Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The Desperation of the Discredited

and dis-honour to those who suffered in WWII, who now live in poverty in their "safe haven". Zionist hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Blue Ibis
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Netanyahu bully
© Unknown

The Israeli prime minister's use of the word 'Judenrein' is a cynical attempt to skew the fight over West Bank settlements

There are words with meanings corrosive as acid. Heavy with the stench of historic crimes. Words that damn those who use them. One such word is "Judenrein", the Nazi-era word that means "cleansed of Jews". It is a surprise, then, to learn that it is a word that has been appropriated by Binyamin Netanyahu to describe the Palestinian demand for the dismantling of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. More shocking still, according to reports yesterday, it was used in talks between Netanyahu and Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier, foreign minister of a country still haunted by the guilt of its Nazi past - who was compelled to nod in embarrassed silence.

Netanyahu has not been alone in using "Judenrein" in recent months to describe the prospect of the removal of Israeli settlements in a future peace deal to create a Palestinian state .

As frustration among Israeli rightists has been mounting against the new policies of President Obama, the word has been creeping into the discourse, first in the rightwing blogosphere and now penetrating the mainstream media in Israel.

It is not the word "Judenfrei" - equally offensive - that Netanyahu used but its even stronger and more despicable companion. A word, under the Nazi race laws, that meant all trace of Jewish ancestry had been removed. The justification for its employment has been somewhat historically self-serving, arguing two things.

First, it contends that because Jewish communities historically lived on the West Bank and in Jerusalem before 1967 (over 3,000 years except for 19 years of Jordanian occupation between 1948 and 1967, according to this argument) any insistence on the removal of the settlements would amount to a de facto ethnic cleansing.

Secondly it argues - as Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi did on 2 July in Yediot Ahronoth - that the international community has accepted an unequal proposition, "that the Palestinians should be allowed to establish a country based on the religion of the majority of its citizens" while denying that same right to Israel. By that logic, he concludes, "international politics will no longer have to deal with the 'Palestinian problem' but rather with the 'Jewish problem' in Palestine".

It is an argument born of desperation that is as stunning for its sophistry as it is for its denial of what the settlement programme post-1967 represented. For while it is true that Jewish communities existed on the West Bank before the six-day war, the settlement programme that followed the occupation is regarded by most international bodies as a serious violation of international law. That view is based on the interpretation of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention as well as a series of UN security council resolutions that have deemed aspects of the settlements to be illegal.

Indeed, according to a report acquired by the Peace Now group in 2006, which it claimed it had acquired from the Israeli government's civil administration, as much as 32% of the land on which settlements are built is, in reality, privately owned by Palestinians.

The reality is that this is not about truth or the justness of Israel's historical argument for the existence of communities in territories it calls by the biblical names of Judea and Samaria. The evocation of Judenrein by Netanyahu and by other commentators is the most cynical of ploys in a negotiation that his government feels that is going against it. Under pressure from Obama to freeze settlement building completely - including the construction that Israel likes to label as "natural growth" - it is being forced into ever more extreme language to defend the continued existence of the settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories in language, like that used with Steinmeier, to embarrass and cajole.

There are words with particular meanings. Bloody with the worst offences. To use "Judenrein" so cheaply to score a political point dishonours the memory of history and its victims. It shames Israel's prime minister.

Monday, July 13, 2009

The Wikipedia "Double Tail"

In the art of surveillance, there is a cunning ploy, familiar to the readers of Le Carre: the target is followed by a clumsy gumshoe; he discovers he is being tailed, easily shakes the tail off and goes on, feeling secure and unobserved. Unbeknownst to him, there are other detectives who stick to him like glue and follow him to his perdition. Professionally it is called a "double tail".

Apparently, some of us were duped by such a ruse in the peculiar affair of a Zionist plot to infiltrate Wikipedia. This powerful online encyclopaedia is ostensibly free and open: everyone can be an editor, add or edit any entry. Editors remain anonymous; their true identity is hidden behind a nickname. This rule has a serious drawback: using this anonymity, a dedicated group may infiltrate the system by stealth, distort reality and create a false picture of the world in the eyes of billions. Apparently this script has been recently enacted.

Conspiracy? Yes. Jewish conspiracy? You bet! The damning email exchange was intercepted and published, revealing a radical Zionist plot to bend "Wiki." A moderate leftist (some would call it 'tame') US-based pro-Palestinian site EI revealed that the radical-extremist Zionist organisation CAMERA called for "volunteers who can work as 'editors' to ensure" that Israel-related articles on Wikipedia agree with their right-wing-Zionist agenda. This effort was to be kept secret from the media and the public. Stealth and misrepresentation were presented as the keys to success. A CAMERA official advised the volunteers to sign up as editors for Wikipedia and afterwards to avoid editing Israel-related material for a while, in order to "avoid the appearance of being one-topic editors". The orchestrated effort was to appear as if it were the work of unaffiliated individuals, and for this reason the editors were to avoid picking a user name that marked them as pro-Israel, or that let people know their real name. The emails taught Zionist apprentices how to act in the interests of Israel while using neutral language. The emphasis was on the long run side of the operation: "This is a marathon not a sprint", a Zionist instructor nicknamed 'Zeq' taught his apprentices in the email exchange.

The EI article about this revelation was quite sycophantic towards Wikipedia. It presented Wiki as an objective source at loggerheads with Zionist infiltrators, and even bordered on advertising: "Openness and good faith are among Wikipedia's core principles. Any person in the world can write or edit articles, but Wikipedia has strict guidelines and procedures for accountability intended to ensure quality control and prevent vandalism, plagiarism or distortion. It is because of these safeguards that articles on key elements of the Palestine-Israel conflict have generally remained well-referenced, useful and objective."

Still, it was not enough, and on the next day, 22 April 2008, EI updated this article with a triumphal and calming statement: "a plan by the pro-Israel pressure group CAMERA to skew Wikipedia in a pro-Israel direction appears to have collapsed after it was exposed by EI". Zeq was dismissed, and anyway, fewer than a dozen of Camera moles were active at the time EI exposed the scheme. In short: everything is fine, Wiki is functioning well, and the Zionist scare is gone, thanks to fearless EI. And anyway, it was only a small operation by the enemies of freedom, and it is over.

Excuse me, is this an article, or a paid advertisement for Wikipedia? Did EI receive on evening April 21st an offer they could not refuse from the owner of Wiki? Only a Zionist can think that Wiki "articles on key elements of the Palestine-Israel conflict have generally remained well-referenced, useful and objective." On the contrary, they are biased in the extreme; just read, for instance, an exceedingly hostile entry on Hamas, including its Talk, i.e. discussions of editors, deletions and corrections. It defines Hamas as "... best known for multiple suicide bombings and other attacks directed against civilians [known to whom? To me it is best known as the ruling party of Palestine, and secondly, as grassroots mutual assistance movement - ISH]... Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel [while all prominent Israeli parties joined in destruction of Palestine - ISH] ... the organization is described by many as antisemitic." Is that objective? Further the entry says, inter alia: Hamas is considered by the US a terrorist organisation. This is true, but not the whole truth. I personally added: However, Russia refused to consider Hamas a terrorist organisation. My addition was immediately removed by ever-watchful Zionist case-officer. Hamas is terrorist, full stop.

Only a dishonest fool, or a man who never used Wikipedia, may think that plan of the Lobby "to skew Wikipedia in a pro-Israel direction appears to have collapsed". The clumsy gumshoe was shaken off, for Camera is but a bunch of amateurs, extreme Jewish nationalists with some nuisance value. They do not represent the Jewish mainstream; but they do play a useful part: they make the mainstream appear moderate. Being hassled by Camera is like being hassled by the Klan - it proves nothing. They hassle everybody, even moderate Zionists and other fellow-philosemites whom Camera fanatics consider insufficiently zealous, such as Johann Hari, an English professional philosemite who recently boasted: "I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me 'a Jew-lover''. Later he strayed farther afield and wrote about Israeli sewage pouring all over Gaza. Afterwards, he complained, "Camera said I am an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels."

Now, when the amateurs are disgraced and gone, the professionals remain. Wiki is as partial to Jews as the Jewish Chronicle. The picture of the world it offers is being edited and shaped in full accordance with general Jewish world view thanks to a group of permanent and devoted editors and arbiters.

Freedom to add and edit is just a bait attracting millions unpaid contributors. If Wiki were truly free, provided that "ordinary people' are in vast majority, we could expect to find a democratic world view, not one not perverted by a biased minority, but the real Wikipedia does not work that way.

The apparent chaos of Wiki is strictly controlled by a hierarchy of Agents Smith, who secure the Wiki matrix. They delete references to Jewish misdeeds, but emphasize every good deed by a Jew. Israel/Palestine is just one area in what is truly universal agenda. For instance, they block and remove attempts to mention the Jewish origin of the founder of Satanist movement, one La Vey (originally Levy), though this explains his hatred towards Christianity. They insist on inferiority of Poincare versus Einstein, of Jung versus Freud or Proudhon versus Marx. Every act against Jews is recorded; every act of Jews against goyim is blotted out from this organised memory of our generation. These editors can manage just fine, thank you, without amateur infiltrators.

Zeq has been banned for his indiscretions, but the man he wrote of so admiringly, whom he described as their role model to his apprentices ("work with him and learn from him"), an ideal, effective Zionist Wikipedia editor called Jayjg, is still there. Jayjg is not just an editor; he is an arbiter, what passes for a judge on the Wikipedia. He was appointed to that position by the site owner himself. He is an Agent Smith of the Wiki matrix. One may see his work in many, many entries: clever and unscrupulous, he is a master of the subterfuge and deceit.

Another, superior Agent Smith is Cberlet or John Foster (Chip) Berlet, the scourge of the web. He is acting under many names. He is a collaborator with the ADL, the Jewish thought police. Though he previously denied having any relationship to ADL, he admitted to Israeli Foreign Affairs that he "had had quite a cordial professional relationship with the ADL" and "had been doing research in cooperation with ADL".

The New York City Jewish newspaper "Forward" reported that Berlet transferred information from FBI anti-Communist informer directly to ADL. Ace Hayes wrote: "John Foster "Chip" Berlet has been involved, over the past half decade, in attacking virtually every independent critic of the Imperial State that the reader can name." His operation is financed by Ford Foundation. Michael Collins Piper in his monumental book on the Kennedy assassination, Final Judgment, asserts that Chip Berlet is a CIA agent. Naturally, his own entry in Wiki is protected from editing. The Arbitration committee (those who hold the reigns of power on the Wiki) "admit to hero-worship of Cberlet', as I was informed by a prominent insider.

These men are discreet, they won't babble about their devotion to the Jewish cause; they hide it under the veil of bureaucratic expressions and abbreviations. Their supporting cast includes some Jewish "antizionists" like RolandR. This is actually a British Trotskyite trade union apparatchik Roland Rance, who does not mind to cooperate with convinced anti-Communist, CIA and ADL agent Berlet and with zealous Zionist Jayjg. So much for his antizionism and his socialism! He, and thousands of smaller wanna-be Agents Smith did not need the starry-eyed arch-Zionists of CAMERA, they are already in.

The "revelation" of EI is nothing but a subterfuge, a "double tail" executed to increase our trust in Wiki. A similar "double tail" operation was performed last year, when Wiki announced it had found CIA-made edits on a few pages. Careful reading of that "revelation" was even more disappointing than that of EI. The worst discovered CIA edit of President Ahmadinejad entry was 'added exclamation "Wahhhhhh!", while "other changes that have been made are more innocuous, and include tweaks to the profile of former CIA chief Porter Goss and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey."

This is ridiculous: the US secret services spend many billions per annum in their drive for domination of the Web. A recent report speaks of $30 billion allocated by the Pentagon for an "electronic Manhattan Project" in order to fight the Web. And they want us to believe that all these billions produced an exclamation "Wahhhhhh!"? Alas, it is just another "double tail" sting by the usual suspects.

2

The Wiki entries on Palestine/Israel are far from "well-referenced, useful and objective" as the dupes of EI claim. On the second thought, are they dupes, or willing collaborators? The top man in EI is Electronic Ali, as Ali Abunima is nicknamed, the man who began the witch hunt against "Shamir the antisemite". He is the Arab front for various exclusively Jewish organisations for Palestine, who rather promote the Jewish cause and fight antisemitism. Such Jewish bodies like to have a compliant shabbesgoy (as Rosa Luxemburg called these guys) for a front, and Ali fits the bill perfectly. Even this article on Wiki has some reference to 'evil antisemites'.

In his attack on me, Electronic Ali acted together with the execrable Hussein Ibish, but since then, the thieves have fallen apart. [1] Another prominent EI person is, or was, Nigel Parry, a British antisemitism-fighter, their webmaster and probably also their case officer. Nigel Perry is an enforcer of Political Correctness and is Gatekeeper General of the permitted discourse on Palestine, keeping it between hard Likud and the soft Peace Now. He proudly mentions many years of involvement with the Palestinian cause. Well, such guys are a reason why the Palestinian cause looks the way it does.

Why, we could have One State, a single unified state in Israel/Palestine by now, but for these guys. Looking back, it was a possible development in 2001, sometime before 9/11, when my call for One State was heeded by many Israelis and Americans, and supported by major American newspapers. Then these men began their campaign to denigrate me and scared the supporters away. "Shamir is discredited and marginalised", they wrote with satisfaction. For them, it did not matter that together with me, they discredited and marginalised the idea of One State -- the only possible peaceful solution to our conflict.

The final battle was fought on the Wikipedia site, where Ali-Ibish-Parry provided ammunition to Zionist Agent Smith Jayjg and ADL's own Barlet, with the ADL-sponsored block of "antifascist" e-zines: British Searchlight, Norwegian Monitor, Swedish Expo, American Trotskyite Socialist Viewpoint et al. These formidable forces were counteracted by our wonderful friend Joh Domingo, a South African fighter against apartheid, and our French friend Omnivore. You can read the protocols of the battle here. They decided to make me a Swedish neonazi impostor, instead of the Israeli writer I am.

All the time this battle was going on, I lived in my Jaffa house, receiving endless visitors, giving numerous interviews, going to work, seeing people - but I might as well have been dead. I felt like Doc Daneeka, a character in Joseph Heller's witty Catch-22, who was declared dead as the plane he was supposed to fly was downed. "I am alive!" he shouted. "Here we have a paper saying you are dead", they replied. His wife "inherited" his property, he was stricken from the lists, they stopped serving him food, and even his friends and comrades looked askance when he appeared. This is the power of an official-looking document - or a webpage blue with hyperlinks. Thus I have learned the dreadful power of an encyclopaedia: it does not reflect the world, but rather creates the world. Wiki is linked to thousands of sites; whether you look at answers.com or at an Arab English-language site, you'll be led to Wiki with its lies.

If an encyclopaedia said I am a Swedish neonazi antisemite, nothing could change it. I could scream all day long: "Look, here I am, in Jaffa" but they would reply: "Here we have an official paper saying that you are not". I am very grateful to Joh Domingo for his superhuman efforts, but he could not overcome the Agents Smith. Neither could I. If tomorrow they decide to make you a little green man from Mars, they will succeed, too. And then, even your friends will look behind you for your flying saucer.

A few days ago, I spoke to a group of Indian intellectuals in Delhi, and afterwards I received this touching letter from Come Carpentier, a French expat writer living in the Indian capital. He wrote: "I meant to thank you for these enlightening, balanced and always objective yet passionate words you spoke that evening...Listening to them dispels even better than reading you the reputation that you have been given by you-know-who as a firebrand defamer of Israel, holocaust denier, Nazi apologist and so on and so forth... Not to mention the rumours about your being a clandestine Swedish Far Right-winger infiltrated in the Holy Land by the international Islamo-Fascist Cabal!"

3

In a way, pro-Jewish bias of Wiki is unavoidable bearing in mind Jewish positions in Western discourse, media and universities. Jews - even people of Jewish origin - are likely to correct discourse in a flattering for them way. They did it hundred years ago, and five hundred years ago. Provided they do it in one direction, they constitute the only entity (besides the undermined Church and its Orders) capable of a marathon (in words of Zeq) - of sustaining a long-run operation.

A hundred years ago, a New York lawyer Samuel Untermeyer financed the first Scofield Reference Bible; since then, the Scofield Bibles are being republished in newer even more pro-Jewish editions and they bring in millions of Christian Zionists.

Joachim Martillo writes in his Judonia:
"Jewish efforts benefit from organizational memory that does not exist in other lobbying situations. The longevity of Jewish Federation organizations can give Israel Lobbying efforts a generational aspect not seen elsewhere. For example, Israel Advocacy organizations worked for fifty years to delegitimize Arabists in the Foreign Service and State Department, and replace them with Israel-sympathetic personnel".
Martllo erroneously connects this result with some specific pro-Israel organisation. Success of Zionism (and incidentally its crimes) is just the strawberry on top of the Jewish success cake. The Jews are engaged in advocacy of Jews, and consequently they delegitimize Arabists, or priests, or independent historians who do not subscribe to the notion that Jews are special in consistently beneficial way. Zionism is a result of Jewish pruning of history, and this pruned history is what we were taught.

There are no Arab sheiks or Russian oligarchs or American oilmen ready to finance anything long term of no immediate relevancy. They do not understand that practically every entry of encyclopaedia, every textbook, influence future generations. A correct entry on, say, Poincare or monotheism or Persian invasion could save potential Zionists from their delusions of grandeur.

Wikipedia is a great idea for Jews: people of all nations from all over the world contribute of their knowledge, and then this Summa is pruned in the way acceptable to the pro-Jewish gardeners. Despite its "free" image, Wikipedia is part and parcel of the immense Judaised media holding, and thus is as biased as any other publication of the group from the New York Times (owned by Sulzberger) to Liberation (owned by Rothschild) to hundreds of Murdock papers.

Conclusion

Wikipedia is an important asset, like the New York Times, but both are in the hands of enemies of freedom. Sometimes good and truthful articles or entries are to be found in both, but these are specks of gold dust placed there to salt the dud mine. We certainly want to democratise both; to make both really democratic and accessible. Until this is done, we should explain that both are tools of mind control not to be trusted or taken at face value. If Wiki wants to preserve some of its reliability, it must get rid of its Zionist enforcers. Not only of the CAMERA bumpkins, but of the hard men in black suits, the Agents Smith.

[1] In an article by Osamah Khalil of Berkeley EI deservedly took Ibish to task for his "defense of Abbas' strategy of deference and obsequiousness to the US and Israel. According to Ibish's issue paper, Abbas' problem is not that he is a failed, corrupt and ineffectual leader who appears to Palestinians as an eager American tool, but that he is "uninspiring" and "lacks the charisma that many politicians rely upon, and is not an emotive speaker." Ibish's screed, continues EI, "deliberately ignores a thugocracy in Palestinian politics as embodied by Mohammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and their ilk." His idea of an independent secular Palestinian state is a US-backed government of thieves and their enforcers... Ibish derides reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas as "utopian", as for him there is no alternative to Abbas' rule, American hyperpower, and Israel's military and economic dominance in the Middle East."

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Three Cheers for the Irish activists kidnapped by Israel

© Michael Gallagher

IPSC members and other supporters greet the
heroes at Dublin Airport
Speech by Freda Hughes,
National Events Coordinator of the IPSC


7th July 2009, Radisson Blu Hotel, Free Gaza Homecoming Press Conference.


Last Monday 29th June, Derek and Mariead set sail on the Free Gaza boat the Spirit of Humanity, along with 19 other international peace activists on a mission to deliver much needed medical supplies, food, toys and olives tree to the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip has been officially under siege since 2007. A recent International Committee of the Red Cross report highlighted the stark living conditions for the people of this beleaguered strip.

For example seriously ill patients are not getting the treatment they need and thousands of Gazans whose homes and belongings were destroyed half a year ago remain without adequate shelter. It states that the almost 4.5 billion dollars pledged for reconstruction by donor countries will be of little use as long as Israel prevents building materials and other essential items from being imported into the Gaza Strip. Essential water and sanitation infrastructure remain insufficient: every day the equivalent of 28 Olympic-size swimming pools of sewage is pumped directly, more or less untreated, into the Mediterranean. Hospitals are struggling because complex and lengthy Israeli import procedures slow down the delivery of basic medical necessities. The ICRC demanded that the restrictions on the movement of people and goods be lifted. This is also the stance of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

© Michael Gallagher

The Gaza 2: Derek Graham and Mairead Maguire

On a diplomatic level, the IPSC is calling for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association agreement (also known as the Euro Med Agreement) on the grounds of constant Israeli breaches of Article 2 of the agreement. The agreement grants Israel preferential trading relations with EU member states, as well as cooperation in scientific, educational and artistic fields .

Article 2 states that respect for human rights and democratic principles are - quote- "an essential element" - unquote - of the Euro Med Agreement. Essential, not optional. The Israeli slaughter in Gaza at the beginning of the year that left over 2,400 people dead, and the ongoing brutal Siege of Gaza in place since 2007 are just two in a long line of actions that have shown Israel's contempt for human rights and democratic principles.

The IPSC feels, given that the EU is Israel's biggest trading partner, that even the threat of suspension of the Agreement could see a change in Israeli behaviour towards the Palestinians. However, it is not something the EU seems willing to act on. The IPSC therefore calls on the Irish Government to take a leading role in Europe in arguing for the suspension of the Euro Med Agreement.

On an individual and institutional level, we advocate a comprehensive Economic, Cultural, Sporting and Academic Boycott campaign against the Apartheid State of Israel and its representatives, similar to the international campaign adopted against Apartheid South Africa. We also call on businesses involved with Israel to divest.

We must remember that the kidnapping of the 21 Free Gaza activists, which, however horrific for the abductees and their families, is merely the latest in a long line of Israeli acts of disregard for international law - from the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, to the illegal Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, to the brutal suppression of the first and second intifadas, to the ravaging of Gaza earlier this year, through to the ongoing Siege of Gaza of which the kidnapping is a part. The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign will continue to fight against these, and future, injustices.

© Michael Gallagher

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney - Israeli Prisoner 88794

Cynthia McKinney calls in to WBAIX.org, now as Prisoner 88794 during her 2nd day in Prison. She tells the story in more detail and talks about the people she's meet in prison.



Letter from an Israeli Jail, by Cynthia McKinney

Written by Free Gaza Team
Freegaza
Saturday, 04 July 2009 13:47

This is Cynthia McKinney and I'm speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies - and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel's Operation 'Cast Lead' [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day's notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16's rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide. U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs - new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel's onslaught that Gaza had become Israel's veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel's despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water ... It's a miracle that I'm even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime ... I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else's children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza's children could color & paint, that Gaza's wounded could be healed, and that Gaza's bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I've learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it's incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream ... like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better ... The once proud, never colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn't cheap. Many of them represent their family's best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they arrived Israel told them "there is no UN in Israel."

The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world's first Jews and Christian. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle's detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and 'yes we can' were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel's marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior's letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they've done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people's children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I'm experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I'm lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let's change the world together & reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State's Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I've met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

cynthia mckinney
© Getty

from Anita Stewart

Breaking: From John Judge, Cynthia's press secretary during her Presidential campaign:
I had another call from Cynthia McKinney who has been told she will remain imprisoned in Ramale, Israel until Monday, July 6 at least along with many others. She asked me to pass along this detail. Among their aid group were three Muslim women from Bahrain who spoke neither English nor Hebrew, and two men from Bahrain. All five of these people were released from custody and flown back to Bahrain in the private plane of the King of Bahrain Sheikh Hamad ibn 'Isa Al Khalifah, where they were welcomed as national heroes.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Long, Slow, Cruel: Endless Isolation in Israeli Prisons

With a voice full of hope for a brighter future, and optimism that the end of suffering is near, the prisoner Hasan Salamah repeated songs he has memorized in order to break the routine of a deadly dull life in cramped isolation cells where mercy is unknown and the only smells are those associated with depression, death or insanity.

The prisoner, Salamah, sentenced to several life sentences, has been held in solitary confinement for six years. The occupation authorities have accused him of responsibility for the deaths of scores of Zionists. He is one of more than 100 Palestinian prisoners being held in isolation cells in various sections of Israeli prisons. This isolation may continue for many years so as to drill into the prisoner's mind, body and soul effects which can not be easily erased. The psyche and the body are subjected to ongoing pressure by being deprived of everything, even the simplest conversation with another human being.

Although isolation is a punishment which is supposed to be limited to a specific duration, the occupation has deliberately set no time limits on it so as to crank up the psychological pressure on prisoners. Isolation is periodically extended throughout the period of confinement by means of a kangaroo court known as the Court of Extended Isolation. The prisoner is brought before the court without ever being informed of the reason for his isolation, which is usually based upon a recommendation by the Zionist internal security service, Shin Bet. The prisoner is merely informed that his isolation has been extended on the basis of confidential material. The extension will be for a year if the isolation is partial (i.e., two persons in one cell) and for a period of six months if the prisoner is completely alone in the cell. Throughout this new term the prisoner continues to endure all the forms of suffering he had previously endured until he is brought before a new court in the following year to receive a new extension from the judge for another year for the same reasons (confidential material), and so on, year after year.

Punishment for Leaders!

According to the Ministry of Current and Released Prisoners, in a report on prisoners being held in isolation, the Israeli Department of Corrections imposes the punishment of isolation on those prisoners accused of carrying out major resistance attacks that led to the death of Zionists or on prisoners who are considered leaders of the nationalist movement among the prisoners, whose words carry weight with the other prisoners.

The goal is to humiliate the prisoner, break his will, destroy his psyche, and turn him into a body without a spirit. They are keen to turn him into fertile ground for the spread of debilitating diseases that weaken the bones and impair vision. They want the isolated prisoner to lose both spirit and body, so that he will long for death a thousand times rather than remain stuck within the same walls, talking to himself and counting the hours and days that drag by, waiting to emerge from this dark tomb.

Riyad al-Ashqar, director of the Information Department of the Ministry, explains that isolation is of two types: The first is in individual cells -called snuke- in which a prisoner is held in solitary confinement. These are no bigger than 1.5 × 2 meters, and there is no room to move, walk or pray. There is one mattress, a blanket, one bottle for relieving oneself, and another for drinking water. The prisoner is only allowed to go to the bathroom once a day.

In these cells prisoners lose all sense of time; they do not know the times of prayer or even when day turns to night. They are not allowed to have watches, radios, newspapers, or any means of communication with the outside world, nor are they permitted to purchase anything from the prison canteen.

The second type of isolation is in a wing of the prison completely devoted to isolation cells. The cells in these sections are slightly better than snuke, and are large enough to house more than one prisoner. They have a toilet inside each cell, and prisoners are allowed to prepare food inside the cell.

The Prisoners Subjected to the Greatest Isolation

Al-Ashqar explained that the number of prisoners being held in isolation is more than 100 prisoners in various prisons, with some being held in solitary confinement within the isolation wings of the prisons of Askalan, Ramla, Ayalon, Nafha and Beer Sheba. There are a number of prisoners who have been singled out by the prison management for punishment by isolation on a continuous basis. They are:
  • Hasan Salamah, from the city of Khan Younis, has been sentenced to dozens of life sentences. So far he has spent six years in isolation.

  • Hamid Ibrahim, from Silwad, has been sentenced to dozens of life sentences. He has been held in isolation ever since his initial arrest more than three years ago.

  • Mahmoud Eesa, from Jerusalem, has been sentenced to several life sentences. So far he has spent eight years in isolation.

  • Tayseer Samoudi, from Yamoun, has spent more than 14 years being shifted from one isolation cell to another.

  • Mu'taz Hijazi, from Jerusalem, was sentenced to 11 years. So far he has spent six years in isolation.

  • Abd al-Naser Halees has spent more than ten years so far in isolation.

  • Jamal Abu Haija of Jenin, has been sentenced to several life sentences. So far he has spent four years in isolation.

  • Abdullah al-Barghouthi, of Ramallah, has been sentenced to dozens of life sentences. So far he has spent five years in isolation.

  • Ahmed al-Maghrabi, from Bethlehem, has been sentenced to several life sentences. So far he has spent five years in isolation.

  • Mohammed Jamal Natsheh, from Hebron; a member of a Legislative Council, he was sentenced to eight years. He has spent five years in isolation.

  • Uwaydah Kallab from the Gaza Strip, was condemned to life imprisonment. He has stayed more than ten years in isolation.

  • Hisham Sharbati was sentenced to eight years; he has spent three years in isolation.

  • Zaher Jabareen, from Hebron, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He has been isolated more than once; the longest period was for two years.

  • Musa Dudeen, from Hebron, was sentenced to life imprisonment and has been subjected to isolation more than six times.

  • Mahawish Nu'aymat of Rafah has spent more than a year in isolation since his arrest.

  • Mohammed Jaber Ubaydi, of the town of Kafr Ni'ma, has spent four years in isolation.

  • Usamah al-Ainabusi of the town of Tubas.

  • Saleh Dar Musa from the town of Bayt Luqya.

  • Jihad Yaghmour of Jerusalem.

Suffering without Limits

Al-Ashqar identified a number of forms of suffering endured by prisoners confined in isolation cells. Among the most serious is being confined in sections that house common criminals; there they are subjected to every form of abuse, curses, and having flammable liquids thrown at them. They are also subjected to a steady assault on their religious sentiments and continued harassment by loud music, constant drumming on their doors and being repeatedly subjected to prisoner counts at short intervals.

Prisoners are not allowed to go out to the exercise "yard" except one hour a day, and the guards manipulate the timing of that hour so that on bitterly cold days they come at six in the morning to announce that anyone who wants to exercise must wake up. If one prisoner wants to sleep and the other wants to go out, the one who stays must wake up to have manacles placed on his hands so that the other can go out. If he doesn't wake up, the other will be deprived of the opportunity to go out in the yard. If they both want to go out, manacles are put on both, and they go out one by one. Frequently one of them will be required to remain out in the yard in manacles. Worse still, manacles are a feature of all the details of daily life. Prisoners are handcuffed when the trash is taken out, when receiving visits from lawyers or family members, and when going out to the clinic or the court. The prisoner will be placed on the examination bed and made to lie with his hands under his back. Prisoners are even forced to give urine samples in a most humiliating way while manacled.

The prisoner in isolation is imposed upon in all aspects of life. The prison administration may, for instance, require one prisoner to be paired off with another in cells that are usually cramped and poorly ventilated. The administration will deliberately pair a non-smoker with a smoker or a religious prisoner with a non-religious one to set the prisoners up for 24-hours-a-day of conflict. If one of them tries to protest or get a transfer away from the other, the solution is blows and truncheons. They are forced to live together, and if they refuse, all their personal belongings are confiscated and the cell is converted to a snuke or torture chamber stripped of all personal belongings. More than once the brothers are told, "One of you could get rid of the other by having the other one die."

A prisoner is subjected to the severest penalties if he reads the Qur'an aloud, or breaks anything inadvertently, or speaks with another prisoner in the section. If a piece of metal, wire or string tied for some particular purpose is found in a cell, all electrical devices will be removed from it and the prisoner will be denied access to the canteen and the daily exercise outing. As for visits from family members, these are already prohibited, except in rare cases.

In addition, there are sudden raids in the middle of the night by a special unit wearing masks and equipped with video cameras. They conduct violent searches in which the prisoner is stripped naked for no reason and handcuffed while his personal belongings are broken and trifled with and the room is turned upside down. After the inspection is completed, the door is locked and the prisoner sticks his hands through a large hole in the bottom of the door to have the handcuffs removed. For two or three days after an inspection a prisoner will work to restore order to his room, only to have the same procedure repeated a few days later.

If a prisoner in isolation is afflicted by any health ailment he will have to go through a complicated set of procedures before being able to see a doctor. He will have to register for the clinic several times. Often the isolation section will have a specific day of the week set aside when those prisoners are allowed to go out for clinic visits. If the day is Monday, for example, and the prisoner gets sick on Tuesday, he will have to wait the whole week before being allowed to go to the clinic. If the officer assigned to take him happens to be busy or has the day off, he loses his chance and has to wait for another week. When he does finally get to the clinic he will remain handcuffed during the examination and forced to listen to insults from the doctor and the nurse. If blood tests or imaging are necessary, he will have to wait for months, if he ever gets one.

Isolation wings tend to be unhealthy places with poor ventilation and poor hygiene; rats run on the food, and the rooms are filled with cockroaches and mosquitoes. Worst of all, the daily exercise yard is no more than a room 5 meters longs by 4 meters wide with a cement roof. It gets no sun, and it is not possible to use it for exercise or even a walk, it being frequently filled with the leftovers of the common criminals, such as urine, feces and other filth.

Prisoners in isolation are denied all religious rights such as holidays, Friday prayers, even religious books. A prisoner may even sometimes have his prayer rug taken away. They are, likewise, deprived of family visits and of newspapers.

Psychological effects

The report pointed out that isolation leaves great psychological effects on a prisoner. For years on end he does not see anyone; he is either entirely alone or with one other person, but the two of them cannot mingle with other people. He is subjected to all forms of psychological torture and deprivation, and then when he shows some signs of protest or of being affected by his situation, he is accused of being suicidal. Force is immediately brought to bear; his hands and feet are bound fast to a high iron "perch" on which he sleeps. He is set free only twice a day for half an hour each in the morning and evening to eat and go to the bathroom.

Many international human rights organizations have confirmed that isolation leaves clear, striking psychological effects on prisoners. Some prisoners go insane as a result of isolation from the world for long periods, for humans are by nature social beings; they need to talk with others. Should a person be forcibly deprived of expression of this natural instinct, he will be vulnerable to serious mental illnesses that will affect the course of his life.

The prisoner Uwaydah Kallab from the Gaza Strip was sentenced to life imprisonment and has spent 20 years in Israeli prisons, during which he has been isolated for more than 12 years. This has led to serious mental illness and the loss of mental and legal competence. It has resulted in his inability to recognize his friends in prison. He refuses the visits of his relatives, and he refuses to acknowledge his only son, who was a young child when Uwaydah was taken away and is now a young man.

Afeef Awawidah is suffering a serious psychiatric illness caused by isolation for long periods. The prison administration attempted to exploit the prisoner's disease by goading him to attack one of his colleagues in isolation. The prisoner Darwish Dawhal is also suffering from a psychological and neurological condition as a result of solitary confinement; he does not wish to talk with anyone or come out of his cell for the daily exercise session.

There are many other prisoners who are suffering from depression and mental illness as a result of isolation from the world for long periods. The situation calls for a serious stand to stop this criminal policy against the prisoners, which is in contravention of humanitarian conventions. The ministry is calling for immediate intervention by international institutions to curb the Israeli policy of punishing our male and female prisoners by isolation, and to improve the living conditions in prisons to bring them in line with the requirements of international law. They need to do that before they make demands of the Palestinians to release Corporal Gilad Shalit or allow him a visit by the Red Cross.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Israeli Psyops: Tweeting for Iran destabilization

I have found myself getting more and more suspicious about the western media coverage of the Iranian elections and their aftermath.

As I wrote before, What I do know for sure is that there are two simultaneous stories:

1.) What is actually happening in Iran

and

2.) How it is being reported here.

What I see is that my point two is pushing Bibi Netanyahu and his version of a Palestinian "state" off the front pages.

It is a good thing to remember that while Iran, in reality, actually poses no threat to Israel's existence (Persians are not suicidal), a free, sovereign Palestinian state in "Judea and Samaria" does. or at least to Bibi's version of it. In my opinion the neocons are back at work.


The run up to Iraq made me a bit paranoid I'm afraid, and all those who whooped up that war, haven't folded their tents or committed harakiri either, they are still with us. I simply don't trust the intentions of the US media, not then, not now.

Just like during the run up to the war in Iraq, the US media is not checking the sources, they are just gushing over the twitters and their tweets. And that is professional negligence if there ever was, because they are quite fishy.

Have you noticed that you can read all these Iranian "tweets"? Are you aware that the language of Iran is Farsi, not English? Does this piece of information suggest anything to you? Perhaps, the world is like in Hollywood movies where all the exotic character speak English, albeit with charming foreign accents? Or maybe, the dial on a person's bullshit meter might tremble a bit?

But, unlike the run up to the war in Iraq, this time some amateurs have take the trouble to do the homework that the "professionals" seem too understaffed to do themselves.

A financial website, "Charting Stocks", has taken the trouble that the MSM can't be bothered with and has exposed a very effective Israeli psy-op.

So, whatever is actually happening in Tehran, we now know that the Israelis are manipulating our perceptions.

Sit back and read this:
Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #IranElection

Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.

Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.

Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. "IranElection" was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.

Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran's election.

I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran

I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.

JPost actually ran a story about 3 people "who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers." Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours earlier? Is that newsworthy? JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers.

JPost, a major news organization, promoted these three Twitterers who went on the be the source of the IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost so concerned about Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers claim to be)? I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono? (who benefits).

There's no question that Israel perceives Iran as an enemy, more so than any other nation. According to a recent poll, more than half of Israel's population support using military force against Iran if they do not cease from developing nuclear energy (which they have the legal right to do as per the NNP treaty). Oddly enough, this comes out of a country which is not a cosigner to the NNP treaty and has no right to develop nuclear energy, yet posses an arsenal of nuclear BOMBS.

Of course, Mousavi himself plays an important role in causing the social unrest within Iran. How often do you see a candidate declare himself the winner before any votes are counted and then, when faced with defeat, call the entire election process a fraud? As obvious as it was in our own 2000 election, Al Gore would not touch the topic of voter fraud. No major US politician goes near the subject. They know full well that such an accusation would shake the entire foundation of our democracy and threaten the political structures that are in place.

These twitting spammers began crying foul before the final votes were even counted, just as Mousavi had. The spammer @IranRiggedElect created his profile before a winner was announced and preformed the public service of informing us in the United States , in English and every 10 minutes, of the unfair election. He did so unselfishly, and without any regard for his fellow friends and citizens of Iran, who don't speak English and don't use Twitter!


Meet The Spammers:

IranRiggedElect
3146 followers. 31 friends.
340 tweets in past 4 days. none before that.
Top 5 words - iranelection, cnnfail, mousavi, tehran,
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 12pm and 2pm eastern standard time
Most retweets: @StopAhmadi @IranElection09 @change_for_iran

Change_for_Iran
14,000 followers. 0 friends
117 tweets in 2 days. none before that.
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm eastern.
Top 5 words: iranelection, people, police, right, students
No retweets

IranElection09
800 followers. 9 friends.
196 tweets in 3 days. none before that.
185 in English. 11 in Farsi (Arabic appearing letters. Not sure if it's Farsi)
Time: bulk between 2:00pm and 6:00pm eastern. Also 1:00am.
Top 5 words: iranelection, rt, mousavi, tehran, march
Most retweets: @IranRiggedElect @StopAhmadi

StopAhmadi
6199 followers. 53 friends.
1107 tweets in past 3 days. None before then.
top 5 words: iranelection, ppl, news, rt, iran.
All tweets in English
Time: bulk between 9:00am and 5:00pm eastern
Most retweets: @mohamadreza @mahdi

mohamadreza
1433 followers. 142 friends
(protected account. cant see data)

The following all have the same photo in their profile and are followed by the profiles previously mentioned.

http://twitter.com/SadeqEn
http://twitter.com/greenvote
http://twitter.com/Change_for_Iran (14,000 followers)
http://twitter.com/iranbaan
http://twitter.com/sdavood
http://twitter.com/IranElection09 (800 followers. 9 friends.)
One of the few things that I am sure of and understand in this situation is that the government of Israel, and those they influence, would like the USA to attack Iran. Up till now there has been little or no enthusiasm in the USA for doing so. How to "create" that enthusiasm? Stay tuned.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Biting the hand that feeds: Israeli minister wants sanctions on US

Anti-Americanism
Obama gets tough with the Israelis - or, rather, talks about getting tough - and hilarity ensues:
"In a sign of growing concern in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government over U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policies, Minister-without-Portfolio Yossi Peled proposed Israeli sanctions on the U.S. in a letter to cabinet ministers on Sunday.

"In the 11-page letter, obtained by the Jerusalem Post from a minister on Monday, Peled recommends steps Israel can take to compensate for the shift in American policy, which he believes has become hostile to Israel."
According to Peled, the Obama administration will eventually come to realize the error of its ways, but for now the U.S. president seems intent on exerting "intensive pressure to stop building in settlements, remove outposts, and advance the formation of a Palestinian state" - all steps previously agreed to by Israeli leaders, by the way, and now thrown in the trash bin by the far-Right nutballs who have captured the Israeli government.

"But in the interim," the Post reports, "the minister suggests reconsidering military and civilian purchases from the U.S., selling sensitive equipment that the Washington opposes distributing internationally, and allowing other countries that compete with the U.S. to get involved with the peace process and be given a foothold for their military forces and intelligence agencies."

The irony of someone "reconsidering military and civilian purchases" which are being made, or will be made, with our money is a real hoot - but the laughs are just starting!

There's just one conceivable answer to the suggestion that Israel should start "selling sensitive equipment that Washington opposes distributing internationally": when did they ever stop? The Israelis have been stealing U.S. technology and selling it to the Chinese - for one example - for years, much to Washington's chagrin. So does this mean they're going to be doing it openly, instead of sneaking around and doing it on the sly?

As for the idea of giving "other countries that compete with the U.S." a military foothold - go for it, Yossi! I can hardly wait until the Venezuelan army arrives to guard the Wall of Separation. And no doubt the Chinese - grateful for all the high-tech weaponry you've stolen on their behalf - will be more than happy to guard the illegal settlements you're building (with our tax dollars).

And although the French would be grateful, I'm sure, if the Israelis switched from Boeing to Airbus - as Peled suggests - they probably wouldn't want to get involved militarily. The most you can expect is that they'll displace Jerry Lewis from their national pantheon of comedic culture heroes and install this guy in his place.

Oh, but we haven't even gotten to the best part of this "news from Bizarro World" item:
"In what may be his most controversial suggestion, Peled recommends intervening in American congressional races to weaken Obama and asking American Jewish donors not to contribute to Democratic congressional candidates. He predicted that this would result in Democratic candidates pressuring Obama to become more pro-Israel."
Israel intervene in U.S. politics - why, what a novel idea! If Peled hadn't suggested it, it would never - ever - have occurred to me.

Okay, now that you've stopped laughing, just consider: look at all the pro-Israel money that has flowed into the coffers of U.S. congressional candidates, and you have to wonder - is it really enough? Surely the Israelis can afford to ship a few million of those billions we give them directly back to Washington. And, when you think about it, isn't this a way for the Israelis to make up for their boycott of Boeing and other U.S. providers - by pumping extra millions into the U.S. economy, via the campaign chests of our elected officials? They don't call it a "special relationship" for nothing.

The reality, of course, is that the Israelis and their American amen corner are already buying up U.S. politicians by the dozen - no, AIPAC doesn't do it directly, they do it through a complex network of local and regional political action committees. As for the idea of Israel and its American friends exerting pressure on a U.S. official in exchange for under-the-table favors - like, say, intervening in an espionage case - well, it is absolutely unheard of...

Or is it?

You really can't make this stuff up, and, what's more, you don't have to bother. Because the last two times the Israelis went in and slaughtered a few thousands of their neighbors, the U.S. Congress voted to hail them as heroes. When it become clear that our president wouldn't be catering to the Israelis' each and every whim, AIPAC circulated a letter demanding that the White House not "pressure" Tel Aviv - and more than three-quarters of the U.S. Senate signed it, along with the vast majority of House members.

Congress is already "Israeli-occupied territory," as one wag famously put it, so Peled's suggestion is redundant, to say the least. What I suggest, however, is that they start a campaign to impeach Obama, and, once they've succeeded, they should finance and run their own candidate for the White House. After all, look how they got rid of Cynthia McKinney and filled her seat with a suitable replacement.

Yes, the laughs just keep on coming:
"Peled called for the formation of a new body intended to influence American public opinion. The groups he suggests courting include Hispanic Americans and labor unions in industries that benefit from Israeli military acquisitions."
What a great idea: they can call the "new body" the "Elders of Zion" and put out a manifesto entitled - what else? - The Protocols. Then they can translate it into Spanish and pass it out at taco joints and factory gates (those that aren't closed on account of the recession and the Israeli boycott of U.S. goods and services). Now there's a winning strategy if ever I saw one!

Seriously, though, what gets me are the disingenuous responses to the Peled sanctions campaign from our pro-Israel lobbyists. "He's right," said Shoshana Bryen, senior director for security policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, but maybe he shouldn't talk so loud: "She warned that such expressions could 'take on a life of their own,'" the Post reports, "and that some of Peled's policy prescriptions could be less than helpful for the Jewish state."

Well, yes, Bryen does have a point: what if the U.S. suddenly stopped the $3 billion-plus in annual aid to the Jewish state? That might prove less than helpful, to be sure. And, even worse, the idea that our Israeli "allies" are faithless, spoiled, and have an unjustifiable sense of entitlement might take on a life of its own, so to speak - and help ensure that the aid cutoff is total, and permanent.

Not that this will ever happen, you understand, not even if the Israelis bombed Washington with those U.S.-bought-and-paid-for fighter jets. Smarties like Ira Forman are way ahead of Peled on this:
"Democratic political activists in Washington dismissed out of hand Peled's suggestions, saying that such an approach would have little chance of influencing Congress' posture on Israel. 'It shows Yossi Peled is terribly uninformed about U.S. politics,' said National Jewish Democratic Council Executive Director Ira Forman. 'He doesn't understand the politics of the American Jewish community. He doesn't understand the politics of the Democratic Party.'"
In short, Peled doesn't understand that the U.S. Congress has already been bought and sold by pro-Israel money - and that any more cash would be redundant. Peled also doesn't understand that no one is supposed to talk about this, unless they're an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president who never had much of a chance anyway. Nothing is ever said, yet the quid pro quo is all-too-well understood.

The Post reports Forman's comment that "such efforts, if attempted, would neither shift congressional support away from Obama nor boomerang to hurt Israel's backing on Capitol Hill," and I'd lay odds on it. Before any "boomerang effect" sets in, at least in the hallowed halls of Congress, the Israelis would have to set off a couple of nukes in major American cities - and even then, there would probably be a congressional resolution expressing undying support for the "special relationship" in spite of all that bothersome radioactivity.

Okay, we've all had our laugh for the day, a light moment that enables us to rise above the depressing everyday reality, but before we return to the mundane world of the distinctly non-amusing, let's consider just who Yossi Peled is, and his place in the Israeli political landscape. Surely he's some fire-breathing extremist, a Kahanist or a supporter of Avigdor Lieberman's neo-fascist party - right? Wrong. According to the Jerusalem Post, he's a "moderate," a relative "dove" who's a Likudnik, albeit on the "left" flank of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party. In which case, can you imagine what the real extremists are wont to do in response to Obama's new policy?

For years, we've heard about how "pro-American" the Israelis are: why, they're just like us - a democratic and inherently Western state that is embedded in an anti-American sea. Well, not anymore. Today, the Foreign Ministry of Israel is run by a man who could be compared, with much justification, to the failed painter from Vienna, or at least a Bizarro World Jewish version of the same.

Israelis want to deport their Arabs, seize their land, and construct a "Greater Israel." What's more, anti-Americanism is on the rise in Israel - as Peled's comments suggest - and the most anti-American of them all appear to be those Israeli-American dual citizens who vote in U.S. elections and go to Israel regularly, where Max Blumenthal recently captured their rabid anti-American sentiments on video.

What I want to know is this: when, oh, when will the American people wake up to the basic absurdity of the "special relationship" - and put an end to it, forever? Their president, it seems, is aware that our national interests are not served by this condition of mutual resentment and dependency. Now that Israel's true face is showing, how long before all the public relations efforts in the world fail to mask the ugly reality?

And the reality is this: Israel has been a burden, not a benefit, to the U.S. and its national interests abroad. By giving the Jewish state our unconditional support, we have, ironically, set ourselves up for some "blowback" from Israel's direction - and it isn't pretty, is it?

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Does Israel Really Have a Right to Exist?

Following Netanyahu's much anticipated policy speech, politicians and journalists, like mindless automatons, have set about repeating Israel's tired mantra that Palestinians should recognize Israel's right to exist. Never mind the fact that the PLO and Palestine Authority have obliged this ludicrous call, not once, but four times. And never mind that Israel has always denied Palestine's right to exist, not only as a nation, but as individuals seeking a dignified life in our own homeland.

Does anyone find it interesting that Israel is the only country on the planet going around with this incessant insistence that everyone recognize her right to exist? Given that we Palestinians are the ones who have been dispossessed, occupied, and oppressed, one might expect that we should be the ones making such a demand. But that isn't the case. Why? Because our right to exist as a nation is self-evident. We are the natives of that land! We know we have that right. The world knows it. That's why Palestine doesn't need Israel or any other country to recognize her right to exist. We are the rightful heirs to that land and this can be verified legally, historically, culturally, and even genetically. And as such, the only true legitimacy Israel will ever have must come from us abdicating our inheritance, our history, and our culture to Israel. That's why Israel insists we declare she had a right to take everything we ever had - from home and property, cemeteries, churches and mosques, to culture and history and hope.

Israel is a country that was founded by Europeans who came to Palestine, formed terrorist gangs who set about a systematic ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians from their homes on 78% of Historic Palestine in 1948. Those Palestinians and their descendants still languish in refugee camps. Israel attempted a similar scenario in 1967 when they conquered the remainder of Palestine, but Palestinians then couldn't be dislodged from their homes as easily. This remains true, despite 40 years of Israel's violent and oppressive military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Despite home demolitions, land confiscations, rapacious building of Jewish-only colonies, endless checkpoints, targeted assassinations, bombings of schools, hospitals, municipal buildings and malls, closures and denials; despite the massive human rights abuses, the imprisonment and torture of men women and children alike, the separation of families, the daily humiliations; despite the massive killings - Palestinians remain. We still resist. We still live, love, and have babies. As much as we can, we rebuild what Israel destroys. Such are rights!

Rights are inherent and inherently just, like the right to live with dignity and to be masters of one's own fate. It is a human right not be persecuted and oppressed because you happen to belong to one religion and not another.

That Israelis simply take property belonging to Palestinians is not a right. That is theft. That Israel cut off the movement of food, medicine and other basic goods to the Gaza strip, causing massive malnutrition, economic collapse and misery because Palestinians elected particular leaders is not a right. That is an affront to humanity. That Israel rain death from the skies on an already battered and starved Gaza, murdering over 3000 human beings and maiming thousands more in a single month is not a right. It's a war crime. That Israel has employed every imperialistic tactic to subjugate, humiliate, break, and expel an entire nation of principally unarmed civilians because of their religion is not a right. It is a moral obscenity. That every Jew from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia be entitled to dual citizenship, one in their native country and one in Israel, while the rightful heirs to the land linger as refugees without citizenship anywhere is not a right. It is an outrage.

I'm sure my words will be twisted in some way to imply that I'm advocating pushing Israelis "into the sea" or some other asinine claim. So let me be explicit: We all have the right to exist, to live, to be masters of our own destiny. We all have the right not to be oppressed by others. Such rights are inherent to every individual living in that land: Jew, Muslim, or Christian. But Israelis do not have the right to create particular religious demographics by causing the demise of the natives. To be a Jewish [or Muslim or Christian] state, where privilege is accorded to those belonging to a particular religion at the expense of those who do not is not a right.

A nation that discriminates against and oppresses those who do not belong to a particular religious, racial, or ethnic group is not a light onto nations. It is a blight. And to recognize such racism as a human or national right goes against every tenet of international law. It defies the basic sense that the worth of a human being should not be measured by their religion, any more than it should be measured by the color of their skin or the language they speak.

Susan Abulhawa is the author of The Scar of David, a work of historic fiction. She is also the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, www.PlaygroundsforPalestine.org and Board Member of Deir Yassin Remembered. She can be reached at: sjabulhawa@yahoo.com.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Gaza: No Right to Life. Collaborate or Die

With the lack of medical services in Gaza, critically ill patients must travel into Israel for treatment. Many are asked to collaborate with Israeli intelligence services before they receive aid. It has been alleged that if they refuse to become informers they are refused medical treatment.



Sunday, June 14, 2009

What are they hiding? Flight 447 and Tunguska Type Events

Every now and then we have to lift our eyes up (literally) from the sordid state of poor Mother Earth and the treatment that our species meets out our weakest members, to contemplate larger matters. Unfortunately, they bring us no comfort either. There is grave danger in the heavens, the like of which has not been seen for over 3600 years. Yet the "leaders" of the world have seen fit to hide this from us.

Blue Ibis

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Air France Flight 447 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared over the Mid-Atlantic (just north of the equator) at approximately 1.33UTC on June 1st 2009.

No mayday signal was received from the aircraft and almost two weeks later, aviation officials have yet to give a coherent explanation as to what could have caused the sudden demise of a high tech Airbus 330-200 passenger plane.

As usual, the media are missing (or concealing) some very obvious yet understandably disturbing data about the nature of the threats to life on planet earth, and as usual, it is left to Sott.net to spell out the details.

One of the first official comments on the incident came from French Prime Minister Francois Fillon who said
"Our only certainty is that the plane did not send out any distress call but regular automatic alerts for three minutes indicating the failure of all systems."
Aviation experts were also said to be puzzled that there were no radio reports from the Airbus and stated that such a modern aircraft would have had to suffer multiple traumas to plunge into the sea.

Commercial aircraft pitot tube

Initial theorizing focused on the Pitot tube, part of the aircraft's system of pressure-sensitive instruments which determine airspeed, Mach number, altitude, and vertical speed. An Air France spokesperson stated on 3 June that "the aircraft sent a series of electronic messages over a three-minute period, which represented about a minute of information. Exactly what that data means hasn't been sorted out, yet."[17]

An aviation safety expert explained a few days later that "complete failure would require 100% failure of the electrical system," which "did not happen early in the flight, because the system was up linking data to the maintenance facility, indicating there was some electricity on the airplane.

The messages, sent from an onboard maintenance system, Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), indicated that between 02:10 UTC and 02:14 UTC - four minutes or less - 5 failure reports and 19 warnings were transmitted.The messages resulted from equipment failure data, captured by a built-in system for testing and reporting, and cockpit warnings also posted to ACARS. The failures and warnings in the 5 minutes of transmission concerned navigation auto-flight, flight controls, and cabin air-handling.

approximate last location of AF 447

Among the ACARS transmissions in the first minute is one message that indicates a fault in the pitot-static system. Sources close to the investigation have confirmed that "the first automated system-failure message in a string of radio alerts from the crashed jet explicitly indicated that the airspeed sensors were faulty". The twelve warning messages with the same time code indicate that the autopilot and auto-thrust system had disengaged, that the aircraft collision avoidance system was in fault mode. Additionally the flight mode went from 'normal law' to 'alternate law'. The remainder of the messages occurred from 02:11 UTC to 02:14 UTC, containing a fault message for an Air Data Inertial Reference Unit (which sends air speed data to the pilots display as well as other systems such as the engines, autopilot, flight control and landing gear systems. At 02:12 UTC, a warning message indicated that there was a disagreement between the independent air data systems. At 02:13 UTC, a fault message for the flight management guidance and envelope computer was sent. One of the two final messages, transmitted at 02:14 UTC was a warning referring to the air data reference system, the other was a "cabin vertical speed warning".

All of the above would seem to bear out the aforementioned aviation expert's conclusion that the plane did indeed suffer multiple traumas before it plunged into the sea. Yet such a series of traumas would be unprecedented in modern aviation history, particularly given that the Airbus 330 is one of the most advanced and and safest commercial planes available. It has an excellent safety record, with more than 550 planes built and no passenger fatalities since it went into service in 1993. It is almost inconceivable then that such a plane with no history of technical issues could have experienced such complete technical failure so quickly that the pilot did not even have time to send a distress call ("Mayday") on the aircraft emergency frequency.

Unsurprisingly then, on June 11th the French Investigation and Analysis Office For Civilian Security discounted the idea then that the "air speed sensor" could have been the main cause of the crash.

Severe weather has also been proposed as a possible cause. This theory is based on the report that at about 1am UTC the pilots reported that they had encountered "stormy weather with strong turbulence". Daniel G. Kottlowski, a senior meteorologist with Accuweather.com calculated that thunderstorms in the region of the crash could have generated updrafts in the range of 100 miles per hour, although he conceded that this was not unusual weather for the region. According to commercial transport pilots familiar with the route, it is likely that the flight crew of the Air France aircraft was aware of the intensity of the storm in the flight path at that altitude long before actually encountering the thunderstorms. Using the on board radar pilots can see and fairly easily navigate around particular storm cells.

Lightning is also unlikely to have caused any serious problems because modern aircraft are designed to take lightning strikes without significant damage.

The most compelling evidence against the weather theory however is the fact that two Lufthansa jets flew through the same area both before and after Flight 447 without incident.
The United Nations weather agency said on Tuesday it had preliminary information indicating the two aircraft recorded data on prevailing temperatures and winds. But they were not equipped to automatically transmit information on turbulence.

On Monday, a source with access to the data transmitted to the World Meteorological Organisation told Reuters in Paris that the two jets passed through turbulence before and after the plane without incident, leaving experts scrambling to assess the weather's role in the disaster.
Indeed, no less than 12 other flights shared more or less the same route with Flight 447 around the time of the accident. No weather problems were reported by any of the planes.

Recent reports that passengers bodies have been found 54kms apart strongly suggest that the plane broke apart high in the air.

When faced with the problem of the loss of a commercial jet in mid-air with no obvious explanation, the mainstream media generally resorts to storytelling, with a little Hollywood movie-style emotional string pulling for good measure, as evidenced by this UK Times article:
Had AF447 suffered a structural failure? Did a window break or wing shear off? Whatever it was, the passengers must have been terrified. It was night over the Atlantic, lightning splitting the sky, the aircraft jolting in the turbulence, systems failing. Then massive decompression, cabin air gone and, outside, the temperature -30C or below. Mercifully they may not have suffered long.
Interestingly, in the same article the authors state:
Though no one yet knows for sure what destroyed the plane, investigators are concerned that it was not caused, as first suggested, by a lightning strike or a bomb or a meteorite. Instead they fear it was a fatal collision of high technology and the brute force of nature.
Ah yes, the "brute force of nature"! Now that is getting close, but even closer was the reference to a meteorite. Even though this idea received scant attention in the mainstream press, with only Discover magazine blog allowing one of their editors to speculate on the statistical possibility of an errant bolide sealing the fate of AF 447, it cannot be discounted. As the saying goes, when all other theories have been tried and found wanting, whatever remains, however implausible, must be the answer.

Readers of Sott.net will be familiar with the data we have compiled on the alarming increase in frequency of meteorite sightings and impacts over the past 10 years. Laura Knight-Jadczyk's article Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls presents a list of impact events dating from 10,000 BC to the present day. It was this and other data, studiously ignored by the mainstream media, that led us to quickly consider a more logical explanation to the sudden disappearance of AF 447.

Within a few days of the crash the first piece of evidence that something other than high technology and weather destroyed AF 447 came in.

A Spanish pilot with Air Comet (which flies from South and Central American countries to Madrid) flying the Lima to Madrid route reported a bright descending light in the region of AF 447's last position:
"Suddenly we saw in the distance a bright intense flash of white light that fell straight down and disappeared in six seconds".

At the time of the sighting, (the copilot and a passenger who was in the front kitchen area of the airplane also saw it), the Air Comet aircraft was located at seven degrees north of the equator and at the 49th meridian West. The estimated location for the A-330-203 until the moment of its disappearance is at the equator and around the 30th meridian West

It seems reasonable to suggest that an aircraft would not produce a bright and intense white light for six seconds as it fell from the sky. The many dozens of meteorite and fireball sightings over the past few years however are often seen as bright white flashes of descending light.

A Sott.net reader later sent us the following report:
Early in the morning today (8th June 2009) I saw here in Brazil, an interview (on Record television network) with a native from the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha who stated that he saw strange lights in the night of the disaster with the Air France Jet.

He declared seeing a light (bright white) and later it changed directions several times and changed to red color.
So are we saying that a meteorite hit AF 447? Not exactly. The chances of a single smallish, (or even largish) rock falling from the sky and hitting a plane travelling at 500mph are surely too remote to be plausible. But meteorites and comets often do not simply fall to earth intact. Remember Tunguska?
The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m. on June 30, 1908

Although the cause of the explosion is the subject of debate, it is commonly believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5 - 10 kilometres (3 - 6 miles) above the Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates of the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across

The Tunguska shock wave
levelled 2000 sq kms of trees

Although the meteor or comet burst in the air rather than directly hitting the surface, this event is still referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 megatons to as high as 30 megatons of TNT, with 10 - 15 megatons the most likely - roughly equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear explosion set off in late February 1954, about 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan and about one-third the power of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 square miles). It is estimated that the shockwave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.

Although the Tunguska event is believed to be the largest impact event on land in Earth's recent history, impacts of similar size in remote ocean areas would have gone unnoticed before the advent of global satellite monitoring in the 1960s and 1970s.

© Don Davis
How the Tunguska blast might
have looked from the windows
of a nearby airliner. The expanding
shock wave would have knocked
the plane from the sky moments later
The Tunguska meteorite probably was visible as it exploded and broke up, appearing as a bright white light descending in the sky. 6-10 miles up is within the height range of commercial aircraft. And AF flight 447 was indeed located in a remote ocean area. So if, as we suspect, the blast from a Tunguska-like comet - though a significantly smaller one than that which exploded over Tunguska - destroyed AF447, the precursor electronic activity in the atmosphere explaining the anomalies of the complete air craft systems failures - it is also likely that modern satellite monitoring systems would have picked up such an event. Indeed, Brigadier General S. Pete Worden's article NEOS, Planetary Defense and Government - A View From the Pentagon confirms this likelihood:
I can show people evidence of real strikes inflicting local and regional damage less than a century ago. Even more compelling are the frequent kiloton-level detonations our early warning satellites see in the earth's atmosphere.

Within the United States space community there is a growing concern over "space situational awareness." We are beginning to understand that it is essential to identify and track virtually everything in earth orbit. Some of these objects, down to a few centimeters in size, present a potential threat to commercial and civil space operations such as the International Space Station.
So, what are the chances that civilian, or even government/military satellite imagery will be available to either confirm or deny this "wild speculation" of ours?

Well, up until a few days ago the chances seemed good. But then, for some unknown reason, and very coincidentally, this happened:
Military Hush-Up: Incoming Space Rocks Now Classified

Space.com
10 June 2009

For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere - but no longer.

A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com had learned.

The satellites' main objectives include detecting nuclear bomb tests, and their characterizations of asteroids and lesser meteoroids as they crash through the atmosphere has been a byproduct data bonanza for scientists.

The upshot: Space rocks that explode in the atmosphere are now classified.

"It's baffling to us why this would suddenly change," said one scientist familiar with the work. "It's unfortunate because there was this great synergy...a very good cooperative arrangement. Systems were put into dual-use mode where a lot of science was getting done that couldn't be done any other way. It's a regrettable change in policy."

Scientists say not only will research into the threat from space be hampered, but public understanding of sometimes dramatic sky explosions will be diminished, perhaps leading to hype and fear of the unknown.
Commenting last year on the significance of the Tunguska event, former Apollo astronaut and chairman of the Board of Directors of the B612 Foundation, Rusty Schweickart, stated:
Tunguska is a great reminder of what we will likely have to deal with in the next 10 years or so. We now know statistically that there are some 600,000 or more "Tunguskas" out there of which we have to date discovered less than 1%! While for those of us who have been working this issue it is clear that we can deflect such impact threats ... the primary prerequisite is that we know one is coming! We can't protect ourselves against something we don't know about.

So the primary "message" of Tunguska is that it happened, it will happen again, and we can prevent it. but we have to find and track these smaller NEOs. Congress has spoken. They've told NASA to crank up a more powerful search program. NASA, however, has refused to act - or even to comply with Congress's request to recommend a search strategy and to estimate the budget needed to support it.

Their excuse? They don't have the budget to support it!

Thanks, NASA.
If a high-altitude cometary explosion did indeed destroy AF 447, then the decision by the US military (and government), just a few days later, to impose a black out on all information about earth-bound space rocks is extremely worrying. It suggests that members of the US government know that a cometary explosion destroyed the Air France flight and that they suspect that more such events, perhaps over populated areas, are likely in the near future. More horrifying however is the callous disregard for human life displayed by such a cavalier attitude to the withholding of information pertaining to what is clearly the greatest existential threat facing humanity today.

the 25 ton doors leading
to the Cheyenne complex