Statement by the Obongo CIA President on the Anniversary of the Assassination of Rafiq Hariri by our own White House Murder INC

Statement by the Obongo CIA President on the Anniversary of the Assassination of Rafiq Hariri by our own White House Murder INC, which is as American as apple-pie...

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release February 13th, 2009

February 13th is a special day for our own CIA. It's the day when our agent Asef SHAWKAT was promoted to be the head of Syrian Military Intelligence.... for conducting a brilliant assassination on our behalf on February 14th 2005, when he brilliantly assassinated Rafic Hariri and 22 others in Beirut on behalf of CIA, after our services were able to brilliantly Bamboozle SMI into submitting to our stove-piping techniques....Hence, Asef Shawkat deserves our full commendation for decades to come.... and we cannot thank him enough for this spectacular clandestine operation, hence we have decided to send our TOP assassination specialist, Jeffrey CIA Feltman to Damascus in order to thank him personally, for his brilliant covert suicide operation across from the St George Hotel, our favorite hang-out....

Saturday marks the fourth anniversary of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri by our own White House Murder INC,. As we share our lies with the Lebanese people over the loss of P.Minister Hariri, we also share our conviction that his sacrifice will be in vain.... The United States fully supports the obfuscation of our CIA inspired Special Tribunal for Lebanon, whose work will begin in a few weeks, to bring those responsible for this horrific crime and those that preceded since January 24th 2002 and followed to justice.....a justice made for and by CIA in order to cover the tracks of the real perpetrators for ever.

As Lebanon prepares for parliamentary elections, the United States will continue to screw Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence, the legitimate institutions of the Lebanese state, and the Lebanese people. The United States remains committed to the full screwing of UN Security Council Resolutions 1701 and 1559, as we give Israel all the American arms it needs in order to violate Lebanon's sovereignty daily. We also will continue to recruit by our own CIA/MOSSAD shenanigans, the voices of stooges and puppets, labeled as "moderation" in Lebanon, and hope that Lebanon continues down the path of national Resistance, peace, and prosperity that its citizens so strongly deserve, in order to placate the daily CIA balderdash and build upon the path of a modern and capable Republic.

CIA/MOSSAD , their surrogates and subservient foot soldiers in "powerful".... interest groups.

CIA/MOSSAD , their surrogates and subservient foot soldiers in "powerful".... interest groups.

What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States knowing full well that your power is restricted to the service of the Siamese twins, CIA/MOSSAD and their surrogates and subservient foot soldiers in "powerful".... interest groups?

A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure. Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed.

On April 30, the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats’ bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 58-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.

These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans’ retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar’s reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of “the people’s representatives” voted as the discredited banksters instructed.

Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate’s motto is: “Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners.”

If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap.

Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters’ defeat by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, “frankly own the place.”

It is not difficult to understand why. Among those who defeated the homeowners bill are senators Jon Tester (Mont), Max Baucus (Mont), Blanche Lincoln (Ark), Ben Nelson (Neb), Many Landrieu (La), Tim Johnson (SD), and Arlan Specter (Pa). According to reports, the banksters have poured a half million dollars into Tester’s campaign funds. Baucus has received $3.5 million; Lincoln $1.3 million; Nelson $1.4 million; Landrieu $2 million; Johnson $2.5 million; Specter $4.5 million.

The same Congress that can’t find a dime for homeowners or health care appropriates hundreds of billions of dollars for the military/security complex. The week after the Senate foreclosed on American homeowners, the Obama “change” administration asked Congress for an additional $61 billion dollars for the neoconservatives’ war in Iraq and $65 billion more for the neoconservatives’ war in Afghanistan. Congress greeted this request with a rousing “Yes we can!”

The additional $126 billion comes on top of the $533.7 billion “defense” budget for this year. The $660 billion -- probably a low-ball number -- is 10 times the military spending of China, the second most powerful country in the world.

How is it possible that “the world’s only superpower” is threatened by the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the US be a superpower if it is threatened by countries that have no military capability other than a guerilla capability to resist invaders?

These “wars” are a hoax designed to enrich the US armaments industry and to infuse the “security forces” with police powers over American citizenry.

Not a dime to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes, but hundreds of billions of dollars to murder Muslim women and children and to create millions of refugees, many of whom will either sign up with insurgents or end up as the next wave of immigrants into America.

This is the way the American government works. And it thinks it is a “city on the hill, a light unto the world.”

Americans elected Obama because he said he would end the gratuitous criminal wars of the Bush brownshirts, wars that have destroyed America’s reputation and financial solvency and serve no public interest. But once in office, Obama found that he was ruled by the military/security complex. War is not being ended, merely transferred from the unpopular war in Iraq to the more popular war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama, in violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, continues to attack “targets” in Pakistan. In place of a war in Iraq, the military/security complex now has two wars going in much more difficult circumstances.

Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades of warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the “challenge to American security” from the Taliban. “We have to kill them over there before they come over here.” No member of the US government or its numerous well-paid agents has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan, could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient for the public to support the continuing enrichment of the military/security complex, while American homes are foreclosed by the banksters who have destroyed the retirement prospects of the US population.

According to Pentagon budget documents, by next year the cost of the war against Afghanistan will exceed the cost of the war against Iraq. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist and a budget expert at Harvard University, the war against Iraq has cost the American taxpayers $3 trillion, that is, $3,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs, such as caring for veterans.

If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government will have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only purpose of which is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and the “security” bureaucracy.

The human and social costs are dramatic as well and not only for the Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani populations ravaged by American bombs. Dahr Jamail reports that US Army psychiatrists have concluded that by their third deployment, 30 percent of American troops are mental wrecks. Among the costs that reverberate across generations of Americans are elevated rates of suicide, unemployment, divorce, child and spousal abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness and incarceration.

In the Afghan “desert of death,” the Obama administration is constructing a giant military base. Why? What does the internal politics of Afghanistan have to do with the US?

What is this enormous waste of resources that America does not have accomplishing besides enriching the American munitions industry?

China and to some extent India are the rising powers in the world. Russia, the largest country on earth, is armed with a nuclear arsenal as terrifying as the American one. The US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the most important source of American power, is undermined by the budget deficits that result from the munitions corporations’ wars and the bankster bailouts.

Why is the US making itself impotent fighting wars that have nothing whatsoever to do with its security, wars that are, in fact, threatening its security?

The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial gangsters, AIPAC , the Siamese twins, CIA/MOSSAD , their surrogates and subservient foot soldiers in "powerful".... interest groups? rule the utterly corrupt beyond redemption US government, no matter who wins any elections in USA, since they are both subservient to the power behind the power ...... The American people be damned....

JSOC, McChrystal and the infamous White House Political assassinations INC,

JSOC, McChrystal and the infamous White House Political assassinations INC,

[The general, besides being leader of an assassination network, is another tool of the One World conspirators, the Council on Foreign Relations. The reports on this guy just keep going from bad to catastrophic.]

Tragically, the major unstated U.S. interest in the region that the President has bought into is the unacceptability of a proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (I-P-I) pipeline at a time when our country is saber-rattling against and threatening Iran with more sanctions. Earlier this year, Iran and Pakistan decided to move forward with their pipeline even if India decides to drop out. Ironically, I-P-I is also known as the “peace pipeline.”

The alternative pipeline route, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (T-A-P-I), is supported by Washington because it denies an important economic benefit to Iran. Sadly, nowhere in the President’s remarks did he mention the pipeline on which construction is slated to begin in 2010.

U.S. policy is not only guided by pipeline politics. There is also the consideration of chessboard geo-positioning necessary to contain Russia, China, and ensure U.S. empire—for those inclined to traditional Cold Warrior “containment” thinking. Apparently, behind what some are calling a “shadow war in Muslim lands,” are targeted assassination teams that have wreaked tri-border havoc in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Lebanon/Syria....

A General Steps From the Shadows

Stanley A. McChrystal shown in 2003 with Victoria Clarke, an assistant secretary of defense.

WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.

“He’s lanky, smart, tough, a sneaky stealth soldier,” said Maj. Gen. William Nash, a retired officer. “He’s got all the Special Ops attributes, plus an intellect.”

If General McChrystal is confirmed by the Senate, as expected, he will take over the post held by Gen. David D. McKiernan, who was forced out on Monday. Obama administration officials have described the shakeup as a way to bring a bolder and more creative approach to the faltering war in Afghanistan.

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence. But former C.I.A. officials say that General McChrystal was among those who, with the C.I.A., pushed hard for a secret joint operation in the tribal region of Pakistan in 2005 aimed at capturing or killing Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld canceled the operation at the last minute, saying it was too risky and was based on what he considered questionable intelligence, a move that former intelligence officials say General McChrystal found maddening.

When General McChrystal took over the Joint Special Operations Command in 2003, he inherited an insular, shadowy commando force with a reputation for spurning partnerships with other military and intelligence organizations. But over the next five years he worked hard, his colleagues say, to build close relationships with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. He won praise from C.I.A. officers, many of whom had stormy relationships with commanders running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“He knows intelligence, he knows covert action and he knows the value of covert DIA/CIA partnerships....modeled on the close covert cooperation with Syrian Military Intelligence and its Chief thug and killer Asef SHAWKAT....the brainchild of CIA, with a long history and record of cooperation on political assassinations from Lockerbie to the assassination of Mr. Elie HOBEIKA in 2002 to the infamous White House Murder INC,” said Henry Crumpton, who ran the C.I.A.’s covert wars in Afghanistan, IRAQ, LEBANON..... after the Sept. 11 attacks....

http://newhk.blogspot.com/2008/12/uniiic-ii-report-revisited.html

As head of the command, which oversees the elite Delta Force and units of the Navy Seals, General McChrystal was based at Fort Bragg, N.C. But he spent much of his time in Iraq commanding secret missions. Most of his operations were conducted at night, but General McChrystal, described nearly universally as a driven workaholic, was up for most of the day as well. His wife and grown son remained back in the United States.

General McChrystal was born Aug. 14, 1954, into a military family. His father, Maj. Gen. Herbert J. McChrystal Jr., served in Germany during the American occupation after World War II and later at the Pentagon. General Stanley McChrystal was the fourth child in a family of five boys and one girl; all of them grew up to serve in the military or marry into it.

“They’re all pretty intense,” said Judy McChrystal, one of General McChrystal’s sisters-in-law, who is married to the eldest child, Herbert J. McChrystal III, a former chaplain at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

General McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976 and spent the next three decades ascending through conventional and Special Operations command positions as well as taking postings at Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a commander of a Green Beret team in 1979 and 1980, and he did several tours in the Army Rangers as a staff officer and a battalion commander, including service in the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

One blot on his otherwise impressive military record occurred in 2007, when a Pentagon investigation into the accidental shooting death in 2004 of Cpl. Pat Tillman by fellow Army Rangers in Afghanistan held General McChrystal accountable for inaccurate information provided by Corporal Tillman’s unit in recommending him for a Silver Star. The information wrongly suggested that Corporal Tillman had been killed by enemy fire.

At the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, where General McChrystal directs the 1,200-member group, he has instituted a daily 6:30 a.m. classified meeting among 25 top officers and, by video, military commanders around the world. In half an hour, the group races through military developments and problems over the past 24 hours.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, brought General McChrystal back to Washington to be his director last August, and the physical proximity served General McChrystal well, Defense officials said. In recent weeks, Admiral Mullen recommended General McChrystal to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates as a replacement for General McKiernan.

One other thing to know about General McChrystal: when he was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2000, he ran a dozen miles each morning to the council’s offices from his quarters at Fort Hamilton on the southwestern tip of Brooklyn.

“If you asked me the first thing that comes to mind about General McChrystal,” said Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the council, “I think of the JSOC and the all American White House Murder INC,.....”

[Again, more B.S. from the head soldier, "al Qaida" conveniently only exists where the US Army wants to go next. Magically, Afghanistan is clear of the pesky little devils, while Pakistan has just been infused with new visions of demonic little jihadis running-around the country causing all kinds of mayhem that can only be cured with a good dose of "Special Forces." Once again, for those who aren't paying attention: bin Laden is dead; his terror organization was never called "al Qaida"; most terror attacks blamed on "al Qaida" were committed by other terror groups or the main source of terrorism in the world, the CIA militant network; the words "al Qaida" and CIA are interchangeable, substitute CIA for "al Qaida" in news reports and you would be hearing truth.]

.....

US choice hardly McChrystal clear


WASHINGTON - The choice of Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal to become the new United States commander in Afghanistan has been hailed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and national news media as ushering in a new unconventional approach to counter-insurgency.

But McChrystal's background sends a very different message from the one claimed by Gates and the news media. His long specialization in counter-terrorism operations suggests an officer who is likely to have more interest in targeted killings than in the kind of politically sensitive counter-insurgency program that the Barack Obama administration has said it intends to carry out.

In announcing the extraordinary firing of General David McKiernan and the nomination of McChrystal to replace him, Gates said that the mission in Afghanistan "requires new thinking and new approaches by our military leaders" and praised McChrystal for his "unique skill set in counter-insurgency".

Media reporting on the choice of McChrystal simply echoed the Pentagon's line. The Washington Post said his selection "marks the continued ascendancy of officers who have pressed for the use of counter-insurgency tactics, in Iraq and Afghanistan, that are markedly different from the Army's traditional doctrine".

The New York Times cited unnamed "Defense Department officials" in reporting, "His success in using intelligence and firepower to track and kill insurgents, and his training in unconventional warfare that emphasizes the need to protect the population, made him the best choice for the command in Afghanistan."

The Wall Street Journal suggested that McChrystal was the kind of commander who would "fight the kind of complex counter-insurgency warfare" that Gates wants to see in Afghanistan, because his command of special operations forces in Iraq had involved "units that specialize in guerilla warfare, including the training of indigenous armies".

But these explanations for the choice of McChrystal equate his command of the special operations forces with expertise on counter-insurgency, despite the fact that McChrystal spent his past five years as a commander of special operations forces focusing overwhelmingly on counter-terrorism operations, not on counter-insurgency.

Whereas counter-insurgency operations are aimed primarily at influencing the population and are primarily non-military, counter-terrorism operations are exclusively military and focus on targeting the "enemy".

As commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from April 2003 to August 2008, he was pre-occupied with pursuing high-value al-Qaeda targets and local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - mostly through targeted raids and airstrikes.

It was under McChrystal's command, in fact, that JSOC shifted away from the very mission of training indigenous military units in counter-insurgency operations that had been a core mission of special operations forces.

McChrystal spent an unusual five years as commander of JSOC, because he had become a close friend of then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld came to view JSOC as his counter to the covert operations capabilities of the Central Intelligence Agency, which he hated and distrusted, and Rumsfeld used JSOC to capture or kill high-value enemy leaders, including Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda's top leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In 2005, JSOC's parent command, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), was directed by Rumsfeld to "plan, synchronize and, as directed, conduct global operations against terrorist networks in coordination with other combatant commanders". That directive has generally been regarded as granting SOCOM the authority to carry out actions unilaterally anywhere on the globe.

Under that directive, McChrystal and JSOC carried out targeted raids and other operations against suspected Taliban in Afghanistan which were not coordinated with the commander of other US forces in the country. General David Barno, the US commander in Afghanistan, has said that he put a stop to targeted airstrikes in early 2004, but they resumed after he was replaced by McKiernan in 2005.

US airstrikes which have caused hundreds of civilian deaths have become a major political issue in Afghanistan and the subject of official protests by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as well as by the lower house of the Afghan parliament. Many of the airstrikes and commando raids that have caused large-scale civilian deaths have involved special operations forces operating separately from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization command.

Special operations forces under McChrystal's command also engaged in raiding homes in search of Taliban suspects, angering villagers in Herat province to the point where they took up arms against the US forces, according to a May 2007 story by Carlotta Gall and David E Sanger of the New York Times.

After a series of raids by special operations forces in Afghanistan in late 2008 and early 2009 killed women and children, to mounting popular outrage, McChrystal's successor as commander of JSOC, Vice Admiral William H McRaven, ordered a temporary reduction in the rate of such commando raids in mid-February for two weeks.

However, the JSOC raids resumed at their original intensity in March. Later that month, the head of the US Central Command General David Petraeus issued a directive putting all JSOC operations under McKiernan's tactical command, but there has been no evidence that the change has curbed the raids by special operations forces.

Obama's National Security Adviser General James Jones responded to Karzai's demand for an end to US airstrikes by saying, "We're going to take a look at trying to make sure that we correct those things we can correct, but certainly to tie the hands of our commanders and say we're not going to conduct air strikes, it would be imprudent."

The airstrike in western Farah province that killed nearly 150 civilians last week, provoking protests by hundreds of university students in Kabul, was also ordered by special operations forces.

McChrystal's nomination to become director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon in May 2008 was held up for months while the Senate Armed Services Committee investigated a pattern of abuse of detainees by military personnel under his command. Sixty-four service personnel assigned or attached to special operations units were disciplined for detainee abuse between early 2004 and the end of 2007.

Captain Carolyn Wood, an operations officer with the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, gave military investigators a sworn statement in 2004 in which she said she had drawn guidance for interrogation from a directive called "TF-121 IROE," which had been given to the members of Task Force 121, a unit directly under JSOC.

However, the military refused to make that document public, despite requests from the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups, protecting McChrystal from legal proceedings regarding his responsibility for detainee abuses.

He was never held accountable for those abuses, supposedly because of the secrecy of the operation of the JSOC.

Although he has been linked with detainee abuses and raids that kill numbers of civilians, McChrystal has not had any direct experience with the non-military elements of such a strategy.

W Patrick Lang, formerly the defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, suggested in his blog on Monday that the McChrystal nomination "sounds like a paradigm shift in which Obama's policy of destroying the leadership of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan takes priority over everything else".

The choice of McChrystal certainly appears to signal the administration's readiness to continue special operations forces' raids and airstrikes that are generating growing opposition by Afghans to the US military presence....

What Is Anti-Semitism?

What Is Anti-semitism?

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/05/a-peace-process-that-has-been-obsessed-with-1967-needs-to-refocus-on-1948.html

A UCSB professor's controversial e-mail
underscores the need to define a sensitive subject.....
Israeli Terrorist Cell Discovered in Australia




( this is the only hosts available for Brendan O'Connell's last video....)

Australian Reporter Faces 14 Years In Jail Over This Video

http://judicial-inc.org/95australian_reporter_faces_14_yea.htm

William I. Robinson, a professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara, probably shouldn't have been surprised when he found himself in the news earlier this month. He had, after all, forwarded an e-mail to his students that juxtaposed images of Palestinians caught up in Israel's recent Gaza Strip offensive with Jewish victims of the Nazis. The e-mail included graphic photographs of dead Jewish children from the 1940s alongside similar photos from Gaza. In a cover note, Robinson called the images "parallel" and compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.

The outcry built slowly. First, a few students complained; then, organized groups became involved. Two national Jewish leaders accused Robinson (who is himself Jewish) of anti-Semitism, and the university's Academic Senate opened an investigation and is considering disciplinary proceedings. Articles about the controversy have been published all over the world and have given rise to fundamental questions:

Is it ever acceptable to compare Israelis to Nazis? When does criticism of Israel become anti-Semitism? And who should make these calls? Below, The Times asks and answers a few questions to help frame the debate.

Let's start with an easy question. What is anti-Semitism?

Actually, that's not easy at all; scholars, philosophers and policymakers have debated the question since the 19th century. The U.S. State Department has defined the term simply but vaguely: "Anti-Semitism is discrimination against or hatred toward Jews."

So how do we recognize it?

That was easier in the bad old days. Who could mistake the violent attacks on Jews across Europe during the First Crusade in 1096? Or the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492? Demonization of Jews, forced conversions, ghettoization, pogroms and the Holocaust -- all were manifestations of classic European anti-Semitism. So were Shakespeare's Shylock and Dickens' Fagin (described as "shriveled" and "repulsive," and referred to simply as "the Jew" more than 200 times in "Oliver Twist").

But today, determining what is or is not anti-Semitism is generally a more nuanced business, at least in the West. Is it anti-Semitic or merely factual to say that Hollywood is controlled largely by Jews? (Remember: Most of the big studio chiefs are Jewish.) Or to note (as some critics of the Iraq war did) that many of the neoconservatives who helped devise the war's intellectual rationale were Jewish -- and possibly harbored a dual loyalty to Israel? Or to point to the existence of a powerful "Israel lobby" that wields substantial influence on Capitol Hill?

So it's a minefield, right?

In 2004, the European Union Monitoring Centre Centre on Racism and Xenophobia tried to bring some rationality to the debate by drawing up a "working definition" of anti-Semitism. Here are some of the examples of anti-Semitic behavior it singled out: Calling for the killing or harming of Jews in the name of an extremist ideology; making dehumanizing or demonizing stereotypical allegations about Jews; accusing the Jews as a people of being responsible for wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group; trafficking in Jewish conspiracy theories; denying the Holocaust; and accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel than to their own nations.

The organization also noted that anti-Semitism "could also target the state of Israel."

Does that mean it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel?

To criticize Israeli policies? Of course not. Even Abraham Foxman, the outspoken national director of the Anti-Defamation League, acknowledges that there's nothing wrong with criticizing, say, Israel's recent offensive in Gaza. Alan Dershowitz, the vehemently pro-Israel Harvard Law School professor, agrees that it would be "absurd" to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

So if it's OK to criticize Israel's policies, what's the big deal? Professor Robinson objected to the Gaza offensive, and he made that clear.

Yes, he made it clear, but it's how he did so that got him in trouble, according to his critics. There are acceptable ways to criticize Israel, while others cross the line into anti-Semitism, says Daniel Goldhagen, author of "Hitler's Willing Executioners." For instance, if a person repeatedly singles out Israel for attack without subjecting other countries to similar scrutiny, that's questionable, Goldhagen says. Or if he opposes Zionism -- and therefore, Israel's right to exist as an explicitly Jewish state -- altogether.

Another way to cross the line, according to the EUMC, Foxman, Dershowitz, the State Department and others, is to compare Israelis to Nazis. "Any comparison between Israeli efforts to defend its citizens from terrorism on the one hand, and the Nazi Holocaust on the other hand, is obscene and ignorant," Dershowitz wrote in December.

The Anti-Defamation League's website notes that comparing the victims of Nazi crimes to those who carried them out "serves to diminish the significance and uniqueness of the Holocaust" and is "an act of blatant hostility toward Jews and Jewish history." As Foxman puts it: "The moment you compare the Jews to those who consciously and systematically determined to wipe them off the face of the Earth -- that's anti-Semitism."

Is that a reasonable line to draw?

Robinson certainly doesn't think so. He says that the charge of anti-Semitism is a smoke screen designed to intimidate Israel's critics. "Israel and its supporters intentionally use it to quash debate about the country's policies," he says. "It's a political ploy."

How does Robinson defend forwarding the offending e-mail?

He doesn't think it needs defending. He says he's teaching a controversial, provocative subject, and that it's his job to challenge students to examine their assumptions as he puts contemporary events into historical context.

And does he meet the Goldhagen test? Does he criticize other nations for their transgressions?

He says he tells his students that there can be no double standard when it comes to human rights, and that the targeting of one Iranian or Palestinian or Jew or Rwandan is equally condemnable. "But at the same time," he adds, "it's unreasonable to suggest that each time I critique one state for a human rights violation that I must also, in the name of balance, run off a litany of all the other human rights violations in the world."

Where does Robinson draw the line between what's acceptable and what's not?

It's fine, he says, to criticize Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe for driving his country to the brink of collapse, but it would be unacceptable to say that he has done so because he is a biologically inferior black African. Similarly, it is acceptable to argue that Israel's offensive in Gaza was wrong -- but it would be anti-Semitic to criticize Israel on the grounds that Jews are dirty, greedy or sinister.

What does Robinson say to the idea that comparing Israelis to Nazis is simply out of bounds?

First, he defends the comparison of Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto. He says that, like the ghetto, Gaza is sealed off. As in the ghetto, the delivery of food and medical supplies is controlled by the hostile power outside, so that poverty and malnutrition are building. As in the ghetto, he says, rebellions are put down with disproportionate force. According to Robinson, it may not be an exact comparison, but it's hardly ridiculous.

Moreover, Robinson insists that such analogies are essential to understanding history. Would it be wrong, he asked, to compare the apartheid regime in South Africa to the Jim Crow laws in the American South, even if the situations were not identical? As for whether it's OK to compare contemporary figures to the Nazis, he notes that President George H.W. Bush once likened Saddam Hussein to Hitler and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has compared Iran to Nazi Germany.

But those are not cases where victims are compared to their persecutors.

Robinson says that comparing victims to their persecutors shouldn't be off-limits. In fact, that's the very irony that makes the analogy so important. "I'm saying that the people who suffered the most nightmarish crime of the 20th century are now using tactics and practices that are eerily similar to what was done to them," he says. But he acknowledges that the analogy has its limits: "Extermination," he says. "Obviously that's the key difference."

So what's the bottom line?

The Foxmans and Dershowitzes say that comparing Israelis to Nazis is, in the final analysis, anti-Semitic because it is so demonstrably untrue and so patently disingenuous. Even Israel's fiercest critics, they argue, ought to concede that the country's actions have been taken in its own defense -- even if one believes that defense was misguided or disproportionately violent or even criminal. Further, they say that the number of Palestinian deaths during the 60-year conflict can't begin to compare to the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust. To suggest a moral equivalency is anti-Semitic because it's so absurd.....

Robinson's bottom line is this: Whether you accept the analogy or find it "absurd," the real principle at stake is that of open debate and academic freedom. A professor engaging in a controversial conversation with his students may not be shut down by the defenders of a particular ideology. Deeply held beliefs are there to be challenged; that's how critical thinking is developed.....

Birobidjan - the original Jewish homeland

Birobidzhan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The criminal conspiracy to spy on Americans and others illegally

The criminal conspiracy to spy on Americans and others illegally....continues unabated under Obongo.

Barack Obama – Mass Murderer

Welcome to the New Total Security State

Holder Justice Department continues to hound those who exposed illegal Bush-Cheney activities and Obama Justice Department has some atoning in order....The entire system seems to be hopelessly corrupt - from top to bottom.

Former Department of Justice lawyer Thomas Tamm, who worked in the department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) and brought attention to the illegal National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless electronic surveillance program code named "Stellar Wind," remains under investigation by the Eric Holder Justice Department for having the fortitude to expose the closely-guarded program to public light.

Tamm was one of only a handful of Justice, FBI, NSA, CIA, government contractor, and military personnel who exposed illegal activities on the part of the George W. Bush administration and paid the price by being subjected to a political vendetta carried out by Bush and Cheney operatives. WMR has reported on many of these unsung heroes who once served and still serve inside the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

In 2007, Tamm's home in Potomac, Maryland was raided by zealous FBI agents who suspected him of leaking details of the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program" (TSP) to journalists. Tamm tried to inform Congress about the illegal program but was rebuffed by, among others, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Representative John Conyers (D-MI).

At the time of its inception after 9/11, the TSP or as NSA and the Oval Office referred to it, "Stellar Wind," was so classified that only the Attorney General and one other person in the Justice Department knew about it. The TSP totally bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants that the OIPR prepared for approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). U.S. Judge James Robertson was so incensed about the bypassing of the FISC, he resigned from it in protest on December 20, 2005. U.S. Judge Royce Lamberth, nominated by President Ronald Reagan and who served as Presiding Judge of the FISC until 2002, was also adamantly opposed to TSP and its systematic bypassing of his court.

The Bush administration, notably Vice President Dick Cheney's chief counsel, David Addington, argued that the FISC was an impediment in what was referred to as "ticking time bomb" cases, those investigations that required immediate and ongoing authority to wiretap. However, there is a "ticking time bomb" clause in the FISA that can bypass the FISC with the authorization of the Attorney General.

The Cheney and Addington argument was largely a ruse in order to allow them and their cohorts in the administration to conduct "fishing expeditions" aimed not at terrorists or potential terrorists but a political "enemies list" drawn up by the Bush White House.

Tamm was also the first person within Justice who corroborated what NSA personnel were reporting about the agency conducting illegal data mining. One of those individuals was NSA employee Russell Tice, who was also subjected to an FBI investigation and government harassment.

Although the government employees who brought attention to the high-level criminality involving the TSP/Stellar Wind were and, in some cases like that of Tamm, are still being investigated, no criminal investigations were brought against the telecommunications companies that participated in the criminal conspiracy to spy on Americans illegally. In fact, Congress gave the telecommunications firms immunity from lawsuits and prosecution as a result of a deal worked out with the Bush administration. One of those senators who voted for the immunity deal is Barack Obama.

After the FBI conducted interviews of all OIPR employees in their quest for the leaker, on August 1, 2007, 12 government vehicles pulled in front of Tamm's home in Potomac, Maryland. Eighteen armed federal agents wearing body armor stormed into Tamm's home while his wife was cooking breakfast. Tamm was removed from his home by the agents who spent seven hours going through his and his family's property. The FBI agents even asked Tamm if there were any "secret rooms" in his house. They also inquired about any weapons in the house and whether he had been visited at home by reporters from The New York Times.

The agents tore through every room, awakening Tamm's son and daughter. The agents seized all the lap top computers, including those of Tamm's children, and a 10-year old lap top. Also seized were the Tamm family's Christmas card list and a calendar with doctors appointments.

After two days, Tamm was offered a deal that he could plead guilty to a felony in return for his testifying against journalists, including the New York Times' James Risen, and their sources at the NSA. Three days later Michael Isikoff of Newsweek phoned Tamm -- someone had leaked information about the FBI raid to Isikoff. Tamm's identity as a source about the TSP was revealed by Isikoff in the December 22, 2008, issue of Newsweek.

Tamm is no stranger to the FBI. His father was a career FBI agent and Tamm watched the 1961 inauguration of President John F. Kennedy from the Pennsylvania Avenue office window of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. However, Tamm's father always lamented the fact that the FBI, under Hoover, wiretapped civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King.

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) member Jane Harman (D-CA) was aware of the existence of the illegal program but recently criticized it when it was revealed that her agreement with Israeli intelligence to apply pressure on the Justice Department to drop their espionage case against two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists in return for AIPAC's support in making her the chairman of HPSCI was the subject of electronic eavesdropping. The surveillance may have involved both TSP monitoring and that authorized by a legal FISC warrant.

The lead FBI agent who has been assigned since 2005 to investigate Tamm is Jason Lawless.

The Obama administration owes it to the American people and to those government public servants who brought attention to impeachable and prosecutable high crimes and misdemeanors by Bush administration officials, including Bush and Cheney, to immediately drop the "witch hunt" against those who served the public interest and upheld the Constitution of the United States to which they took an oath to protect against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Individuals like Bush, Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Addington, Rove, Elliott Abrams, Rahm Emanuel and John Bolton and many others.... showed themselves to be domestic/foreign agents and enemies of the Constitution....

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13544

Tribes with Flags at the heart of EUROPE....?

Tribes with Flags at the heart of EUROPE....?

First of all....Macedonia and Thrace are the northern parts of Greece and as EE members enjoy EE standards of peace and prosperity!!! Second, I think you are talking about FYROM (UN resolution 1993)at Skopje and its treatment of not the minority but the majority of Albanians who lets face it they are demanding autonomy and eventual separation as their Kosovo brothers have attained! Remember that FYROM was called Vardar or in Slav Vardanska and part of the Yugoslav Kingdom, for centuries until Tito and Stalin came to power and after the defeat of the Nazis, both Bulgaria and Vardanska were with the Nazis against Greece and conquered Greece and as such with the help of the Nazis controlled the northern part of Greece, Macedonia and Thrace!!! During the years 1940 to 1949 Macedonia and Thrace in northern Greece was officially occupied by the Nazis but the Bulgarian Military officers.... such as Gligorov and Nikola's family were in charge of bringing all the Nazi Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace and ...kicking all the Greeks out!!! Simple revenge, because the Greeks won the war of 1912-1913 When the Nazis were defeated, the Communist Russians did not forget and came after the Bulgarians and Vardanskans who had sent soldiers to fight the Russians with the Nazis!!! With the help of mainly USA the battle between the Greeks and the Ex-Nazi-Bulgarians lasted up to 1949 and eventually the ex-Nazi-commie Bulgarians assister by the commies were defeated and thrown out of Macedonia and Thrace and as such the northern part of Greece was liberated from the Nazi-commie-Bulgarian military elite, including Gligorov and Nikola's family! Tito and Stalin, for being good Communist boys put them up in Vardanska, but decided to change the name without of course asking the people from Vardar to Vardar-Macedonia, province in Yugoslavia!!! But Vardar has many ethnic groups and the largest is ....Albanian!!! The ex-Nazi-CommieBulgarians, who run out of Macedonia and Thrace, in Greece to avoid punishment for atrocities committed against the Macedonian and Thracian people are only a...minority in Vardanska-Macedonia and not the majority as you mention!!! There are mainly Albanians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Gypsies and about 200,000 Greeks according to Tito's demographic statistics!!! The Bulgarian president at the last NATO meeting demanded that the 200,000 Bulgarians in FYROM are Bulgarians and not...FYROMIANS!!! Since Albania became a member of NATO on April 1, 2009 you can be very certain that the Albanian population from now on would be properly counted according to EE standards and not according to the ex-Nazi-Commie Bulgarian standards!!! The Illyrian-Albanians have been there in Vardanska(FYROM) for centuries and even fought against Alexander the Great, the Greek king of Macedonia, and as such shared Vardanska-Macedonia(FYROM) with the Greeks for centuries!!! The colonial Bulgarians came from...Bulgaria in Russia(currently...Tataristan) over a...1000 years later after Alexander the Great!!! The Albanian population in FYROM/Vardanka-Macedonia, or commonly in Europe called...FYROMacedonia...has been treated by the ex-Nazi-Commies as basically second class citizens and were not even allowed to study in their own language!!! To go to university they had to learn the Bulgarian-Slav dialect....renamed as New Macedonian, in the last few years by the ex-Nazi-Commie-Bulgarians at Skopje! With the breaking up of Yugoslavia....Vardanska-Macedonia...headed by Gligorov(the ex-Nazi-Bulgarian-a major of the Bulgarian army helping the Nazis conquer Macedonia and Thrace from Greece) applied to get status at the UN as Macedonia, with the justification that Stalin and Tito... the Commie-big-shots in the area then... baptized then as such in 1944 to 1949 in the Balkans!!!and as such they are entitled to the name... Macedonia! They signed an agreement to use temporarily the name FYROVM..standing for Former Yugoslav Republic Of Vardanska-Macedonia, which at the end ended up as only FYROM...with the promise to find a name for their country since Macedonia was Greece!!! Well, since 1993 they have never proposed any name.....but they have set-up shop, started the..Nazi-Commie style of manufacturing historical lies and started promoting themselves now as...descendants of ...Alexander the Great, the Greek king of Macedonia!! So...the Albanians cannot live anymore with such....ex-Nazi-Commie-Bulgarians..with promises and more promises and nothing more!!! If the ...Bush's puppets at Skopje can do that against the Greeks, the Albanians are afraid that the ex-Nazi-Commies would baptize them as...Macedonians as well!!! So...now that Albania and Bulgaria are in NATO and Bulgaria in EE...it is time for complete autonomy for the Illyrian-Albanian population of Varanska-Macedonia!!! Nobody likes the...ex-Nazi-Commie-Bulgarians at Skopje!!! Bulgaria does not recognize their new language as Bulgaria knows it is their own language...a...Bulgarian language with a few.... Gypsy, Serbian, Albanian and Greek words thrown in to make it look different!!! And of course the Macedonian Greeks are very upset with them as they try to basically STEAL Greek history and culture from them and that is why this nameless country called temporarily FYROM is still out of EE, NATO and only as..FYROM at the UN until they find a name accepted by Macedonia in Greece, and of course the present Greek government headed by a prime minister from Macedonia!!!

In Macedonia, Albanian politicians are openly accusing the government (dominated by the non-Albanian majority) of waging an undeclared war against Albanian autonomy. Such autonomy was promised last year as part of a long term peace deal between the Albanians and non-Albanians in Macedonia.....go figure what the PNAC killers are still doing.....

Claims of lies and Swiss Banking....

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/05/2912

Swiss authorities claim that the Indian government submitted "forged" documents in the $8 billion Hassan Ali case. Has finance ministry lied to the Supreme Court?

Exclusive report By Sanjay Kapoor Berne/New Delhi

Someone is not telling the truth. Is it the Union finance ministry of the UPA government in Delhi, performing its last tango, caught in what is clearly a 'Swiss Bank Tangle'?

Last week in the Supreme Court, the central government's solicitor, responding to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that demanded government's action on retrieving Indian black money stashed in Swiss banks, had given the names of three Indians and how the agencies were following up on their case.

In a 29-page affidavit, the government had detailed the action it had taken against Pune-based stud farm owner, Hassan Ali Khan, his wife Rheema and Kolkata-based businessman, Kashi Nath Tapuria, who allegedly were holding $8 billion in an UBS account in Switzerland.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), on its part, has issued a show cause notice to Khan for contravention of Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 after it found out during a raid in January 2007 that Khan had deposited around 8 billion dollars at the UBS Bank. The Income Tax department has raised a total demand of Rs 71,848.59 crore against Khan, his wife Rheema and other associates. Investigations so far have revealed overseas bank accounts of Kashi Nath Tapuria and his wife. The ED has seized their passports.

Hardnews travelled to Switzerland to chase a story on the Indian black money and Swiss Bank transparency issue, and learnt to its surprise that there was a manifest truth deficit on this issue. The most scandalous was the assertion by the Swiss justice ministry on the celebrated case of the mysterious Hassan Ali Khan and his account in Switzerland. In a communication from Folco Galli, Information chief of Eidgenössisches Justiz-und Polizeidepartement (EJPD) Bundesamt für Justiz (Swiss Department of Justice and Police) BJ, Berne, Hardnews was informed that the Indian authorities submitted "forged" documents to seek assistance on the Hassan Ali Khan case. Galli's reply to Hardnews on this case is precise and direct and does not need any interpretation. Galli talks about $ 6 billion and not $ 8 billion as it is made out to be. Here is his categorical reply:

"In January 2007, Indian authorities have submitted in the case of Hassan Ali Khan a request for legal assistance to the Federal Office of Justice (FoJ)... In the same month, the FoJ informed the Indian authorities as follows: Concerning the presumed transfer of 6 billion USD, domestic inquiry has revealed that the banking information provided with the request for legal assistance are forged documents. Accordingly, the supposed transfer to UBS accounts has no reality.

Concerning the request Swiss authorities need some specification in order to be able to examine and possibly to accept and execute it:

- a confirmation that the Indian investigation is a criminal one (no tax or related investigation)
- a better description of the predicate offences which are object of the Indian money laundering investigation
- to show the relation between the predicate offences and the accounts in Switzerland... In March 2007, the Indian Embassy submitted some complements to the FoJ.

In April 2007, the FoJ informed the Embassy that the complements don't include the necessary specification. Without these information, Swiss authorities can't examine whether the conditions to grant legal assistance are fulfilled or not. Indian authorities haven't submitted the necessary specification so far."

To reiterate, Galli says the following: first, the documents that were given by Indian authorities were forged and, therefore, the transfer of Indian funds to UBS accounts "has no reality". Swiss authorities want to provide further assistance in that case if the Indian authorities could satisfy the Swiss government's demand to establish dual criminality - what is crime in India is a crime in Switzerland. The Swiss also wanted to know whether Khan's offence was an object of Indian money laundering. Since April 2007, Indian government has not responded to Swiss authorities on this issue.

Interestingly, Supreme Court, too, had asked why the Indian government had not slapped money laundering charges against Khan and Tapuria.

Galli, in his communication, also informs that most requests for legal assistance come from neighbouring and other European states. "The Indian authorities submit only a few requests per year to Switzerland." Galli did not elaborate on the quality of these requests and what came of them.

This is not the first time that the Swiss had problems with Indian documentation. Even in the Bofors case, Swiss courts had refused to entertain some of the documents as they were illegible. The moot question is: were forged documents created deliberately to prevent transfer of funds to India or the account does not exist at all?

Galli's answer does not preclude the possibility of such an account as he expects the Indian government to furnish more authentic details to take the probe further. Evidence that the account may exist lies in the huge fine that has been imposed by income tax authorities on Khan and his associates. The question is: who are behind this charade?

It seems that the UBS managed to convince the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) of their integrity, which had put their license on hold for retail banking in India claiming lack of cooperation in tracking Hassan Ali Khan's money trail. The ED that looks into foreign exchange related crimes gave the clearance seemingly after giving credibility to Swiss government claims. It is reasonable to infer that both the ED and Swiss Bank were on the same page on the quality of evidence against Khan. Earlier, Swiss Bankers' Association president Pierre G Mirabaud, during a visit to India last year, had put the onus of getting to the truth on Khan's money trail on New Delhi.

Another aspect investigated by Hardnews was how much of Indian funds are stashed in the Swiss banks. Is it really Rs 70 lakh crore as claimed by BJP's prime ministerial candidate or is it less? It was important to get an official view from the Swiss Bankers' Association and square it with all the figures bandied around in India.

The Swiss Bankers' Association Communication Director, James Nason, told Hardnews in Berne about the money held in their accounts. The Swiss National Bank, Nason stated, comes out with details of bonds and securities held in custody account in Switzerland. At the end of 2008, the total was 3,822 billion CHF (Swiss Frank = Rs 43). Out of this, 2,190 billion CHF was of foreign entities that included the government, institutional and private etc. Indians had 4,306 million CHF liabilities; this includes both the custody and fiduciary accounts. China, on the other hand, had 15,650 million CHF alone in custody account. Nason reiterates that all of this is not "private money", it could be government, institutional or whatever.

Those who know the ways of Swiss banking like the author of the celebrated book on Swiss banking, (Switzerland - a rogue state?) Viktor Parma, claims that the banks in his country do not give information readily and are good at buying time. They were forced to yield to US demands under President Barack Obama as it enjoys a privileged position. The big question is: will the Swiss treat India, even if LK Advani becomes the prime minister and chases these funds, with some amount of respect?

Sanjay Kapoor is the Editor of Hardnews monthly magazine and the author of Bad Money Bad Politics - The untold Hawala story.....

Seeds of Truth.....

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4684.shtml