October 01, 2008

Summarizing the foreign policy views of Barack Obama and of America's ruling class generally, I wrote the following in May of last year:

As is true with every candidate for national office, Obama regularly proclaims the seriousness and depth of his religious convictions. I had thought that one of the bedrock principles of such convictions was humility, and a recognition of the limits of human knowledge and what ought to be the limits of human action.

But there is nothing remotely humble about any of this at any point, just as there is nothing humble about the prevailing views of the foreign policy establishment. People who hold these beliefs have not one God, but two: a God in Heaven, and a God on Earth. Their God on Earth is America: it is all-powerful and should be so, it is all-knowing, its beneficence alone makes progress and civilization possible, for which mankind should be properly grateful -- and its wrath is terrible. They will construct the world in their own image, and nothing and no one will be permitted to oppose them.

The governing class, including the foreign policy establishment, have been convinced of the truth and rightness of this view for over 60 years. This view led us into Korea, into Vietnam, into Latin America, into the interventions of the 1990s, into Afghanistan, into numerous other interventions, and into Iraq. Hillary Clinton believes it, so does Obama, so does Bush. With only one or two exceptions, every national politician believes it.

America is God. God's Will be done.

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'Hundreds join' settler violence

Independent.co.uk

Peace campaigner attacked with a pipe bomb tells Donald Macintyre why right-wing extremism should be feared

Thursday, 2 October 2008

Zeev Sternhell is careful about his choice of words when he unhesitatingly calls the pipe bomb which exploded outside his front door last week "an act of Jewish terrorism."

As a Holocaust survivor orphaned by the age of seven and a combat veteran of Israel's wars, Professor Sternhell, 73, who was lucky to have only been injured in the leg by flying shrapnel from the bomb, is "horrified" not for himself but because it might have hit his wife, daughter his grandchildren on one of their sleepovers, or their neighbours. "It was a terror act because they couldn't know who would have been hit."

Given that, as he wryly puts it, he has no known enemies in the "criminal underworld", the reason for what police think was attempted murder isn't hard to find. As a veteran member of Peace Now, and vigorous opponent of the occupation since the late 1970s, the Hebrew University scholar, Israel Prize laureate and internationally-known authority on the roots of fascism apparently became the target of the highest-profile attack inside Israel by far right-wing Jewish extremists since Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995.

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by Jonathan Cook / September 30th, 2008

The words “Jewish” and “terrorist” are not easily uttered together by Israelis. But just occasionally, such as last week when one of the country’s leading intellectuals was injured by a pipe bomb placed at the front door of his home, they find themselves with little choice.

The target of the attack was 73-year-old Zeev Sternhell, a politics professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem specializing in European fascism and a prominent supporter of the left-wing group Peace Now.

Shortly after the explosion, police found pamphlets nearby offering 1.1 million shekels ($300,000) to anyone assassinating a Peace Now leader. The movement’s most visible activity has been tracking and criticizing the growth of the settlements in the West Bank.

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The New York Times

September 29, 2008
Doubt Arises in Account of an Attack in China
By EDWARD WONG

KASHGAR, China — Just days before the Olympic Games began in August, a truck plowed into a large group of paramilitary officers jogging in western China, sending bodies flying, Chinese officials said at the time.

They described the event as a terrorist attack carried out by two ethnic Uighur separatists aimed at disrupting the Olympics. After running over the officers, the men also attacked them with machetes and homemade explosives, officials said. At least 16 officers were killed, they said, in what appeared to be the deadliest assault in China since the 1990s.

Multimedia

A foreign tourist took photographs of an attack on paramilitary officers in Kashgar, China. One of the photographs showed uniformed men wielding machetes and attacking other uniformed men. Chinese officials, however, have said that two Uighur men used machetes in the attack.

Audio Slide Show

Witness Describes Kashgar Attack

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w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 16:14 26/09/2008

Leftist professor: Bomb shows settler violence spilling over Green Line

By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

Professor Zeev Sternhell on Friday said the bomb attack against him late Wednesday was a sign that settler violence was spilling over the Green Line into Israel proper.

He told Israel Radio that, "There are two populations in the territories and there are two systems of law, and if settlers are allowed to beat Palestinians, to uproot their orchards and demolish their houses ? why shouldn't this happen across the Green Line?"

The Green Line demarcates Israel's border with the West Bank as it lay before the 1967 Six Day War.

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Monday, September 22, 2008

WASHINGTON: Millions of voters in US states crucial to this fall's presidential election received DVD copies of a controversial documentary film as advertising inserts in their morning newspapers last week, with more sent out over the weekend.

The 2006 film, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," which has been accused by critics of encouraging Islamophobia, was reportedly delivered, or slated for delivery this weekend, into tens of millions of households in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri and other "swing states" that don't vote consistently for either party and usually decide elections.

Republicans and their candidate, Senator John McCain, have made battling the threat posed by radical Islamists a central platform of their campaign, while presenting their Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, as being weak on the issue. Obama has also fought off persistent smear campaigns, particularly aimed at Jewish voters, that he is a "closet Muslim."

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September 19, 2008 HBO Real Time with Bill Maher

Homeland Security, Sesame Style

By Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin

POSTED September 18, 2008 | 7:30 AM

(Above: Rosita and Meryl Chertoff)

Big Brother and Big Bird
 
When it comes to securing the homeland, who better to help you sleep at night than various characters from the popular children’s show, “Sesame Street" ... ?!?
 
Seriously.
 
In a move that will make Bush administration detractors bring back those duct tape jokes again, the Department of Homeland Security has partnered up with the famous children’s show.
 
“We all want our children to feel safe in this world,” said Meryl Chertoff, wife of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, at a ceremony held at the John Tyler Elementary School to announce the partnership. "And who better to do that than our Sesame Street friends, Grover and Rosita!”

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Whose culture of hatred?
Ayman El-Amir

"Why do they hate us" was the most perplexing question that gripped Americans in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks seven years ago. The groping for answers did not take long as the Halliburton- Bush administration produced its own hasty response. It launched a carpet-bombing campaign of Afghanistan from end to end, ousted the backward rule of the Taliban, chased Al-Qaeda's leaders and operatives and adopted in September 2002 the Bush doctrine of hot pursuit and pre-emptive strikes against suspected terrorist targets. Billions of US dollars and tens of thousands of brains and hardware were poured into the global war on terror. It forestalled some plots but failed to prevent others in London, Madrid and North Africa.

The Halliburton-instigated invasion of Iraq then shifted the focus and relegated the "Why do they hate us" question to the background of the short American memory. One of the versions concocted by the Halliburton-Bush administration to sell the Iraqi war was to fight the terrorist coalition of Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. All evidence belied the notion of any possible connection. Instead of serving as the landmark in stamping out terrorism, Iraq itself became a hotbed of terrorism. It turned into a jihadist's dream of crushing "the infidels", a freedom fighter's dream of evicting the conquerors, and a multifarious sectarian dream of settling old scores. The relative drop in attacks and number of casualties the US command structure is now flaunting to justify the reduction of occupation forces is misleading: divided Iraq is not turning into a peaceful country and will not be so for a long time to come.

The US-led global war on terror is faring even worse in Afghanistan where NATO troops are fighting desperate battles against a resurgent Taliban. The lessons of past British occupation and Soviet conquest remain unlearned. And NATO generals are experiencing self-doubts that the war against terror in Afghanistan can ever be won. A US analyst once compared trying to crush Al-Qaeda to smashing a ball of mercury with a sledgehammer. All that happens is that it breaks up into a myriad of smaller balls each having the same chemical elements of the original ball. After seven years of Bush's global war, terrorism has mushroomed, the world is not a safer place to live in and the agonising question of "Why do they hate us" still persists. The UN's experience in tackling the problem may be relevant here.

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RAMI G. KHOURI
Published: September 12, 2008

Washington is most comfortable supporting Arab dictators and life-long presidents. Rice was meeting and dealing with the heads of state of Tunisia, Libya and Algeria, three of the most authoritarian figures in the world.


BEIRUT -- In this week marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attack on the United States, three noteworthy events related to the U.S. and the Middle East caught my eye: Al-Qaida's number two man Ayman Zawahiri released a new videotape; Republican Party vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin started her foreign policy education by meeting with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an extremist organization that puts Israeli interests above American interests; and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meeting and dealing with the heads of state of Tunisia, Libya and Algeria, three of the most authoritarian figures in the world, not just in the Middle East.

Why is this worldwide web of extremism noteworthy? It helps clarify that the terrorism scourge persists because its root causes continue to thrive. Those causes are multiple, complex and ever changing, and relate primarily to events in four orbits: the Arab-Asian region, Europe, Israel, and American foreign policy.

It is impossible in analytical or historical terms to separate the four main strands of sentiment and policy that have given birth to the contemporary Salafist terrorist movements we all suffer today: dictatorial or merely corrupt and incompetent Arab and Asian governments; violent and colonial Israeli policies; hypocritical and Israeli-influenced American policies that often manifest themselves in warfare; and, the consequent, more recent phenomenon of demeaned and disoriented young Arab-Asian immigrants in Europe, often second and third generation immigrants.

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Eyewitnesses: settlers went from house to house shooting indiscriminately

Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

Israeli occupation troops and paramilitary Jewish settlers on Saturday rampaged through several Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, killing at least one Palestinian civilian and injuring several others, including three people suffering critical gunshot wounds.

The most serious incident took place at the village of Asira al Qibliyeh, south of Nablus, when heavily armed Jewish settler terrorists rampaged through the village, shooting indiscriminately on Palestinians and vandalizing their homes and property.

According to the head of the local village council, dozens of armed settlers took part in the rampage which lasted for several hours.

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Friday, September 12, 2008, 14:30

FOR all the natural serenity of this beautiful place, it is dangerous.

At the top of the hill behind us, there is a large shed. A man runs a chicken farm here, on land illegally confiscated from the locals.

A pair of enormously powerful spotlights on the far hill are switched on at dusk to shine through villagers' windows as they lie in bed.

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Are the fire hydrants in your neighborhood turned on?

11:56 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 27, 2008

By CHRIS HAWES / WFAA-TV

ROCKWALL COUNTY - A North Texas homeowner wants you to learn from his family's tragedy.

The fire hydrants in his neighborhood are turned off.

But he didn't know that until June 24th, the night his house caught fire.

"My grandfather died last year. My wife's grandfather died last year. All our pictures were the biggest thing that we lost," said Eric Aderholt.

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09/10/08

Remembering 9-11, Al Zain’s Palestine Post 9-11 debunks Israeli myths of Palestinian 'terror'
Dr. Marwan Asmar

As the world remembers the anniversary of 11 September, Osama Al Zain’s feature documentary Palestine Post 9/11 becomes ever more relevant in providing an analysis of the international system where war became an instrument of politics and priorities and alliances reordered to fight terrorist threats that may have been blown out of all proportions.

Al Zain’s documentary is a full-length feature examining the attack on New York and Washington from a Palestinian perspective, suggesting 9/11 has been a disaster for the Palestinians, and which Israel exploited to provide a false linkage between Palestinian ambitions for statehood and Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. In so doing it has fed into the growth of Christian fundamentalism in the USA and Christian Zionism in the Bush administration and built a rock hard alliance with Israel under the banner of fighting global terrorism.

After 9/11 new factions developed in the “US government and the intellectual contours of American life” to make sure “no even-handed policy [towards the Palestinians] ever occurs,” and the Israeli view remains supreme by hijacking American foreign policy through its totally biased media.

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Related
Abu Nidal – Mossad terrorist: Israeli penetration of Palestinian organizations was common, but it was clearly not the whole story. Most intelligence sources I consulted agreed that it was standard practice to use penetration agents not simply to neutralize or destroy the enemy but to try to manipulate him so that he did one's bidding without always being aware of doing Whatever jobs [Abu Nidal] might have done for Arab sponsors, and they had been numerous and nasty, he had done many other jobs from which Israel alone appeared to benefit." Abu Nidal - Did he mastermind 9/11 ?

Second 9/11 Hijacker Tied to Abu Nidal, Iraq

Explosives Used by Terrorists in London and Tel Aviv Identical: Were both incidents "False flags"? Was Achilli Lauro a "false flag" attack? Was Munich? Are all these terror incidents blamed on Arabs, like the Lavon Affair, faked to turn world opinion against the Palestinians for Israel's political benefit? In his book, "Abu Nidal: A Gun For HIre" author Patrick Seale makes a strong case that Abu Nidal, the supposed mastermind of both Achilli Lauro and Munuch, was in fact an agent of the Mossad.

Was Abu Nidal Forgery Aimed at Refuting Joe Wilson?


w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 14:26 12/09/2008
Austrian Jews irate as court unfreezes $10m account of number 1 terrorist of the 80s
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent

Austria's justice ministry, security services and Jewish community are furious over a Vienna Court decision to unfreeze a bank account of the Palestinian Abu Nidal terrorist group.

At the end of the 1990s the Austria Bank froze the $10 million account of Iraqi citizen Halima al-Mughrabi, on the order of Austria's intelligence services, as part of the international campaign to intensify the sanctions on Saddam Hussein's regime.

On January 13, 2000, al-Mughrabi went to her bank branch in Vienna and asked to transfer some $2 million from her account to her account in the Arab Bank in Jordan. The bank clerks held her up and called the police. She was charged with being active in the Abu Nidal organization (ANO) and managing its bank account. She was also said to be the wife of ANO's treasurer.

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This is what happens when a crime is redefined as war

The proper investigation of terrorist conspiracy has been wrecked by cynical politics. Meddling has again made us less safe

* Simon Jenkins
*
o Simon Jenkins
o The Guardian,
o Wednesday September 10 2008

The sun never sets on the war on terror, even as it degenerates into blood and recrimination. The Woolwich trial of eight members of a supposed 13-member gang all but collapsed on Monday. Despite evidence of intent to blow up an airliner, the jury convicted three defendants of conspiracy to commit murder but failed to reach a verdict on the central allegation.

It has been an open secret in police circles that Operation Overt, the most complex in counter-terror history, was sabotaged by the American vice president, Dick Cheney, desperate for a headline boost to the Republicans' 2006 mid-term elections. British intelligence was following trails and acquiring evidence against 20 suspects. They needed American surveillance help in Pakistan and shared their information, foolishly it now appears, with Washington.

The backstory is told in Ron Suskind's new book, The Way of the World. Tony Blair, bursting with news of the operation, discussed it in July 2006 with George Bush, who was impatient for action. The argument, says Suskind, was a classic between American gung ho and British patience.

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Added: September 10, 2008

The GWOT is the ideological backbone of the American Empire. It defines US military doctrine, including the preemptive use of nuclear weapons..."

9/11 and the "American Inquisition"

By Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, September 11, 2008

Today's "Global War on Terrorism" is a modern form of inquisition. It has all the essential ingredients of the French and Spanish inquisitions.

Going after " Islamic terrorists", carrying out a Worldwide preemptive war to " protect the Homeland" are used to justify a military agenda.

"The Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT) is presented as a "Clash of Civilizations", a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.

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Secrets and Lies: The Persecution of Muhammad Salah (Part I)

Michael E. Deutsch and Erica Thompson

Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol 37, no. 1 (Summer 2008), p. 38
Special Feature

Authors’ Note:

As Muhammad Salah’s lawyers, we felt compelled to write this article because the true story of the Salah case has never been told. Instead, many books and articles have repeated and spun mistruths about it built upon a foundation of lies and a confession extracted under Shin Bet torture. It is not without trepidation that we exercise our First Amendment right to present these facts to the public, however. Given the history of this case, not to mention the U.S. government’s relentless persecution of Sami al-Arian, Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, and the officers of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in the United States, it seems clear that the government will try again and again to punish those it sees as enemies of Israel. This demonstrated abuse of power by the government has created a profoundly “chilling effect” on the right of Palestinians living in this country to support the struggle against the illegal occupation of their homeland. Even the publication of this article could put Muhammad Salah and his family at risk of government retaliation.

THE 2007 ACQUITTAL of Muhammad Salah on terrorism conspiracy charges in United States federal court was a victory for opponents of torture, government secrecy, and the U.S. government’s uncritical and unconditional support for Israel. The verdict vindicated a Palestinian-American labeled a terrorist and persecuted by Israel, the United States, and the U.S.-based pro-Israel lobby for well over a decade.

The story of Muhammad Salah chronicles the U.S. decision to criminalize the Palestinian resistance movement and, ultimately, to team up with Israel in a joint “war on terror.” U.S. criminal statutes were “weaponized” to achieve Bush administration objectives; racketeering lawswere deployed to criminalize acts of resistance to the Israeli occupation by characterizing them as murder, kidnapping, and money laundering; the government used a multimillion dollar civil tort case brought by pro-Israel lawyers against Salah and several Muslim charities as the blueprint for its later criminal prosecution; and finally, the government fanned the flames of fear by charging Salah with material support for terrorism based on the false allegations of a known FBI “disinformant.” None of these objectives could have been achieved, however, if the U.S. Constitution had been respected. As this article will show, bedrock constitutional rights to free speech, due process, and public trial—as well as prohibitions against summary arrest, coerced confessions, and secret evidence—were cast aside in pursuit of the administration’s goals. The result was what amounted to a military court sitting in the city of Chicago.

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