The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 12 Issue 46…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…November 15, 2009

Intuit's Vibe

Turn, Turn, Turn

By Pete Seeger

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)

There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)

And a time for every purpose, under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)

There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)

And a time for every purpose, under Heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down

A time to dance, a time to mourn

A time to cast away stones

A time to gather stones together

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)

There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)

And a time for every purpose, under Heaven

A time of love, a time of hate

A time of war, a time of peace

A time you may embrace

A time to refrain from embracing

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)

There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)

And a time for every purpose, under Heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose

A time to rend, a time to sew

A time to love, a time to hate

A time for peace, I swear it's not too late.

News You Use

ICAHD and Seeger's "Turn"

"As Israelis, we believe that the only chance for a genuine peace is one that enables the Palestinians to establish what we have, a viable and truly sovereign state of their own. A just peace will also provide all the peoples of our region with the security, dignity, freedom and economic opportunities they deserve." ICAHD's goal is a just and sustainable peace.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) is a non-profit organization, which was originally established to oppose and resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories. As a direct-action group, ICAHD is comprised of members of many Israeli peace and human rights organizations. All of its work in the Occupied Territories is closely coordinated with local Palestinian organizations. Over time, ICAHD expanded its resistance activities to include direct action against land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, policies of "closure" and "separation," the wholesale uprooting of fruit and olive trees and more.

For a decade, Pete Seeger, who is considered one of the pioneers of American folk music and is known for his political activism, has been donating a portion of the royalties from his recording "Turn, Turn, Turn" to ICAHD. The lyrics of the song are the words of King Solomon from the book of Ecclesiastes. According to Professor Jeff Halper, director of ICAHD, who recently met with Seeger in New York, Seeger remarked that he "thought it was appropriate that the biblical part of the song make its way to Israel." Seeger also urged, "Artists and cooks to stand up and demand a just peace. That is the duty of artists and cooks."

For more information about ICAHD, visit its website at www.icahd.org, or email info@icahd.org. (Source: www.Haaretz.com)

Bit of History

The Lavon Affair

In the early 1950s, the United States initiated a more activist policy toward Egypt. Fearing this policy, which encouraged Britain to withdraw its military forces from the Suez Canal, would embolden Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser's military ambitions towards Israel and frustrated by its failed diplomatic efforts to influence US policy, Colonel Binyamin Gibli, the chief of Israel's military intelligence, Aman, initiated Operation Suzannah in the summer of 1954 in order to reverse US policy.

Operation Suzannah was designed to carry out bombings and acts of terror in Egypt with the aim of creating an atmosphere in which the British and US opponents of British withdrawal from Egypt would be able to gain the upper hand and block the withdrawal. Historian Shabtai Teveth, who authored one of the more detailed accounts of the false flag operation, wrote that the assignment was designed "To undermine Western confidence in the existing [Egyptian] regime by generating public insecurity and actions to bring about arrests, demonstrations, and acts of revenge, while totally concealing the Israeli factor. The team was accordingly urged to avoid detection, so that suspicion would fall on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'."

Aman's top-secret cell, Unit 131 was tasked with conducting the operation. Unit 131 operatives had been recruited several years before by Israeli intelligence officer Avram Dar, who arrived undercover in Cairo as a British citizen of Gibraltar named John Darling. Dar recruited several Egyptian Jews who had previously been active in illegal emigration activities and trained them for covert operations.

Before the unit, which was activated in the spring of 1954, began its mission, Israeli agent Avraham Seidenberg (Avri Elad) was sent to oversee the operations. Having assumed the identity of Paul Frank, a former SS officer with Nazi underground connections, Seidenberg allegedly told Egyptian Intelligence about the operation. Egyptian authorities arrested Philip Natanson. A search of his apartment produced incriminating evidence and names of accomplices. Several suspects were arrested, including Egyptian Jews and undercover Israelis.

The terror cell managed to firebomb a post office in Alexandria on July 2, and on July 14, it bombed the U.S. Information Agency libraries in Alexandria and Cairo and a British-owned theater. The homemade bombs caused little damage and no injuries or deaths.

While Colonel Dar and Seidenberg managed to escape the Egyptian authorities, one suspect, Yosef Carmon, was tortured to death in prison and Hungarian born Israeli Meir Max Bineth committed suicide. The trial began on December 11 and lasted until January 27, 1955; two of the accused, Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Azar, were condemned to execution by hanging and two acquitted with the rest receiving lengthy prison sentences. The trial was widely criticized as a show trial, and there were allegations that evidence had been extracted by torture.

Two of the imprisoned operatives, Meir Meyuhas and Meir Za'afran, were released in 1962, after having served seven years in prison. The remainder was freed in February 1968, in a secret addendum to a prisoner of war exchange.

Aman continued using Seidenberg for intelligence operations until 1956, when he was caught trying to sell Israeli documents to the Egyptians. He was tried and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In 1980, Mossad provided evidence showing Seidenberg had betrayed Aman even before Operation Suzannah.

In meetings with Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, secretary of defense Pinhas Lavon denied any knowledge of Operation Suzannah. Sharrett commissioned a board of inquiry, which found no conclusive evidence that Lavon authorized the operation. Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion succeeded Lavon as minister of defense and later became Prime Minister following the resignation of Sharett.

Operation Suzannah, which became the Lavon Affair, turned out to be disastrous for Israel. Its standing and credibility in its relations with the Britain and the US would take years to repair. The tactics of the operation led to deep-seated suspicion of Israeli intelligence methods, such as agent provocateurs and false flag operations. The political aftermath caused considerable political turmoil in Israel that affected the influence of its government.

In March 2005, Israel publicly honored the surviving operatives, and President Moshe Katsav presented each of the nine Egyptian Jewish agents who were involved in Operation Suzannah with a certificate of appreciation for their efforts on behalf of the state, ending decades of official denial by Israel. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.com)

United States Robot Assassins

By John Burl Smith

While reading Jeremiah Chapter 19, I encountered his prophesy regarding Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem having filled the Valley of Hinnom with the blood of innocents and was reminded of the United States' robot assassins. Earlier this year, CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated what was described as a "very serious" covert program kept secret from Congress for 8 years. According to US Rep. Jan Schakowsky, House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, "In 2001 George W. Bush authorized the capture or killing of al-Qaeda operatives. Vice Pres. Dick Cheney directed the CIA to develop plans to dispatch teams of assassins overseas to kill senior al-Qaeda terrorists and ordered the CIA to delay notifying Congress of the program."

By sending assassination squads around the world to kill people, the US government sanctioned state-sponsored murder. Predictably, the disclosure by Panetta stirred outrage among Democrats and the general public. The U.S. denounced Israel's targeted killing of Palestinians it believed to be terrorists in July 2001. US Government officials are fond of saying "We hold ourselves to a higher moral and ethical standard than our enemies."

Appointed by Pres. Barack Obama to head the CIA, Panetta's disclosure was supposed to put an end to the CIA's blatant disregard of human rights and international law. However, in May 2009 Panetta opened a whole new CIA can of worms by sanctioning the use of unmanned aircraft to kill suspected al-Qaeda leaders. He said of such targeted assassinations, "It's the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt al-Qaeda leadership." This new attitude reflects a willingness to go far beyond Cheney's counter-terrorism hit squads to the indiscriminate use of robots that kill innocent women and children as well as high profile al-Qaeda leaders.

Originally, appointed CIA Director by Bill Clinton, George Tenet refused to deploy Predator drones for anything other than counterinsurgency surveillance and reconnaissance. Chastened by past assassination scandals, he argued that it would be a "terrible mistake" for "the Director of CIA to fire a weapon like this." Seven years later, however, there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing using robots has become official U.S. policy and the world has become concerned about the US' lack of regard for the rule of law and the deaths of innocent civilians.

The US' reckless disregard for non-combatants drew the ire of UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston. He expressed concern at a press conference (10-27-09). "My concern is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The onus is really on the US government to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons."

Sounding more and more like the Bush administration, the Obama administration told the UN in June that it has a legal framework to respond to unlawful killings. It also said that the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have no role in relation to killings during an armed conflict. On its face, sending robots to kill alleged al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not a huge ethical departure from Cheney's kill squads. It is still state-sponsored murder, since many of those killed are not the intended targets, have not appeared in court and, for the most part, are considered "collateral damage." Afghanistan did not attack the US. So, what justifies the US recklessly causing so many innocent civilian deaths? The US must be held accountable for its wanton behavior.

The world now knows more about Cheney's CIA assassination squads than is known about Obama's CIA robot assassins. Cheney's operation had no oversight, no checks and balances, and, as far as is known publicly, the same is true for Obama's drone killers. One thing is known and that is the guy who ran Cheney's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from September 2003 until August 2008 is Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It is no coincidence that drone strikes by the military have increased exponentially since Obama put McChrystal in charge of military efforts in Afghanistan. Obama is currently considering a report by McChrystal calling for a 40,000 troop escalation in the war in Afghanistan.

Alston's concerns center on the fact that there were only 10 recorded drone strikes in 2006 and 2007 combined. Conversely, since January 2008, U.S. drones have attacked inside Pakistan 82 times. Even more distressing, during the first month after Barack Obama took office, U.S. robots killed approximately 80 people in Pakistan. Currently, the death toll is estimated between 750 and 1,000 people. Among them were about 20 leaders of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and allied groups, the rest were suspected militants or civilians. For instance, in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of Kurram, a Predator strike reportedly killed between 25 and 30 villagers but no major insurgent. The most frequent target of such drone strikes was Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. Since Pres. Obama authorized attacks inside Pakistan, 15 of the 41 robot attacks were specifically aimed at Mehsud. He was finally killed on August 5th, along with one of his wives and her father.

During another of those 15 attacks, according to the American press, a pair of missiles from a Predator struck the Pakistani village of Mirali, killing at least 25 militants. In the local media, the dead were described as "29 tribesmen" attending a funeral. The apparent target of the attack, Mehsud, escaped unscathed. Consider, the US tried 14 times unsuccessfully to kill Mehsud, but each time some unknown number of innocent Pakistanis was killed and injured. The difference in description of whether the dead are Taliban and al Qaeda or innocent villagers is at the heart of Alston's concerns. Americans see drones over Pakistan as terrorist-killers. People in Pakistan say the robotic planes are wiping out neighbors.

Mr. Alston and most of the world see the secrecy surrounding the CIA program as problematic. It gives agents sitting in computer rooms in Langley, Virginia impunity as they kill 20 or 30 villagers along with Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders; then, they go home to their families in total security. Alston's point is this is not a video game, hit or miss, real people die. Without real accountability, these robotic strikes could be punishment to terrorize helpless villagers who sympathize with the Taliban. These robots killing so many innocent villagers seem lost on Mr. Obama. It is clear he places greater value on US lives than is placed on Afghani and Pakistani lives. Regarding trust, Jeremiah's prophesy that once the pottery bottle is broken it cannot be put back together again is apropos. (Sources: www.abc.net.au, www.wired.com, www.haaretz.com, www.newyorker.com, and http://washingtonindependent.com)

Hood Notes

Demolitions, Blockade and War Crimes

In October, Israeli authorities demolished more Palestinian-owned structures in East Jerusalem in defiance of international calls to cease such actions. Palestinian reports say a family of five was forcibly evicted from their home in the Beit Hanina district before the building was demolished. Israeli bulldozers then destroyed the foundations of another building nearby.

UN officials say such demolitions violate international law and raise serious humanitarian concerns. Israel says buildings subject to demolition orders have been built without permits. Palestinians say it is virtually impossible to obtain the necessary approval from Israel's municipal authorities in Jerusalem. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says the authorities have demolished about 420 Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem since 2004.

Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 war and annexed it soon afterwards in a move that has not been recognized internationally.

In addition to demolishing homes, Israel continues to restrict movement of goods, services and people in the Gaza Strip. According to Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, "Israel's blockade affects every aspect of life in Gaza, and is even preventing students from having basic school supplies."

In March, the US pledged $300 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza at a donor's conference in Egypt. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said at the conference, "A child growing up in Gaza without shelter, health care, or an education has the same right to go to school, see a doctor, and live with a roof over her head as a child growing up in your country or mine." In a letter to Clinton, Human Rights Watch called on the US, as Israel's most important political, military and financial backer, to dissociate itself from the blockade and to speak out against it.

Yet, according to Whitson, "Children in Gaza are suffering from punitive restrictions while the United States and other allies of Israel have failed to take a firm stand against this policy, prolonging the effects of the war."

Under international humanitarian law, Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza, even though it withdrew its permanent military forces and settlers in 2005, because it continues to exercise effective day-to-day control over most aspects of life in Gaza. In addition to controlling Gaza's land, air, and sea borders, Israel controls most of its electricity, water, and sewage capacity, telecommunications networks and population registry.

Israel's blockade violates its duty as an occupying power to safeguard the basic health and welfare of the occupied population, a form of collective punishment in violation of international humanitarian law. The International Committee of the Red Cross, in its authoritative commentary on the Geneva Conventions, states that "the concept of collective punishment must be understood in the broadest sense: it covers not only legal sentences but sanctions and harassment of any sort."

Defying pressure from the United States and Israel, the UN General Assembly this week overwhelmingly approved a resolution that calls on both the Jewish State and the Palestinians to investigate the accusations of war crimes during last winter's deadly Israeli bombings of Gaza. Approved by a vote of 118 to 14, the resolution calls on Israel and "the Palestinian side" to undertake investigations into the Goldstone allegations within three months, and asks UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to transit the report to the Security Council.

Israel angrily rejected the resolution as "deeply flawed, one-sided and prejudiced" while the United States called it "unbalanced and unbiased" and warned that it would hurt prospects for achieving Middle East peace. The US' negative vote on the UN resolution follows a US House of Representatives resolution denouncing the Goldstone report. (Sources: www.bbc.co.uk/, www.nation.com.pk and www.hrw.org)

Venue for an Artist

No on H.R. 3962

By US Rep. Dennis Kucinich

We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.

Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.

But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies - a bailout under a blue cross.

By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal. The Center for American Progress' blog, Think Progress, states, 'since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.' Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that 'money will start flowing in again' to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation. Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy.

During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The 'robust public option' which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks' hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy - in which most Americans live - the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street.

This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America's manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care. America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatized health care system. As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care.

Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America's businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals.

About Me: Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, all the House Republicans except one, most new Democrats and most Blue Dogs voted against H.R. 3962 for different reason. The above is Rep Kucinich's explanation of his opposition to the House bill.

Politics Y2K9

The Evil Empire (Excerpts)

By Paul Craig Roberts

The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that "our" government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire.

Obama is already set on the course to a one-term presidency. He promised change, but has delivered none. His health care bill is held hostage by the private insurance companies seeking greater profits. The most likely outcome will be cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in order to help fund wars that enrich the military/security complex and the many companies created by privatizing services that the military once provided for itself at far lower costs. It would be interesting to know the percentage of the $700+ billion "defense" spending that goes to private companies. In American "capitalism," an amazing amount of taxpayers' earnings go to private firms via the government. Yet, Republicans scream about "socializing" health care.

Republicans and Democrats saw opportunities to create new sources of campaign contributions by privatizing as many military functions as possible. There are now a large number of private companies that have never made a dollar in the market, feeding instead at the public trough that drains taxpayers of dollars while loading Americans with debt service obligations.

Obama inherited an excellent opportunity to bring US soldiers home from the Bush regime's illegal wars of aggression. In its final days, the Bush regime realized that it could "win" in Iraq by putting the Sunni insurgents on the US military payroll. Once Bush had 80,000 insurgents collecting US military pay, violence, although still high, dropped in half. All Obama had to do was to declare victory and bring our boys home, thanking Bush for winning the war. It would have shut up the Republicans.

But this sensible course would have impaired the profits and share prices of those firms that comprise the military/security complex. So instead of doing what Obama said he would do and what the voters elected him to do, Obama restarted the war in Afghanistan and launched a new one in Pakistan. Soon Obama was echoing Bush and Cheney's threats to attack Iran.

In place of health care for Americans, there will be more profits for private insurance companies. In place of peace there will be more war. Voters are already recognizing the writing on the wall and are falling away from Obama and the Democrats. Independents who gave Obama his comfortable victory have now swung against him, recently electing Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia. This is a protest vote, not a confidence vote in Republicans.

Obama's credibility is shot. And so is Congress', assuming it ever had any. The US House of Representatives has just voted to show the entire world that the US House of Representatives is nothing but the servile, venal, puppet of the Israel Lobby. The House of Representatives of the American "superpower" did the bidding of its master, AIPAC, and voted 344 to 36 to condemn the Goldstone Report.

US Representative Dennis Kucinich, who is now without a doubt a marked man on AIPAC's political extermination list, asked the House if the members had any realization of the shame that the vote condemning Goldstone would bring on the House and the US government. The entire rest of the world accepts the Goldstone report. The House answered with its lopsided vote that the rest of the world doesn't count as it doesn't give campaign contributions to members of Congress.

This shameful, servile act of "the world's greatest democracy" occurred the very week that a court in Italy convicted 23 US CIA officers for kidnaping a person in Italy. The CIA agents are now considered "fugitives from justice" in Italy, and indeed they are.

The kidnapped person was renditioned to the American puppet state of Egypt, where the victim was held for years and repeatedly tortured. The case against him was so absurd that even an Egyptian judge order his release.

Clearly, this means that the crime that Bush, Cheney, the Pentagon, and the CIA ordered is too heinous and beyond the pale to be justified, even by memos from the despicable John Yoo and the Republican Federalist Society.

The finding of the Italian court, and keep in mind that Italy is a bought-and-paid-for US puppet state, indicates that even our bought puppets are finding the US too much to stomach.

Moving from the tip of the iceberg down, we have Ambassador Craig Murray, rector of the University of Dundee and until 2004 the UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which he describes as a Stalinist totalitarian state courted and supported by the Americans.

As ambassador, Murray saw the MI5 intelligence reports from the CIA that described the most horrible torture procedures. "People were raped with broken bottles, children were tortured in front of their parents until they [the parents] signed a confession, people were boiled alive."

"Intelligence" from these torture sessions was passed on by the CIA to MI5 and to Washington as proof of the vast al Qaeda conspiracy.

Amb. Murray reports that the people delivered by CIA flights to Uzbekistan's torture prisons "were told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they'd been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes."

"I was absolutely stunned," says the British ambassador, who thought that he served a moral country that, along with its American ally, had moral integrity. The great Anglo-American bastion of democracy and human rights, the homes of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the great moral democracies that defeated Nazism and stood up to Stalin's gulags, were prepared to commit any crime in order to maximize profits.

Amb. Murray learned too much and was fired when he vomited it all up. He saw the documents that proved that the motivation for US and UK military aggression in Afghanistan had to do with the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The Americans wanted a pipeline that bypassed Russia and Iran and went through Afghanistan. To insure this, an invasion was necessary. The idiot American public could be told that the invasion was necessary because of 9/11 and to save them from "terrorism;" and the utter fools would believe the lie.

"If you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you'll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It's what it's about. It's about money, it’s about energy, it's not about democracy."

Guess who the consultant was who arranged with then Texas governor George W. Bush the agreements that would give to Enron the rights to Uzbekistan's and Turkmenistan's natural gas deposits and to Unocal to develop the trans-Afghanistan pipeline? It was Karzai, the US-imposed "president" of Afghanistan, who has no support in the country except for American bayonets.

Amb. Murray was dismissed from the UK Foreign Service for his revelations. No doubt on orders from Washington to our British puppet. (Source: www.creators.com)

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Phone Calls

Email www.ramzybaroud.net ...The Obama Administration has obviously discovered the limits of the "audacity of hope": a strong, unified pro-Israel lobby, decisively rightwing Israeli government, a unified US Congress backing Israel's every move, a wishy-washy international community, fragmented Muslim and Arab countries, and all the rest. Therefore, it was no surprise to see Mrs. Clinton, on her recent Middle East trip backtracking on every promise her government had made. She "claimed (on November 1) that halting settlement building had never been a pre-condition to resuming talks," reported The Times. Worse, not only did she fail to convince Netanyahu of the US position, which was more or less consistent with international law, she commended him for failing to meet what was once considered a strong US demand. The switch happened during her one-day visit to Jerusalem. "What the Prime Minister (of Israel) has offered in specifics of restraint on the policy of settlements ... is unprecedented," she said of Netanyahu's dismal promise to slow down settlement activities in the West Bank. There are over 500,000 Jewish settlers in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, living in many settlements that are all considered illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention and numerous UN resolutions. To add insult to injury, Mrs. Clinton, continued, at every stop, to demand Arabs and Muslim to reach out to Israel.

Email jasonk@yahoo.com ...Israel to rely on US veto...By Jason Koutsoukis...Israel will rely on the support of permanent UN Security Council members the US, Britain and France to block the progression of a Human Rights Council report accusing it of war crimes in Gaza. The report, by South African judge Richard Goldstone, was formally adopted by the UN's Human Rights Council on Friday, passing it on for deliberation to the more powerful Security Council in New York. The UNHRC resolution threatens strong action against Israel by the Security Council and the International Criminal Court should there be no serious internal investigations of evidence of war crimes cited by the Goldstone fact-finding mission. But any action by the Security Council is considered unlikely, as the US has indicated that it will use its veto over the Security Council agenda to block discussion of the report. Israeli leaders reacted angrily to the UNHRC vote and the accompanying resolution that condemned Israeli human rights violations in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, and also criticized Israel for failing to co-operate with Justice Goldstone's mission.

Email vikingjohn@juno.com ...A newly declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file indicates that an Israeli intelligence agent was among the staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). "WFO files disclose that AIPAC is a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group staffed by US citizens," says the August 13, 1984 document- a secret communication from the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO) to the FBI director. "WFO files contain an unsubstantiated allegation that a member of the Israeli Intelligence Service was a staff member of AIPAC," it adds. The secret FBI document was declassified and handed over to the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) after it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. IRmep needed the documents to file a third amicus brief urging Judge T.S. Ellis not to drop the charges brought against AIPAC workers Steve J. Rosen and Keith Weissman under the 1917 Espionage Act. On May 1, 2009, the Department of Justice dismissed the espionage charges against the two former AIPAC staffers. Who put the pressure on the department for dismissal of charges? Department of Defense Employee Col. Lawrence Franklin who was indicted along with the AIPAC workers in 2005, however, pleaded guilty to the charges, admitting that he had provided classified information about Iran to two AIPAC employees. Apparently the Israeli agent had promised to facilitate the appointment of Harman as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in exchange for the information. It is widely believed that the 1984 and 2005 espionage incidents were not isolated events. As part of a defamation lawsuit he has launched against AIPAC, Rosen intends to show that obtaining and leveraging classified US government information in the service of Israel is common practice at AIPAC. He claims it was unfair for AIPAC to fire and smear him in the press after he was indicted on espionage charges in 2005. AIPAC lawyers, however, are hoping to get the case thrown out on technicalities before it goes to trial in early 2010. AIPAC, considered the most powerful and connected lobbying group in Washington, is known for the influence that it holds over US foreign policy. Former US president Jimmy Carter has also accused AIPAC of putting a great deal of pressure on politicians running for office who do not share AIPAC goals.