Repeating Madness of War

In the 60 years of its existence, the state of Israel has fought six major wars and several "smaller" ones (the War of Attrition, the Grapes of Wrath, the two Intifadas, and more.)

The 1948 confrontation was a war of "no alternative," if one justifies the Jewish intrusion into Palestine by the fact that there was no other solution for the problem of their existence. But already the second round, the war of 1956, was an example of incredible shortsightedness.

The French, who initiated the war, were in a state of denial: they could not admit to themselves that in Algeria a genuine war of liberation was taking place. Therefore, they convinced themselves that the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdell-Nasser, was the root of the problem. David Ben-Gurion and his aides (and particularly Shimon Peres) wanted to remove the "Egyptian Tyrant" (as he was then uniformly called in Israel) because he had raised the banner of Arab unity, which they considered an existential threat to Israel. Britain, the third partner, was longing for the past glories of Empire.

All these aims were totally negated by the war: France was expelled from Algeria, together with more than a million settlers; Britain was pushed to the margins of the Middle East; and the "danger" of Arab unity proved to be a scarecrow. The price: a whole Arab generation was convinced that Israel was the ally of the nastiest colonial regimes, and the chances of peace were pushed back for many years.

The 1967 war was intended at the beginning to break the siege on Israel. But in the course of the fighting, the war of defense became a war of conquest which drove Israel into a vertigo of intoxication from which it has not yet quite recovered. Since then we have been captives in a vicious circle of occupation, resistance, settlements, and permanent war.

One of the direct results was the 1973 war, which destroyed the myth of our army's invincibility. Yet without this being the intent of our government, this war had one positive result: three unusual personalities – Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, and Jimmy Carter – succeeded in translating Egyptian pride over the successful crossing of the Suez Canal into a peace agreement. But the same peace could have been achieved a year earlier, without war and without the thousands of killed, if Golda Meir had not arrogantly rejected Sadat's proposal.

The First Lebanon War was, perhaps, the most hopeless and dimwitted of Israel's wars, a cocktail of arrogance, ignorance, and a complete lack of understanding of the opponent. Ariel Sharon intended – (a) destroy the PLO, (b) cause the Palestinian refugees to flee from Lebanon to Jordan, (c) drive the Syrians out of Lebanon, and (d) turn Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate. The results: (a) Arafat went to Tunis, and later, as the result of the First Intifada, returned to Palestine in triumph, (b) the Palestinian refugees remained in Lebanon, in spite of the Sabra and Shatila massacre that was intended to panic them into fleeing, (c) the Syrians remained in Lebanon for another 20 years, and (d) the Shi'ites, who had been downtrodden and beholden to Israel, became a powerful force in Lebanon and Israel's most determined foe.

The less said about Lebanon War II the better – its true character was obvious right from the start. Its aims were not frustrated – simply because there were no clear aims at all. Today Hezbollah is where it was, stronger and better armed, shielded from Israeli attacks by the presence of an international force.

After the First Intifada, Israel recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization and brought Arafat back to the country. After the Second Intifada, Hamas won the Palestinian elections and later took over direct control of a part of the country.

Albert Einstein considered it a symptom of madness to repeat again and again doing something that has already failed and to expect a different result every time.

Most politicians and generals conform to this formula. Again and again they try to achieve their aims by military means and obtain contrary results. The Israelis occupy an honorable place among these madmen.

Carl von Clausewitz, the renowned military theorist, famously said that

"War is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means. Meaning: war is there to serve policy and is useless when it does not."

The text partially taken from Always the Military Option by Uri Avnery, an Israel antiwar activist.

The Understatement of Israel Apartheid Regime

Palestinian flag waving over Israeli soldiers during a demonstration against the controversial separation wall in the West Bank village of Bil'in west of Ramallah

On the face of it, the two regimes, the earlier South Africa and Israel, are very different. 

Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial discrimination that the white minority in South Africa employed to maintain power over the black majority. It was characterized by the denial of political rights to blacks, the fragmentation of the country into white areas and black areas (called Bantustans) and by the imposition on blacks of restrictive measures designed to achieve white superiority, racial separation and white security.

The "pass system," which sought to prevent the free movement of blacks and to restrict their entry to the cities, was rigorously enforced. Blacks were forcibly "relocated," and they were denied access to most public amenities and to many forms of employment. The system was enforced by a brutal security apparatus in which torture played a significant role.

The Palestinian territories - East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza - have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Although military occupation is tolerated and regulated by international law, it is considered an undesirable regime that should be ended as soon as possible. The United Nations for nearly 40 years has condemned Israel's military occupation, together with colonialism and apartheid, as contrary to the international public order.

In principle, the purpose of military occupation is different from that of apartheid. It is not designed as a long-term oppressive regime but as an interim measure that maintains law and order in a territory following an armed conflict and pending a peace settlement. But this is not the nature of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Since 1967 Israel has imposed its control over the Palestinian territories in the manner of a colonizing power, under the guise of occupation. It has permanently seized the territories' most desirable parts - the holy sites in East Jerusalem, Hebron and Bethlehem and the fertile agricultural lands along the western border and in the Jordan Valley - and settled its own Jewish "colonists" throughout the land.

Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories has many features of colonization. At the same time it has many of the worst characteristics of apartheid. The West Bank has been fragmented into three areas - north (Jenin and Nablus), center (Ramallah) and south (Hebron) - which increasingly resemble the Bantustans of South Africa.

Israel's apartheid wall at Qalqilya.

Restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by a rigid permit system enforced by some 520 checkpoints and roadblocks resemble, but in severity go well beyond, apartheid's "pass system." And the security apparatus is reminiscent of that of apartheid, with more than 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons and frequent allegations of torture and cruel treatment.

Many aspects of Israel's occupation surpass those of the apartheid regime. Israel's large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, leveling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites.

Following the worldwide anti-apartheid movement, one might expect a similarly concerted international effort united in opposition to Israel's abhorrent treatment of the Palestinians. Instead one finds an international community divided between the West and the rest of the world. The Security Council is prevented from taking action because of the U.S. veto and European Union abstinence. And the United States and the European Union, acting in collusion with the United Nations and the Russian Federation, have in effect imposed economic sanctions on the Palestinian people for having, by democratic means, elected a government deemed unacceptable to Israel and the West. Forgotten is the commitment to putting an end to occupation, colonization and apartheid.

Written by John Dugard, a South African law professor teaching in the Netherlands. He is currently Special Rapporteur on Palestine to the United Nations Human Rights Council. This article comes courtesy of the Institute for Middle East Understanding and was published first in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

According to the keynote speaker of the week, Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) Dr. Jamal Zahalka, “Israel is implementing apartheid policies in Palestine by building the apartheid separation wall, bypass roads for Jews only in the West Bank, restrictions on movement of Palestinians, hundreds of checkpoints, in addition to the siege and daily violation of basic human rights of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.” He adds, “Even Palestinian citizens of Israel are in fact second degree citizens that suffer systematic discrimination in all aspects of their lives.”

“Calling the occupation apartheid isn’t an overstatement, it’s an understatement,” Zahalka told Ynet, “The Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are worse than apartheid.” 

"There are roads for Jews only, there are checkpoints, and there is a curfew. The population is separated. The human rights of the Palestinians are completely violated,” Zahalka added.

Other Links

www.endisraeliapartheid.net
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid

2008 : The Year of Food Riots

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that between March 2007 and March 2008 prices of cereals increased 88%, oils and fats 106%, and dairy 48%. The FAO food price index as a whole rose 57% in one year — and most of the increase occurred in the past few months.

Another source, the World Bank, says that that in the 36 months ending February 2008, global wheat prices rose 181% and overall global food prices increased by 83%. The Bank expects most food prices to remain well above 2004 levels until at least 2015.

The most popular grade of Thailand rice sold for $198 a tonne five years ago and $323 a tonne a year ago. On April 24, the price hit $1,000. Increases are even greater in Haiti, the market price of a 50 kilo bag of rice doubled in one week at the end of March.

These increases are catastrophic for the 2.6 billion people around the world who live on less than US$2 a day and spend 60% to 80% of their incomes on food. Hundreds of millions cannot afford to eat.

• Egypt Thousands of demonstrators in Mahalla el-Kobra loot shops and throw bricks at police during protests at rising food prices and low salaries, as part of nationwide strike
  
• Haiti At least four people killed in the southern city of Les Cayes after food prices rise 50 per cent in the past year
  
• Côte d’Ivoire Police injure more than ten protesters as several hundred demonstrators demand government action to curb food prices
  
• Cameroon Riots last four days and result in at least 40 deaths. Unrest is due to high fuel and food prices. Worst riots in country for 15 years
  
• Mozambique At least four people killed and 100 injured following fuel price rises
  
• Senegal Violent demonstrations in Dakar as prices of rice, milk and oil soar. Senegal imports almost all its food
  
• Yemen Five days of rioting and a hundred arrests after the price of wheat doubled over two months. Protesters set up roadblocks in Sana’a and Aden
  

...and in Mauritania, Bolivia, Indonesia, Mexico, India, Burkina Faso, and Uzbekistan

U.N. peacekeepers patrol in an armored vehicle during protests on a street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

World Bank president Robert Zoellick noted last week that world food prices had risen 80% over the past three years, and warned that at least 33 countries face social unrest as a result.

The irony is extraordinary. At a time when world leaders are expressing grave concern about diminishing food stocks and a coming global food crisis, the world government brings into force measures to increase the use of biofuels - a policy that will further increase food prices, and further worsen the plight of the world's poor.

What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert them to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world's rich consumers. This is, in the words of the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, nothing less than a "crime against humanity". It is a crime the UK government seems determined to play its part in abetting. The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), introduced on 15 April, mandates petrol retailers to mix 2.5 per cent biofuels into fuel sold to motorists. This will rise to 5.75 per cent by 2010, in line with European Union policy.

The message could not have been clearer if the Prime Min ister, Gordon Brown, had personally put a torch to a pyre of corn and rice in Parliament Square: even as you take to the streets to protest your empty bellies and hungry children, we will burn your food in our cars. The UK is not uniquely implicated in this scandal: the EU, the United States, India, Brazil and China all have targets to increase biofuels use. But a look at the raw data confirms today's dire situation. According to the World Bank, global maize production increased by 51 million tonnes between 2004 and 2007. During that time, biofuels use in the US alone (mostly ethanol) rose by 50 million tonnes, soaking up almost the entire global increase.

Next year, the use of US corn for ethanol is forecast to rise to 114 million tonnes - nearly a third of the whole projected US crop. American cars now burn enough corn to cover all the import needs of the 82 nations classed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as "low-income food-deficit countries". There could scarcely be a better way to starve the poor.

Ethanol and biodiesel are very heavily subsidized, which means, inevitably, that crops like corn (maize) are being diverted out of the food chain and into gas tanks, and that new agricultural investment worldwide is being directed towards palm, soy, canola and other oil-producing plants. This increases the prices of agrofuel crops directly, and indirectly boosts the price of other grains by encouraging growers to switch to agrofuel.

As Canadian hog producers have found, it also drives up the cost of producing meat, since corn is the main ingredient in North American animal feed.

Climate Change: Scientists say that climate change could cut food production in parts of the world by 50% in the next 12 years. But that isn't just a matter for the future:

1. Australia is normally the world's second-largest exporter of grain, but a savage multi-year drought has reduced the wheat crop by 60% and rice production has been completely wiped out.
   
2. In Bangladesh in November, one of the strongest cyclones in decades wiped out a million tonnes of rice and severely damaged the wheat crop, making the huge country even more dependent on imported food.
   
3. Other examples abound. It's clear that the global climate crisis is already here, and it is affecting food.

Oil Prices: The price of food is linked to the price of oil because food can be made into a substitute for oil. But rising oil prices also affect the cost of producing food. Fertilizer and pesticides are made from petroleum and natural gas. Gas and diesel fuel are used in planting, harvesting and shipping.

It's been estimated that 80% of the costs of growing corn are fossil fuel costs — so it is no accident that food prices rise when oil prices rise.

The sociology of the food riot is pretty straightforward: The usually impoverished majority of citizens may acquiesce to the rule of detested corrupt and repressive regimes when they are preoccupied with the daily struggle to feed their children and themselves, but when circumstances render it impossible to feed their hungry children, normally passive citizens can very quickly become militants with nothing to lose. That's especially true when the source of their hunger is not the absence of food supplies but their inability to afford to buy the available food supplies. And that's precisely what we're seeing in the current wave of global food-price inflation. As Josette Sheeran of the U.N. World Food Program put it last month, "We are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it."

The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, has already warned that 100 million people could be pushed deeper into poverty because of food price rises caused directly by this imbalance between supply and demand. Even consumers in rich countries are suffering. We now pay higher prices for our food in order to subsidise the biofuels industry, thanks to measures such as the renewable fuels directive.

This is not just a short-term price blip, but the beginnings of a major structural change in the world food market. Population pressure - still something of a taboo subject - is also certainly playing a part. With the world population growing by 78 million a year, and expected to reach nine billion by the middle of the century, there are simply many more mouths to feed.

The hunger has historically been an instigator of revolutions and civil wars, it is not a sufficient condition for such violence. For a mass outpouring of rage spurred by hunger to translate into a credible challenge to an established order requires an organized political leadership ready to harness that anger against the state. It may not be all that surprising, then, that Haiti has been one of the major flashpoints of the new wave of hunger-generated political crises; the outpouring of rage there has been channeled into preexisting furrows of political discontent. And that's why there may be greater reason for concern in Egypt, where the bread crisis comes on top of a mounting challenge to the regime's legitimacy by a range of opposition groups.

The rapid industrialization of China and India over the past two decades — and the resultant growth of a new middle class fast approaching the size of America's — has driven demand for oil toward the limits of global supply capacity. That has pushed oil prices to levels five times what they were in the mid 1990s, which has also raised pressure on food prices by driving up agricultural costs and by prompting the substitution of biofuel crops for edible ones on scarce farmland. Moreover, those new middle class people are eating a lot better than their parents did — particularly more meat. Producing a single calorie of beef can, by some estimates, require eight or more calories of grain feed, and expanded meat consumption therefore has a multiplier effect on demand for grains. Throw in climate disasters such as the Australian drought and recent rice crop failures, and you have food inflation spiraling so fast that even the U.N. agency created to feed people in emergencies is warning that it lacks the funds to fulfill its mandate.

Read Further

How Rich Starved The Poor.

How Hunger Could Topple Regimes.
OECD Background Note: Agricultural Policy and Trade Reform. (Pdf File)

Israel The Great Benefactor of U.S.

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War II. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.

Israel also gets other special deals from Washington. Other aid recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and thus earns extra interest. Most recipients of American military assistance are required to spend all of it in the United States, but Israel can use roughly twenty-five percent of its aid allotment to subsidize its own defense industry. Israel is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, an exemption that makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the United States opposes, like building settlements in the West Bank.

Moreover, the United States has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems like the Lavi aircraft that the Pentagon did not want or need, while giving Israel access to top-drawer U.S. weaponry like Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the United States gives Israel access to intelligence that it denies its NATO allies and has turned a blind eye towards Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

In addition, Washington provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the United States has vetoed 32 United Nations Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, a number greater than the combined total of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It also blocks Arab states’ efforts to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s agenda.

The United States also comes to Israel’s rescue in wartime and takes its side when negotiating peace. The Nixon Administration re-supplied Israel during the October War and protected Israel from the threat of Soviet intervention. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war as well as the lengthy "step-by-step" process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. There were occasional frictions between U.S. and Israeli officials in both cases, but the United States coordinated its positions closely with Israel and consistently backed the Israeli approach to the negotiations. Indeed, one American participant at Camp David (2000) later said, "far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer."

Is it A Compensation for Past Crimes by the European?

Because Jews were persecuted for centuries and can only be safe in a Jewish homeland, many believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the United States.

There is no question that Jews suffered greatly from the despicable legacy of anti-Semitism, and that Israel’s creation was an appropriate response to a long record of crimes. This history, as noted, provides a strong moral case for supporting Israel’s existence. But the creation of Israel involved additional crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.

The history of these events is well-understood. When political Zionism began in earnest in the late 19th century, there were only about 15,000 Jews in Palestine.29 In 1893, for example, the Arabs comprised roughly 95 percent of the population, and though under Ottoman control, they had been in continuous possession of this territory for 1300 years. Even when Israel was founded, Jews were only about 35 percent of Palestine’s population and owned 7 percent of the land.

The mainstream Zionist leadership was not interested in establishing a bi-national state or accepting a permanent partition of Palestine. The Zionist leadership was sometimes willing to accept partition as a first step, but this was a tactical maneuver and not their real objective. As David Ben-Gurion put it in the late 1930s, "After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine."

To achieve this goal, the Zionists had to expel large numbers of Arabs from the territory that would eventually become Israel. There was simply no other way to accomplish their objective. Ben-Gurion saw the problem clearly, writing in 1941 that "it is impossible to imagine general evacuation [of the Arab population] without compulsion, and brutal compulsion." Or as Israeli historian Benny Morris puts it, "the idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century."

This opportunity came in 1947-48, when Jewish forces drove up to 700,000 Palestinians into exile. Israeli officials have long claimed that the Arabs fled because their leaders told them to, but careful scholarship (much of it by Israeli historians like Morris) have demolished this myth. In fact, most Arab leaders urged the Palestinian population to stay home, but fear of violent death at the hands of Zionist forces led most of them to flee.  After the war, Israel barred the return of the Palestinian exiles.

The fact that the creation of Israel entailed a moral crime against the Palestinian people was well understood by Israel’s leaders. As Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, "If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? 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?"

Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians’ national ambitions. Prime Minister Golda Meir famously remarked that "there was no such thing as a Palestinian," and even Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the 1993 Oslo Accords, nonetheless opposed creating a full-fledged Palestinian state. Pressure from extremist violence and the growing Palestinian population has forced subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from some of the occupied territories and to explore territorial compromise, but no Israeli government has been willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state of their own. Even Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David in July 2000 would only have given the Palestinians a disarmed and dismembered set of "Bantustans" under de facto Israeli control.

Europe’s crimes against the Jews provide a clear moral justification for Israel’s right to exist. But Israel’s survival is not in doubt – even if some "Islamic extremists" make outrageous and unrealistic references to "wiping it off the map" – and the tragic history of the Jewish people does not obligate the United States to help Israel no matter what it does today.

The full text is here with the title "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" written by John J. Mearsheimer, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Is U.S. Waging War for Israel?

Many throughout the Muslim world and beyond are asking this question: 

What are the real reasons behind the US invasion of Iraq and its wish to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran?

For all their grandiose posturing, in truth, Iraq, Syria and Iran have never posed a direct threat to the US mainland. Put simply, they're too far away from the neighbourhood. So why would the US be willing to expend so many human lives and so much treasury on changing the regimes of countries it doesn't like?

Theories abound. At the top of the list is America's quest for oil, a shrinking, non-renewable resource. But, in reality, the US gets very little of its oil from the Middle East and the Gulf. Most comes from South America and Africa.

Another theory revolves around the petrodollar monopoly, which both Iraq and Iran have sought to disband by trading their oil in Euros. There may be something in this one but it doesn't explain why Syria is in the firing line.

The US says it wishes to export 'democracy' to the region but its reaction towards the Shiite government in Iraq, led by the Dawa Pasrty that has close ties with Iran, and the way that the democratically-elected new Hamas-led Palestinian government has been isolated, hardly lends credence to this. Democracy will not bring US-friendly governments, which is what the Bush administration really seeks.

A premise, which many in the Arab world believe, should also be dissected. Is the US manipulating and remoulding the area so that Israel can remain the only regional superpower in perpetuity?

This is not as fanciful as one might imagine on first glance. Read the following strangely prophetic segment from an article published in 1982 by the World Zionist Organisation's publication Kivunim and penned by Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist with links to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Yinon's strategy was based on this premise. In order to survive Israel must become an imperial regional power and must also ensure the break-up of all Arab countries so that the region may be carved up into small ineffectual states unequipped to stand up to Israeli military might. Here's what he had to say on Iraq:

"The dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front. Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run, it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.

"An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon.

"In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul and Shiite areas in the South will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."

Text taken from here.

Read further A closer look:The Israeli origins of Bush's war, By STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI

How can the U.S. be influenced? See how many Israeli running the American government.

American / Israeli Dual Citizens Running the American Government.
Attorney General - Michael Mukasey
Head of Homeland Security - Michael Chertoff
Chairman Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - Richard Perle
Deputy Defense Secretary (Former) - Paul Wolfowitz
Under Secretary of Defense - Douglas Feith
National Security Council Advisor - Elliott Abrams
Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff (Former) - “Scooter” Libby
White House Deputy Chief of Staff - Joshua Bolten
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs - Marc Grossman
Director of Policy Planning at the State Department - Richard Haass
U.S. Trade Representative (Cabinet-level Position) - Robert Zoellick
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - James Schlesinger
UN Representative (Former) - John Bolton
Under Secretary for Arms Control - David Wurmser
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - Eliot Cohen
Senior Advisor to the President - Steve Goldsmith
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary - Christopher Gersten
Assistant Secretary of State - Lincoln Bloomfield
Deputy Assistant to the President - Jay Lefkowitz
White House Political Director - Ken Melman
National Security Study Group - Edward Luttwak
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - Kenneth Adelman
Defense Intelligence Agency Analyst (Former) - Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
National Security Council Advisor - Robert Satloff
President Export-Import Bank U.S. - Mel Sembler
Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families - Christopher Gersten
Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Public Affairs - Mark Weinberger
White House Speechwriter - David Frum
White House Spokesman (Former) - Ari Fleischer
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - Henry Kissinger
Deputy Secretary of Commerce - Samuel Bodman
Under Secretary of State for Management - Bonnie Cohen
Director of Foreign Service Institute - Ruth Davis

“Why are there Israeli- but not Mexican-American Dual Nationals?”

Can one imagine a Japanese citizen serving in the Pentagon during WWII? 

Or how about a citizen of the Soviet Union holding a cabinet position in the White House during the Cold War?

This war will be waged for the security of Israel and will be paid for by the blood of American soldiers and the hard-earned money of American citizens whose quality of life is inversely tied to the cost of petroleum.

Recently, in their much lauded paper, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Harvard professor, Stephen Walt, and University of Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer, focused attention on the strong Israeli lobby which has a powerful influence over American foreign policies (see BBC article). They detail the influence that this lobby has exerted, forming a series of international policies which can be viewed as in direct opposition to the interests and security of the American people. These acts and policies are more often than not carried out by US government appointees who hold powerful positions and who are dual American-Israeli citizens. Since the policies they support are often exclusively beneficial to Israel, often to the detriment of America, it has been argued that their loyalties are misdirected.

A WAR CRIMES, said Mahathir

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad

A Glimpse of Dead People in Iraq in Week 17.

Sunday: 108 Iraqis Killed, 60 Wounded
Monday: 2 US Soldiers, 41 Iraqis Killed; 112 Iraqis Wounded.
Tuesday: 5 GIs, 56 Iraqis Killed; 185 Iraqis Wounded.
Wednesday: 2 US Soldiers, 1 US Contractor, 59 Iraqis Killed; 114 Iraqis Wounded.
Thursday: 3 US Soldiers, 42 Iraqis Killed; 38 Iraqis Wounded.
Friday: 1 US Soldier, 44 Iraqis Killed; 128 Iraqis Wounded.
Saturday: 53 Iraqis Killed, 148 Wounded.

How long will this will continue?

In London former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has called for an international tribunal to try Western leaders with war crimes over the war in Iraq, a spokesman for the organisers said.

In a speech at Imperial College, London, Mahathir called for a tribunal to try US President George W. Bush plus former prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard of Australia for their part in the conflict, said a spokesman for the Muslim group the Ramadhan Foundation, which set up the event.

Spokesman Mohammed Shafiq told AFP that Mahathir, who was in office from 1981 to 2003, wants to see the trio tried "in absence for war crimes committed in Iraq.

"It was a opportunity for students to put a range of questions about war crimes and the international situation." He said that people have to stop killing each other and use arbitration, negotiation and discussion as an alternative to violence, war and killing."

On the war in Iraq, Mahathir spoke about "the thousands dying, the economic war, the power of oil and how we could utilise some of these tools to have a leverage against the people who commit countries to war," Shafiq said.

He purposely did not speak about or answer questions from students on the political situation in Malaysia, said Shafiq.

More than 450 people attended the speech and about 200 more had to be turned away.

The Ramadhan Foundation is a leading British Muslim youth organisation working for peaceful co-existence and dialogue between communities.

Among the mountain of war crimes Western leaders are guilty of include:-

• The illegal use of napalm and other chemical weapons 
• Intentionally torturing and abusing detainees 
• Blocking aid convoys 
• Killing unarmed civilians, including shooting into family homes 
• Western leaders are also guilty of many other violations of the Geneva Convention, the Charter of the United Nations, the Nuremberg Charter, International Law and the Constitution of the United States, including crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. 
• International law professors have called the attack against Iraq “a fundamental breach of international law (that) would seriously threaten the integrity of the international legal order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War.” 

Mahathir Mohamad’s statement appears to be valid as the International Criminal Court defines the following as international crimes:

(a) Crimes against Peace:
Namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing:

(b) War Crimes:
Namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity:

(c) Crimes against Humanity:
Namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

Also reported here and here.

The Real Big Picture - Architecture of U.S. Militarism

Former Cold War hawk and CIA analyst, Chalmers Johnson, has written:

“As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can’t begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.

Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage. . . .We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.”

“These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally.... If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people’s countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.”

The United States military dominates the globe through its operation of 10 Unified Combatant Commands. Composed of forces from two or more armed services, the Unified Commands are headed by four-star generals and admirals who operate under the direct authority of the Secretary of Defense, accountable only to the President. Six of the Commands are responsible for designated regions of the world, and the four others for various operations.

They are :

1. United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM), at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. Created in October 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, it is responsible for North American homeland defense and coordinating homeland security with civilian forces.
2. United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), established February 7, 2007, in Stuttgart, Germany. To be relocated to the African continent, it is responsible for Africa excluding Egypt.
3. United States Central Command (CENTCOM), at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, is responsible for Egypt through the Persian Gulf region, into Central Asia, and is handing over responsibility for the Horn of Africa to AFRICOM.
4. United States European Command (EUCOM), in Stuttgart, Germany, is responsible for Europe and Israel, and is handing over responsibility of Africa to AFRICOM.
5. U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), on Oahu, Hawaii, is responsible for the Asia-Pacific region including Hawaii.
6. U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), in Miami, Florida, is responsible for South and Central America and the surrounding waters.
7. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida,provides special operations for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
8. U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), at Naval Support Activity Headquarters in Norfolk and Suffolk, Virginia, supports other commands as a joint force provider.
9. U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, covers global mobility of all military assets for all regional commands.
10. Tying them all together is United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM), at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, which describes itself as “is a global integrator charged with the missions of full-spectrum global strike, space operations, computer network operations, Department of Defense information operations, strategic warning, integrated missile defense, global C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance), combating weapons of mass destruction, and specialized expertise to the joint warfighter.... U.S. Strategic Command is part of a rich history that spans both the interrelated strategic and space communities.”

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, On June 1, 1992, President George H. Bush established U.S. Strategic Command, which for the first time in U.S. history brought the planning, targeting, and wartime employment of strategic (nuclear) forces under the control of a single commander, while the day-to-day training, equipping and maintenance responsibilities for its forces remained with the Air Force and Navy.
Again, according to its own history:

“Events of Sept. 11, 2001, vividly proved that the nation needed a new strategic direction. The emergence of transnational global threats – state and non-state actors such as terrorist organizations that operate across state borders, increasingly in affiliation with others who oppose U.S. interests – required a more integrated approach to our nation’s defense. Sept. 11 also illustrated the need to improve the nation’s national command and control architecture.”

It becomes easier to understand that so-called “defenses” are not really to defend the United States from a surprise attack. These systems include both “national” missile defense systems in the form of ground-based interceptors, initially in Alaska and California, and “theater” missile defenses, at foreign bases or on ships at sea. In addition, research and development is underway on laser missile defense systems, to be deployed, eventually, on airplanes and space-based vehicles. These theater missile defenses are intended to work together with the offensive weapons systems, like swords and shields, to protect U.S. troops and bases and other U.S. “strategic assets” around the world. Admiral Ramu Ramdas, the former head of India’s navy and now a leading proponent of nuclear abolition has described U.S. theater missile defenses as a “net thrown over the globe.”

One of the main goals of the policies and programs endorsed by the Nuclear Posture Review is to make U.S. threats of force, including nuclear threats, more credible: more powerful conventional forces for use where nuclear weapons would be untenable and more useable nuclear weapons where nothing else has sufficient power to intimidate or destroy. Nuclear weapons are not segregated either operationally or doctrinally from conventional weapons.


Another not so hidden part of the architecture of U.S. militarism is the incredible amount of money the U.S. has spent - and is spending - on its military enterprise.

“Atomic Audit,” a study by the Brookings Institution completed in 1998, found that, as a conservative estimate, the United States spent $5.5 trillion dollars on nuclear weapons alone, from 1940–1996 (in constant 1996 dollars.) The Brookings study found that nuclear weapons spending during the 56 year period it examined exceeded the combined total federal spending for education; training, employment, and social services; agriculture; natural resources and the environment; general science, space, and technology; community and regional development, including disaster relief; law enforcement; and energy production and regulation. On average, the study estimated, the United States spent $98 billion a year on nuclear weapons.

The NNSA’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 budget request for nuclear weapons research, development, and testing activities is $6.6 billion, more than 5% over the prior year’s appropriation, Even after accounting for inflation, this is more than one-third higher than the average annual spending on nuclear weapons during the Cold War. However, this figure does not include delivery systems or command and control technologies, which are funded separately through the DoD. Many of the Pentagon programs are “dual use,” meaning shared with conventional weapons systems, which complicates assessment of the total budget.

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimates that the United States currently spends approximately $54 billion annually on all nuclear-related programs and activities including offensive and defensive capabilities, Department of Defense and Department of Energy activities, strategic and theater forces, as well as associated command, control and communications capabilities. That is more than the entire military budget of nearly every individual country in the world. In 2006, only China ($121.9 B), Russia ($70.B), the United Kingdom ($55.4B), and France ($54.B) spent $54 billion or more in total on their militaries.

Full text is here written by by Jacqueline Cabasso, Global Research, April 26, 2008

Israel Soldiers Breaking the Silence

They're called "Refuseniks" but not for refusing to serve. They've done it proudly and courageously, and here's how "Courage to Refuse" members state their position:

• We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
  
• We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people. We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.
  
• We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.
  
• We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.
  
• We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.
  
• We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.
  
• We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
  
• We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.
  
• The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.

These are courageous men and some women, hundreds of them. Their "Courage to Refuse - Combatant's Letter" web site lists 550 by name. There are hundreds more as well. Their numbers are growing, and their resistance is firm. Further numbers of signers are here.

In another report, 50 Israeli protesters demonstrated today in front of IDF Chief of Staff’s house in north Tel Aviv. The demonstration took place after a blast, presumably caused by Israeli artillery, resulted with the tragic death of 7 family members picnicking on Gaza beach.

The demonstration called for the halt of Israeli policy of targeted killings and preventive shelling, which is not only illegal, but also often results with the death of innocent Palestinian civilians. This policy, argued the protesters, also contributes to the escalation of the violence in the region and eventually endangers Israeli civilians. This Israeli contribution to the escalation of violence and the apparent preferring of such illegal military moves over the pre-elections promised negotiations, urged CTR to resume its activity. The movement intends to carry out further activities in order to prevent IDF’s illegal actions and save both civilians and IDF’s soldiers lives. The presence of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s daughter, Dana Olmert, attracted the Israeli media’s attention and brought the demonstration to the press’s headlines.

The Palestine land confisticated and settled by Israel since 1948.

U.S. OPENS WORLD'S BIGGEST EMBASSY IN IRAQ

THE SYMBOL OF OCCUPATION

The 104-acre, 21-building enclave – the largest US Embassy in the world, similar in size to Vatican City in Rome – is often described as a "castle" by Iraqis, but more in the sense of the forbidden and dominating than of the alluring and liberating.

Designed according to what are called the "Inman standards" – the results of a 1985 commission on secure embassy construction headed by former National Security Agency head Bobby Inman – recent embassies have been built as fortified compounds away from population centers and surrounded by high walls.

In the case of larger embassies in the most dangerous environments, as in Baghdad, secure housing is included, along with some of the amenities of home – restaurants, gyms, pools, cinemas, shopping – that can give the compound the air of an enclave.

The US government cleared the new Baghdad Embassy for occupancy last week, with the embassy's 700 employees and up to 250 military personnel expected to move in over the month of May. The $740 million compound – expected to cost more than $1 billion a year to operate – was originally expected to cost $600 million to build and was to open in September 2007.

"It is a symbol of occupation for the Iraqi people, that is all," says Anouar, a Baghdad graduate student who thought it was risk enough to give her first name. "We see the size of this embassy and we think we will be part of the American plan for our country and our region for many, many years."

Read further here.

View of America in Arab countries fueled by American policies, not values. Below are an interesting slide from Shibley Telhami’s latest polling in the Islamic world.


Download the Arab Public Opinion Polls full report here (Pdf File, 110 Pages).

The Elements of Propaganda during WAR

At times of war, or build up for war, messages of extremities and hate, combined with emotions of honor and righteousness interplay to provide powerful propaganda for a cause. Those who promote the negative image of the “enemy” may often reinforce it with rhetoric about the righteousness of themselves; the attempt is to muster up support and nurture the belief that what is to be done is in the positive and beneficial interest of everyone. Often, the principles used to demonize the other, is not used to judge the self, leading to accusations of double standards and hypocrisy.

Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, but often at the cost of exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying about the issues in order to gain that support. While the issue of propaganda often is discussed in the context of militarism, war and war-mongering, it is around us in all aspects of life.

As the various examples below will show, common tactics in propaganda often used by either side include:

• Using selective stories that come over as wide-covering and objective.
  
• Partial facts, or historical context
  
• Reinforcing reasons and motivations to act due to threats on the security of the individual.
  
• Narrow sources of “experts” to provide insights in to the situation. (For example, the mainstream media typically interview retired military personnel for many conflict-related issues, or treat official government sources as fact, rather than just one perspective that needs to be verified and researched).
  
• Demonizing the “enemy” who does not fit the picture of what is “right”.
  
• Using a narrow range of discourse, whereby judgments are often made while the boundary of discourse itself, or the framework within which the opinions are formed, are often not discussed. The narrow focus then helps to serve the interests of the propagandists.

Media critics have long pointed out the discrepancy between the overwhelming number of pro-war military voices versus the almost complete absence of antiwar voices.

Military control of information during war time is also a major contributing factor to propaganda, especially when the media go along with it without question. The military recognizes the values of media and information control very well. The military often manipulates the mainstream media, by restricting or managing what information is presented and hence what the public are told. For them it is paramount to control the media.

It turns out the pro-war slant of military analysts was in fact part of a carefully orchestrated propaganda effort from the Pentagon. The New York Times (NYT) has revealed the Pentagon recruited more than seventy-five retired military officers to appear on TV outlets as so-called military analysts ahead of the Iraq war. Newly disclosed Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration themes and messages to millions of Americans in the form of their own opinions.

The NYT's Saturday story regarding the media's use of Pentagon-controlled "independent" military analysts, but there hasn't really been any fallout at all. Despite being accused by the NYT in a very lengthy, well-documented expose of misleadingly feeding government propaganda to their viewers and readers, virtually all media outlets continue their steadfast refusal to address or even acknowledge the story. How can "news" organizations refuse to address -- just completely ignore -- accusations which fundamentally indict their behavior as "journalists"?

The so-called analysts were given classified Pentagon briefings, provided with Pentagon-approved talking points and given free trips to Iraq and other sites paid for by the Pentagon. Their involvement was ultimately approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Retired Green Beret Robert Bevelacqua, a former Fox News analyst, said, “It was [the Pentagon] saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’”

The Pentagon even hired a private contractor to monitor the analysts’ broadcast interviews. Brent Krueger, a senior official who helped oversee the propaganda effort, said, “We were able to click on every single station, and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’”

The propaganda campaign also extended into the nation’s newspapers. Nine of the Pentagon-connected analysts wrote op-ed articles for the New York Times, and the Pentagon helped two retired military officers write a piece for the Wall Street Journal.

Many of the same retired military officers also have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they were asked to assess on air. In interviews, at least two so-called analysts admitted to deliberately tempering their on-air comments out of fear of losing military contracts for their firms. Officials from NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN all admitted to being unaware of their analysts business interests in the war. Fox News declined to comment for the New York Times.

On Military Propaganda Pushed Me Off TV, Jeff Cohen said

"But I’m also for keeping the focus and onus on CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, even NPR – who were partners in the Pentagon’s mission of “information dominance.” And for us to see that American TV news remains so corrupt today that it has hardly mentioned the Times story on the Pentagon’s pundits, which was based on 8,000 pages of internal Pentagon documents acquired by a successful Times lawsuit."

Long-time journalist Norman Solomon produced a 2007 documentary detailing the historical use of propaganda by the government and media to generate American support for all of the numerous wars we've started over the years. Entitled War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, the documentary was narrated by Sean Penn, and included this exchange on the problematic aspects of using retired generals as war commentators (.pdf; h/t Scott Horton via email):

The Times reports the Pentagon continues to use the analysts in a propaganda campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

The BIG Lies : From The Book Weapons of Mass Deception.

We've always known what good PR and advertising could do for a new line of sneakers, cosmetics, or weight-loss products. In Weapons of Mass Deception, Rampton and Stauber show us a brave new shocking world where savvy marketers, "information warriors," and "perception managers" can sell an entire war to consumers. Indeed, Washington successfully brought together the world's top ad agencies and media empires to create "Operation: Iraqi Freedom" - a product no decent, patriotic citizen could possibly object to. With meticulous research and documentation, Rampton and Stauber deconstruct this and other "true lies" behind the war:

• Top Bush officials advocated the invasion of Iraq even before he took office, but waited until September 2002 to inform the public, through what the White House termed a "product launch."
  
• White House officials used repetition and misinformation - the "big lie" tactic - to create the false impression that Iraq was behind the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, especially in the case of the alleged meeting in Prague five months earlier between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials.
  
• The "big lie" tactic was also employed in the first Iraq war when a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah told the horrific - but fabricated - story of Iraqi soldiers wrenching hundreds of premature Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and leaving them to die. Her testimony was printed in a press kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a PR front group created by Hill and Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm.
  
• In order to achieve "third party authenticity" in the Muslim world, a group called the Council of American Muslims for Understanding launched its own web site, called OpenDialogue.com. However, its chairman admitted that the idea began with the State Department, and that the group was funded by the U.S. government.
  
• Forged documents were used to "prove" that Iraq possessed huge stockpiles of banned weapons.
  
• A secretive PR firm working for the Pentagon helped create the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which became one of the driving forces behind the decision to go to war.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.

Read also the followings:

SELLING THE WAR ON IRAQ
A Strategy of Lies: How the White House Fed the Public a Steady Diet of Falsehoods
America's Ministry of Propaganda Exposed -- Part One
Study documents nearly 1,000 lies from Iraq war propaganda campaign

Jimmy Carter visits to Gaza - "If you are not with us, than you are evil"

Poor Jimmy Carter. All he wanted to do was talk peace. But all he got was the shaft, from the Bush administration, the secretary of state, the Israeli government, the mainstream media, and the presidential candidates. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe denounced his meeting with Hamas representatives from Gaza as not "useful." Condi Rice intoned that "Hamas is a terrorist organization," which she then described as an "impediment to peace" and the Israeli government did her one better by refusing to speak to Carter at all, though he was permitted five minutes with President Shimon Peres as a courtesy.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the Bush administration explicitly warned former President Carter against meeting with members of Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the Gaza Strip and which is regarded by the U.S. as a terror group.

Carter, who met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria over the weekend, is trying to draw the Islamist group into peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

But Rice and other senior U.S. officials have voiced strong concern that Carter's meeting could merely confuse U.S.-brokered peace talks already moving at a slow pace between Abbas and Olmert.

Carter was also lacerated by the U.S. media, which did not report the visit in detail except to criticize it. According to the Washington Post, Hamas engages in "deliberate targeting of civilians," such as the Israeli town of Sderot, which "suffers daily rocket attacks."

What the Washington Post seems unaware of Israeli targeting of civilians when it can't find an actual "militant" to kill. The relentless barrage on Sderot using crude, homemade rockets reportedly killed only one resident in the past year, a worker from Ecuador. Hundreds of Palestinians, mostly civilians and including many children, have been killed in Israeli reprisals during that same time period. It is particularly ironic that the Israelis killed 20 Palestinians on April 16, all civilians and including five children, the day on which Obama made his speech and the White House was criticizing Carter's efforts. Israeli sources, which understate Palestinian deaths, report that 4,604 Palestinians have been killed since 2000 versus 1,033 Israelis. Nearly one thousand of the dead Palestinians were children.

Investor's Business Daily, opining that "Our worst ex-president honors the memory of Yasser Arafat while hugging Hamas-cidal terrorists. Instead of embracing terrorists, Jimmy Carter should be laying wreaths at the tombs of their victims." 

Benjamin Shapiro, writing for Townhall.com, put it slightly differently: "Jimmy Carter is an evil man. It is painful to label a past president of the United States as a force for darkness. But it is dangerous to let a man like Jimmy Carter stalk around the globe cloaked in the garb of American royalty, planting the seeds of Western Civilization's destruction." 

Rep. Joe Knollenberg of Michigan is so angry about Carter that he is proposing legislation blocking any federal funding for the Carter Center, saying that "America must speak with one voice against our terrorist enemies," while Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina has called on Condi Rice to revoke Carter's passport. The new head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, complains that Carter holds "warped" views on the Middle East. Berman, who is a strong and vocal supporter of Israel at all times and under all circumstances, apparently believes that his own views are just fine.

It is difficult to detect much that is extreme in the Carter mission. If one accepts that Hamas is a reality in the Middle East, having been chosen by a large majority of the residents of Gaza and the West Bank, its legitimacy should not be questioned, even if its tactics and some of its political positions should be challenged. It is clear that no settlement for the Israel-Palestine problem can be envisioned without Hamas' participation, which leads one to assume that Israel, which continues to stonewall while it expands its settlements, has no interest in any solution until it has sealed off all of Jerusalem and taken everything else it wants on the West Bank. This position is being supported de facto by the United States, which has done absolutely nothing to stop the Israelis in spite of the assurances dutifully delivered in Annapolis (pdf file) only four months ago. 

Israel says efforts by former President Jimmy Carter to work out a cease-fire with Gaza's Hamas rulers failed. Israel Senior Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad says that Hamas presented nothing new in its demands for a truce during Carter's recent meetings with officials of the militant group.

Jimmy Carter would like to reverse a failed process that he knows is not good for the United States, Israel, or the Palestinians. He surely expected that he would receive no credit for his efforts and would instead be on the receiving end of considerable criticism, frequently bordering on the scurrilous. It is a tribute to his integrity and dedication to what is right that he has persevered in spite of everything that Israel's numerous friends have thrown at him.

What Chance Annapolis has? See the video.

Europe Has Found Her Deadly “Christian Roots” - And the New Charlemagne

A portrait of Charlemagne by Albrecht Dürer that was painted several centuries after Charlemagne's death, the coat of arms above him show the German eagle and the French Fleur-de-lis.

April 14, 2008 | From theTrumpet.com
Pope John Paul II famously encouraged Europeans to “find your roots!” They have accepted the challenge.

by
GERALD FLURRY

The Habsburgs were the sword of the Holy Roman Empire throughout the Middle Ages. They did their killing while supporting artists like Bach, Mozart and Schubert. They were very sophisticated as they slaughtered people.

Adolf Hitler used to love to attend the opera. His mind was saturated with the music of Richard Wagner. He even said that one couldn’t understand the Third Reich without understanding Wagner. That German composer was a sex pervert and an anti-Semite, yet Hitler was intoxicated by him.

In 1983, Pope John Paul ii was in Vienna—300 years after that city was attacked by the “barbarian Turks” and the Polish king rallied the European kings and drove out the barbarians. John Paul said at that time that Europe needed to return to its “Christian roots.” The present pope delivers the same message. But does this world know what those Christian roots really are?

The Vatican leaders understand their history. That is not true of most of the world, which is why many millions of people are so easily deceived about what the pope believes.

You can travel around Europe and see the Habsburg castles even today. Many of them have dungeons below them. Tour guides will tell you that the Habsburgs would have great feasts upstairs, listening to the finest classical music, while people were being tortured to death below. Similarly, Hitler could listen to beautiful opera while his minions were committing unspeakable atrocities.

In 1926, Hitler stated, “Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews …. The work that Christ started but could not finish, I—Adolf Hitler—will conclude.” He did not consider Jesus a Jew, but only a half-Jew because He was begotten by God.

However, the biggest problem that Hitler posed to the world was not his being a fanatical anti-Semite. That is only part of the story. This is where many people are deceived. Hitler was the political head of the Holy Roman Empire.

Much of the world looks upon the Jews as God’s chosen people. In Vienna, Hitler came to believe that God had replaced the Jews with the Germans and the Holy Roman Empire. He learned it in that cultured city—looking at the crown jewels and the opulence of the Habsburgs.

He believed the Germans were God’s chosen people. This is why the crown jewels of that empire meant so much to him.

In 1938, Hitler had brought the insignia of the First Reich, the imperial crown, the orb of empire, the scepter, and the imperial sword from Vienna to Nuremberg. At a rally, he vowed that they would remain there forever.

There is also a spear, called the spear of destiny. Many believe it is the spear that killed Christ—which is pure nonsense. The spear is supposed to have mystical powers. The legend states that if you look at this spear long enough, it will endow you with magical power. Hitler went there often and undoubtedly was mesmerized by it.

Lange’s Commentary says this about the fall of Jerusalem to the Roman armies in a.d. 70: “[T]he stamp of divine retribution was impressed upon the fate of Jerusalem and the temple, even for heathen eyes. We may call to mind the expression even of … Titus: ‘That God was so angry with this people that even he feared His wrath if he should suffer grace to be shown to the Jews’ ….”

Ceasar Titus believed that God had commissioned him to punish the Jews. The “Holy” Roman Empire grew out of that mighty empire.

Lange’s continues: “[H]e refused every mark of honor on account of the victory obtained, with the attestation that he had been only an instrument in God’s hands to punish this stiff-necked nation. Compare the well-known expressions of Josephus, as to the height which the wickedness of his contemporaries had reached.”

Has evil reached this height in America, Britain and the Jewish nation today? Is God concerned about our wickedness?

Josephus said that Titus killed 1.1 million Jews and took 97,000 slaves. There are over a hundred prophecies that tell us biblical Israel is going to be punished by that same empire in the end time. 

The seventh Holy Roman Empire has almost been completely resurrected in Europe today. Pope Benedict xvi is the spiritual head of that empire.

Many leaders in Europe are working feverishly to complete the Holy Roman Empire. Some say that to complete the process they only need a new Charlemagne—a strong leader after the image of the man who was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in a.d. 800. Then they will have found their Christian roots. More about Charlemagne here and here.

What happened with Rome and Jerusalem in the first century is only a type of what is going to happen on a much greater scale in this end time—according to Bible prophecy.

Few people, even in Europe, understand their own Christian roots. But they should understand. If they did, and knew where a return to those roots is leading the Continent, they would never want to find them again! The Holy Roman Empire is about to radically change the course of world history!

The Pope’s Standoff With Islam

Another recent development in the Vatican highlights the escalating tension between Catholicism and Islam. At his Easter vigil service on March 22, Pope Benedict baptized Magdi Allam—a former Muslim. Allam is a deputy editor of one of Italy’s most powerful newspapers, and he’s also a bestselling author.

Stratfor wrote this about the much-publicized baptism: “Allam is an Egyptian-born convert from Islam to Christianity, and is a prominent outspoken critic of radical Islamism” (March 24). The timing of the baptism was especially significant, as Stratfor went on to point out: “Only days before, on March 19, an Internet posting of an audio message purporting to be from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused the pope specifically of fomenting a ‘new Crusade’ against Islam.”

In fact, a new crusade will happen. The Crusades were a series of Catholic-sponsored military expeditions to wrest control of Jerusalem and others parts of the Holy Land from Muslim control. The word crusade comes from the Latin word crucesignatus, which means one signed by the cross. During the Crusades, tens of thousands of bloodthirsty Europeans, operating under the Roman Catholic banner, descended into the Holy Land via the Near East, where they set about pillaging, raping, mutilating and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims.

Stratfor wrote, “The papacy is a unique geopolitical entity. It was once literally a kingmaker, crowning the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire.” And it’s going to crown another one, who will be the last one.

Soon after that, Jesus Christ will return and establish God’s government over all the Earth. God will save mankind from itself, but He will do it His way and according to His timetable. Today, your Bible says the whole world is deceived (Revelation 12:9). But when Christ returns, He will remove that veil of deception and lead the world in the right way to live.

Before that, however, God prophesies of a great end-time clash between the king of the north (the EU dominated by Germany and the Vatican) and the king of the south (radical Islam). Even now, we are seeing this spectacular clash in its preliminary stages. (For more on this, read our booklet The King of the South.) Prophecy is being fulfilled. You can know where all of these events are leading!

Stratfor continued, “In attempting to galvanize and energize 1 billion Catholics, Benedict might also further alienate 1 billion Muslims.” A superpower is rising in Europe. It will soon impact this world and shed blood as no church-state combine ever has.

Stratfor wrote, “[I]t could very well move the Vatican onto center stage in radical Islamism’s conflict with the West. And that can have profound geopolitical implications.” Yes, indeed!

Now to prophecy. Revelation 17:10 says, “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” The “one is” emerged during World War ii as the Hitler-led Axis power. God says one more resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire is coming.

It will be led by the new Charlemagne.

Pope Visits to America - Sex Scandal, Gay Bishop and Interfaith Dialogue.

Pope Benedict has played to rock-concert-sized crowds on his first visit to the United States as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

"This has been a joyous week. It's been a joyous time for Catholics — and it wasn't such a bad week for Methodists, either. The excitement was just palpable," Bush, a Methodist, said at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, an event that coincided with the pope's visit. "It's not every day you get to be the warm-up act to the Holy Father," Bush said to an audience that brought raucous applause.

The pontiff's visit came at a challenging time for the American church. Wounds from the clergy sex scandals are still fresh, in Minnesota and across the nation, and are likely to scar the laity's trust for generations. In many areas, priest shortages and shifting resources are forcing the painful closure of beloved parishes. 

After years of near silence on the issue of the abuse and rape of children at the hands of pedophile priests, Pope Benedict XVI made public acknowledgement of the scandal a central theme of his first visit to the United States as head of the church. The first mention of the scandal came while still en route from Rome when he told reporters he was "deeply ashamed" about the scandal that had caused "great suffering."

It was the first time the papacy had directly addressed the victims of abusive clerics, and it signaled that Benedict's first trip to the United States as pontiff would be not just a state visit but an effort at reconciliation with American believers and an exercise in humility for the church's role in a scandal the pope conceded had been "very badly handled."

He said he is "deeply ashamed" of the clergy sex abuse scandal that has devastated the American church. Roman Catholic sex abuse cases can be found here.

“Only in this way will we give unambiguous testimony to the truth of the Gospel and its moral teaching. This is the method which the world is waiting to hear from us.”

The Pope did not mention specific issues troubling the churches. However, many Protestant groups have been arguing for years over how to understand what the Bible says about truth and salvation, and whether it prohibits gay sex.

The U.S. Episcopal Church caused an uproar among its fellow Anglicans in 2003 by consecrating the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

He also has said he would like to reach out to the Muslim community through dialogue, and Muslims were included in the pontiff's meeting with interfaith leaders in Washington on Thursday night. But many Muslims in America remain wary, saying the pope has created the impression that he is insensitive to their faith.

Many still recall the pope's September 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany, in which Benedict quoted a Byzantine Christian emperor saying that "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".  The full text is here.

That lecture sparked days of protests in Muslim countries, some of them violent, and an Italian nun in Somalia was killed in retaliation. The Pope repeated several times that he regretted the offense his speech caused, and that he has deep respect for Islam. But the remarks have caused lingering damage, according to Muslims and some Catholic scholars interviewed.

"I don't think he did enough to apologize," said Omar T. Mohammedi, a member of the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

"For a person of his stature to come out and say this about Islam, it amazes me, it's sad," said Wael Mousfar, president of the Arab Muslim American Federation, a community group in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, a largely Muslim neighborhood. "Islam is the target of everyone nowadays; he just jumped on the bandwagon and joined the crowd."

There have been other perceived slights. For example, the pope confounded Muslims when he baptized a prominent Egyptian-born Italian Muslim convert on international television Easter Sunday. Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service. The Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book "Long Live Israel."

"This person chose to be Catholic, it's not a problem," said Imam Shamsi Ali of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. The problem was the pope's celebration of the conversion on a global stage, he said.