Obama Appoints Top Notch CFR, Bilderberg Members

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
January 22, 2009

Obama announces the appointment of CFR-Bilderberg members George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke at the State Department.

From Reuters:

In a flurry of diplomatic activity in his first week in office, U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday named special envoys for the Middle East and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

Newly confirmed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Obama had chosen George Mitchell, a former senator and seasoned international trouble-shooter, as an envoy who will try to jump-start moribund Arab-Israeli peace talks.

Obama tapped former ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan and related issues.

George Mitchell is not simply a CFR member — he is a former director of the globalist organization.

Mitchell “got his start in Federal politics when appointed by President Jimmy Carter (CFR member),” writes Tom Kovach. “Mitchell is chairman of the second-largest law firm in the world, DLA Piper. You know, the firm that recently put a full-service, ‘multicultural’ office in Dubai. You know, the port city in a country that tried to buy American port operations with oil money. Mitchell’s law firm has a ’strategic alliance’ with a consulting group owned by former US Secretary of Defense William Cohen (CFR member), which did PR work on behalf of DP World, the Dubai company that tried to buy the ports.” DLA Piper represents more than half of the top 250 Fortune 500 clients and nearly half of the FTSE 350 or their subsidiaries.

Mitchell sits on the steering committee of the American Friends of Bilderberg along with such luminaries as Conrad Black, Henry Kissinger, and David Rockefeller,

	Alex Jones confronts globalist minion Richard Holbrooke at the Bilderberg meeting in Ottawa.

Ditto Richard Holbrooke. He is on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. A dedicated Clintonite and former ambassador to the United Nations, Holbrooke brokered the Dayton Peace Accords, the “peace agreement” that partitioned and reduced Bosnia to a NATO and IMF client state, a model of bankster privatization. Holbrooke’s “peace plan” was only realized after massive NATO bombardment of Bosnian Serb territory.

Holbrooke is a consummate insider and global elite operative. Along with Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, and Paul Allaire, Holbrooke directs the American Friends of Bilderberg, an organization that takes money from Exxon, Arco, IBM, and other transnational corporations and has its meetings funded by the globalist Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Endowment fund.

It looks like the White House is shaping up to become a branch office of the CFR and Bilderbergers, but then this is simply business as usual. For years, the CFR — with its associate memberships in such international units as the Trilateral Commission, Club of Rome, and Bildebergers — has infested not only the White House, but the State Department, the NSC, the Pentagon, and much of the federal government.

“CFR membership is also inclusive of West Point Superintendents, Allied Supreme Commanders, Secretaries of Defense, and Military Policy members. Media memberships include Time, New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, etc.,” writes Noah W. Hutchings. “The CFR also exerts influence on United States personnel at the various United Nations agencies, which is natural, because UN goals usually parallel CFR’s goals.”

The American people think they voted for change, but in fact they simply signed off on four or eight more years of globalist rule.

Solidarity with Gaza: Just the Beginning

The latest Israeli assault on the tiny Strip represents the failure of the siege to weaken Hamas and the Gazan people's resolve. It should come as a wake-up call to the world that placing 1.5 million people in a cage and denying them basic necessities, including food, medical supplies and fuel only takes that fuel from their hands and adds it to the fire, notes Hammam Farah.


The incessant sound of typing over the many laptops around me became the background theme sound of my life for the past two and a half weeks. Since Israel's latest assault on Gaza that began on December 27, my social circle of journalists and activists have besieged ourselves (no pun intended) in a friend's basement to write articles, coordinate with other groups, take interviews, and discuss strategies for raising awareness and taking action.

Already, the bone chilling, cold streets of Toronto have seen several mass demonstrations of solidarity with the people of Gaza and anger at an Israeli government that is increasingly being recognized as one of apartheid and racial exclusion. For our Palestinian people back home, the struggle consists of continued steadfastness and resistance. For us in the Diaspora, it's about education, solidarity, and the promotion of the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid and its institutions. For both those in Palestine and outside, the long-term goal is the ending of Israeli apartheid, and the immediate goal is breaking the world's silence over the two-year-old inhuman siege on Gaza and its culmination with this massive assault that has so far taken the lives of over a thousand people today.

This latest assault represents the failure of the siege to weaken Hamas and the Gazan people's resolve. It should come as a wake-up call to the world that placing 1.5 million people in a cage and denying them basic necessities, including food, medical supplies and fuel only takes that fuel from their hands and adds it to the fire.

When I phoned my grandmother who lives in Gaza to check on her last week, she said that there used to be a choice between bread and rice, but now there was only bread. The obvious next step is for even bread to disappear and the people left with nothing to eat. She went on to say that the electricity was out and that the water was dirty and had to be boiled to clean. The psychological aspect is even worse. People are left to constantly contemplate whether to stay home or seek shelter elsewhere within the narrow streets of Gaza, which is one of the few, if not the only, territories on earth where civilians are denied the chance to leave and seek refuge during a time of war or bombardment. The decision could determine whether they would live or die. To my increasing frustration, other relatives did not answer their phones because the Israeli intelligence has been calling people to intimidate them into collaborating.

But the suffering only strengthens our will to continue the struggle. Here in Canada, our government will have to answer for its overt support for the massacres. So do our universities. Several university presidents issued a statement in 2007 condemning Britain's University and College Union's motion to discuss the academic boycott of Israel, using the principle of academic freedom as justification. But they have remained silent over the bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza and other educational institutions. How dare they have the audacity to believe that condemnation of a non-violent boycott, but silence over the violence of bombs will go unanswered for? They, also, will have to answer to us. And all the student unions that refused or kept delaying the passing of boycott resolutions will now have to make a choice.

For this is just the beginning. It is inspirational to see the thousands of people who came out to the streets in protest and the many who attended a teach-in on Gaza last week. The number of unions who are pledging to boycott Israel is continuing to grow. The number of Jews opposing Israel's apartheid is continuing to grow and even the media has been finally reporting on Jewish condemnation and protest of Israel. And the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia have cut their ties with Israel.

And yet, Israel does not see the harm it has done to its own image. Even during this horrific onslaught on Gaza, the Central Elections Committee of Israel has just banned two of the largest and most popular Palestinian citizen ("Israeli Arab") parties from running in next month's Knesset elections. If this is how Israel plans to fight back the growing allegations of apartheid, then our work is going to be cut out for us much sooner than I predicted.

Many people are getting involved now, including people that were unaware of what's going on, people who were unsure which side to take, people who knew what was going on but didn't know what to do about it, people who supported the Palestinians but did not support the boycott and now do, and people who supported Israel and now don't.

Hammam Farah is a Palestinian Canadian who was born in the Gaza Strip as part of Gaza's small Christian community. He resides in Toronto and is a solidarity activist with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), which is spearheading the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign in Canada. He can be reached at hammamf@gmail.com. This article appeared in The Palestine Chronicke

Gaza invasion: Powered by the U.S.

Taxpayers are spending over $1 billion to send refined fuel to the Israeli military -- at a time when Israel doesn't need it and America does.

Editor's note: Generous support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

By Robert Bryce

Jan. 16, 2009 | Israel's current air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip has left about 1,000 Palestinians dead, including 400 women and children. Several thousand people have been wounded and dozens of buildings have been destroyed. An estimated 90,000 Gazans have abandoned their homes. Israel's campaign in Gaza, which began more than two weeks ago, has been denounced by the Red Cross, multiple Arab and European countries, and agencies from the United Nations. Demonstrations in Pakistan and elsewhere have been held to denounce America's support for Israel.
It's well known that the U.S. supplies the Israelis with much of their military hardware. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has provided about $53 billion in military aid to Israel. What's not well known is that since 2004, U.S. taxpayers have paid to supply over 500 million gallons of refined oil products -- worth about $1.1 billion –- to the Israeli military. While a handful of countries get motor fuel from the U.S., they receive only a fraction of the fuel that Israel does -- fuel now being used by Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and tanks to battle Hamas.
According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, between 2004 and 2007 the U.S. Defense Department gave $818 million worth of fuel to the Israeli military. The total amount was 479 million gallons, the equivalent of about 66 gallons per Israeli citizen. In 2008, an additional $280 million in fuel was given to the Israeli military, again at U.S. taxpayers' expense. The U.S. has even paid the cost of shipping the fuel from U.S. refineries to ports in Israel.

In 2008, the fuel shipped to Israel from U.S. refineries accounted for 2 percent of Israel's $13.3 billion defense budget. Publicly available data shows that about 2 percent of the U.S. Defense Department's budget is also spent on oil. A senior analyst at the Pentagon, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, says the Israel Defense Force's fuel use is most likely similar to that of the U.S. Defense Department. In other words, the Israeli military is spending about the same percentage of its defense budget on oil as the U.S. is. Therefore it's possible that the U.S. is providing most, or perhaps even all, of the Israeli military's fuel needs.
What's more, Israel does not need the U.S. handout. Its own recently privatized refineries, located at Haifa and Ashdod, could supply all of the fuel needed by the Israeli military. Those same refineries are now producing and selling jet fuel and other refined products on the open market. But rather than purchase lower-cost jet fuel from its own refineries, the Israeli military is using U.S. taxpayer money to buy and ship large quantities of fuel from U.S. refineries.
The Israeli government obtains the fuel through the Defense Department's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, and pays for the fuel and the shipping with funds granted to it through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), another Defense Department program. (In 2008, Congress earmarked $2.4 billion in FMF money for Israel, and $2.5 billion for 2009.) The dimensions of the FMS fuel program are virtually unknown among America's top experts on Middle East policy. For his part, the Pentagon analyst was surprised to learn that FMS money was even being used to supply fuel to Israel. "That's not the purpose of the program," he says. "FMS was designed to allow U.S. weapons makers to sell their goods to foreign countries. The idea that fuel is being bought under FMS is very, very odd."

The fuel program, in fact, raises a number of pressing questions. The shipments have occurred during times of record-high oil prices, when American consumers have been angered by motor fuel prices that in 2008 exceeded $4 per gallon. Given those high prices, it appears to make little sense for the U.S. government to be promoting policies that reduce the volume of -- and potentially raise the price of -- motor fuel available for sale to U.S. motorists.
The U.S. fuel shipments are part of a sustained policy that has widened the energy gap between Israel and its neighbors. Over the past few years, the Israel Defense Force has cut off fuel supplies and destroyed electricity infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Those embargoes and attacks on power plants have exacerbated a huge gap in per-capita energy consumption between Israelis and Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. And that sharp disparity helps explain why the Palestinians have never been able to build a viable economy.
Edward S. Walker, former president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, says the fuel supply program is emblematic of U.S. military support for Israel. Walker, who has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, explains that the FMF money allows the Israelis to "do with it what they want. They can buy equipment or fuel. It's their choice, not the government's choice. It's the only program where we give someone a blank check and they can use it any way that they choose."
Given the recent spike in oil prices, which helped send the U.S. and the world economy into a tailspin, and Americans still smarting from paying $4 at the pump, says Walker, "Why are we supplying fuel to Israel when we are paying such high prices?"

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Latest Deaths: Gazans 600, Israelis 5 (4 from "friendly" fire)

No, this is not the latest score of some football match, and the higher numbers do not mean that one side is doing better than the other!
The title of this article is designed to emphasize how one sided the Gaza conflict is. We can not be absolutely sure about the Gazan deaths, but the figure of 600 does not sound too far off the mark. However, we can be sure that the Israeli figures are 100% correct. This excludes the countless injuries, which are probably equally lopsided.
Of the 5 Israeli's that have been killed, at least 3 (and almost certainly 4) were the result of "friendly fire". This means (as far as we can tell) that the killing ratio is actually 600 to 1 (so far).
I'm obviously not suggesting that this should be more, I would rather see zero casualties on both sides, but it gives a very clear picture of how "disproportionate" this battle is.
Some have called this attack a "Palestinian Holocaust", and in many ways it is. The Gaza Strip is like a huge prison camp and the people are not allowed to leave. They have not received sufficient food or water, or medical assistance and the seriously injured are faced with a slow death. Doesn't this sound familiar?
Of all the people on this planet, you would think the Israeli's know better than anyone else what it is like to be imprisoned, starved and killed. It seems not?
Perhaps Israel feels that the endless reminders of "their" holocaust and the numerous memorials all over the world are not enough, and they need to provide us with a practical demonstration of how it was? Could it be they really don't see how outrageous this is, or is it, as some have suggested, a simple case of not giving a damn?
And as the killing continues, the rest of the world sits on its hands and pretends to be concerned.
Of course, when Israel has had its fill and feels that the mission has been "Accomplished", we will start to
hear talk about a ceasefire and French President Sarkozy (and probably Tony Blair) will appear on the scene to take the glory for ending a conflict that has already finished!

The United States and most of Europe are powerless to intervene, because they know that Israel will do whatever it wishes without any repercussion, and a price will have to be paid by anyone who even considers it.
Do you think I exaggerate? Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the occupied territories, has condemned Israel for its actions in Gaza. As a result he was held for 20 hours and then denied entry to Israel (and he is Jewish!).
David Icke has, in his own special way, explained his views on the Israeli situation with his newsletter: "Time To Tell The Truth About Israel ..."
Unfortunately, because the mainstream media and others supportive of Israel have told us that it is bad, wrong and very naughty to be critical of Israel, most of the public immediately brand those issuing the criticism as "anti-Semitic" or "Jew Haters".
Sadly, because this "brainwashing" is so effective, very few actually read the articles in question to find out for themselves whether it is fair criticism, or really anti-Semitic comments. It is almost as if some harm will fall upon a person if he/she even dares to glance at such information and it is the same kind of fear created by the KGB in Soviet times.
If people were to find the courage to read some of the articles available on the internet, they would discover that most of them are not attacking Jews, but "Zionists" (which are not always Jewish). This is an important difference, but something that many try to make a single issue. By making people believe that an attack on a Zionist is the same as attacking a Jew, the real culprits obtain a very powerful shield. It is the Zionist leaders of Israel who are to blame for the excessive force being used in the Gaza, not Jews in general.
We have seen many in Israel protest against the attack on Gaza, which is solid proof that many Israeli's do not automatically support their government and therefore do not always think the same. Are these people "anti-Semitic" or "self-haters"? Of course not! They are people who want to live in peace, just like any other normal person.
I do not support the tactics used by Hamas, but these are desperate measures by desperate people. If the world "encouraged" the Israeli leaders to discuss a possible solution with Palestine, instead of demanding one at the end of a gun, maybe a compromise can be reached. Unfortunately, we all know how Israel hate that word, but sooner or later that is what will be required, if they truly want peace.
The only other solution is to kill every last Palestinian man, woman and child, and they seem to have made a good start on that option.
I was going to post a link to some photos showing the children who have been killed or badly injured in the attack on Gaza, but what's the point? Those of you who believe them will be horrified by the images, and those that don't will assume its more "Arab" theatricals and they are only pretending to be dead to get our sympathy. Maybe all the destroyed buildings seen in the photos are also an illusion and Hamas purposely turned them into rubble because it was good press? Or maybe something really terrible is happening there and some of us are no longer human enough to care anymore?
Ian Brockwell writes straight talking, honest stories that engage readers. Contact Ian through NewsBlaze or his News Page.

Obama's statement on the Crisis in Palestine

It's no small wonder that President Elect Barack Obama is keeping silent on the current round of wanton slaughter and destruction in Palestine. After all He had already made his position crystal clear when he addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, otherwise known as "The Israeli Lobby", on June 4th of last year. There had been doubts amongst a portion of Jewish voters as to his fealty to Israel but in his opening statement he put those fears to rest.

"I want you to know that today I'll be speaking from my heart, and as a true friend of Israel. And I know that when I visit with AIPAC, I am among friends. Good friends. Friends who share my strong commitment to make sure that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and forever."

The speech, reportedly written by James Steinberg, his newly nominated deputy secretary of state and former deputy national security advisor under Bill Clinton, was the Nadir of Obama's semblance of integrity. His sycophantic, one sided admiration for Israel was as intense as his vilification of anyone who dared to criticize its policies. His choice of words to express the unity between the U.S. and Israel was probably more revealing that he would have liked.

"Our alliance is based on shared interests and shared values. Those who threaten Israel threaten us. Israel has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel's security."

If by "shared values" he means that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has been one of pillage, murder and chaos, then he would be right. If by "shared interests" he means the theft of Arab land, he would also be correct. The same foreign policy pursued by the Bush-Cheney gang, against which he had been railing during his campaign, is acceptable when it comes to protecting a nuclear armed apartheid regime such as Israel. The obligatory nod to a negotiated Peace was briefly addressed in terms that would not have anyone shifting in their seats...

"As president, I will work to help Israel achieve the goal of two states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security. And I won't wait until the waning days of my presidency." SNIP "Israel's quest for peace with its neighbors has stalled, despite the heavy burdens borne by the Israeli people."

How many Presidents have we heard this from over the last 20 years ? What "quest for Peace" with its neighbours? Every dog and pony show organized by successive occupants of the Whitehouse has been only to give the appearance of progress and has always proposed an impossible choice for the Palestinians in which they would be the ones to give and the Israelis would be the ones to take. Camp David Redux. He goes on to recount a visit to Israel on which he took a joyride on an IDF helicopter, paid for by U.S. taxpayer "aid" he consistently voted for..

"I saw a narrow and beautiful strip of land nestled against the Mediterranean. On the ground, I met a family who saw their house destroyed by a Katyusha rocket. I spoke to Israeli troops who faced daily threats as they maintained security near the blue line. I talked to people who wanted nothing more simple, or elusive, than a secure future for their children."

There was no visit to the very unbeautiful, poverty ridden lunar landscape that is Gaza. There was no mention of the thousands of Palestinian families who had lost sons, daughters, mothers and fathers to F-16's, Apache attack helicopters, Merkava tanks, white phosphorous bombs, nerve gas and M-16 bullets all delivered through his complicity and his commitment to Israel's "security". There was no mention of the thousands of Palestinian homes bulldozed to rubble, the thousands of families these criminal acts made homeless. There needs to be recognition of the real suffering on both sides of the equation. Israeli families are suffering as a consequence of the actions of their own government and those of the U.S. which have given rise to the actions of a desperate Palestinian people who have been driven to the end of hopelessness and despair. An increasing number of Israeli citizens are beginning to realise this and opposition to the occupation and the enslavement is growing. There are increasing numbers of these same Israeli troops that Obama talked to that are refusing to take part in the destruction of an entire people.

"Israel can also advance the cause of peace by taking appropriate steps - consistent with its security - to ease the freedom of movement for Palestinians, improve economic conditions in the West Bank, and to refrain from building new settlements - as it agreed to with the Bush administration at Annapolis."

Ah, "security" again. Does Obama not realize that these same "settlements" represent an abrogation of International Law? Does "security" outweigh this same framework of International Law to which his own country and Israel are signatories? Is he going to continue to add to the very long list of U.S. vetoed resolutions against Israel? The only U.N. resolution that he wants to see enforced is 1701 under which the "security council calls for an end to hostilities between Hizbollah and Israel", never mind that Israel instigated this massacre to try and bring Hizbollah to heel only to have to drag their sorry behinds back home. The precipitating event was"by way of deception", the motto of Mossad, and was quickly sanitized from any media reporting.

Obama will continue the vilification of and bellicosity towards Iran and Syria which he insists pose a grave danger to a country that possesses hundreds of Nuclear weapons. The following quotes illustrate the continuity we can expect with regard to U.S. policy in the Middle East.

"The threats to Israel start close to home, but they don't end there. Syria continues its support for terror and meddling in Lebanon. And Syria has taken dangerous steps in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, which is why Israeli action was justified to end that threat." No matter that the "The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no trace of nuclear material in Syria's Al-Kibar so far, but it would continue sampling in this area to analyze, said Mohammed ElBaradei, IAEA director general, in Vienna Monday" Source. The IAEA has not come back to date with any confirmation.

"There is no greater threat to Israel - or to the peace and stability of the region - than Iran." SNIP "The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat."

It does not seem to register with Obama that the original translation from Farsi to English had been later corrected to "I have no doubt that the new movement taking place in our dear Palestine is a spiritual movement which is spanning the entire Islamic world and which will soon remove this stain of disgrace from the Islamic world". The original New York Times translation was disingenuous at the very least. With regard to Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, the IAEA has yet to find a single scrap of evidence to support this claim. They didn't come up with any proof with regard to Iraq either but that didn't stop the invasion as the U.S. and it's allies demanded Saddam Hussein prove a negative. His upcoming ultimatum to Iran to either stop it's unproven nuclear weapons program or face the consequences fails to take in to account the strong military and trade agreements between Iran, China and Russia. Would the future President be willing to drop American boots into China and Russia's backyard? Would this increase "the peace and stability of the region"? Russian President Vladimir Putin has already laid the ground rules for this scenario. Source

Despite his current silence, the echoes of his betrayal of the Palestinian people are there for everyone to hear.

Andrew Hughes is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Andrew Hughes

Jewry’s Silence On Gaza

By Brother Nathanael Kapner, Copyright 2008

Articles May Be Reproduced Only With Authorship of Br Nathanael Kapner

 

WHEN TERRORISTS ARE ‘MUSLIMS’ the Jewish-occupied press & media bombard the world with front-page headlines, email alerts, and editorials promoting the ‘war on terror.’ But when Jews are the terrorists, such as is the case in the Israeli Chanukah 2008 Gaza Massacre, silence reigns in the Jewish occupied press & media. The Israelis get away with wholesale murder because America allows it and the Jewish propaganda machine supports it - either through loudly voiced propaganda or through deafening silence. The internal destabilization of a US brokered ‘peace process’ between Israel & the Palestinians is part of a Zionist plan to bolster the Jewish/Israel Lobby’s stranglehold on the American political system. “The Israel Lobby is so powerful,” asserts Jimmy Carter, “that all US politicians are beholden to the Lobby’s agenda.”
The Jewish-occupied press coverage of Israeli attacks on Palestinian towns treats the US government as an innocent bystander. Jewry simply chooses to ignore the importance of the US as a supplier of weapons to Israel. For in its role as Israel’s primary arms supplier, America could exert control over Israeli murders of Palestinians, but it chooses not to.
Along with the Israelis, the US Military/Zionist complex is also a clear winner in the slaughter of the Gazan civilians. The Israeli air strikes against the Palestinians comes from General Dynamic’s/Lockheed Martin’s F-16 Fighting Falcons & Hughes’/McDonald Douglas’ AH-64 Apache Helicopters.
And the shared US/Israeli frightening technology of “unmanned drones,” which Israel has developed to a perfection, continues to terrorize the Palestinian civilian population with “delayed bombs and grenades” deployed throughout Gaza. The Israeli drone is known throughout military circles as the “hi tech killing machine.” This Israeli killing machine is in huge demand throughout the world.
The US is also reliant on the Israeli “unmanned drones” - utilizing the Israeli-developed technology for homeland security. Northrop Grumman, (for which the neocon Jew, Douglas Feith, does consulting work as well as for Lockheed Martin), has recently been awarded a $1bn contract to build three unmanned drone prototypes for the US military. Currently, Israeli-made drones are flying within America’s borders.
America’s continuation as a viable power is now dependent on a military economy. With the loss of a broad manufacturing base since the 1960’s owing to Jewish Wall Street bankers investing almost exclusively beyond America’s borders, defense contractors provide the last vestiges of US manufactures.
A system of military-economic fascism is now embedded in America’s political process. The corruption of the US political system has been advanced to perfection by the most powerful force the world has ever known: Jewry’s Israel Lobby. And the “silence” over Jewish terrorism will grow ever more deafening in the days & months to come…

___________________________________
For More See: The Zionist ‘Beast’ Attacks Gaza Click Here And: Gaza & Zionist Jewish Bankers Click Here
And: The Israelization Of US Foreign Policy Click Here
And: Kill Civilians? - The Jewish Talmud Tells Me So Click Here
And: Why Israel Should Not Exist Click Here
And: Obama To Lead Fourth Reich Click Here

How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' Kills

Since the classic definition of 'terrorism' is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal, Israel would seem to be inviting an objective analysis that it has chosen its own terrorist path, says Robert Parry.

Israel, a nation that was born out of Zionist terrorism, has launched massive airstrikes against targets in Gaza using high-tech weapons produced by the United States, a country that often has aided and abetted terrorism by its client military forces, such as Chile’s Operation Condor and the Nicaraguan contras, and even today harbors right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in blowing up a civilian airliner.
Yet, with that moral ambiguity excluded from the debate, the justification for the Israeli attacks, which have killed at least 364 people, is the righteous fight against “terrorism,” since Gaza is ruled by the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.
Hamas rose to power in January 2006 through Palestinian elections, which ironically the Bush administration had demanded. However, after Hamas won a parliamentary majority, Israel and the United States denounced the outcome because they deem Hamas a “terrorist organization.”
Hamas then wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group that once was considered “terrorist” but is now viewed as a US-Israeli partner, so it has been cleansed of the “terrorist” label.
Unwilling to negotiate seriously with Hamas because of its acts of terrorism – which have included firing indiscriminate short-range missiles into southern Israel – the United States and Israel sat back as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza worsened, with 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians packed into what amounts to a giant open-air prison.
When Hamas ended a temporary cease-fire on Dec. 19 because of a lack of progress in those negotiations and began lobbing its little missiles into Israel once more, the Israeli government reacted on Saturday with its lethal “shock and awe” firepower – even though no Israelis had been killed by the post-cease-fire missiles launched from Gaza. [Since Saturday, four Israelis have died in more intensive Hamas missile attacks.]
Israel claimed that its smart bombs targeted sites related to the Hamas security forces, including a school for police cadets and even regular policemen walking down the street. But it soon became clear that Israel was taking an expansive view of what was part of the Hamas military infrastructure, with Israeli bombs taking out a television station and a university building as well as killing a significant number of civilians.
As the slaughter continued on Monday, Israeli officials confided to Western journalists that the war plan was to destroy the vast support network of social and other programs that undergird Hamas’s political clout.
“There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel,” a senior Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post.
“Hamas’s civilian infrastructure is a very, very sensitive target,” added Matti Steinberg, a former top adviser to Israel’s domestic security service. “If you want to put pressure on them, this is how.” [Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2008]
Since the classic definition of “terrorism” is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal, Israel would seem to be inviting an objective analysis that it has chosen its own terrorist path. But it is clearly counting on the US news media to continue wearing the blinders that effectively limit condemnations about terrorism to people and groups that are regarded as Washington’s enemies.
Whose Terrorism?
As a Washington-based reporter for the Associated Press in the 1980s, I once questioned the seeming bias that the US-based wire service applied to its use of the word “terrorist” when covering Middle East issues. A senior AP executive responded to my concerns with a quip. “Terrorist is the word that follows Arab,” he said.
Though meant as a lighthearted riposte, the comment clearly had a great deal of truth to it. It was easy to attach “terrorist” to any Arab attack – even against a military target such as the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 after the Reagan administration had joined hostilities against Muslim forces by having US warships lob shells into Lebanese villages.
But it was understood that different rules on the use of the word "terrorism" applied when the terrorism was coming from “our side.” Then, no American reporter with any sense of career survival would think of injecting the word “terrorist” whatever the justification.
Even historical references to acts of terrorism – such as the brutal practice by American revolutionaries in the 1770s of “tar and feathering” civilians considered sympathetic to the British Crown or the extermination of American Indian tribes – were seen as somehow diluting the moral righteousness against today’s Islamic terrorists and in favor of George W. Bush's "war on terror."
Gone, too, from the historical narrative was the fact that militant Zionists employed terrorism as part of their campaign to establish Israel as a Jewish state. The terrorism included killings of British officials who were administering Palestine under an international mandate as well as Palestinians who were driven violently from their land so it could be claimed by Jewish settlers.
One of the most famous of those terrorist attacks was the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where British officials were staying. The attack, which killed 91 people including local residents, was carried out by the Irgun, a terrorist group run by Menachem Begin who later founded the Likud Party and rose to be Israel’s prime minister.
Another veteran of the campaign of Zionist terrorism was Yitzhak Shamir, who also became a Likud leader and eventually prime minister.
In the early 1990s, as I was waiting to interview Shamir at his Tel Aviv office, I was approached by one of his young female assistants who was dressed in a gray and blue smock with a head covering in the traditional Hebrew style.
As we were chatting, she smiled and said in a lilting voice, “Prime Minister Shamir, he was a terrorist, you know.” I responded with a chuckle, “yes, I’m aware of the prime minister’s biography.”
Blind Spot
To maintain one’s moral purity in denouncing acts of terror by US enemies, one also needs a large blind spot for recent US history, which implicates US leaders repeatedly in tolerance or acts of terrorism.
For instance, in 1973, after a bloody US-backed coup overthrew the leftist Chilean government, the new regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet joined with other South American dictatorships to sponsor an international terrorist organization called Operation Condor which assassinated political dissidents around the world.
Operation Condor mounted one of its most audacious actions on the streets of Washington in 1976, when Pinochet’s regime recruited Cuban-American terrorists to detonate a car bomb that killed Chile’s former foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt. The Chilean government's role immediately was covered up by the CIA, then headed by George H.W. Bush. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
Only weeks later, a Venezuela-based team of right-wing Cubans – under the direction of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles – blew a Cubana Airliner out of the sky, killing 73 people. Bosch and Posada, a former CIA operative, were co-founders of CORU, which was described by the FBI as “an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization.”
Though the US government soon learned of the role of Bosch and Posada in the Cubana airline attack – and the two men spent some time in a Venezuelan jail – both Bosch and Posada since have enjoyed the protection of the US government and particularly the Bush Family.
Rebuffing international demands that Bosch and Posada be held accountable for their crimes, the Bushes – George H.W., George W. and Jeb – have all had a hand in making sure these unrepentant terrorists get to live out their golden years in the safety and comfort of the United States.
In the 1980s, Posada even crossed over into another US-backed terrorist organization, the Nicaraguan contras. After escaping from Venezuela, he was put to work in 1985 by Oliver North’s contra-support operation run out of Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council.
The Nicaraguan contras were, in effect, a narco-terrorist organization that partially funded its operations with proceeds from cocaine trafficking, a secret that the Reagan administration worked hard to conceal along with the contras’ record of murder, torture, rape and other crimes in Nicaragua. [See Parry’s Lost History.]
President Reagan joined, too, in fierce PR campaigns to discredit human rights investigators who documented massive atrocities by US allies in Central America in the 1980s – not only the contras, but also the state terrorism of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan security forces, which engaged in wholesale slaughters in villages considered sympathetic to leftist insurgents.
Generally, the major US news outlets treaded very carefully when allegations arose about terrorism by “our side.”
When some brave journalists, like New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner, wrote about politically motivated killings of civilians in Central America, they faced organized retaliation by right-wing advocacy groups which often succeeded in damaging or destroying the reporters’ careers.
Double Standards
Eventually, the American press corps developed an engrained sense of the double standards. Moral outrage could be expressed when acts of terrorism were committed by US enemies, while studied silence – or nuanced concern – would be in order when the crimes were by US allies.
So, while the US news media had no doubt that the 9/11 terrorist attacks justified invading Afghanistan, there was very little US media criticism when President Bush inflicted his “shock and awe” assault on Iraq, a war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.
Though many Muslims and others around the world have denounced Bush’s Iraq invasion as “state terrorism,” such a charge would be considered far outside the mainstream in the United States. Instead, Iraqi insurgents are often labeled “terrorists” when they attack US troops inside Iraq. The word “terrorist” has become, in effect, a geopolitical curse word.
Despite the long and bloody history of US-Israeli participation in terrorism, the US news media continues its paradigm of pitting the US-Israeli “good guys” against the Islamic “bad guys.” One side has the moral high ground and the other is in the moral gutter. [For more on the US media’s one-sided approach, see the analysis by Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.]
Any attempt to cite the larger, more ambiguous and more troubling picture draws accusations from defenders of US-Israeli actions, especially the neoconservatives, of what they call “moral equivalence” or “anti-Semitism.”
Yet it is now clear that acquiescence to a double standard on terrorism is not just a violation of journalistic ethics or an act of political cowardice; it is complicity in mass murder. Without the double standard, it is hard to envision how the bloodbaths – in Iraq (since 2003), in Lebanon (in 2006) and in Gaza (today) – would be possible.
Hypocrisy over the word “terrorism” is not an innocent dispute over semantics; it kills.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

India Massive Internet Outage As Cables Cut

Murad Ahmed, Technology Reporter

Tech Central: er, something's happening

Millions of people across the Middle East and Asia have lost access to the internet after two undersea cables in the Mediterranean suffered severe damage.

Huge numbers in Egypt and India were left struggling to get online as a result of the outage, when the major internet pipeline between Egypt and Italy was cut.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) throughout the region, including those in United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, also reported problems. International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

Industry experts told The Times that two sub-sea cables went down just off Alexandra, causing the mass disruption. It happens to a single cable typically once a year, and companies have developed the fail-safe of redirecting traffic to a second cable should this occur.

“It is incredibly rare to experience a dual-break where both cables are down simultaneously,” said a spokesperson for Interoute, the internet networks company.

The Egyptian ministry said it will take “several days” for cables to be repaired and is trying to reroute Egypt’s internet connections.

Indian ISPs said their problems were due to the cable damage off Egypt. Speaking to reporters, Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers’ Association of India, said: "Information technology companies, software companies and call centres that provide online services to the UK or the US east coast are the worst affected."

Rafaat Hindy, from the Egyptian ministry, said: "Despite this being an international cable affecting many Gulf and Arab countries, we are closest to it and so we have a lot of responsibility.

"We are working as fast as we can."

It is thought that up to 70 per cent of web services in Egypt, and 60 per cent in India, were disrupted yesterday. There were reports that phone and internet difficults had spread to Yemen, Sudan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The shut down will take several days to fix, and could have a major impact on the region and across the world. It is likely to hit businesses who will struggle to communicate in the affected countires. Call-centres who work for British companies are likely to be offline or hard to contact in the coming days. Others warned that bank and stock market trading could be affected.

The digital blackout highlighted the vulnerability of global communications. Hundreds of millions of people access the web, but the vast majority of international traffic runs through a a small amount of cables submerged below the sea.

Industry insiders warned that a domino effect was occuring today, causing the disruption to spread across the globe. As companies’ private internet services went down, workers were forced to use the public internet and mobile phones to communicate. This has resulted in a heavy strain on phone and internet networks, meaning calls could go down and cause the internet to become slower or blackout completely.