Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Moral Failure of Israel, from Jabotinsky to BEZION to Ariel Sharon to BiBi Netanyahu....


Zionist Quote of the Day....

“I don’t understand your optimism,” Ben-Gurion declared. “Why should
the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make
terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country by force …
There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was
that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and
stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps
forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no
chance. So, it’s simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a
powerful and utterly criminal army of assassins. …”


The Moral Failure of IsraHell, from Jabotinsky to BEZION to the butcher Ariel Sharon to BiBi Netanyahu the thug in chief....


http://roiword.wordpress.com/tag/benzion-netanyahu/


One additional factor I would add to gain some understanding of Bibi. It's the effect on Bibi of his 100 year father, Benzion.

Benzion is a formidable personality with an overpowering hatred of Arabs. He was a buddy with Jabotinsky and has always been a VERY outspoken advocate of Greater Israel. His concept of Greater Israel has always included the Sinai, Lebanon up to the Litani river, parts of Syria and Jordan. This is the environment Bibi grew up in.

When I lived in Israel in the 1980's Benzion was a frequent speaker at various events as well as on TV talk shows. I heard enough to get ill when he opened his mouth. The short version of his philosophy is Jewish supremacy. He vehemently opposes a two state solution and advocates perpetual domination of the Arabs with forcible transfer if they act up.

It is widely accepted in Israel that Bibi cannot implement a two state solution until his father dies, if then. I've seen the two of them together on a stage and Benzion dominated his son, even when he was PM the first time. I am sure, given Benzion's attitude that he is pushing Bibi hard to bomb Iran. It would not surprise me if he is telling Bibi to use nuclear weapons on Iran. If Benzion were PM, there is no doubt in my mind that he would not hesitate to lay complete radioactive waste to Iran and sleep well that night....

The American leaders and their English counterparts as well as those in France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe are conveniently hiding behind Jews, Israel, and Israeli-first-ers etc....

The fact remains that the near war crisis early this year – which could have caused a disaster for Iran, the United States, the Middle East, and the world - as well as the similar near war crisis in 2006, owed its existence to the decisions of the US (and UK, etc.() leaders.

They pursued coercive diplomacy with respect to Iran that was going to lead to war. This was a massive miscalculation by US, UK and other leaders.

In 2007, the US NIE on Iran saved the day.

In 2012, Mr. Obama, an instigator of the most recent crisis in the first place, had to publicly defuse the near war crisis by himself.

It was not Israeli leaders that brought the world to the edge of potential disaster; it was the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom, and assorted other Zioconned European leaders....

They forced the Iranians to state that they are ready for war.

May be the lone sane Englishman by the name of Jack Straw can be sent to Iran to negotiate a deal with Iranians.

No other Western politician can credibly do so - and certainly not that hussy called Baroness Ashton....

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12845/mutually_assured_madness

I fear the situation in the US is somewhat more complex, malignant even.
First, there's a constant "holding forth" of the Holocaust as a teaching device for the edification and chastisement of the goyim. Perhaps if the psychic capital of the event had been invested in an interest bearing account, rather than being trotted out to pay the day-to-day bills of over zealous Zionists, there might be more "goyish guilt" to tap into.
Next, there's the highly dangerous cultivation of the "Rapture scenario." Many evangelical Bible thumpers orgasm over the fulfillment of scriptural promise, justifying the resources Zionists invest in their cultivation. Left unsaid is the "end of days" that entails the virtual destruction of the Zionist state (and most of its Jewish folk) just before the return of the Messiah who was, after all, rejected by the Chosen People. The term "mixed emotions" comes to mind.
Bottom line; evangelical support for Israel is driven by a desire to be Ruptured out of an increasingly bad situation, a desire that is quite sanguine about the anticipated Shoan Mark II (G*d's will & all that.)
A growing "Christian Dominionist" voice in the US military (OK, mainly the AF, but they're players, right?) adds another unsavory ingredient to this witches brew, and further complicates the role of "civilian governance" in these increasingly complicated times....

The possibility that these threats are either some Machiavellian scheme or Netanyahu being a 'windbag' is discounted by the considerable number of former senior Israeli intelligence and military figures who have come out publicly against such a venture. One presumes they would be in a position to assess whether the threats were mere bravado.

I agree that it is very reassuring that the US military appears to recognize the dangers of getting involved in such a war. However, their reluctance would not count for much if political considerations compelled Obama to take the US into war in Israel’s support, or if there were US casualties caused (actually or ostensibly) by an Iranian response.

Unfortunately, such initial reluctance would not act to temper the military’s actions once they went in (even though Obama might well wish that). Their tendency to use the full force available to them is likely to ensure that “the consequences for the United States – and also Western Europe – would be dire, if not indeed absolutely catastrophic”.

As was pointed out, the Iranian response to an Israeli attack could well be critical to the outcome. It is difficult to make any reasonable assessment of the chances that it would be ‘strategic’. The Iranian regime also has internal imperatives, and may believe it cannot afford to give an impression of weakness by moderating its riposte. Just as the Holocaust overshadows and warps Israeli policies and actions, the influence of religion has a large effect on those of the Iranian ‘theocracy’. In both cases, rational considerations may be swamped by such ‘ideological’ beliefs....


The Roots of Israeli Behavior: Sabotage Peace at any Cost....

Here is a fascinating article on Iranian's Jews....

Iran's Jewish community is the largest in the Middle East outside Israel.
The Jewish community of Persia, modern-day Iran, is one of the oldest in the Diaspora, and its historical roots reach back to the 6th century B.C.E., the time of the First Temple.

After the Iranian Revolution, Khomeini met with the Jewish community upon his return from exile in Paris and issued a ''fatwa'' decreeing that the Jews were to be protected. Similar edicts also protect Iran's tiny Christian minority....

The Jews also have a representative in parliament who is obligated by law to support Iranian foreign policy and its Anti-Zionist position.
Tehran has 11 functioning synagogues, many of them with Hebrew schools. It has two kosher restaurants, and a Jewish hospital, an old-age home and a cemetery. There is a Jewish library with 20,000 titles, its reading room decorated with a photograph of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Any Iranian who dares travel to Israel faces imprisonment and passport confiscation. ''We are Jews, not Zionists. We are a religious community, not a political one," says an Iranian Jew....


http://www.sephardicstudies.org/iran.html


Fast Forward to 2012, MENA, R2P, Revolutions, Russia, China, India and beyond....

Obama, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Derek Challot and the rest of this crew populating the Obama Administration are no different than the utterly criminal and Barbaric Cheney Neocons/Ziocons....

R2P, HRW, many NGOs and Soros/CIA are frauds: an HRW "mission" consists of a bunch of yuppies sitting in the lobby of a five star hotel using the hotel WiFi, in this case in Bamako, Mali, running up bar tabs and reading anonymous and phony e-mails from "sources." Carbon copy of HRW's "work" in Libya, Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, South Sudan, and now, Mali....

R2P has become an excuse for launching aggressive moves all over the world.... If this goes on, what seems to be likely to happen is the start of another Cold War with Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. Added to the simmering conflict with the Muslim world, this is going to lead to all sorts of crises down the road. Especially if you add in the economic recession and the effects of climate change. As they say, interesting times ahead!


"Israel" has no right to exist, and certainly not in Palestine. First of all, the ancient kingdom of Israel was NOT Hebrew, let alone anything like "Jewish". There was no one called "Jew" at the time that Israel existed and even if there had been the ancient Israelites kept a strongly guarded border between it and the area known as Judea which was a very very poor place inhabited by a few very poor people, much like the Bedouins of today, and it was plagued by robbers and brigands. These people who call themselves Jews originated from South East Russia with the hordes of Attila the Hun. Stalin, a Georgian Jew, established The Jewish Autonomous Region called Birobidjhan there. It is the same size as Switzerland but far, far more fertile. It has everything one could possibly need in a county including a modern city with everything a modern city usually has - libraries and museums and schools and parks. There are very few Jews there! There are masses of room there in a beautiful country. What are they doing in the ME when they have NO ethnic connection to it? They are NOT Semitic, never have been. The People of Phoenicia and Palestine are the Semites.... It is a trick, one, the usual kind of deceitful trick to make the people of the World think that they are Semitic and belong in the ME when actually they are of Mongolian Turkic extraction mixed with Slavs since the hordes traveled without women and just took them wherever they happened to be. It may be that the word SLAVE comes from the word Slav - because, as usual, instead of making and creating, manufacturing themselves, they stole everything they wanted as they went along, settling eventually in the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian. So, let them get the hell out of Palestine and go back to where they came from where no one will bother them. They can take their ugly concrete walls with them (thirty feet high), erect them around Birobidjhan, have one entrance or exit - and that should be in the power of an old Palestinian to open or close - and they should not be allowed out except for emergencies, and maybe not even then.They will be perfectly safe and secure there, NO one will bother them ever - and perhaps the World will be allowed some heavenly peace. They are very foolish people - if they are actually human at all, that is....


The end, in their ZIO-eyes, always justified the means....

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, affirmed that Shamir had been right when he once declared that “the sea is the same sea and the Arabs are the same Arabs.” The statement was interpreted as meaning that Arabs would never reconcile themselves with Israel’s existence, and would always seek to throw the Jews into the sea. For Netanyahu, despite the criticism directed at Shamir for his remark, “today there are of course many more people who understand that this man saw and understood basic and genuine things.”

Far from embodying an Israeli past defined by intransigence on the Palestinian question, Shamir has seen himself reincarnated in those such as Netanyahu. The current prime minister may be a slicker knock-off of his cynical, disdainful predecessor; he will mouth words on Palestinian statehood that Shamir would never have uttered; but the results are really little different. Israel still controls millions of Palestinian lives, a wide swathe of the West Bank, access to the Gaza Strip, and it is further consolidating this unviable state of affairs.

At the same time, Palestinians are caught in a situation similar to the one that Israel sought to impose on them through the Camp David Accords of 1978. One of the two agreements signed between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was a “Framework of Peace in the Middle East.” It outlined a five-year transitional period, at the end of which Palestinians would gain full autonomy and self-government. Egypt viewed full autonomy as statehood. Begin envisaged it, as best, as a form of administrative self-government while Israel expanded settlement building.

The current Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would be hard-pressed to identify how present circumstances are qualitatively different than what Begin, and with him Shamir, imagined over three decades ago. Palestinians administrate themselves in entities that are, effectively, under Israeli control; settlement construction goes on; and the Israeli prime minister continues to manipulate the card of eternal Palestinian hostility to the Jews, when his policies have closed off all horizons of amelioration for Palestinians, hardening that hostility.

More broadly, the cataleptic status of the so-called peace process is a testament to the stubbornness and bullheadedness of the heirs of Yitzhak Shamir, for whom all substantial Israeli concessions were seen as intolerable. His inflexible successors have brought the lumbering machine of open-ended negotiations to a halt. We are where for years we knew we would be: absolutely nowhere. There is much blame to distribute on the Palestinian side, but it was always Israel that retained the initiative on a final deal, because it held the land, the military whip hand, and the greater favor of the Zioconned United States, or idiotic Zioconned Europe....

Netanyahu and his ideological pairs are confident for the future. The prime minister managed to neutralize the U.S. administration during the past four years. Barack Obama once said he would make Middle East peace a priority, and held it against George W. Bush that he had not. Now, the Zioconned president has gotten the measure of that cheerless enterprise, and if one thing preoccupies him when it comes to Israel, it is to avert an Israeli attack on Iran. The Palestinians are out of the picture, and no one in Zioconned Washington has a desire to embark again on what is regarded as the fool’s errand of Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Nor will things be different if Obama is re-elected; and even less so if Mitt Romney becomes president. The Israeli-Palestinian track is in permanent deep-freeze, and one fears that it will only regain life when a new crisis emerges. Indeed, what prospects do the Israelis seriously imagine that they have? The Palestinians won’t disappear – in fact their numbers, and resentment, will only grow. One day they will get over their debilitating disagreements and could opt for more a drastic solution to their desolate condition.

We can thank earlier Israeli leaders like Shamir for distilling the underlying contempt for Palestinians that seems to have influenced poor Israeli decision-making in the past 40 years. It’s the same contempt that many Israeli politicians had for Arab societies that seemed to accept the stranglehold of authoritarian leaders (leaders with whom the Israelis were otherwise content to deal). That passivity has evaporated in the past 18 months, as Arabs have sought emancipation. Are the Palestinians different? Surely not.

There are perhaps many Israelis who would accept a fair peace settlement with the Palestinians. There may even be Israeli politicians who would agree, although most tend to espouse such an agenda when they’re out of office, after having done virtually nothing to advance it while in office. But the reality is that Israel is no closer to finalizing peace with the Palestinians than it was when Shamir was prime minister. Netanyahu may have altered the optics somewhat, but the aims haven’t changed, nor the deadlock.

Despite a brief moment of hope during the mid-1990s, Israel’s political class in recent years has mostly followed his example. Shamir is no lost echo from a bygone time; he is Israel’s present, and an ominous portent of the country’s future....





Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Seoul -- In a country in a technical state-of-war, no oppressive security....


The United States has a lot to learn but is too caught up in its own self-importance to take heed....

http://truthernews.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/the-nuclear-assassination-of-america-exposed/

March , 2012 -- Seoul -- In a country in a technical state-of-war, no oppressive security....
WMRDC,

The first thing that an American visiting South Korea for the first time experiences is the situation at Incheon International Airport, outside of Seoul. One steps off the plane and instantly notices it. It is as if you have been transported back in time, not to bad times but to an era when anyone traveling to any airport in the United States experienced the same thing.

In Seoul, simply stated, there is no omni-present security menacing travel weary visitors with automatic weapons, dogs, constant messages from the dystopian Homeland Security state, and all the other trappings of fascism. The only sign of a security or military presence is the gaggle of U.S. Army troops travelling in their camouflage battle uniforms. While the battle uniforms may impress many Americans, the South Koreans are used to the U.S. military presence as an unfortunate relic of the past -- from the Cold War when the United States extended its global reach not to fight "terrorism," but the other bogeyman threat of its day -- "communism."

South Korea is still in a technical state of war with North Korea, a demilitarized line of truce separating the two nations' armies. But if South Korea is in a technical state of war, where are all the trappings of war at the airport? Most certainly, security is present but not in a manner that seeks to needlessly bring fear to a population that is more interested in expanding one of Asia's tiger economies and not engage in fascistic population control.

It was once like this in America, before a small group of zealots hijacked our way of life to create a siege mentality and turned the democratic, federal republic of the United States of America into a "homeland." Maybe, if Americans felt freer to travel without all the hassles millions of Americans experience every day, the United States would, again, become an innovative robust economy, like that of South Korea and a half dozen other Asian nations that are experiencing growth while the United States and its economically-disintegrating allies are in free-fall collapse -- politically, economically, and morally.

Innovation and quality of life abhor a fascistic vacuum. However, since the barbaric inside job of 9/11, the power elite of America, represented by people with the last names of Bush, Cheney, Abrams, Tenet, Kerry, Obama, Biden, Santorum, Romney, McCain, Huckabee, and Palin have helped create a state of fear among Americans -- the fear of a constantly-morphing monster who keeps changing his name from Al-Qaeda to "home grown terrorist" to Boko Haram to "underwear bomber," "Time Square "sizzle bomber," and "lone wolf." The fear was manufactured by Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, the Anti-Defamation League, the FBI, the CIA, and every other billionaire and agency with a stake in the game to keep a good thing going....

And the power "Matrix" comes up with useful ways to delude the American people that they have hope and a fascist-free future. So, the elite creates "action figure" political candidates that excite the public but go nowhere by design: Howard Dean, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Ralph Nader.

There is also the noticeable absence of constant police sirens here in Seoul. Why? In the Washington, DC area, it is known that police and emergency vehicles often sound their sirens as part of a psychological warfare program aimed at the public. A Washington Metropolitan Police source said the idea came from the Israelis who believe would-be terrorists think twice when they hear a wailing siren.

In Korea, it appears that the Israelis are more interested in stoking fear among the North Korean leadership, where Israeli firms connected to the Mossad have landed lucrative contracts to make a sixty-some year old police state a better police state. Israel, which excels at building walls, is providing advice to the North on a wall that will keep North Koreans from fleeing into China and Russia. The Israelis have had plenty of practice on how to control people as seen by their brutal occupation of the Palestinian people and make no mistake about it, that same Israeli expertise has been used to convince certain elements in the United States to champion Israeli practices on and within our own borders.

As for North Korea and Israel, we have two sexagenarian police states finding each other at last -- a morbid love story.

Meanwhile, South Korea is hosting Expo 2012. And anyone visiting South Korea will immediately notice that this is a country more interested in creating an environment for ideas and commerce than in brandishing security "toys" to intimidate non-existent threats....




Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Zionist Project....


Zionist Quote of the Day....

“I don’t understand your optimism,” Ben-Gurion declared. “Why should
the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make
terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country by force …
There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was
that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and
stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps
forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no
chance. So, it’s simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a
powerful and utterly criminal army of assassins. …”



http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/ND06Dj02.html

The Zionist Project

1948: LEST WE FORGET.

“Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word…it would be this: ‘At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today [1897] I would be answered by universal laughter. If not in 5 years, then certainly in 50. Everyone will know it’ “. Theodor Herzl Diaries 1987.

Herzl missed his goal by only 1 year.

Theodore_Herzl.jpg

Zionism emerged as a national movement in Eastern Europe in the 1880’s. Its founder, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), a Hungarian Jew, dreamt of establishing a Jewish State in the land of Palestine, a dream which was to be realized through colonization and land acquisition. According to Zionist archives, the leadership of early Zionism believed that the native population of Palestine, as a result of this colonization, would simply “fold their tents and slip away” or, if they resisted, they would be spirited across the borders”.

It all started in a small way as the first Zionist settlement in Palestine was founded with the financial help of Edmond James de Rothschild (1845-1934), a French financier who assisted a small group of the Russian Bilu Jewish Society to immigrate to Palestine in 1882. This Philanthropist sponsored a few more tiny settlements at the time such as Gai Oni, Roch Pina, Zichron-Ya’acov (which he named after his grandfather) and Rishon Letzion with settlers from around Eastern Europe.

The single aim of all these settlements and their planners who envisioned them was to slowly and secretly transfer, drive out and ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people.

This concept of transfer of the local population was held dear by almost every member of the Zionist leadership in Europe. At their first official Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, they called already for “the establishment of a publicly and legally secured home in Palestine for the Jewish people”.

20 years later, the Balfour Declaration threw them a lifeline.

Copy%20of%20Israel_Zangwill.jpg

To secure support for this project, Israel Zangwill (1864-1926), an Anglo-Jewish writer and a powerful leader of British Zionism, coined the phrase: “a land without a people for a people without land”. Little did he and all his colleagues in the Zionist leadership realise (or wished to remember) that there were almost 410,000 Palestinians (Muslims and Christians) living in Palestine around the early 1890’s.

weizmann.jpg

Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) who was to become Israel’s first president, said once: “…there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people…and there exists the Jewish people and it has no country. What is left is to fit the gem into the ring…”

The Zionist leadership did not actually mean that there were no people in Palestine. They meant that there were no people in Palestine worth considering as a people.

The Zionists truly believed that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people. Theodor Herzl wrote in June 1895: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border…and both the process of expropriation and removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly…”

Israel Zangwill followed by saying that “if we wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples…”.

Zionism’s idea of transfer was even tested within a wider Arab framework where Zionist leaders would offer Arab leaders financial incentives, expertise and international influence in exchange for acquiescence in the expansion of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine). In January 1919, for example, Chaim Weizmann and the Hashemite Emir Faisal who was aspiring to the leadership of the Arab Nationalist Movement, concluded an agreement under British auspices whereby Faisal would support Jewish immigration into Palestine in return for economic support for the future state Faisal was hoping to create.

As Palestinian resistance to the expansion of the Yishuv was growing, so was the Zionist determination to implement the doctrine of separation between the Jewish community and the Palestinian population in preparation for the eventual establishment of a Jewish state.

David_BG.jpg

Yishuv leaders such as David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), born in Poland as David Gruen and who arrived in Palestine in 1906 at the age of 20 and later became the first prime minister of Israel, strongly advanced the idea of transfer and saw the link between the separation of the Palestinians and of the Jews and the plan for the eventual transfer of the Palestinians out of Palestine.

When the Palestinian Revolt took place (1936-39), the Zionists saw a chance and a reason for the strengthening of their underground forces and the expansion of their military infrastructure. It was becoming clear to the Yishuv that the solution to the Palestinian demographic problem can only be achieved through military threats.

Ben-Gurion declared in 1936: “…What can drive the Arabs to a mutual understanding with us?…Facts, only after we manage to establish a great Jewish fact in the country will the precondition for discussion with the Arabs be met”.

Valdimir%20Jabotinsky.jpg

Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940), born in the Ukraine-USSR, was a member of the World Zionist Organisation and later founded the Zionist-Revisionist movement, which was the central ideological component of the Likud (now Ariel Sharon’s Kadima party), always believed that the creation of a Jewish state meant imposing the will of Zionism on the Palestinian population. He stated:

“…colonisation can continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through…this is our policy towards the Arabs and to formulate it in any other way would be hypocrisy…The Jewish question can be solved either completely or it cannot be solved at all. We are in need of a territory where our people will constitute the overwhelming majority…and one must not be afraid of the word ‘segregation’ ”.

Jabotinsky believed that only ‘an iron wall of bayonets and Jewish armed garrisons’ would be able to secure Jewish sovereignty on both sides of the Jordan River. Like Weizmann and Ben-Gurion before him, he had only contempt for the indigenous Arabs. He once said: “we Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the East. The Islamic soul must be broomed out of Eretz Yisrael”. This ideology found expression in two military terrorist organizations:

Menachem%20Begin.jpg

The first was the Irgun formed in 1935 by Menachem Begin (1913-1992) a Polish Jew who became prime minister in 1977 (and about whom Albert Einstein in a 1948 letter to the New York Times said that he and his party were “closely akin in their organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties”).

Shamir.jpg

The second was the Stern Gang led by Itzhak Shamir (born Icchak Jaziernicki in Rozana, Poland in 1915) which was responsible for many terrorist acts including the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte. Shamir, of course, became Israel’s Prime Minister not once but twice: from 1983-84 and again from 1986-1992.

This Shamir described the Arabs as “beasts of the desert, not a legitimate people”. In a memorandum to UNSCOP in 1947, his Stern Gang called for the compulsory evacuation of the entire Palestinian population from Palestine, preferably in the direction of Iraq. As the sale of land by absentee landlords increased so did the bitterness of the Palestinian farmers who worked on them and who were now forced to leave by their new land owners. For this purpose, Chaim Weizmann established the Jewish Agency Executive to promote the idea of Palestinian transfer from newly acquired land. At the same time, Jewish immigration increased and the number of Jewish immigrants jumped from 30,000 in 1933 to 61,000 in 1935 (representing 29.5% of the total population).

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The end, in their ZIO-eyes, always justified the means....

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, affirmed that Shamir had been right when he once declared that “the sea is the same sea and the Arabs are the same Arabs.” The statement was interpreted as meaning that Arabs would never reconcile themselves with Israel’s existence, and would always seek to throw the Jews into the sea. For Netanyahu, despite the criticism directed at Shamir for his remark, “today there are of course many more people who understand that this man saw and understood basic and genuine things.”

Far from embodying an Israeli past defined by intransigence on the Palestinian question, Shamir has seen himself reincarnated in those such as Netanyahu. The current prime minister may be a slicker knock-off of his cynical, disdainful predecessor; he will mouth words on Palestinian statehood that Shamir would never have uttered; but the results are really little different. Israel still controls millions of Palestinian lives, a wide swathe of the West Bank, access to the Gaza Strip, and it is further consolidating this unviable state of affairs.

At the same time, Palestinians are caught in a situation similar to the one that Israel sought to impose on them through the Camp David Accords of 1978. One of the two agreements signed between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was a “Framework of Peace in the Middle East.” It outlined a five-year transitional period, at the end of which Palestinians would gain full autonomy and self-government. Egypt viewed full autonomy as statehood. Begin envisaged it, as best, as a form of administrative self-government while Israel expanded settlement building.

The current Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would be hard-pressed to identify how present circumstances are qualitatively different than what Begin, and with him Shamir, imagined over three decades ago. Palestinians administrate themselves in entities that are, effectively, under Israeli control; settlement construction goes on; and the Israeli prime minister continues to manipulate the card of eternal Palestinian hostility to the Jews, when his policies have closed off all horizons of amelioration for Palestinians, hardening that hostility.

More broadly, the cataleptic status of the so-called peace process is a testament to the stubbornness and bullheadedness of the heirs of Yitzhak Shamir, for whom all substantial Israeli concessions were seen as intolerable. His inflexible successors have brought the lumbering machine of open-ended negotiations to a halt. We are where for years we knew we would be: absolutely nowhere. There is much blame to distribute on the Palestinian side, but it was always Israel that retained the initiative on a final deal, because it held the land, the military whip hand, and the greater favor of the Zioconned United States, or idiotic Zioconned Europe....

Netanyahu and his ideological pairs are confident for the future. The prime minister managed to neutralize the U.S. administration during the past four years. Barack Obama once said he would make Middle East peace a priority, and held it against George W. Bush that he had not. Now, the Zioconned president has gotten the measure of that cheerless enterprise, and if one thing preoccupies him when it comes to Israel, it is to avert an Israeli attack on Iran. The Palestinians are out of the picture, and no one in Zioconned Washington has a desire to embark again on what is regarded as the fool’s errand of Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Nor will things be different if Obama is re-elected; and even less so if Mitt Romney becomes president. The Israeli-Palestinian track is in permanent deep-freeze, and one fears that it will only regain life when a new crisis emerges. Indeed, what prospects do the Israelis seriously imagine that they have? The Palestinians won’t disappear – in fact their numbers, and resentment, will only grow. One day they will get over their debilitating disagreements and could opt for more a drastic solution to their desolate condition.

We can thank earlier Israeli leaders like Shamir for distilling the underlying contempt for Palestinians that seems to have influenced poor Israeli decision-making in the past 40 years. It’s the same contempt that many Israeli politicians had for Arab societies that seemed to accept the stranglehold of authoritarian leaders (leaders with whom the Israelis were otherwise content to deal). That passivity has evaporated in the past 18 months, as Arabs have sought emancipation. Are the Palestinians different? Surely not.

There are perhaps many Israelis who would accept a fair peace settlement with the Palestinians. There may even be Israeli politicians who would agree, although most tend to espouse such an agenda when they’re out of office, after having done virtually nothing to advance it while in office. But the reality is that Israel is no closer to finalizing peace with the Palestinians than it was when Shamir was prime minister. Netanyahu may have altered the optics somewhat, but the aims haven’t changed, nor the deadlock.

Despite a brief moment of hope during the mid-1990s, Israel’s political class in recent years has mostly followed his example. Shamir is no lost echo from a bygone time; he is Israel’s present, and an ominous portent of the country’s future....


Monday, March 19, 2012

NGOs: Missionaries of Empire, U.S. Seeks to Release $50M for Democracy.....


NGOs: Missionaries of Empire, U.S. Seeks to Release $50M for Democracy.....LOL

by Devon DOUGLAS-BOWERS (USA)

OrientalReview

Imperialism

Non-governmental organizations are an increasingly important part of the 21st century international landscape performing a variety of humanitarian tasks pertaining inter alia to issues of poverty, the environment and civil liberties. However, there is a dark side to NGOs. They have been and are currently being used as tools of foreign policy, specifically with the United States. Instead of using purely military force, the US has now moved to using NGOs as tools in its foreign policy implementation, specifically the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and Amnesty International.

National Endowment for Democracy

According to its website, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is “a private, non-profit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world,” however this is sweet-sounding description is actually quite far from the truth.

The history of the NED begins immediately after the Reagan administration. Due to the massive revelations concerning the CIA in the 1970s, specifically that they were involved in attempted assassinations of heads of state, the destabilization of foreign governments, and were illegally spying on the US citizens, this tarnished the image of the CIA and of the US government as a whole. While there were many committees that were created during this time to investigate the CIA, the Church Committee (led by Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho) was of critical importance as itsfindings “demonstrated the need for perpetual surveillance of the intelligence community and resulted in the creation of the permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.” The Select Committee on Intelligence’s purpose was to oversee federal intelligence activities and while oversight and stability came in, it seemed to signal that the CIA’s ‘party’ of assassination plots and coups were over. Yet, this was to continue, but in a new way: under the guise of a harmful NGO whose purpose was to promote democracy around the world—the National Endowment for Democracy.

The NED was meant to be a tool of US foreign policy from its outset. It was the brainchild of Allen Weinstein who, before creating the Endowment, was a professor at Brown and Georgetown Universities, had served on the Washington Post’s editorial staff, and was the Executive Editor of The Washington Quarterly, Georgetown’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, a right-wing neoconservativethink tank which would in the future have ties to imperial strategists such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.[3] He stated in a 1991 interview that “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”[1]

The first director of the Endowment, Carl Gershman, outright admitted that the Endowment was a front for the CIA. In 1986 he stated:

We should not have to do this kind of work covertly. It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA. We saw that in the ‘60s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created.[2]

It can be further observed that the Endowment is a tool of the US government, as ever since its founding in 1983, it “has received an annual appropriation approved by the United States Congress as part of the United States Information Agency budget.”

No sooner than the Endowment was founded did it begin funding groups that would support US interests. From 1983 to 1984, the Endowment was active in France and “supported a ‘trade union-like organization that for professors and students’ to counter ‘left-wing organizations of professors,’”[3] through the funding of seminars, posters, books, and pamphlets that encouraged opposition to leftist thought. In the mid and late 1990s, the NED continued its fight against organized labor by giving in excess of $2.5 million to the American Institute of Free Labor Development which was a CIA front used to undermine progressive labor unions.

Later on, the Endowment became involved in interfering with elections in Venezuela and Haiti in order to undermine leftwing movements there. The NED is and continues to be a source of instability in nations across the globe that don’t kneel before US imperial might. Yet the Endowment funds another pseudo-NGO: Freedom House.

Freedom House

Freedom House was originally founded in 1941 as a pro-democracy and pro-human rights organization. While this may have been true in the past, in the present day, Freedom House is quite involved in pushing US interests in global politics andits leaders have connections to rather unsavory organizations, such as current Executive Director David Kramer being a Senior Fellow to the Project for the New American Century, many of whose members are responsible for the current warmongering status of the US.

During the Bush administration, the President used Freedom House to support the so-called War on Terror. In a March 29, 2006 speech, President Bush stated that Freedom House “declared the year 2005 was one of the most successful years for freedom since the Freedom House began measuring world freedom more than 30 years ago” and that the US should not rest “until the promise of liberty reaches every people and every nation” because “In this new century, the advance of freedom is a vital element of our strategy to protect the American people, and to secure the peace for generations to come.”

Later, it was revealed that Freedom House became more and more supportive of the Bush administration’s policies because of the funding it was getting from the US government. According to its own internal report in 2007, the US government was providing some 66% of funding for the organization. This funding mainly came from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US State Department, and the National Endowment for Democracy. Thus, we see not only the political connection of Freedom House to US government, but major financial connections as well.

It should be noted, however, that Freedom House was not alone in supporting the government. Under the Bush administration, the US government forced NGOs to become more compliant to their demands. In 2003, USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios stated in a speech given at a conference of NGOs that in Afghanistan the relationship between NGOs and USAID does affect the survival of the Karzai regime and that Afghans “believe [their life] is improving through mechanisms that have nothing to do with the U.S. government and nothing to do with the central government. That is a very serious problem.” On the situation in Iraq, Natsios stated that when it comes to NGO work in the country “proving results counts, but showing a connection between those results and U.S. policy counts as well.” NGOs were essentially told that they were tools of the US government and were being made part of the imperial apparatus.

Most recently, Freedom House was active in the Arab Spring, where they aided in the training and financing of civil society groups and individuals “including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen.”

While the Endowment and Freedom House are being used as tools of US foreign policy that does not mean that the US government isn’t looking for new tools, namely Amnesty International.

Amnesty International

The human rights organization Amnesty International is the newest tool in the imperial toolbox of the American Empire. In January 2012, Suzanne Nossel was appointed the new Executive Director of Amnesty International by the group itself. Before coming to Amnesty, Nossel already had deep connections to the US government as she had “served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations at the U.S. Department of State.”

Nossel is known for coining the term ‘smart power’ which she defined as knowing that “US interests are furthered by enlisting others on behalf of U.S. goals, through alliances, international institutions, careful diplomacy, and the power of ideals.” While this definition may seem harmless, ‘smart power’ seems to be an enhanced version of Joseph Nye’s ‘soft power,’ which itself is defined as “the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than using the carrots and sticks of payment or coercion.” A possible example of this ‘smart power’ is the war in Libya, where the US used the UN as a means to get permission to engage in ‘humanitarian intervention.’

Yet, even before Nossel was appointed to Amnesty, the group was unwittingly aiding in the media war against Syria. In a September 1, 2011 Democracy Now interview, Neil Sammonds, the researcher and one of the author’s for Amnesty’s report Deadly Detention: Deaths in Custody Amid Popular Protest in Syria, spoke about the manner in which the research was done for the report. He stated:

I’ve not been into Syria. Amnesty International has not been allowed into the country during these events, although we have requested it. So the research for this report was done mostly from London, but also from some work in neighboring countries and through communications with a large network of contacts and relatives of the families, and, you know, other sources.

How can one write a report with any amount of authority if their only sources are through second-hand sources that may or may not have a bias or an agenda to push? How can you write a report using sources whose information has no way of being verified? It is reminiscent of the media war against Gaddafi, where it was reported in the mainstream media that he was bombing his own people and had given Viagra to his soldiers as so they could rape women, but absolutely none of this was verified.

While NGOs can have a positive influence on society at large, one must be aware of their backgrounds, who is in charge of them, and from whom they are getting funding from because the nature of the NGO is changing, it is being more and more integrated into the imperial apparatus of domination and exploitation. NGOs are fast becoming the missionaries of empire.

NOTES:

[1] William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, 3rd ed. (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2005) pg 239

[2] Ibid, pg 239

[3] Ibid, pg 240

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Devon Douglas-Bowers is a 20 year old independent writer and researcher.

The Moscow Times

By Jonathan Earle

A United Russia Duma deputy accused the United States of "fighting our country," after the Obama administration said it would boost funding for civil society and democracy in Russia.

Irina Yarovaya wrote that U.S. plans to create a $50 million "civil society fund" are an attempt to meddle in Russia’s internal politics and exert destabilizing pressure.

"The money … is being spent on fighting our country," she wrote in a statement posted on the ruling party’s website Friday.

The Obama administration has asked Congress to create a "civil society fund" with money from a decades-old program initially designed to promote market economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaulsaidlast week in Washington.

"When you talk to real human rights organizations and [find out] what they really need, they need that kind of support," McFaul said in a speech to an audience at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The announcement drew a mixed response from the human rights leaders and the opposition.

"We are forced to exist on foreign money," veteran human rights leaderLyudmila Alexeyevasaid, The New York Times reported, citing an Interfax report. "Our government does not consider it necessary to spend money on maintaining the nongovernmental human rights community."

Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, said the money would hurt the opposition, which has experienced a resurgence in recent months after Duma and presidential elections that were marred by allegations of fraud.

"It’s very easy to present this as a kind of subversive activity. … Unfortunately, yes, this initiative would rather harm civil society and the opposition in Russia more than it would help," he said, The New York Times reported.

Kremlin-linked analysts said the additional funds were a mixed blessing for Russia, adding that $50 million wasn’t enough to tip the political scales one way or the other.

Vyacheslav Nikonov, a Duma deputy from United Russia and head of the Kremlin-linked Politika Foundation, even warned that the proposal could prompt authorities to further restrict the flow of foreign money to domestic NGOs.

Vladimir Putin cracked down on NGOs during his 2000-08 tenure as president. And in the run-up to his return to the Kremlin, several organizations were portrayed as agents of the West.

Whether the funds will be used to discredit the regime or build genuine civil society will depend on who administers the funds, said Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-linked analyst who is vice president of the Plekhanov Institute of Economics.

"Who will distribute the funds, an idealist or a Russophobe?" he asked.

Markov said an idealist, someone who truly supports Russia’s development, would give money to pro-business groups such as Delovaya Rossia and Opora or to Yabloko’s good-governance programs. Political parties are barred from accepting foreign money.

A Russophobe, he said, would give money to opposition leaderAlexei Navalnyor Golos, the elections watchdog that has been the target of a government-sponsored smear campaign.

Iosif Diskin, an analyst and member of the Public Chamber, said the announcement had more to do with internal American politics than democracy in Russia.

"The Obama administration is trying to please critics who say he’s not doing enough to promote democracy and civil society in Russia," Diskin said.

Although he decried "politicized" grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the entity that will likely distribute the grants, he said Russia benefits from most of what USAID provides.

"Ninety percent of their funding is positive," he said.