work.

And that is why the Empire will endure until disaster befalls it, as it did all the others.

Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of seven books.

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in US policy | Leave a Comment »

Newer Entries »