Kourosh Ziabari

Burning the holy books which are interconnected with the hearts and souls of millions of people around the world is one of the most heinous and dreadful actions which one can think of. After decades of bloodshed and bigotry in the two World Wars, Civil War in the United States and Crusades against Muslims in the 11^th and 12^th centuries, burning the holy books can be interpreted as a new form of barbarity and ignorance in the modern era and an unforgivable crime which can be justified by no standards whatsoever.

Over the past decade, several cases of desecrating the holy book of Muslims, Quran, have been reported that incited the hatred and frustration of millions of Muslims and non-Muslims in the four corner of the globe.

In July 2010, an extremist Christian pastor Terry Jones gained widespread public attention when he announced that he would be burning copies of the Holy Quran on the anniversary of September 11 attacks for the alleged excuse that they were the Muslims who spearheaded the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and that Islam promotes violence and aggression. Of course such a terrible idea can be only issued by someone who suffers from an inferiority complex and yearns for attracting people’s attention. Taking a glance at the background of Terry Jones and what his former colleagues say about him, one can effortlessly figure out that the Christian pastor has always had an ambivalent personality and an air of self-importance which has made him an arrogant and supercilious man. After receiving an honorary degree from an unaccredited theology school in 1983 when he was 32, he began referring to himself as “Doctor” for which he was ultimately found guilty and condemned by a German administrative court.

Jones moved to Germany in 1981 and established a small church in Cologne named Christian Community of Cologne. As reported by the German publication “Der Spiegel,” the congregation fired him after a while, accusing him of spreading a “climate of fear and control” in the church. His colleagues say that he preached the congregants to beat their children with “rods” and also consumed the church funds for personal, improper purposes. What can be inferred from his biography is that the traces of sanity and reason can be barely found in his behavior and disposition.

In July 2010, he made the headlines by announcing his devilish plan for burning the copies of Holy Quran on an “International Burn a Quran Day.” Several heads of states, politicians, academicians, peace activists and journalists condemned his plan, and although he initially retreated from his decision, he finally set ablaze copies of the holy book of Muslims in Dove World Outreach Center’ss sanctuary on March 20, 2011.

Surprisingly, the Western politicians refused to express disapproval of this shocking venture and only stated that Terry Jones should cancel his plan simply because the lives of multinational forces in Iraq and Afghanistan might be endangered. Actually, the Western statesmen credulously overlooked the immoral and decadent nature of this action or simply refused to practice what they always preach: religious tolerance and diversity. Of course they would have no response to give if asked about the veracity of their claims of being supportive to religious freedom and tolerance. They offended and disappointed millions of Muslims with their silence and demonstrated that they have no respect for the beliefs of those who want to live alongside them in peace.

But the Quran burning controversy of 2011 did not mark an end to the adventurous ploys of Pastor Jones. The newspapers and TV stations across the world reported last week that Terry Jones once again burned copies of the Holy Quran and a portrait depicting Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on Saturday, April 28 in what was claimed as his protest to the detainment of a so-called Christian clergyman in Iran.

Before committing this obscene act, Pentagon had urged Jones not to burn the Holy Quran for the sake of the security of Americans in uniform, but no other statement was released by Obama administration to prevent the insane pastor from doing such a crime. Gainesville Sun reported on April 29 that the Quran burning plan was attended by a number of local residents and was broadcast live on internet. Even a group of police officers patrolled around the church premises and provided security for the ceremony. The region’s fire department chief also said that Jones had received proper authorizations for burning certain materials on April 28, but it was not specified what the materials were.

Although the high-ranking officials of Islamic countries, including the Iranian statesmen condemned the renewed venture of burning the Holy Quran in strongest terms, the U.S. and European officials turned a blind eye to the blasphemy, tacitly endorsing the radical pastor.

However, what is clear is that Jones is certainly looking for national and international attention. He has established a campaign for the 2012 presidential elections and even created a website for his campaign with the slogan “Real America, Real Hope.” In this website, Jones has claimed that he is standing up to speak for “truth” and confront “Islamic radicalism.” This is unquestionably a testimony to his lunacy and provides evidence for the fact that this mad man has no clear ideology or worldview. If he is a real Christian pastor, then can he justify that insulting the holy book of a major religion is in compliance with the teaching of Christianity?

Different Christian institutions, including the World Evangelical Alliance have strongly condemned Terry Jones and asked the U.S. government to take action against him. An Islamic movement in Pakistan has called for the execution of Terry Jones; however, it seems that the Obama administration and the Israeli-dominated Congress are so coward and pitiable that they will get along with the appalling enterprise that has come out of their country.

Of course, it should not be neglected that Yusef Naderkhani, the so-called pastor who is in jail in Iran is not detained on charges of changing his religion or advocating Christianity. He is charged with sexual abuse and robbery and no death penalty, as the U.S. mainstream media pretend, has been issued for him. The problem of Terry Jones and people like him with Islam and its teaching is that Islam unveils the true evil nature of imperialism and this is something which the U.S. politicians and their stooges such as the pastor of a tiny church in Florida cannot tolerate.

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Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. His articles and interviews have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Tehran Times, Press TV, Global Research and Foreign Policy Journal.

…but when will he give Israel the kicking it deserves?

by Stuart Littlwood  –   Intifada Palestine

(London} UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has worked himself into a lather over Iran’s blocking of a Foreign Office website. He says: “I condemn this action by the Iranian Government. ‘UK for Iranians’ was launched to reach out to Iranians, explaining, discussing and engaging with them on UK policy.

“We have no quarrel with the Iranian people… At the launch of our website, I celebrated the links between the UK and Iran, and the richness of Iran’s culture… It is not just Iranians who are the poorer for their government’s censorship, but the rest of the world. We will continue to look for opportunities to engage with the Iranian people, confident that Iranians are outward looking and deserve the same freedoms that others enjoy around the world.”

What a hoot! For months Mr Hague worked overtime to force the people of Iran into misery, poverty and isolation by imposing a battery of “unprecedented” sanctions. He then campaigned to have these measures intensified, and to hell with the consequences – for them and for us.

Hague, with his pro-Israel affiliations, is simply not the right person to engage with the Iranians or anyone else in the Middle East.

‘UK for Iranians’ looks like a clone of America’s “virtual embassy”, which is also beamed at the Iranians. It too was blocked back in December. The British website says things like: “The UK would welcome improved relations with Iran. We have shared interests in a wide range of issues, including a stable Afghanistan… However, the UK and many other countries have serious concerns about the Iranian Government’s policies: its failure to address serious international concerns about its nuclear programme; its support for terrorism and promotion of instability in its region; and its continued denial of the human rights to which its own people aspire and which Iran has made international commitments to protect…”

I suspect the only people in the UK who have concerns about Iran’s policies are the Israel luvvies and Washington lapdogs that infest our parliament.

On the touchy subject of diplomatic relations the website has this to say: “Since an attack by government-sponsored militias on the British Embassy in Tehran on 29 November 2011, the British Embassy in Tehran and the Iranian Embassy in London have both been closed. This does not amount to the severing of diplomatic relations in their entirety. It is action that reduces our relations with Iran to the lowest level consistent with the maintenance of diplomatic relations…”

It was Hague’s decision to shut down the British embassy in Tehran and eject the Iranians from London. He had not in any case maintained a full diplomatic presence in Tehran and the embassy operated at chargé d’affaires level for several months after the previous ambassador left. Perhaps they couldn’t find a new ambassador who was willing to jump through Hague’s foreign policy hoops. So now we do business with Iran through a third-party country, Germany.

So much for the desire to improve relations, reach out, engage, share interests, talk over “serious concerns”, and so forth.

Aiming a final kick our diplomatic service says: “The international community has lost confidence that Iran’s nuclear activities are for exclusively peaceful purposes… We are clear that we have no quarrel with the Iranian people. The responsibility for any impact on the population lies with the Iranian Government and their failure to meet the requirements of the IAEA Board of Governors and to comply with mandatory UN Security Council Resolutions. The Iranian Government can choose to act to bring sanctions to an end at any point.”

In other words, we turn the screws but the screams are not our fault – just like it wasn’t our fault when we did the same in Iraq for 12 long years, starving their kids, before delivering shock’n’awe and wholesale destruction.

Hague said in his Middle East Statement, 9 November 2011: “Iran’s actions not only run counter to the positive change that we are seeing elsewhere in the region; they may threaten to undermine it, bringing about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East or the risk of conflict”.

Yet according to the US intelligence community Iran hasn’t got an active nuclear weapons programme and Israeli intelligence agrees. Only a few weeks ago the Director of the National Intelligence Agency, James Clapper, reported: “We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons… We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons…”

Why is Hague so focused on Iran when Iran’s close neighbour Israel is the one with a runaway, unsafeguarded nuclear weapons programme?

UN Security Council resolution 487, in 1981, called on Israel “urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards”. Israel has ignored it for 30 years. Hasn’t it occurred to Hague that Israel’s huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, chemical and biological – and it’s refusal to end the illegal occupation of Palestine – are what’s really undermining positive change?

Furthermore, as the BBC reported http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11709428, back in 2009 the IAEA called on Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, open its nuclear facilities to inspection and place them under comprehensive IAEA safeguards. “Israel refuses to join the NPT or allow inspections. It is reckoned to have up to 400 warheads but refuses to confirm or deny this.”

It is the only state in the region that is not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (Iran is). It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. As regards biological and chemical weapons, Israel has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.

So Hague is kicking the wrong target. He needs to propel the toe of his bovver boot into the US-subsidized backside of the Zionist entity. That’s where unprecedented sanctions are need.

They are conspicuously absent when they would be so easy to apply.

And I’m still waiting for answers to simple questions I put to Mr Hague through my MP, who is one of his faithful lieutenants in the Foreign Office. They include…

• What concrete proof is there of Iran’s military application of nuclear technology?

• Why isn’t Hague more concerned about Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the threat it poses to the region and beyond, and the mental state of the Israeli regime?

• How many times has a British foreign secretary visited Tehran in the 32 years since the Islamic Revolution?

• Did Mr Hague make any effort to go and talk before embarking on punitive sanctions?

• By pulling our people out of Tehran and throwing Iran’s people out of London Mr Hague has shut the door on diplomacy. How can he now communicate effectively with a people he pretends to “have no quarrel with” but seems determined to goad into becoming an implacable enemy?

And in an exchange of words the other day about the British Government’s obscenely greedy tax on motor fuel – it levies a 130% surcharge (in duty and value-added tax) on the ex-refinery price – the MP in question tried to persuade me that by December the measures his administration had taken would save motorists £144 filling up the average family car.

It’s a claim that will astonish British motorists who have watched with alarm as prices at the pump rocket and are likely to go higher, ditto energy prices as a whole. The Government’s policy of making bitter enemies where we need to have friends and forcing up the price of crude, is hurting us as well as the Iranians and is already causing catastrophic damage to British industry and hardship for families and pensioners.

I told the MP I hoped he wasn’t going to lecture us again on how the only way to defend our national security was to declare economic war on Iran and its people and threaten ultimately to vaporise their women and children and reduce their homeland to rubble. Nearly everyone by now knows it’s poppycock. Mr Hague, I said, “seems to have a thirst for aggravation, has assumed the role of Europe’s bovver-boy and right now is probably this country’s biggest liability”.

Stuart Littlewood
20 March 2012

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Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

Decline results when a nation is betrayed by craven leaders, who crawl and humiliate themselves before a minority of thuggish mediocrities pledged to a foreign state without scruples or moral integrity.

by James Petras and Robin Eastman Abaya

Introduction:  A Week of National Humiliation:

From March 4th to March 9th, 2012, 13,000 militant Israel Firsters, took over “political Washington”[1] and imposed a foreign regime’s (Israel) political agenda to the rousing applause and appreciation of their captive vassal US legislators and executives who crowded the halls and platforms groveling for the imperious nods of their visiting Israeli overlords[2].  The annual meeting of the American (sic) Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the most outrageous public display of Zionist-Jewish power as it shapes US foreign policy.  The sole purpose of AIPAC is to ensure Israel’s unchallenged military and political power over a huge region from North Africa to the Persian Gulf.  Over three quarters of the US Congress members paraded themselves before the AIPAC, as well as President Obama and Vice President Biden and any high ranking Cabinet members in any way related to US foreign policy (Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Defense Panetta included).  They all loudly parroted the political agenda and military priorities that the AIPAC has imposed on the United States.

AIPAC: A launch pad for Israeli Leaders

The AIPAC gathering is clearly not a meeting of “just another lobby”[4]: It is the launch pad used by Israel’s top political and military leaders to drag the US into another major war in the Middle East – this time against Iran[5].  Shimon Peres, Israel’s President opened the conference, setting the militarist tone and political framework for US President Obama who followed, slavishly echoing the language and substance of the Israeli leader[6].  The following day the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, spoke, and forcefully laid out the line for a US war against Iran [7]with thousands of prominent and respectable Jewish Americans, Israel Firsters, leaping to their feet dozens of times in fanatic support for a US war – a war, in which few, if any, of them, their children, relatives or friends will suffer loss of life or limb[8].  This was the same Bibi Netanyahu who once opined that the 9-11 attack on the US benefited Israel because it linked the US closer to Israeli interests.

Not since the War of 1812, which saw the British occupation and burning of Washington, has the US capital been so utterly humiliated by a foreign power.  Unlike the British crown, which then negotiated a peace settlement, allowing the US to regain its sovereignty and capital, the Israeli leaders and their rabid “fifth column” demand a military agreement, in which Israel dictates the terms under which the US goes to war with Iran.

Israeli leaders have not secured the submission of the US because of Israel’s military, economic or political superiority:  They have a puny economy, a fraction of the US nuclear weapons and have few allies and even less public approval in the international community.  But they do have at least a half million fanatical, unconditional Zionist militants in the United States, including thousands of loyal multi-millionaires and billionaires who fund the campaign of both Democrat and Republican parties[9].  AIPAC is the vanguard of Israel’s shock troops in the US.  Highly disciplined and organized, AIPAC lobbyists invade the offices of every Congressperson armed with a legislative script carefully prepared by and for the State of Israel[10].  They have secured the full commitment of most members of Congress for Israel’s agenda waving both dollar signs and stars (of David).  As past history has amply demonstrated, Congressional staff or legislators who dare hesitate or ask for time to reflect, rapidly find themselves on the receiving end of AIPAC’s political bullying and threats which usually secure acquiescence.  Refusal to capitulate to AIPAC means the end of a political career in Washington.

The Israeli (and therefore AIPAC’s) agenda is to pursue an unprovoked war, either initiated by the US or as part of a US-backed Israeli sneak attack, against the sovereign Islamic Republic of Iran[11].  Iran is targeted today because the other opponents of Israel’s colonization of Palestine have been destroyed in previous Zionist-backed US wars, namely Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and the ongoing proxy war against the Assad regime in Syria.

Today Israeli leaders insist that Iran should be violently denied what over 120 other nations practice freely:  the legal enrichment of uranium for medical, commercial and scientific purposes.  Past Israeli propaganda, echoed by the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, falsely claimed Iran possessed nuclear weapons or … was in the process of manufacturing them and therefore posed an ‘existential’ threat to Israeli.  Even the mere ‘capacity’ to enrich uranium for medical purposes (many times below the level needed for a weapon) is presented as a major threat to the Jewish State.   Meanwhile, the 27 US intelligence agencies (in their yearly ‘findings’) and even the US-influenced International Atomic Energy Agency have found no such evidence of an ongoing weapons program – thus the need for bizarre terms like ‘existential threat’.

Israel’s high command has now come up with a new flimsy pretext for war.  Iran’s potential (through its advanced scientific and technical manpower and research centers) for acquiring a ‘nuclear weapon capability’ may constitute a sufficient cause for war[13]. In other words, Israel has ordered its 13,000 AIPAC militants, to demand every US Congress person vote for a war resolution on the basis of Iran’s current uranium enrichment program geared to medical uses and on its sophisticated scientific and intellectual potential!  Meanwhile, the Mossad has launched a not-so-secret program of terrorist assassinations of Iranian scientists – in their homes, offices and universities; with nary a protest from the ‘Zionized’ US press.

Israel’s Willing Executioners

Netanyahu’s newest criterion for war (Iranian capability) has the blind support of the major Jewish organizations in the US[14].  American Zionists are the willing executioners promoting an aggressive, unprovoked, military attack against the homeland (and homes) of 75 million Iranians.  Let us be clear, there are naked genocidal impulses permeating some of the pronouncements of leading US Jewish religious leaders.  The executive vice president of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Herring, suggested that Israel should consider “the use of tactical nuclear weapons in areas that aren’t so populated or in the open desert  …to show the Iranians that their lives are on the line, that Israel won’t go quietly”.[15]  The rabbi did not specify whether population centers of a quarter of a million inhabitants or less qualify under his definition of “not so populated” and therefore are suitable targets for this educational display of thermo-nuclear destruction, “just to show the Iranians”….  Let us keep in mind that among the Zionist fundamentalists, “not a few organizational leaders … wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons right now”.

When Netanyahu gave the command to the AIPAC delegates to invade the US Congress and secure a war commitment on the basis of Iran’s ‘capacity’ (for uranium enrichment), there was no debate and no dissention among the ‘shock troops’ – only blind unanimous approval among Jewish American citizens for their foreign master. These respectable Jewish-Americans marched lock-step in platoons right up to the Congress members on their lists, canned arguments in one hand and Israeli-ghost-written legislation in the other.  They boast of having rounded up a substantial majority of elected US representatives – for war!

If Israel’s power in the US depends on AIPAC’s tight control over the US Congress, the lobby, for its part, depends on the power of the wider Zionist power configuration permeating strategic political and administrative offices, political party structures and the electoral process itself.  This, in turn, depends on Zionist media influence linked back to economic and financial power.  The democratic and representative process has been totally crushed under this narrow-focused juggernaut for war on behalf of Israel.

AIPAC’s Congressional and Executive Collaborators

While much has been made of the influence AIPAC exercises over the US Congress and Executive via ‘lobbying’, better termed intimidation and pressure tactics, a great part of its success is based on the larger Zionist matrix of power operating within the government, civil society and the economy.  When AIPAC lobbyists approach Congress members with Israeli-dictated foreign policy priorities in hand, they coordinate and are given a major platform by the forty-plus elected Zionist legislators who, just happen, to occupy strategic positions, such as the chairpersons of Congressional committees dealing with foreign policy, especially policy related to the Middle East.  In other words, AIPAC’s conquest of Congress is ‘by invitation’.  The relation is ‘reciprocal’.  AIPAC and the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations and various fundraisers mobilize money and activists to help elect the reliable Zionists to office.  Once in place, they openly collaborate in writing pro-Israel legislation and ensuring that ‘majorities’ vote the ‘right way’.

Mark Dubowitz, executive director of “Foundation for Defense of Democracies” helped write the latest (Iran) sanctions bill … (Financial Times March 6, 2012, pg. 9).  The “Foundation” is better known as an unconditional and unquestioning promoter of Israel’s agenda.  Dubowitz is one of many un-elected ‘legislators’ who write and promote laws at Israel’s behest.  The legislation to impose sanctions on Iran, authored by Dubowitz, is designed to brutalize and starve 75 million Iranian citizens into submission to further Israel’s goal of unquestioned supremacy in the Middle East.

AIPAC’s operations are not confined to Congress or  to the electoral process.  From the Reagan Administration to the Obama Administration, AIPAC has supplied committed Zionists to key positions in the Treasury, State Department, National Security Council and the President’s inner circle of advisors on the Middle East[18].  AIPAC pressure ensures the appointment of Zionists to the executive branch and has led to the creation of special administrative posts designed specifically to pursue Israel’s agenda.  A good example of AIPAC’s success is the post of Undersecretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Intelligence.  The position was first held by Stuart Levey, a Zionist zealot, whose whole purpose was to design and implement US (and later EU) sanctions against Iran.  His replacement, David Cohen, a clone also from AIPAC, is the author of legislation pushing for punitive sanctions against Syria.

Dennis Ross, widely known as ‘Israel’s lawyer’ and a former AIPAC leader, was appointed senior adviser to Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, was the architect of US support for Israel’s starvation blockade and criminal bombing of Gaza (1999), the murderous invasion of Lebanon (2006).  He has provided ‘cover’ for Netanyahu’s  massive building of Jews only settlements on occupied Palestinian lands and his cynical ‘peace negotiations’ ploy.

Jeffrey Feltman, the current AIPAC front man in the State Department, is  the key official in charge of Middle East affairs, especially Lebanon, Syria and Iran[21].  Obama’s own inner circle of advisers is dominated by unconditional Israel supporters, including David Axelrod as chief confidant and the former Presidential Chief of Staff, dual US-Israeli citizen and current Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel[22].   What is striking is the constant cycle from leadership and activity in Zionist (Israeli-front) organizations, entry into powerful government post, return to one or another pro-Israel think tank, ‘civic organizations’,  electoral office or lucrative private practice – all promoting the interests of Tel Aviv.

AIPAC and the 52 Grassroots Organizations

AIPAC’s power in Washington depends on the activism of hundreds of thousands of American Zionists affiliated with organizations under the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (MAJO).  While there is considerable overlap of membership,  MAJO leaders openly serve as a transmission belt for Israel: transmitting the political line from Tel Aviv to their membership, including activist doctors, dentists and stock brokers in New York, Miami, Kansas City, Los Angeles and San Francisco and all points north, south, east and west.  When AIPAC has ‘trouble’ securing an elected representative’s sign-on to legislation for sanctions against whichever country is currently targeted by Israel, the reluctant legislator becomes a prime target for local Zionist notables and ‘fund raisers’, who pay them a ‘visit’ to persuade, if possible, threaten retaliation, if necessary.  If a legislator still refuses to hew to Israel’s line, or considers service to a foreign power to be harmful to United States, he/she will soon find that AIPAC has raised millions of dollars to fund a campaign of slander and electoral defeat.

Along with these upper middle class ‘grass roots’ activists there are the numerous highly politicized Zionist mega-millionaires and billionaires, like Adelson, Saban and scores of others, who make no bones about being fanatical Israel Firsters and donate  millions to Congresspeople willing to subordinate US interests to Israel’s quest for Middle East supremacy.

Besides this legal corruption of the political process, there is the issue of illegal espionage and thuggery on AIPAC’s part, most recently evidenced by the ongoing law-suit by one of two former top AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen caught spying for Israel (passing classified documents on US military policy towards Iran).   Rosen, who was acquitted in a highly manipulated ‘trial’, maintains that AIPAC routinely encouraged its officials to secure confidential US government documents for Israel.

And then there are the prominent free-lance Zionists, who engage in vicious, highly publicized, political thuggery, physical assaults and blackmail against critics of Israel[26].  The most prominent defamers, like Abraham Foxman of the Anti (sic) Defamation League, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz, manipulate legions of respectable and wealthy thugs to pressure schools, universities and other employers to censor and fire critics of Israel.  These Zionist organizations far exceed the reach and effective blacklisting of an earlier generation of witch hunters, like Senator Joseph McCarthy, who were rank amateurs in comparison.  The recent antics of Israel-Firster Andrew Adler, editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times, whose call for the Israeli Mossad to assassinate President Obama[27] led merely to his resignation as editor after several weeks of nervous outrage (but no federal investigation or charges).

What is striking here is that while most respectable Zionists dissociate themselves from AIPAC spies and verbal assassins, the power of the Israel Firsters ensures that such goons and thugs are rarely charged for their crimes and have never gone to jail.

The wider impact of Zionist influence and thuggery is evident in the timorous self-censorship of the majority of Americans who privately express fear and loathing at the confrontational, strident and abusive Zionist-Americans pushing a foreign agenda.

Israel, Zionism and the Mass Media

The mass media is a key political resource, which the pro-Israel power configuration exploits to the full.  Not a single major print, television, film or radio outlet is willing to provide a balanced account of the Israel-Palestine conflict[30].  Israel’s dispossession of thousands of Arab families from their homes and the daily terrorist Zionist settler and military assaults against Palestinians protesting land seizures go unreported[31].  The hundreds of nuclear weapons in Israel’s arsenal are never mentioned while the Jewish State’s hysterical claims that non-nuclear Iran represents an existential threat are repeated and magnified, ad nauseam.  The leaders of the 52 know their Goebbels:  A lie repeated often enough becomes an accepted truth.

Zionism and Leveraging Power

What is crucial in understanding the Zionist Power Configuration’s stranglehold over our government is how it leverages power.  For example, a tiny minority falsely claims to speak for all American Jews, who represent about 3% of the US population.  However, based on this claim, they mobilize and raise funds to elect the committed Zionists who hold about 10% of the seats in the US Congress and Senate.  These representatives, in turn, enjoy the support of a tiny cadre of super rich Zionists, whose promotion allows them to gain control over key committees dealing with Middle East policy and security.

Domestic security has been deeply influenced by the Zionist-Israeli agenda:  Former US Attorney General, Michael Mukasey and Homeland Security Tzar, Michael Chertoff have been among the most prominent officials orienting US domestic security to focus on critics of Israel and the entrapment of Muslim citizens in bizarre webs of phony terrorist plots, while real domestic security has suffered and civil rights have been shredded.  The over-representation of Zionists on the US Supreme Court (3 out of 9) and the careful selection of recent justices, like Justice Sotomayor, underscore the profound nature of the process as it extends to the judiciary.

The Zionist Power Configuration controls the Mid-East policies of both Democratic and Republican Party and their Presidential nominees through their Congressional and political party power bases.  The US President, in turn, is leveraged, in order to secure key policy appointments for Zionists in the State Department, Treasury and Pentagon.  Their leverage in the foreign policy establishment allows Zionist officials to put pressure on allies and clients in the United Nation and European Union to support policies, such as Israel’s boycott and punishment of the elected Hamas government in Gaza and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Leverage is how Israel, an infinitely small and insignificant state with less than 1% of world GNP, exports and market shares and occupying .001% of the world’s territory, can play such a disproportionate role in the reconfiguration of power in the Middle East.  Through its American-Zionist influentials, Israel has manipulated the US into a quagmire of wars in the Middle East, costing the world’s consumers of oil untold billions of dollars and pushing the world economy into recession.

Israel’s “Petroleum Tax”: War Threats and the Price of Gas

During the first 3 months of 2012, the price of oil rose 15% (over 30% since the summer 2011) largely due to Israel’s war mongering and threats to launch an offensive war against Iran.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Peres and Foreign Minister Lieberman have all repeatedly demanded the US bomb Iran, or failing that, they warn, Israel would launch its own offensive war against the Iranian people and drag the US into another war.

Almost all oil experts and political analysts agree that the spike in oil prices is a result of Israel’s war mongering, as major international oil speculators bet that an Israeli assault on Iran will provoke a major disruption in production and transportation of petroleum in the Middle East and provoke a global shortfall.

The 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations have added to the war hysteria by echoing and embellishing on Israel’s claims of an Iranian nuclear threat (or Iran’s “growing capacity” to threaten Israel in the future).

During the first three months of this year alone, the increased price of gasoline – or more accurately Israel’s war tax on the American consumers and drivers costs an additional 60 cents a gallon, or $9 dollars more to fill a 15 gallon tank.  This represents the tribute the Zionist power configuration has imposed on the American consumers in their push for a new war on Israel’s behalf.  No US politician would dare discuss this issue, let alone speak up and tell the Zionist chattering classes and their “beloved leaders” to stop pimping for war or else risk the cutting off of Israel’s $3 billion dollar annual handout from the US taxpayers.

Leading economists have stated that the price hike in petroleum (caused by a bellicose Israel) is stunting growth and pushing the US and EU back into recession … costing millions more job losses[35].  If we add the consumer losses caused by high gas prices to the losses in world economic output, the mere war chants of Netanyahu, Lieberman, Peres and the AIPAC will cost the global economy hundreds of billions over the course of the year.

Any mention of Israel’s gas tax on the American family’s budget will elicit outraged accusations of anti-Semitism from respectable Zionists and ugly threats from their thug accomplices.  When Obama performed his infamous annual belly crawl to pleasure the AIPAC delegates and their Israeli guests, in the midst of cheers over his re-affirmation of America’s unconditional loyalty to the state of Israel, he also quietly asked Israel to lower the war cries at least until after the November elections because of its effects on the price of gasoline on the American voter.

The high price of oil is damaging Obama’s chances for re-election.  The American electorate may not understand the real cost of Obama’s submission to Israel and may not be aware of Israel’s gas tax, but they are holding their putative President responsible for their pain at the pump!  There is only one thing that Obama cherishes more than Zionist support and that is the votes of an economically squeezed American electorate, who are turning against him in droves as the price of gasoline soars.

Conclusion

The week of March 4 to 11, 2012 will go down in history as a week of national humiliation; a time when legions of fanatical American Zionists took over Washington; when the entire Cabinet, led by President Obama, groveled before the officials of a foreign state – in the heart of Washington DC.  When the President and Prime Minister of Israel directed their foreign legionaires to march on the US Congress and shove their flimsy pretexts for  war with Iran into the faces of cringing legislators, the simplistic and idiotic message was: Bomb Iran because it may soon have … a nuclear ‘capacity’.  If asked what constitutes capacity, they quote their beloved leaders in Tel Aviv, including the semi-literate (former nightclub bouncer) Foreign Minister Avi Lieberman, the morally corrupt Bibi Netanyahu and the quietly diabolic Shimon Peres that Iranians can ‘enrich uranium’ – a capacity long held by 125 other countries.

It is with supreme arrogance that the followers of AIPAC and the 52 Presidents penetrate the US government in order to serve a foreign government.  None bother to hide their past, present or future affiliations with the state of Israel.  They are backed by prestigious Zionist academics, whose tendentious justifications for war have already sent tens of thousands of US soldiers to an early grave or to the wards of military and veteran hospitals and clinics across the country: They have sold us the argument that by serving the interests of the State of Israel we serve the United States.  From this, it only follows that to break the law and act as an unregistered agent for a foreign power, to transfer highly classified government documents to Mossad agents at the Israeli embassy and to threaten Americans who criticize or oppose Israel is a patriotic act[37].  Naval analyst Jonathan Pollard, the convicted US master-spy for Israel, is widely celebrated in Israel as an honorary Colonel in the IDF and a hero; the leaders of the major Zionist organizations are again pressuring Obama to release this traitor.

The documented performance of the leading Zionists in public office in the United States over the past two decades has been an unmitigated disaster. The self-proclaimed best and brightest have led the country into the worst economic and military catastrophes in a century.  It was Alan Greenspan, as head of the Federal Reserve, who de-regulated the financial sector and optimized conditions for the mega-swindles and speculative frenzy bringing down the entire financial system.  It was his replacement, Ben Bernacke, who pushed for trillions of US tax-payer dollars in bail-out funds to save his cronies on Wall Street and set them back on course, in the last 2 years, to repeat their speculative orgy – and allow such tribal compatriots as Stephen Schwartzman to reap $213 million in earnings in 2011.

It was Fred Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Libby, Abrams and Ross, as well as their less prominent lieutenants, who pushed the US into wars on Israel’s behalf in Afghanistan and Iraq, all the while confidently predicting ‘low cost, quick victories’ (even slam-dunks).  Never has such a cohort of Ivy League mediocrities collectively produced so many disastrous policies in such a brief historical time while never being held in any way, shape or form responsible or accountable for their performance.  It is obvious that these policy disasters did not result from faulty intellect or lack of an elite education.  Their apparent ignorance of historical, political, economic and military realities was a result of their blinding Zionist loyalties to the Israeli state whose real interests they embraced.  This lack of accountability guarantees that this process will continue until the US, as a republic, is destroyed for the masses of its misled citizens.

In order to justify a war against Israel’s regional adversaries, these blind mediocrities have distorted the realities of Arab nationalism.  It was with supreme tribal arrogance and racism that they assured themselves that Arabs could never sustain prolonged resistance to their imperial juggernaut.  They believed precisely what their tribal religion/ideology told them:  They were a chosen people (genetic studies aside).  They were the most financially successful investors or speculators.  They attended and taught at the most prestigious universities.  When, on occasion, a leading Zionist philanthropist, like Bernard Madoff, fell afoul—and actually went to jail– it was because, like his fellow tribalists,  Milken, Boesky and Pollard — he didn’t buy his one way ticket to Israel soon enough.

When a country, like the United States, is in decline, it is not because of external competition:  Declining competitiveness is only a symptom.  It is because of internal rot.  Decline results when a nation is betrayed by craven leaders, who crawl and humiliate themselves before a minority of thuggish mediocrities pledged to a foreign state without scruples or moral integrity.

Source: My Catbirdseat

******

James Petras latest book is The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattacks

(Atlanta:  Clarity Press 2011) 2nd edition.

It depends whether the miscreant enjoys “We will always have your back regardless”…. status

Franklin Lamb

Beirut

On March 6, 2012, the US Congressional Research Service released a report to the US Congress concerning Restrictions on the use of American weapons by recipient countries. For those who have followed the subject there was not a whole lot new in the CRS study, yet it is instructive in identifying Israel once again as far and away the most egregious violator of virtually every provision of every US law which purports to regulate how American weapons are used.

According to one CRS researcher, requesting anonymity during a Skype conversation and subsequent memo:

“An intern and I decided, almost for amusement, to count violations of US Arms Export Control laws by Israel between the date of ACEA enactment, 1976, through last month and we estimated more than 2.5 million violations if we applied the law given the legislative history and intent of Congress at the time of its passage. We based that figure on our estimation of each individual violation of the act as well as of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. It could be firing a US 155 mm artillery shell, various missiles, bombs, rockets and of course cluster munitions. For example, were Israel brought before a Court, the prosecutors would surely argue that each cluster booklet dropped on Lebanon in 2006 was a separate violation plus the two million estimated dropped during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and during the 1978, 1993 and 1996 invasions. Add to this figure Israel’s records of violating US Arms export laws in Gaza, the West Bank and Syria and the true number is surely several million violations. Essentially all committed with impunity.”

In accordance with U.S. law, the U.S. Government is mandated to enforce strict conditions on the use against civilians, of weapons it transfers to foreign recipients. Violations of these conditions can lead to the suspension of deliveries or termination of contracts for such defense items, and even the cutting off of all aid to the violating country.

Section 3(a) of the 1976 US Arms Export Control Act (AECA) sets the standards for countries to be eligible to receive American arms and it also sets express conditions on the uses to which these arms may be put. Section 4 of the AECA states that U.S. weapons shall be sold to friendly countries “solely” for use in “legitimate self-defense, for use in “internal security,” and to enable the recipient country to participate in “collective measures requested by the United Nations for the purpose of maintaining or restoring international peace and security.”

Should the President or Congress determine pursuant to section 3(c)(3)(A) of the Arms Export Control Act that a “substantial violation” by a foreign country of an applicable agreement governing an arms sale or grant has occurred, then that country is automatically ineligible for further U.S. military hardware. This action would also terminate provision of credits, loan guarantees, cash sales, and deliveries pursuant to previous sales or grants. Other options include suspension of deliveries of defense items already ordered and refusal to allow new arms orders.

The United States has only once used such an option against Israel.

Questions raised by researchers in Beirut during the summer of 1982 and by Washington Post journalist Jonathan Randal regarding the use of U.S.-supplied military equipment by Israel in Lebanon in June and July 1982, led the Reagan Administration to determine on July 15, 1982, that Israel “may” have violated its July 23, 1952, Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement with the United States (TIAS 2675) and the AECA.

The pertinent language of the 1952 agreement between Israel and the United States states: “The Government of Israel assures the United States Government that such equipment, materials, or services as may be acquired from the United States … are required for and will be used solely to maintain its internal security, its legitimate self-defense, or to permit it to participate in the defense of the area of which it is a part, or in United Nations collective security arrangements and measures, and that it will not undertake any act of aggression against any other state.”

Alarm centered on whether or not Israel had used U.S.-supplied antipersonnel cluster bombs against civilian targets during its carpet bombing West Beirut during the nearly three month siege.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee held hearings on this issue in July and August 1982. On July 19, 1982, the Reagan Administration announced that it would prohibit new exports of cluster bombs to Israel. This prohibition was lifted by the Reagan Administration in November 1988 under US Israel lobby pressure on the White House designed to assist the Presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush against Senator Walter Mondale.

The facts of this case which mainly centered on events in Lebanon are instructive. During the 1973 Ramadan war, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, watching Arab forces advance on Israel troops following the October 6 Egyptian and Syrian offensive, and being advised by the Israeli Defense Ministry of a pending disaster, threatened President Nixon with Israel using nuclear weapons unless the US rescued Israel. Nixon’s immediate response was to order a massive air lift to Israel of US arms stockpiled for use in Vietnam at Clark air force base near Subic Bay, Philippines. The base commander at Clark immediately resigned because being on the defensive in Vietnam, he advised Washington US troops needed those weapons. Included were eight types of US cluster bombs including the M-42, M-46,CBU-58 A/B, APAM (BLU) 77/B, MK 20 “Rockeye”, MK 118 and he M-43 “Birdie” as the U.S. Marines in Beirut referred to the M-43 it in late 1982 and 1983.

During a late June 1982 meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Begin, Reagan was handed a note from George Shultz. Based on the information he had in hand, Reagan directly told Begin that the US had reliable information than Israel was using American weapons against civilians in Lebanon. At this point according to Reagan, Begin became very agitated. He lowered his glasses and while glaring at Reagan and shaking his index finger said, “Mr. President, Israel has never and would never use American weapons against civilians and to claim otherwise is a blood libel against every Jew, everywhere.” Following their meeting Reagan told Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, as reported by Weinberger and by various biographers of Reagan that “I did not know what the term “blood libel” meant, but I know that the man looked me straight in the eyes and lied to me.”

The original Secretary of State George Schultz suggestion to Reagan of Israel using two types (the M-42 and the CBU-58) of American cluster bombs was soon changed to the charge that Israel in fact used all eight types of American cluster bombs Nixon had sent to Meir during October 1973.

Proof of the use of the eight types of US cluster bombs was delivered to an assembly of US Pentagon and other officials in late July 1982 at the Indian Head Ordnance facility on the Potomac River in Southern Maryland on instructions from the late American Journalist Janet Lee Stevens to this observer. Substantive and still preserved demonstrative and physical evidence, including photographs and US cluster bombs, some of which still were filled with the high explosive minol, that were carried in my suitcase, that had been gathered from around West Beirut by Janet and her research team that included Palestinian fighters delegated by Yassir Arafat and Khalil al Wazir (Abu Jihad) some Marabatoun fighters, as well several Amal milita as well as this observer to aid with the task.

The US / Israel lobby accurately considers American arms control laws as meaningless. The prohibitions against Israel’s use of American weapons against civilians have not, are not and in all likelihood will never be enforced against Israel given the regime’s continuing occupation of much of the US government.

The once cherished American value of building a nation based on humane laws and the American national security interest of achieving a foreign policy that deals on the basis of equality with other nations have been sacrificed so as to delay the inevitable collapse of the apartheid colonial enterprise implanted on Palestine.

The Obama “we’ve got your back regardless” genuflection endangers America as surely as it threatens with US weapons, every country in the Middle East and beyond that may even contemplate challenging Zionism’s regional hegemony.

It’s high time for true American patriots to take back their country and rejoin the community of nations on the basis of equality and mutual respect for all, entangling and corrupting alliances with none.

******

About the Author

Franklin Lamb, a former Assistant Counsel of the US House Judiciary Committee at the US Congress and Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil, and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Following three summers at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Lamb was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Center where he specialized in Chinese Law. He was the first westerner allowed by the government of China to visit the notorious “Ward Street” Prison in Shanghai. Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and works with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon and the Sabra-Shatila Foundation. His new book, The Case for Palestinian Civil Rights in Lebanon, is due out shortly.

by Paul Balles

The election of Barack Obama ushered in the use of political networking that hadn’t been seen before.

Amazingly, the message failed to register in the minds of the Republican candidates now vying for votes as nominees. Instead of recognizing the potential that the Obama campaign exploited, Republican contenders have been raising huge capital contributions to support traditional speaking engagements and TV ads.

Even more amazing has been the recognition by the youth in both the Arab spring and in the American Occupy campaigns to use the Obama network success.

If, as Marshall McLuhan believed, “The media is the message”, it becomes imperative to fully understand networking as media with a message, especially when it comes to politics in large numbers.

In a recent poll, Pew Internet & American Life Project found that only a quarter of social network users always or mostly agree with their friends’ political posts.

The majority, 73 percent, agrees with friends’ posts “only sometimes”. When they do differ in opinion, 66 percent usually ignore the offending post. Just over a quarter (28 percent) respond with their own posts, and 5 percent said they might respond depending on the circumstances.

One study of the Pew report made it clear that “Social media users unfriend those with contrary political opinions.” The message in that is the well worn social advice: if you want to keep your friends, don’t discuss politics.

According to Howard Kurtz, The Daily Beast and Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief, “when you’re living online, politics apparently gets in the way of friendship, just like when you’re hosting a dinner party.”

Ten percent of social network users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone because that person posted too frequently about political subjects, and nine percent have blocked someone because they posted something about politics or issues that they disagreed with or found offensive.

Kurz found that the large majority of people simply ignored posts they disagree with; and “38 percent say they were surprised to learn that the political leanings of others were different than they imagined.”

Another of Kurz’s interesting findings was that “16 percent have followed or friended someone because that person shared the user’s political views.”

The latest and most remarkable use of networking is the video by Invisible Children, the non-profit group that produced a hugely popular half-hour documentary about the notorious African warlord Joseph Kony.

The group’s “KONY 2012″ video had been viewed more than 75 million times on YouTube by late Monday (March 13).

Invisible Children says it wants to make Kony a household name and drum up global support to end the murders, rapes, abuses and abductions committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army in central Africa.

“KONY 2012″ skyrocketed to popularity on YouTube, propelled by thousands of posts on Twitter and Facebook, according to a CNN Wire.

Reported by Al Jazeera, “the charity is being criticised for its style of campaigning on the issue and the film has triggered a vigorous online debate about the film’s accuracy.”

An editorial in Haaretz noted that “It is the first call for concrete action against an injustice being perpetrated overseas that has gone viral, sent out to tens of millions of people by tens of millions of other people. It has stretched the boundaries of the public and political dialogue, which is usually restricted to events within each country’s borders.”

The editor warned that “Israel should take note of ‘Kony 2012.’ It would not be far-fetched to assume that a similar film will be made about the Palestinian conflict. And once the heartrending images of bleeding children are seared into the consciousness of tens of millions of people, it’s doubtful that even 46 pauses for applause in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to AIPAC will be able to erase the damage.”

Social networking accommodates a huge number of participants, with Facebook and twitter taking the lead. The interactive nature of the medium provides a platform for word of mouth advertising and promotion.

A social networking site is also a place where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to others. One writer called social networking “the logical extension of our human tendencies toward togetherness.”

If social networking can get a president elected, facilitate revolutions, help or hinder political dialog and arouse global support for millions of abused children, it’s a media with a spectacular message.

********

Throughout his life as an educator, Dr. Paul J. Balles, a retired American university professor and freelance writer, has lived and worked in the Middle East for 40 years – first as an English professor (Universities of Kuwait and Bahrain), and for the past ten years as a writer, editor and editorial consultant.
He’s a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the GULF DAILY NEWS . Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month. He writes a weekly op-ed column for Akbar Al Khaleej (Arabic). He has also edited seven websites, including bahrainthismonth.com, womenthismonth.com