Ha'aretz says U.S. officials face 'pro-Israel' background check

by Stephen M. Walt for Foreign Policy

There is an amazing story in Ha'aretz today on the "pro-Israel" litmus test that determines who is permitted to serve in the United States government. Here's the sort of lede you're not likely to read in the New York Times or Washington Post:

Every appointee to the American government must endure a thorough background check by the American Jewish community.

In the case of Obama's government in particular, every criticism against Israel made by a potential government appointee has become a catalyst for debate about whether appointing "another leftist" offers proof that Obama does not truly support Israel."

The story goes on to rehearse what happened to Chas Freeman (whose appointment was derailed by the Israel lobby because he voiced a few mild criticisms of Israel's behavior) and reports that similar complaints are now being raised against the appointment of former Senator Chuck Hagel. Even more bizarrely, the Zionist Organization of America and other rightwing Jewish groups are complaining about the appointment of Hannah Rosenthal to direct the Office to Combat and Monitor Anti-Semitism. Why? Apparently she's been involved with J Street and other "leftwing" organizations that ZOA et al deem insufficiently ardent in their support for the Jewish state, and has suggested that progressive forces need to be more vocal in advancing the peace process.

One has to feel a certain sympathy for Ms. Rosenthal, who is forced to defend her own appointment by telling an interviewer:

I love Israel. I have lived in Israel. I go back and visit every chance I can. I consider it part of my heart. And because I love it so much, I want to see it safe and secure and free and democratic and living safely."

These are fine sentiments, but isn't it odd that she has to defend her qualifications for a position in the U.S. government by saying how much she "loves" a foreign country? For an American official in her position, what matters is that she loves America, and that she believes anti-semitism is a hateful philosophy that should be opposed vigorously. Whether she loves Israel or France or Thailand or Namibia, etc., is irrelevant. (And yes, it's entirely possible to loathe anti-Semitism and not love Israel).

But the real lesson of all these episodes is the effect of this litmus test on the foreign policy community more broadly. Groups in the lobby target public servants like Freeman, Hagel, and Rosenthal because they want to make sure that no one with even a mildly independent view on Middle East affairs gets appointed. By making an example of them, they seek to discourage independent-minded people from expressing their views openly, lest doing so derail their own career prospects later on. And it works. Even if the lobby doesn't manage to block every single appointment, they can make any administration think twice about a potentially "controversial" choice and use the threat to stifle open discourse among virtually all members of the mainstream foreign policy community (and certainly anyone who aspires to public service in Washington).

The result, of course, is the U.S. Middle East policy (and U.S. foreign policy more generally) is reserved for those who are either steadfastly devoted to the "special relationship" or who have been intimidated into silence. The result? U.S. policy remains in the hands of the same set of "experts" whose policies for the past seventeen years (or more) have been a steady recipe for failure. If a few more Americans read Ha'aretz, they might start to figure this out.

US Generals Flood Israel for Exercise against ‘Specific Threats'

By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu for IsraelNN via Information Clearing House

An unprecedented number of American generals, along with 1,400 U.S. army soldiers, are participating with top IDF brass in the high-level Juniper Cobra military exercise that one U.S. Navy commander said is aimed at “specific threats.” Public affairs officials interrupted the naval commander in order to divert the conversation from the scenario of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and defending itself from a counter-attack.

One senior IDF source told BBC magazine, “I've never seen so many American generals.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, along with the commander of the U.S. force in Europe and U.S. ambassador to Israel James Cunningham attended the three-week exercise on Tuesday. It is one of the largest-ever joint training drills and is fueling speculation that the United States is preparing for the worst while hoping for the best concerning Iran’s nuclear program.

Former IDF General Yitzchak Ben-Israel told BBC, “[On] one thing we are serious: We will not let Iran have a nuclear bomb." He said that the joint drill, which is held annually, "is not a bluff’ but is aimed at pressuring Iran to back down from its refusal to cooperate with international authorities on its program to enrich uranium, a key element for a nuclear weapon."

"But if Iran will not be pressed, if Iran continues to insist that it has the right to go and enrich uranium as much as it wants, then someone will have to use force.” he added.

“Overall, the goal is to ensure peace in the region, and maybe even farther from this region,” said Prime Minister Netanyahu. “I think the IDF and the U.S. Armed Forces are creating a new path, and the goal is to defend Israel. This exercise, unique and large in scale, is an expression of the meaningful relations between Israel and the United States"

The exercise included a live-fire component and a multi-layered active defense system.

As the joint drill was taking place, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the U.S. Congress, "Whoever threatens Israel also threatens us."

UN vote shows weakening of USraelian Empire

The United Nations General Assembly voted yesterday overwhelmingly in favour of endorsing the Goldstone Report. In total, 114 states voted to adopt the report and 18 objected. It is interesting to look at the list of countries who actually voted against it. We can split them into the following groups:

A) Core members of the USraelian Empire:

Israel, the United States, Canada

B) Core members of NATO and the Echelon alliance:

Australia, Germany, Italy, Netherlands (France and the UK are missing!)

C) Core members of the NATO colonies in the "New Europe":

Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Macedonia, the Ukraine

D) The usual "South Pacific powerhouses":

Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau

E) Panama (uh?!)

All in all, this is pretty embarrassing for the USraelians: they could not even get all NATO or Echelon countries to oppose this resolution. After all, the 44 countries which abstain did not have the courage to face their own public opinion's outrage at such a stance.

Considering the desperate efforts of the US Congress and the Obama Administration to oppose this resolution by all means, this outcome is yet another proof of the fact that the Israelian Empire is far weaker today than it used to be.

Why are they walking out?

Predictably, a group of pro-Zionist countries has staged a walkout yesterday at the UN during Iranian President Ahmadinejad's speech. Here are the words which triggered this walkout:

How can one imagine that the inhuman policies in Palestine may continue; to force the entire population of a country out of their homeland for more than 60 years by resorting to force and coercion; to attack them with all types of arms and even prohibited weapons; to deny them of their legitimate right of self-defense, while much to the chagrin of the international community calling the occupiers as the peacelovers, and portraying the victims as terrorists. How can the crimes of the occupiers against defenseless women and children and destruction of their homes, farms, hospitals and schools be supported unconditionally by certain governments, and at the same time, the oppressed men and women be subject to genocide and heaviest economic blockade being denied of their basic needs, food, water and medicine. They are not even allowed to rebuild their homes which were destroyed during the 22-day barbaric attacks by the Zionist regime while the winter is approaching. Whereas the aggressors and their supporters deceitfully continue their rhetoric in defense of human rights in order to put others under pressure. It is no longer acceptable that a small minority would dominate the politics, economy and culture of major parts of the world by its complicated networks, and establish a new form of slavery, and harm the reputation of other nations, even European nations and the U.S., to attain its racist ambitions.

I have marked in read above the parts which are, according the the speaker, fact. In blue, I have singled out the speaker's comments. Now let's ask ourselves which part are the "offending" ones? Are the "Ziophiles" (is that how supporters of Zionism should be called?) disputing the fact or not? Clearly, if they accept that these facts are not disputable, and they are not, then how can they possibly reject the characterizations of these facts by Ahmadinejad?!

Here are the delegations which, as far as I could find out, walkout out: Argentina, Australia, Britain, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand and the United States (Canada followed Israel's instructions and never even showed up).

The usual list of countries unconditionally supporting Israel typically includes the "Echelon countries" Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and what Norman Finkelstein calls the "Pacific powerhouses": the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Tuvalu and Palau (did they walk out too?). Add to this turbo-Zionist and Zarkozy-run France and Berlusconi-run Italy (both Echelon-wannabes for sure). Argentina has always been something of an Israeli colony anyways, Costa Rica still is an American colony, Germany has to "out-Zionize" everybody else because of "guilt" and Hungary still hopes to get some missiles.

It is reassuring that out of the 192 nations forming the United Nations only a small number of spineless delegations decided to participate in the latest buffoonery and it is outright pitiful and laughable that the Israelis are back-slapping each other on such as "success".

The most ironic thing in this issue is, of course, that the Ziophiles vilify Ahmadinejad for allegedly denying a genocide which occurred 60 years ago while they themselves walk out of a room as soon as a speaker mentions the indisputable genocide* which is currently taking place in Palestine!

If what we saw yesterday is the extent of the "muscle" of the USraelian Empire then we can say with some confidence that its days are numbered.

The Saker

*definition of "genocide": "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group" (Merriam Webster online); does anybody seriously deny that this is exactly what is taking place in Palestine?!

Obama's predictable surprise

The big news this morning is that it appears that the Obama administration has scrapped the plans for the deployment of a ABM system in Europe. Finally. This is somewhat of a surprise, although the Russians were heavily hinting that this might happen already a week ago, but this is also something we should have expected.

The first thing to keep in mind here is that this anti-ballistic system made no sense whatsoever. None. First, the argument that this system was designed to protect Europe from Iranian missiles is a quasi-official joke. Not only does Iran not have any missiles of that range, but Iran has no motive to attack Europe. Even if the Iranians had such missiles, as they might sometime in the future, it is simply unthinkable to imagine a scenario in which the Iranians would start shooting missiles at Europe as in any future conflict the Iranians would have their hands full in the Middle-East. Oh, and Iran *already* has very good ballistic missiles capable of reaching any country or city in the Middle-East.

Second, the Russians did come up with a very effective military response to the planned US deployment. By a combination of short and long range missiles, including the powerful Iskander-M theatre ballistic missile, the Russians could simply eliminate this system in less than 30min. Alternatively, they could engage GRU Spetsnaz forces who, we should remember, were created during the Cold War precisely with the task of destroying NATO missile systems in Europe.

So why were the Russians so angry about this plan if it represented no military threat for Russia? Because it represented a very real political threat, an arrogant provocation of truly continental proportions. Nevermind that this missile system was militarily useless, it gave the East Europeans, in particular the Poles, a (false) sense of "being an important part of NATO" and it encouraged the Europeans to thumb their noses at Russia. Furthermore, by re-igniting an arms race in Europe it created exactly the kind of tensions which the US Empire always fosters to then justify various "defensive responses" for the "sake of stability".

Needless to say, this kind of hubris is typical of the kind of sick Russophobic obsession which is the trademark of the Bush Neocons. The Obama Neocons - yes, they are also Neocons - clearly came to realize that this grand pissing contest with Russia was not something the USA could afford at this moment in time.

The American about face on this issue leaves the snivelling Poles (alongside a good chunk of the Czech political elites) looking really stupid. They put so much hopes (and in the case of the Czechs, so much political capital) into this grand scheme, that they now look like the irrelevant idiots that they are. Of course the Obama administration took this decision without consulting its East European puppets. While the Poles and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the Czechs are useful for the US Empire to do such things as being members of various "coalitions of the willing" - as a figleaf for US imperialism - they really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Besides, what are they going to do about it anyway? It's not like they can cuddle up to the Russians, or anyone else for that matter.

At the end of the Cold War, Eastern European countries missed a truly historical opportunity to become sovereign, independent countries. Instead, they sheepishly ran away from their former masters straight into the hands of a new, equally cynical, masters (I would even argue that the GDR was getting more respect from the old USSR than what Poland gets from the USA today). Now they have to pay the price of their own lack of dignity. I can't say that I feel sorry for them.

The thing which worries me now are the rumors that some kind of deal was made between Russia and the USA over Iran. I think that some caution needs to be used here.

Some observers noted that Russia had allowed US supplies to transit through Russia on the way to Afghanistan and they concluded that Russia had "caved in" to US pressure. I disagree. Russia has a fundamental interest in not allowing a complete military defeat of the USA in Afghanistan. Why? Because as long as the US and the Taliban are fighting each other, the Talibans and the rest of the Wahabi/Deobandi crazies are not busy trying to export their model to Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan and the rest of the region. The Russians - and the Iranians for that matter - understand Afghanistan very well, and they fully realize that nothing could be worse for them than a return to power of the Pashtun crazies. The decision to allow US/NATO to resupply through Russia was, I strongly believe, the correct one. However, to help the Empire in Afghanistan and to help it in Iran are dramatically different propositions.

With regards to Iran, Russia has a fundamental interest in *not* allowing the US Empire to prevail. For all their differences, Russia and Iran are objective allies, key allies I would even say. Furthermore, there is no doubt in my mind that the Russians fully know and understand that the Iranians are not hiding some secret nuclear program right under the nose of IAEA inspectors - that kind of nonsense is only good for propaganda purposes. The real issue in Iran is that the Islamic Revolution is clearly succeeding in turning Iran into a modern, technologically sophisticated, and politically independent country and *that* is the real threat to the USA and Isarel. The USraelians simply cannot accept that a nation which stood in defiance for their diktats for now three decades would succeeded and prosper. So the real purpose of this entire hysteria over Iran is to put enough pressure on Iran to force it to drop on its knees and accept a massive surrender of its national sovereignty. If the USraelian Empire achieves this goal it will be able to send its Borg-like message to the rest of the world: " resistance is futile - you shall be assimilated". And that is precisely what Russia - and the rest of the SCO countries - cannot afford to let happen. You can either have a Borg-like dominion or a multi-polar world, but you cannot have it both ways.

Do the Russians understand that? Oh yes, I am quite sure they do. However, understanding is one thing, but acting on this understanding is quite another.

The folks ruling Russia today and not idealists by any means and they are quite capable of back-stabbing Iran, or anyone else for that matter, if that brings them some kind of advantage. Not only that, but there is also a real danger that the Russians will allow the USraelians to bring on more pressure on Iran just in order to force Iran into becoming a more compliant ally. I think that this would be a grievous mistake, but I would not put it past Medvedev and his team.

My hope is, of course, that Russia will make no concessions on the Iran matter at all. Or if there is some kind of quid pro quo in this business, then at least it is not a major one. For example, the Russians could decided to shelve/delay the much announced plans to sell the S-300PMU missiles to Iran. That would be rather annoying to Iran, and that would make the USA and Israel very happy. But that would not, I believe, fundamentally alter the equation of a USraelien strike on Iran. Yes, S-300PMU missiles are awesome, but only as part of a modern and integrated air-defense system (which Iran currently lacks). Besides, the best strategy for Iran is not to shoot down Israeli or US planes, but not to present a lucrative set of targets to the enemy. Hezbollah utterly defeated the Israeli Air Force in 2006 without firing a single air-defense missile during the entire war!

All in all, I am cautiously (and uncharacteristically) optimistic in this case. I don't believe that the Russians bargained away anything significant. We will know pretty soon as all sorts of negotiations are scheduled for the month of October, both at the UN and bilaterally between the USA and Iran.

The main problem is, of course, that Israel is run by a clique of total crazies and that the Israeli public opinion is solidly behind them. I still fully expect an Israeli attack on Iran, and I expect the AIPAC-controlled White House, Congress and US corporate media, to fully support Israel. In fact, the Israel Lobby probably sees the various negotiations in October as a pious excuse ("see - we did try to talk to them and resolve our differences peacefully, but the Mullahs would not listen") before striking out at Iran. But if the decision of attacking Iran has already been made, as I believe that it has, then there is nothing Russia could do to really prevent it in the first place. The one thing Russia will *never* do is allow for a UNSC Resolution authorizing the use of force under Chapter 7 against Iran. Neither will China, for that matter. And since that is just about the only thing which the USraelians would really need from Russia - what could Medvedev have bargained away anyway other than some "good will" on the issue of Afghanistan?

And let's not forget one very important thing here: Iran also offered a "grand bargain" to the USA which reportedly even included some major concession on the Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon. And Iran is - objectively - shall we say "working not against" the USA in Iraq, at least on a tactical level (strategically, I think that Iran is brilliantly outmaneuvering the USA in Iraq, using it to keep down the Baathists and the Sunni crazies, and securing the grip of the Shia majority on power, before giving Uncle Sam the boot). So it's not like the Russian stance is much different from the Iranian one: both governments are willing to talk and, yes, to negotiate with the USraelian Empire. Talking and negotiating, by the way, does absolutely *not* mean surrendering. All this really proves is that pragmatic politics is the subtle art of the possible and that grandstanding is not the best way to achieve anything.

I believe that the US decision to scrap the plans for a missile defense in Europe is not as much a reflection of some concessions made by the Russians as it a reflection of the reality on the ground: the USraelians simply don't have the means to constantly confront every country out there, much less so a powerful one like Russia. That the White House has finally understood this just shows that the Obama Neocons are somewhat more pragmatic and less ideological than the Dubya Neocons.

The Saker

Nader Was Right: Liberals Are Going Nowhere With Obama

By Chris Hedges for Truthdig

The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. They were had. It is not a new story. The Democrats have been doing this to us since Bill Clinton. It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble. Our last hope is to step outside of the two-party system and build movements that defy the Democrats and the Republicans. If we fail to do this, we will continue to undergo a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion that will end in feudalism.

We owe Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party an apology. They were right. If a few million of us had had the temerity to stand behind our ideals rather than our illusions and the empty slogans peddled by the Obama campaign, we would have a platform. We forgot that social reform never comes from accommodating the power structure but from frightening it. The Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists who battled for women’s rights, the labor movement, and the civil rights movement knew that the question was not how do we get good people to rule—those attracted to power tend to be venal mediocrities—but how do we limit the damage the powerful do to us. These mass movements were the engines for social reform, the correctives to our democracy and the true protectors of the rights of citizens. We have surrendered this power. It is vital to reclaim it. Where is the foreclosure movement? Where is the robust universal health care or anti-war movement? Where is the militant movement for sustainable energy?

“Something is broken,” Nader said when I reached him at his family home in Connecticut. “We are not at the Bangladesh level in terms of passivity, but we are getting there. No one sees anything changing. There is no new political party to give people a choice. The progressive forces have no hammer. When they abandoned our campaign, they told the Democrats we have nowhere to go and will take whatever you give us. The Democrats are under no heat in the electoral arena from the left.

“There comes a point when the public imbibes the ultimatum of the plutocracy,” Nader said when asked about public apathy. “They have bought into the belief that if it protests, it will be brutalized by the police. If they have Muslim names, they will be subjected to Patriot Act treatment. This has scared the hell out of the underclass. They will be called terrorists.

“This is the third television generation,” Nader said. “They have grown up watching screens. They have not gone to rallies. Those are history now. They hear their parents and grandparents talk about marches and rallies. They have little toys and gizmos that they hold in their hands. They have no idea of any public protest or activity. It is a tapestry of passivity.

“They have been broken,” Nader said of the working class. “How many times have their employers threatened them with going abroad? How many times have they threatened the workers with outsourcing? The polls on job insecurity are record-high by those who have employment. And the liberal intelligentsia have failed them. They [the intellectuals] have bought into carping and making lecture fees as the senior fellow at the institute of so-and-so. Look at the top 50 intelligentsia—not one of them supported our campaign, not one of them has urged for street action and marches.”

Our task is to build movements that can act as a counterweight to the corporate rape of America. We must opt out of the mainstream. We must articulate and stand behind a viable and uncompromising socialism, one that is firmly and unequivocally on the side of working men and women. We must give up the self-delusion that we can influence the power elite from the inside. We must become as militant as those who are seeking our enslavement. If we remain passive as we undergo the largest transference of wealth upward in American history, our open society will die. The working class is being plunged into desperation that will soon rival the misery endured by the working class in China and India. And the Democratic Party, including Obama, is a willing accomplice.

“Obama is squandering his positive response around the world,” Nader said. “In terms of foreign and military policy, it is a distinct continuity with Bush. Iraq, Afghanistan, the militarization of foreign policy, the continued expansion of the Pentagon budget and pursuing more globalized trade agreements are the same.”

This is an assessment that neoconservatives now gleefully share. Eliot A. Cohen, writing in The Wall Street Journal, made the same pronouncement.

“Mostly, though, the underlying structure of the policy remains the same,” Cohen wrote in an Aug. 2 opinion piece titled “What’s Different About the Obama Foreign Policy.” “Nor should this surprise us: The United States has interests dictated by its physical location, its economy, its alliances, and above all, its values. Naive realists, a large tribe, fail to understand that ideals will inevitably guide American foreign policy, even if they do not always determine it. Moreover, because the Obama foreign and defense policy senior team consists of centrist experts from the Democratic Party, it is unlikely to make radically different judgments about the world, and about American interests in it, than its predecessors.”

Nader said that Obama should gradually steer the country away from imperial and corporate tyranny.

“You don’t just put out policy statements of congeniality, but statements of gradual redirection,” Nader said. “You incorporate in that statement not just demilitarization, not just ascension of smart diplomacy, but the enlargement of the U.S. as a humanitarian superpower, and cut out these Soviet-era weapons systems and start rapid response for disaster like earthquakes and tsunamis. You expand infectious disease programs, which the U.N. Developmental Commission says can be done for $50 billion a year in Third World countries on nutrition, minimal health care and minimal shelter.”

Obama has expanded the assistance to our class of Wall Street extortionists through subsidies, loan guarantees and backup declarations to banks such as Citigroup. His stimulus package does not address the crisis in our public works infrastructure; instead it doles out funds to Medicaid and unemployment compensation. There will be no huge public works program to remodel the country. The president refuses to acknowledge the obvious—we can no longer afford our empire.

“Obama could raise a call to come home, America, from the military budget abroad,” Nader suggested. “He could create a new constituency that does not exist because everything is so fragmented, scattered, haphazard and slapdash with the stimulus. He could get the local labor unions, the local Chambers of Commerce and the mayors to say the more we cut the military budget, the more you get in terms of public works.”

“They [administration leaders] don’t see the distinction between public power and corporate power,” Nader said. “This is their time in history to reassert public values represented by workers, consumers, taxpayers and communities. They are creating a jobless recovery, the worst of the worst, with the clear specter of inflation on the horizon. We are heading for deep water.”

The massive borrowing acts as an anesthetic. It prevents us from facing the new limitations we must learn to cope with domestically and abroad. It allows us to live in the illusion that we are not in a state of irrevocable crisis, that our decline is not real and that catastrophe has been averted. But running up the national debt can work only so long.

“No one can predict the future,” Nader added hopefully. “No one knows the variables. No one predicted the move on tobacco. No one predicted gay rights. No one predicted the Berkeley student rebellion. The students were supine. You never know what will light the fire. You have to keep the pressure on. I know only one thing for sure: The whole liberal-progressive constituency is going nowhere.”

Absolutely brilliant piece by Eric Walberg - MUST READ!

June was a busy month for two of Washington’s real ‘Axis of Evil’. Venezuela’s Chavez completed his nationalisation of oil and Iran’s Ahmedinejad stemmed a Western-backed colour revolution, leaving both bad boys in place, muses Eric Walberg


What drives US foreign policy? Is it primarily the domestic economy, as it logically should be, or, as many argue, the powerful Israel lobby, or as other argue, the need to secure energy sources? Of course, the answer is all three, in varying degrees depending on the geopoltical importance of the country in question. And woe to any country that threatens any of the above.

Russia is perhaps a special case, as US politics was dependent for so long on the anti-communist Cold War that ideologues found it impossible to dispense with this useful bugaboo even after the collapse of Communism. But it was not only Sovietologists like Condoleezza Rice that perversely prospered from this obsession, but the US domestic economy itself, which was transformed into what is best described as the military-industrial complex (MIC). It would take very little to placate today’s Russia -- pull in NATO’s horns and stop pandering to the Russophobes in Eastern Europe -- but that would hurt the MIC and would hamper the US plans for empire and oil. So it remains an enemy of choice, though not part of the Axis of Evil.

This crude characterisation by Bush/Cheney lumped North Korea, Iraq and Iran together as the worst of the worst. With the US invasion of Iraq, the current score is one down, two to go. But North Korea is a red herring. It is merely a very useful Cold War foil, beloved of the MIC, justifying its many useless, lethal weapons programmes. A popular whipping boy, a bit of innocent ideological entertainment.

Without Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and ignoring Korea, we are left with Iran. But Bush could easily have added Venezuela to his list, as it is these two countries that pose the greatest real threat to the US empire. Both have charismatic leaders who not openly denounce US and Israeli empire but do something about it. And both have large, nationalised oil sectors. Chavez’s successful defiance of the US has directly inspired Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to elect socialist leaders and given Cuba a new lease on life. Ahmedinejad has defied the many Israel-imposed bans on supporting the Palestinian resistance and even publically questioned the legitimacy of Israel itself. These bold and principled men are thereby pariahs, albeit useful ones for the MIC, along with their Cold War ghost Kim Jong Il.

That is the catch. While the empire officially frets, the US military-based economy thrives on its official enemies. It would collapse without them. This is the supreme irony to be noted by observers of what can only be described as the bizarre and contradictory world of US foreign policy.

Venezuela and Iran are indeed threats to the US empire. President Hugo Chavez not only thoroughly nationalised the oil sector after the crippling strike led by oil executives in 2002-03, but proceeded to use the revenues to transform his country, putting it on the albeit bumpy road to socialism -- subsidised basic goods, mass literacy and free health care. He has even been providing poor Americans with discount gas. “The oil belongs to all Venezuelans,” Chavez emphasised to reporters last month in Argentina, after the government announced it was taking over oil service companies along with US-owned gas compression units, adding to the heavy oil projects Venezuela took over in 2007. Natural gas looks like it will be next. The point of this is to “regain full petroleum sovereignty,” that is, full political sovereignty. No more attempted colour revolutions for Venezuela.

Which brings us to Iran. When Mahmoud Ahmedinejad took office in 2005, with the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he tried to wrest control of key ministries, especially oil and the government’s National Iranian Oil Company (NOIC), from the Rafsanjani/ Mousavi capitalist elite, replacing officials with his own choices -- primarily from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It was not till 2007 that he was able to install his candidate for oil minister, also head of the NIOC, Gholamhossein Nozari. Like Chavez, he proceeded to use state oil revenues to consolidate his base among the poor, something which the so-called reformists under his predecessor Mohammed Khatami or earlier nonreformists under Rafsanjani/ Mousavi were not noted for.

While Hashemi Rafsanjani was parliamentary speaker with Mirhossein Mousavi his prime minister in the 1980s, younger Iranians, including Ahmedinejad, were fighting in the IRGC (many martyring themselves) in the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Rafsanjani became Iran ’s first president in 1989 and added to his family’s vast fortune, much of it connected with oil, during his privatisation programme when he opened the oil industry to private Iranian contractors. This continued under the “reformist” Khatami, who took over the presidency in 1997.

Ahmedinejad’s ascendancy in 2005 on a platform to fight and eliminate the “oil mafia” confirmed the IRGC as the underlying force confronting Rafsanjani and the reformists. Throughout the 2009 electoral campaign, Ahmedinejad attacked his opponents as leaders of the corrupt elite, now trying to claw back control.

The elite had had enough, and the election ruckus last month was their last stand against the clearly populist, essentially leftist Ahmedinejad (in the West labelled a “hardliner”). Some pundits call Ahmedinejad’s decisive win a coup d’etat by the IRGC, but the recent demonstrations in Teheran look eerily similar to those in Caracas in 2002-03 when Venezuelan society was paralysed by its economic elite, mobilising its own Gucci crowd, strongly backed by the US, protesting a populist president’s determination to use oil revenues to help the common people. Chavez risked his life in the process, but his careful planning foiled the plotters and he survived to carry out his agenda. Whether Ahmedinejad can do the same, and to what extent the IRGC is a vehicle for promoting social welfare is a drama which is only now unfolding.

The Western media has uniformly denounced the Iranian elections, with no real evidence, as fraudulent, much as it denounced the many elections that Chavez had to undergo in the face of US-inspired strikes and even a military coup, before the opposition and its US backers relented. The US has generously financed Iranian expatriate dissidents and has penetrated Iranian society with the clear intent to overthrow Ahmedinejad, exactly like they did in Venezuela, though it is rarely mentioned in the Western press.

The US policy of using soft power to undermine unfriendly governments is well known to both Latin American socialists and Iranian clerics. Khamenei insisted in his sermon last week that Iran would not tolerate the green “colour revolution” underway. No wonder that Ahmedinejad, Chavez and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are such good friends. They have much in common.

In similar electoral contests in Latin America between nationalist-populists and pro-Western liberals, the populists have consistently won in fair elections, so the results in Iran should come as no surprise. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Lula da Silva in Brazil, all of whom have consistently polled 60 per cent or more of the vote in free elections. The people in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national security over alignments with military empires.

The parallel between Iran and Venezuela coincides with a flowering of relations between Iran and Latin American countries as it seeks a way out of the US-imposed blockade. Iran will help develop Bolivia’s oil and gas sector, has opened a trade office in Ecuador, and entered into agreements with Nicaragua, Cuba, Paraguay, Brazil and, of course, Venezuela. Council of Hemispheric Affairs analyst Braden Webb reports that “Venezuela and Iran are now gingerly engaged in an ambitious joint project, putting on-line Veniran, a production plant that assembles 5,000 tractors a year, and plans to start producing two Iranian-designed automobiles to provide regional consumers with the ‘first anti-imperialist cars’.”

Perhaps what upsets the US most about Ahmedinejad is his continued attempts to establish an Iranian Oil Bourse in the Iranian Free Trade Zone on the island of Kish, an idea which Chavez heartily approves of. The bourse is meant to attract international oil trading to the Middle East and to help move international trade away from the dollar as the oil currency, currently accounting for 65 per cent of trade. Over half of Iran’s oil business is now conducted in euros, despite the EU’s support for the US boycott. An indication of just how evil the US considers this move is the fact that his Evil Axis colleague Saddam Hussein was executed not long after switching his accounts to euros. Note that Kim Jong Il remains comfortably in place despite his own penchant for euros.

Both the Venezuelan and Iranian thorns have incensed Washington for daring to use their oil revenues to redistribute wealth in their societies and then organise resistance to US hegemony in their respective neighbourhoods. They are examples which continue to inspire and which pose a threat to US imperial policy, both international and domestic. For what better way to solve all the ills of US society -- lack of secure health care, poverty, violence -- than dismantling the MIC and initiating a foreign policy based on peace rather than war?

The big difference between these two thorns, of course, is Islam and Iran’s interference with the US-Israeli agenda. Now that the oil companies have resigned themselves to Venezuela’s new assertiveness, they and their government spokesmen are not so concerned with trying to overthrow Chavez. However, the extra weight of the Israel lobby in Washington makes sure that another Iranian revolution remains at the top of the list of Obama’s things-to-do.

Another curious difference is that US attempts to turn Venezuela’s neighbours against it backfired, as they came to Chavez’s defence and followed his example, while similar efforts to conspire against Iran have had considerable success.

The schism in both Venezuelan and Iranian societies is very real and is being taken advantage of by the US and friends, who are doing their “best” to engineer a collapse of the populist governments to make room for more US-friendly colour revolutions. But there is too much Yankee baggage for this to work anymore. It is time for a colour revolution at home.

***

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/. You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com

The Empire is Bankrupt - is anybody paying attention?

While the "big story" right now is the situation in Iran, check out this other "big story" which is not getting nearly as much attention:

The American Empire Is Bankrupt by Chris Hedges

De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire by Michael Hudson

(thanks to C. for bringing these two articles to my attention!)

The Empire under Obama is as stupid as it was under Dubya

Lately, the USraelian Empire has been in the panic mode. On June 7th, an election will take place in Lebanon. Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah should do very well. And why not? Hezbollah single handedly beat the Israelis, it prevented a coup by the Lebanese "Three Stooges" (Hariri, Jumblatt and Siniora) and it has re-built the areas destroyed by the Israelis in a record time.

Obama's puppeteers understand this and this is why they have come up with an "oh-so-slick" response to this threat: they sent Biden to Lebanon and planted a story in Spiegel claiming that it was Hezbollah which killed Hariri.

Biden to Lebanon is just the pinnacle of arrogance and hubris. The Imperial High Command absolutely refuses to admit that being seen with a senior Imperial Leader is a kiss of death for any Arab politician unless that politician is a total USraelian stooge and puppet (Mubarak comes to mind).

As for blaming Hezbollah for the murder of Hariri, one has to feel some sympathy for the plight of the Empire. See, Lebanon does not have a marketplace quite like Markale, or a village quite like Racak: with the entire press corps ready to pick-up any "massacre" report no matter how absurd and without any possibility for the local authorities to investigate. So blaming the Hariri murder on Hezbollah is the best possible option - nevermind that Syria has been blamed for it almost since day one (blaming Syria was needed then, blaming Hezbollah is needed now) and nevermind that Hezbollah had nothing to gain, and much to loose, by such an action.

These silly tactics will not bring a single vote to the USraelian stooges in Lebanon. Those who are already at the Empire's service do not need more "reasons" (they need money and power). Those who support Hezbollah will only laugh at the crude and predicable nature of these operations. And the few in the middle who might hesitate in their vote will probably find themselves more, not less, attracted to the Party which manages to elicit such nonsensical but frantic interventions by the USraelians.

I predict that Hezbollah will do amazingly well in the next elections and that the US puppets currently in power in Lebanon will loose most of their power.

We will find out soon enough.

By Haitham Sabbah for Palestine Think Tank

Same old story, new president:

U.S. President Barack Obama will not cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel, a senior U.S. administration official said Wednesday. The $30 billion in aid promised to Israel over the next decade will not be harmed by the world financial crisis, the official told Israel Radio. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. military aid to Israel was increased in a decade-long deal agreed to by Bush in 2007. OTOH, U.S. will pay close to $1 billion for rebuilding the wreckage in Gaza mostly caused by armaments paid for by the U.S.! To add insult to injury, there is a condition on that money:

Clinton: Some $900 million pledged by the United States to the Palestinians will be withdrawn if the expected Palestinian Authority coalition government between Fatah and Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist, Western and Israeli diplomats said Wednesday.

Key Facts

• Total direct aid to Israel, 1948-2003, $89.9 billion (uncorrected for inflation)
• Since 1976 Israel has been the largest annual recipient of US aid. It is the largest cumulative recipient since World War II.
• Direct U.S. aid for each Israeli citizen in 2001 (per capita annual income of Israel = $16,710) — over $500
• Direct U.S. Aid for each Ethiopian citizen in 2001 (per capita annual income of Ethiopia = $100) — about $.45
• REGULAR US GRANT AID in FY 2003
1. $2.76 billion military aid grant
2. $2.1 billion economic support funds
3. $600 million refugee resettlement grant
• COMMERCIAL LOAN GUARANTEES IN FY 2003, $2 billion
• BUSH ADMINISTRATION SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST FOR FY 2003
1. Military aid grant $1 billion
2. Commercial loan guarantees $9 billion
3. Arrow missile development $60 million
• TOTAL AID FOR FY 2003 $14.82 billion
• Percentage of U.S. foreign aid that goes to Israel — 30%
• Israel's population as a percentage of world population — .01%
• Section 116 of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) states, "No assistance may be provided under this part to the government of any country which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights." 22 U.S.C. 2304(a)
• Section 4 of the Arms Export Control Act prohibits selling military equipment to countries that use them for non-self-defense purposes.
• The U.S. State Department determined in February 2001 that Israel has committed each of the acts that the law defines as "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges and trial, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, and other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, or the security of person." It described Israeli army use of live ammunition against Palestinians when soldiers were not in impending danger as "excessive use of force."

SOURCES: Clyde R. Mark, Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance, Congressional Research Service, updated April 1, 2003; Clyde R. Mark, Middle East: U.S. Foreign Assistance, FY 2001, FY 2002, FY 2003 Congressional Research Service, March 28, 2002

The US Empire looses yet another country, this time El Salvador

Leftist Victory in El Salvador Closes an Historic Cycle

By Marc Cooper for the Huffington Post

The apparent victory of leftist candidate Maurico Funes in Sunday's presidential election in El Salvador finally closes out the Cold War in Central America and raises some serious questions about the long term goals of U.S. foreign policy.

With Funes' election, history has come full cycle. Both El Salvador and neighboring Nicaragua will now be governed by two former guerrilla fronts against which the Reagan administration spared no efforts in trying to defeat during the entire course of the 1980's. We will now coexist with those we once branded as the greatest of threats to our national security. Those we branded as "international terrorists" now democratically govern much of Central America.

Funes, once a commentator for CNN's Spanish-language service, comes to power representing the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a Marxist guerrilla group-turned-political -party, an organization that the U.S. government once described in terms now reserved for Al Qaeda and Hizbollah.

From the late 1970's until a negotiated peace settlement in 1992, the FMLN fought a bloody civil war against a series of U.S.-backed right-wing regimes. Those Salvadoran regimes engaged in horrific massacres and deployed savage death squads, taking a massive human toll. While the FMLN also perpetrated atrocities, all independent analysts agree that the overwhelming majority of the 75,000 who were killed in the war in El Salvador were victims of government-sponsored violence.

This same FMLN which now comes to power in El Salvador was once declared as the primary perpetrator of "international terrorism" by the Reagan administration who deployed hundreds of U.S. military advisors to the tiny Central American country and who quadrupled the size of the Salvadoran Army. In this all-out quest to crush the FLMN, U.S. authorities, at best, turned a blind eye to the bloody excesses of the Salvadoran regime. At worst, it encouraged them.

At the same time in history, the U.S. spent billions creating a "contra" army to destabilize and dislodge the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) which had taken power in Nicaragua in 1979, overthrowing the dynastic and dictatorial rule of the Somoza family - another U.S.-backed ally.

During the entire eight years of the Reagan era, defeating both the FMLN and the FSLN were the absolute top priorities of U.S. foreign policy as the administration argued that the Texas border was a short hop from the fields of Central America and that all must be done to stop the northward march of hemispheric revolution. The sort of inflammatory rhetoric used to describe the Central American guerrilla movements was an eerie precedent for the overheated war of words against "The Axis of Evil" that would emerge earlier this decade.

The Nicaraguan Sandinistas were eventually defeated by an American-backed opposition in elections in 1990 and democratically and peacefully transferred power (something the Reaganites claimed could never happen). But the Sandinistas returned to power last year re-electing its historic leader Daniel Ortega as president. Almost twenty years of rule from the pro-U.S. coalitions that had succeeded the Sandinistas had failed to implement any meaningful social change.

The Salvadoran FMLN, meanwhile, which has acted as a parliamentary opposition party since the 1992 Salvadoran peace accords, now comes to power ending twenty years of uninterrupted rule by the country's ultra-conservative ARENA party - a political organization born directly from the death squads of the 1980's and, yes, a close ally of the U.S.

All of this raises the question of why so many lives were spent and so many billions in U.S. dollars were burned in an attempt to expunge these leftist forces twenty years ago? Wouldn't it have been possible in 1989 to find some sort of accommodation with these radical forces and not postpone the inevitable for twenty years?

In the case of Nicaragua, the year-old reborn and duly elected Sandinista administration--while far from a model of democratic ethics-- hardly poses any threat to U.S. interests. Though President Ortega, saddled with governing one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, still clothes his actions in revolutionary rhetoric, he has headed up what many think is essentially a conservative regime which recently outlawed all abortion (a move that could warm the deceased Ronald Reagan's heart). Ortega campaigned successfully for the presidency last year by quoting from scripture and has not flinched from pacting with the most conservative of political elements.

In the case of El Salvador, President-elect Funes has pledged to maintain close and cordial relations with the U.S. And while the FMLN--like the Sandinistas - clings to some of its Cold War revolutionary rhetoric, no one expects any radical moves by the incoming government. Fighting widespread poverty aggravated by the global slump and a chilling crime wave, the FMLN will have its hands full just keeping the government on keel. President-elect Funes holds distinctly moderate views and in an American context would be little more than a liberal Democrat. In any case, the FMLN can point to its recent governance of several Salvadoran cities (including until recently the capital of San Salvador) as its democratic bona fides.

The resurrection of the FMLN and the FSLN at this time in history raises a troubling irony regarding U.S. foreign policy. Yesterday we were told they were our greatest enemies. Today, now in power, they hardly garner any U.S. press coverage, let alone much attention from Washington. Likewise, the right-wing forces we bankrolled with blood and treasure and who we were told were a bulwark of Western Civilization, utterly failed in solving the basic existential questions that bedeviled their respective countries. Twenty years from now, we have to ask, what will Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria look like? Might we find ourselves peacefully co-existing with the same undefeated forces who today we proclaim our mortal enemies? Might we be better off using our soft power, our economic and diplomatic clout to force negotiation and moderation with those we perceive as irrational and radical enemies? Or do we only reach that conclusion after the dissipation of prolonged, bloody and ultimately unsuccessful armed intervention and war?


Journalist and author Marc Cooper is a Special Correspondent for The Huffington Post as well as Editorial Director of its campaign reporting project OffTheBus. A contributing editor to The Nation magazine, Marc is also a member of the faculty at the USC Annenberg School for communication and Associate Director of its Institute for Justice and Journalism. Marc can be reached at cooper@huffingtonpost.com .

The Israel Lobby scores another huge victory

POLITICS-US: Freeman Withdrawal Marks Victory for Israel Lobby

By Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe for IPS news

WASHINGTON, Mar 10 (IPS) - Amb. Chas Freeman withdrew from consideration for a top intelligence post in the Obama administration on Tuesday, following a vitriolic battle that pitted Republican lawmakers and pro-Israel hardliners opposed to his appointment against liberals and members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities who had come to his defence.

Freeman’s withdrawal came as a surprise to many in Washington, particularly since it came only hours after Adm. Dennis Blair, the administration’s director of national intelligence (DNI) who made the appointment, issued a strong defence of Freeman during his testimony before the U.S. Senate.

His withdrawal is likely to be viewed as a significant victory for hardliners within the so-called "Israel lobby," who led the movement to scuttle his appointment, and a blow to hopes for a new approach to Israel-Palestine issues under the Obama administration.

A brief notice posted late Tuesday on the DNI website stated that "Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced today that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed. Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret."

The DNI did not provide any further reason for Freeman's withdrawal.

Senator Chuck Schumer, a critic of Freeman who privately conveyed his concerns to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel last week, released a statement taking credit for the withdrawal, according to Greg Sargent of the Plum Line blog.

"Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position," Schumer's statement read. "His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing."

The battle over Freeman began in late February, soon after Blair appointed him as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). The NIC, among other responsibilities, is tasked with producing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), which are consensus judgments of all 16 intelligence agencies.

Freeman was reportedly Blair’s hand-picked choice for the job. He is a polyglot with unusually wide-ranging foreign-policy experience - his previous jobs have included chief translator during President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to China, ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs.

But Freeman is also known for his outspoken and often caustic political views. He has been especially critical of the Bush administration’s conduct of the "war on terror" and of Israeli policies in the occupied territories.

Initial resistance to the appointment came from neoconservatives and other pro-Israel hardliners who were opposed to Freeman’s critical views of Israeli policies. The campaign against Freeman was spearheaded by Steve Rosen, a former official for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who is currently facing trial for allegedly passing classified information to the Israeli government.

It was quickly taken up by neoconservative commentators in the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and the New Republic, among other places.

However, Freeman’s critics soon shifted their focus from his views on Israel to his ties with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi royal family has provided funding to the Middle East Policy Council, a think tank that Freeman headed, leading to allegations that he was "on the Saudi payroll" or even a "Saudi puppet."

Last week, 11 congressional representatives - including several with major financial ties to AIPAC and other right-wing pro-Israel groups - called on the DNI’s inspector-general to investigate Freeman’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia.

Later in the week, Blair sent the representatives a letter offering his "full support" for Freeman and praising the appointee’s "exceptional talent and experience." The letter also discussed Freeman’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia, stressing that "he has never lobbied for any government or business (domestic or foreign)" and that he "has never received any income directly from Saudi Arabia or any Saudi-controlled entity."

Blair’s letter appeared to have defused the case against Freeman based on his Saudi ties.

On Monday, the seven Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee sent their letter of concern to Blair, but they made no mention of the Saudi charges that formed the backbone of their House colleagues’ letter from the previous week. Instead, the senators focused on Freeman’s alleged intelligence inexperience and his "highly controversial statements about China and Israel."

It was the China issue that had become the central attack against Freeman in recent days. Critics pointed to a leaked email that he sent to a private listserv about the Chinese government’s 1989 repression of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, in which he appeared to argue that the Chinese authorities’ true mistake was not the violent repression but their "failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud."

Blair and others countered that the email was taken out of context, and that Freeman was not describing his own views but what he referred to as "the dominant view in China."

One member of the listserv who did not wish to be identified said that Freeman’s email came in the context of an extended conversation about what lessons the Chinese leadership took from the Tiananmen Square events, and that Freeman himself has always regarded the events as a "tragedy."

Regardless, the leaked email became the focal point of the debate over Freeman. On Thursday, 87 Chinese dissidents and human rights activists released a letter conveying their "intense dismay" at his appointment and asking President Obama to withdraw it.

But others stepped in to defend Freeman’s record on human rights in China. China scholar Sidney Rittenberg told James Fallows of the Atlantic that Freeman was "a stalwart supporter of human rights who helped many individuals in need" during his diplomatic career in Beijing. Jerome Cohen, an expert in Chinese law, told Fallows that the allegations that Freeman endorsed the Tiananmen Square repression were "ludicrous."

Fallows was one of several prominent media figures - including Joe Klein of Time and Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic - who came to Freeman’s defence in recent days. While many of them disagree with Freeman’s outspoken views, they warned against what Fallows calls the "self-lobotomisation" of U.S. foreign policy that results from shutting out dissenting voices.

Diplomatic and intelligence professionals in the foreign policy bureaucracy - in which Freeman was seen as enjoying strong support - also rallied to his defence.

Last week, 17 former U.S. ambassadors – including former ambassador to the U.N. Thomas Pickering and former ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis – wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal praising Freeman as "a man of integrity and high intelligence who would never let his personal views shade or distort intelligence estimates."

On Tuesday, seven former senior intelligence officials wrote to Blair in support of Freeman. They called the attacks on him "unprecedented in their vehemence, scope, and target" and perpetrated by "pundits and public figures... [who are] aghast at the appointment of a senior intelligence official able to take a more balanced view of the Arab-Israel issue".

These endorsements by figures with solidly establishmentarian credentials appeared to have strengthened Freeman’s position. This made Tuesday’s announcement especially unexpected, since many felt that Freeman had succeeded in riding out the storm.

Despite the Saudi and Chinese angles of the Freeman controversy, many still saw it as heart a neoconservative campaign to shut out critics of Israel from positions of power.

"The whole anti-Freeman effort was engineered by the people who fear that Obama will abandon current policies toward Israel from acceptance of the occupation to forceful opposition to it," M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum wrote on the Huffington Post.

The timing of Freeman’s withdrawal is likely to prove especially bad for the Obama administration, since it came after Blair had committed a significant amount of political capital to defending his appointee.

In his testimony before the Senate on Tuesday, Blair responded to concerns raised by Lieberman by praising Freeman’s "inventive mind" and argued that his critics "misunderstand the role of the development of analysis that produces policy."

"I can do a better job if I’m getting strong analytical viewpoints to sort out and pass on to you and the president than if I’m getting precooked pablum judgments that don’t really challenge," Blair told Lieberman.

Lieberman seemed unsatisfied with Blair’s answer. "OK, I guess I would say, ‘to be continued’," he replied.

As it turned out, Lieberman did not have to wait long to get the response he wanted.
-------

The tactics of the Israel Lobby

by Charles Freeman in the Wall Street Journal

To all who supported me or gave me words of encouragement during the controversy of the past two weeks, you have my gratitude and respect.

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government. Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service. When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was "asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse." I added that I wondered "whether there wasn't some sort of downside to this offer." I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception. It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service. I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged. I now look forward to returning to private life, freed of all previous obligations.

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy. These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration. Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic. I am my own man, no one else's, and with my return to private life, I will once again – to my pleasure – serve no master other than myself. I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.

I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair. Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home. Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.

Report by Mohamed Khodr - How Zionists Occupy Two Nations: America and Palestine

by Mohamed Khodr for Palestine Think Tank

From America’s “Jewish Triangle” to Iraqi’s “Sunni Triangle: Government Job Notice: No Gentiles Need Apply

“The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish Century.”

–Yuri Slezkine, Professor of History at University of California, Berkeley, “The Jewish Century”; Princeton University Press (Russian Jewish immigrant to the U.S.)

No, America, there is no Zionist Conspiracy running our nation; just well funded organized Zionist Coincidences

From Truman, to Clinton, to Obama, to…..

In a Nov. 10, 1945 meeting with American diplomats brought in from their posts in the Middle East to urge Truman not to heed Zionist urgings to recognize Israel, Truman bluntly explained his motivation:

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents”

–Harry Truman, 33^rd President

“Clinton drew applause for his own commitment to Israel when he stated that should the Iraqis ever cross over the Israeli border for aggression, “I would personally get in a ditch, grab a rifle, and fight and die.”

–President Bill Clinton, speaking at a Toronto Jewish Fund Raiser, July 30, 2002 (thestar.com) (BUT he avoided fighting for America)

Sixty years after Truman’s recognition of Israel, the 44^th President Elect of the United States, Barack Obama, in true allegiance to the Flag of Israel, continues the expected, no, the demanded subservience and pandering to America’s Zionists.

Four Examples of Obama’s Allegiance to Israel at the expense of our national interest in the Middle East. This man of “hope” is nevertheless “hopelessly” devoted to Israel.

1. “Obama Asks Shimon Peres (President of Israel): What can I do for Israel?”

–Haaretz, November 17, 2008

2. Obama’s Letter to President Bush on Israel, June 25, 2008

“A fundamental principle of America’s Middle East policy must be our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security. I believe that is a bipartisan commitment and I will work to continue and advance that consensus. …The Arab states should support the Palestinians and prepare their own people for peace by making gestures of normalization toward Israel.”

(OBAMA is uninformed: The Arab League did offer just such a Peace Plan to Israel three times, 1981, 2002, 2007); but Israel rejected it each time.

3. Obama’s conference call with 900 U.S. Jewish Rabbis: September 18, 2008 (Ynet.com)

“The senator spoke of his recent trip to Israel, and reaffirmed personal commitment to Israel’s security, calling it sacrosanct: “I think that it’s also important to recognize that throughout my career in the State Legislature and now in the US Senate I have been a stalwart friend of Israel. On every single issue related to Israel’s security, I have been unwavering, and will continue to be unwavering….”My belief is that Israel’s security is sacrosanct and we have to ensure that as the sole democracy in the Middle East, one of our greatest allies in the world, one that shares a special relationship with us and shares our values, we have to make sure that they have the support whether its financial or military to sustain their security and the hostile environment.”

As with all American politicians, Obama made the requisite pilgrimage to Israel to pay homage to the great democracy living in a constant existential threat from its impotent, incompetent, weak, illiterate, unproductive, and failed Arab neighbors, as well as his more important pledge of allegiance to AIPAC where political careers are made or destroyed. The path to the White House or Congress goes through AIPAC.

4. Obama’s Speech to AIPAC, March 2, 2007

“And I can tell you that as a candidate for the president of the United States and as a president of the United States, I vow to work as diligently and as consistently and as determinedly as possible with AIPAC and with the Great State of Israel to bring that vision about.”

–Obama’s Speech at AIPAC, March 2, 2007: Read full text to see the full fledged love fest replete with the lies, myths, and clichés provided by AIPAC to all political cowards and hypocrites seeking office.

Mr. Obama, you’re simply the last in a long line of American politicians who’ve never taken notice of Israel’s true contempt of the only “friend” it has in the entire world. Without our recognition, support and hundreds of billions of tax dollars of aid (Israel is the world’s 16^th richest nation), there would be no Israel. Beware of Israel’s rabid bite of the hand that feeds it.

“Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice. “
–Moshe Dayan, America’s hero of the 1967 Preemptive attack on Arab nations

When, in all our history, has anyone with ideas so bizarre, so archaic, so self-confounding, so remote from the basic American consensus, ever got so far? —Richard Hofstadter

Israel and its Jewish supporters around the world navigate the paradox oxymoronic paradigm between their boastful pride of Jewish “tribal” power that wields enormous political, economic, and military might around the world—the power to invade, massacre, occupy foreign lands at will with total impunity and immunity from world action; a power to silence and intimidate world governments, none more so than the “wag the tail superpower”, America; and between milking the image of eternal victimhood, weakness, and s constant existential threat by a hate filled hostile world; a world genetically born and inbred with “Anti-Semitism”.

While in reality Israel is the military occupier and slum lord of Palestine, Southern Lebanon’s Shebaa farms, and Syria’s Golan Heights. It possesses between 200 – 300 nuclear weapons while Arabs/Iran have none. It has the second most powerful air force in the world (after the U.S.). It is the fourth largest exporter of military weapons and possesses the world’s latest spy technology including access to all U.S. Spy intelligence.

It has the might to destroy the entire world should it come under a doomsday attack.

’’Prime Minister Golda Meir also told me, on-the-record during the course of an interview I did with her for the BBC’s Panorama programme, that in a doomsday situation Israel would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it. (Her full quote with its context is as set down on page xii of Waiting for the Apocalypse, the Prologue to Volume One of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews).

–Alan Hart, ICH, June 8, 2008. Mr. Hart was a BBC correspondent, an author, his latest: “Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews”, Vol. 1 and 2, and a researcher.

BUT, it is also the little victim that maybe extinguished by its “bad neighbors”.

“Looking at Zionism without taboos means seeing the hard reality of the domination and oppression it has created. Out of the original sins of the world against the Jews grew the original sins of Zionism against the Palestinians.”

–Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Original Sins”; An Israeli Scholar at Haifa University (Israel) and author of:

“The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why”

“The war’s seventh day, which began on June 12, 1967 (Six Day War) , and has continued to this day, is the product of our choice. We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justifications for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories we developed two judicial systems: One—-progressive, liberal—in Israel; and the Other—cruel, injurious—-in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an APARTHEID regime in the occupied territories immediately after their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.”

–Michael Ben-Yar, Israeli Attorney General in Yitzhak Rabin’s government in mid 1990’s.

(Quoted in “Herzl’s Nightmare, One Land, Two Peoples” by Peter Rodgers, former Australian Ambassador to Israel, pg. 32 – 33)

“What struck me most about the biblical narrative was that the divine promise of land was integrally linked with the mandate to exterminate the indigenous peoples, and I had to wrestle with my perception that those traditions were inherently oppressive and morally reprehensible….It was some shock to realize that the narrative presents “ethnic cleansing” as not only legitimate, but as required by the deity….By modern standards of international law and human rights, what these biblical narratives mandate are “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity…Was there a way of reading the traditions which could rescue the Bible from being a blunt instrument of oppression, and acquit God of the charge of being the Great Ethnic-Cleanser?

–Dr. Michael Prior, C.M., “Confronting the Bible’s Ethnic Cleansing In Palestine”; The Link, December 2000 (Americans for Middle East Understanding. http://www.ameu.org/)

Dr. Prior is Professor of Biblical Studies in the University of Surrey, England, and visiting professor in Bethlehem University, Palestine. He is a biblical scholar and author of “Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry” and “The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique.”

World Jewry constitutes 0.0019% of the world’s population and less then two percent of the U.S. population. But despite their very small numbers they are without a doubt the richest, most educated, successful, organized, ambitious and motivated tribe in the world. Their intelligence, brilliance, and high education have given the world its most creative thinkers, inventors, artists, physicians, writers, and Noble Prize winners. The world owes a great deal to world Jewry for the enormous contributions they’ve made to this world. They’ve been in the forefront of civil rights, liberal causes, and justice.

No one should begrudge the extraordinary success and accomplishments of Jewish Americans. They worked hard and deserve the respect and admiration of all Americans.

BUT, and here’s the really big rub—organized Jewry has translated their enormous “Jewish Power” of wealth, political activism, media, Hollywood, and industry dominance to ensure that our government is willfully complicity in supporting Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, refugees on their own land (living on only 18% of their original Palestine) while Israel defies all divine and human laws against its barbaric treatment and occupation of millions of Palestinians.

It is this “Jewish Power/Israel Lobby” that the entire world must have the courage to publicly and forcefully condemn and do all things necessary, sooner rather than later, to end its power and put Israel in its place.

Only when the western governments are free from the albatross of the Israel Lobby will Palestine, the Middle East and the Muslim world be free to cohabit this world in peace and good relations with the West.

Ending Israel’s political and military terrorism will end Muslim terrorism.

In Middle East politics:

Israel manipulates America—America manipulates Arab Dictators—therefore Israel manipulates Arab Dictators.

For almost twenty months Israel, with the full knowledge and support of our U.S. government, has besieged the lives and land of Gaza. Today Gaza is slowly dying without food, water, medicines, fuel, electricity and oxygen for its premature infants and sick elderly. Surgeons don’t have the lights, medicines, or equipment to remove the bullets and shrapnels from Palestinian children courtesy of the American taxpayer and Israeli soldiers. Poverty, mass unemployment, malnutrition, and disease are rampant in Gaza but thanks to decades of a Jewish dominated U.S. media that has dehumanized Palestinians, their lives are not newsworthy, easily ignored and deleteable from western consciousness. The only useful purpose Palestinian children serve is as target practice for the training of new Israeli soldiers.

The useless, incompetent, and inept Arab League lip synchs again to help the Palestinians while in reality their cry is —-with our souls, our blood, we sacrifice ourselves to thee O America.

Why are the Palestinians dying and suffering for decades amidst world silence?

Answer: Jewish Power and the Israel Lobby:

Which includes the Armageddon pushing Christian Fundamentalists; an oxymoronic group of the followers of the prince of peace who seek a world holocaust against Non-Christians; but as long as they support Israel, organized U.S. Jewry will accept them as partners.

“His name is Yusuf Samir, and he is a reporter for the Israeli Arabic service. He tells us….”The Palestinians are animals,” he says. “They are less than human. They are savage beasts. Israel is a land of love. People in Israel love one another. But the Palestinians do not love. They hate. They should be destroyed. We should put fire to them. We should take back Beit Jala, Bethlehem, take back all the land and get rid of them.”

Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered—death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred….Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo—but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

It was in Gaza, where I lived for weeks at a time during the seven years I spent in the Middle East, that I came to know the dark side of the Israeli Defense Force”.

–Chris Hedges (former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief), “A Gaza Diary”; Harper’s Magazine; October 2001

In East Jerusalem, Israel continues the Judaization of the Holy City to three faiths. As part of that official policy the Israeli police in an early morning raid on November 9 forcibly evicted Fawzia al-Kurd, 57, and her partially paralyzed wheel chair bound husband from their home of 52 years. They couldn’t collect any possession and Fawzia’s was still wearing her pajamas upon their eviction. Fawzia was forced to move into a tent while her very ill husband is living with relatives. Not satisfied with just evicting and confiscating their home, the Israeli soldiers chased Fawzia to her make shift tent and destroyed that too. Fawzia is cold, hungry, homeless and separated from her very ill husband. Why? According to Israel she set up the tent “without permission.” This is the democracy we as Americans are paying and dying for in absolute ignorance and silence.

Only Israel of all nations can literally get away with murder. As long as our government is held in the palms of the Israel Lobby; such murder is committed with regularity and impunity.

“New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths.” George Bernard Shaw

Thankfully, several prominent Jews have formed a new lobby, J Street, to oppose the influence of the Israel Lobby and its stranglehold on US foreign policy that emphasizes force over diplomacy. J Street supports a peaceful negotiated settlement of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the formation of two independent states although it avoids delineating the borders of such states; for example, by supporting the 1967 borders.

The Iraq War: The “Jewish/Israel Lobby” Triangle

No greater example of the power of the “The Israel Lobby” and the mainly Jewish cabal in the Bush administration than this nation being forced into an illegal, immoral, and destructive war, the Iraq War, that has bankrupted this nation and shed the blood of our youth while killing over a million Iraqi’s. To this date and in our alleged democracy no one, not one single person, has been held accountable for this deliberately manufactured war and genocide against the innocent Iraqi’s; not for the lies, not for shredding our Constitutional system of government and guaranteed civil liberties, not for the trillions of wasted dollars, not for the rivers of blood, not for the torture, rape, murder, and crimes against humanity committed by the war criminals in Washington D.C. . All will or have left office to better financial careers and future book and movie deals.

America has forgotten Abeer Qasim Hamza, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, gang raped by five U.S. soldiers then shot in the head along with her parents and her five year old sister, Hadeel. Abeer’s crime was that she was an Iraqi girl and a Muslim, thus fodder for the “liberators” for freedom. She is dispensable trash as no doubt thousands of other Iraqi girls and women both in and out of prison.

American and Israeli soldiers can kill in cold blood and gang rape at will in their respective occupied territories and know they won’t face prosecution as they simply were carrying their actions in self defense and according to terms of “engagement”, which obviously includes rape.

Would our government, media, Hollywood, think tanks, business leaders have reacted differently if this was a Jewish girl gang raped in Syria or Iran? Would there be hysterical cries for blood and wiping out the two nations?

When Daniel Pearl, Jewish journalist for the Wall Street Journal, was killed in Pakistan, the western media was in rage mode for weeks. Hollywood further enshrined this incident with a movie, “A Mighty Heart” that received endless press. However, most shockingly and as far as I know for the first time, our federal government provided free propaganda for this movie.

The Department of State, the nation’s premier diplomatic agency, had its tax funded website serve as a commercial billboard for this movie about a “Jewish” journalist. It posted a three-part video discussion on Daniel Pearl’s murder and the capture of his killers on its home page under the title “The Daniel Pearl Murder: A First Person Account.”

In an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “White Man’s Burden”, (May 4, 2003), Ari Shavit wrote:

“The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. ..Is the Iraq war the great neoconservative war? It’s the war the neoconservatives wanted, Friedman (Thomas Friedman of the New York Times) says. It’s the war the neoconservatives marketed… Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.”

An overwhelming majority of political, economic, military experts in the U.S. and around the world have documented in print and interviews that the Pro Israel mainly Jewish Neocons pushed for this war.

“With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel….You don’t come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq”.

–Former Senator Ernest Hollings May 6, 2004 Charleston Post and Courier

“The lack of public discussion about the role of Israel in the thinking of “President Bush” is easier to understand, but weird nevertheless. It is the proverbial elephant in the room: Everybody sees it, no one mentions it. The reason is obvious and admirable: Neither supporters nor opponents of a war against Iraq wish to evoke the classic anti-Semitic image of the king’s Jewish advisers whispering poison into his ear and betraying the country to foreign interests.”

–Michael Kinsley (Jewish journalist), “What Bush Isn’t Saying About Iraq. President Bush won’t discuss two big reasons he wants to invade Iraq”; Slate, October 24, 2002

“They are the so-called neo-cons, or neo-conservatives. A compact group, almost all of whose members are Jewish. They hold the key positions in the Bush administration, as well as in the think-tanks that play an important role in formulating American policy and the op-ed pages of the influential newspapers….Seemingly; all this is good for Israel. America controls the world, we control America. Never before have Jews exerted such an immense influence on the center of world power”.

–Uri Avnery, “The Night After”, Counterpunch, April 10, 2003 (Mr. Avnery is a former Israeli soldier and Knesset Member)

“Jews hold stunningly powerful positions and clout in the United States. The combination of the American state’s power and the Jewish power in the areas of legislation, administration, media, law, business, culture, and entertainment have made the Jews a defining factor of contemporary America. Because Israel is inseparable from the identity of American Jews, Israel is inseparable from the American experience.”

–Avraham Burg, in his book: “The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes”, (Oct. 2008) Served as Speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, and Chair of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization.

“How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people?… It is the Jewish connection, the tribal solidarity among themselves and the amazing pull on non-Jews, that has molded this unprecedented power … The Jewish connection covers all areas and reaches every level. Most Americans may not even sense this gigantic effort, but there is scarcely a Jew who is not touched by its tentacles…The extent and depth to which organized Jewry reached – and reaches – in the U.S. is indeed awesome … The most effective component of the Jewish connection is probably that of media control …Jewish wealth and acumen wields unprecedented power in the area of finance and investment banking, playing an important role in influencing U.S. policy toward the Middle East … In the larger metropolitan areas, the Jewish-Zionist connection thoroughly pervades affluent financial, commercial, social, entertainment, and art circles.”

–Alfred Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978), pp. 206, 209, 212, 218, 228, 229.

“We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own…”

–Ari Shavit, May 27, 1996 New York Times, (expressing sorrow and anger at Israel’s deliberate massacre of over 100 Lebanese civilians under U.N. protection in Qana, Lebanon; April 1996)

“Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times… The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked.

—Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (Univ. of Chicago, 1993), pp. 1, 103.

“The President of the United States, on issue after issue, has reflected the thinking of neoconservatives.”

- Richard Perle

This is NOT a discourse or criticism of Judaism or of Jews in general but of an elite of Jewish Americans who dominate the Tripartite triangle of power in this country, what is termed “Jewish Power”; centered in the triangle of Washington D.C. (Government); New York City (Financial/Banking Institutions), and Hollywood/Media.

Thus the power of the Jewish Triangle arising from their dominance in Government, the Financial/Banking Sector, and Hollywood/Media, forced this nation into a war of choice for the sake of Israel and Oil.

Coincidentally, Lieutenant General Jay Garner, a staunch supporter of Israel, was appointed after Iraq’s invasion in 2003 as Director of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, replaced later by Paul Bremer.

Harvard Professor of Law Noah Feldman (Jewish) was the man most responsible for writing Iraq’s constitution.

The most striking facet of the establishment Jewish American “elite” is their rotating political life cycle, playing musical chairs if you will, between top government positions and the private sector be it in business, academia, influential policy “think tanks”, the media and entertainment industry. This has given the Israel Lobby enormous knowledge, insight, and leverage to singularly ensure America’s foreign policy is dominated by Israel’s interests.

Examples of Outrageous Arrogance of Power by Jewish Americans and the Israel Lobby:

“In October 1980, Thomas Dine, became the new staff director of AIPAC…In a 1992 interview (he said):… I wanted APAC to have a much broader reach into the policy-making processes of our own government. And that meant both the Legislative and Executive branches”….Dine’s AIPAC (in addition to Congress would be)…working directly with officials in the executive branch to shape policy at the Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, and anywhere else Israel had business…Dine boasted of a “Jewish Political Power.”

–J. J. Goldberg; “Jewish Power” page 200-201

“Why didn’t Jimmy Carter speak from the podium at the Democratic National Convention? Alan Dershowitz said he had something to do with it…..In an interview with Shalom TV, the Harvard Law School professor says he “pushed” Barack Obama “very hard to make that decision,” Dershowitz said in

an interview with Shalom TV. “Barack Obama had to make a choice between his

Jewish supporters and his anti-Israel supporters like Jimmy Carter, and he

did not choose Jimmy Carter. And that was an embarrassment for Jimmy Carter

and a show of disrespect.”

–Alan Dershowitz, “I helped keep Carter Silent”, Jewish Telegraph Agency, November 13, 2008

“According to the Washington Times, November 4, 1992, AIPAC’s President David Steiner in a taped telephone conversation with AIPAC donor Howard Katz boasted that the lobbying organization was “negotiating” with Clinton over whom the Democratic candidate would appoint as secretary of state and as his national security adviser should he win the election. When asked if AIPAC would participate in the selection of the new secretary of state, Steiner said, “We’ll have access….We have a dozen people in (the Clinton) headquarters. And they are all going to get big jobs,” Steiner, a trustee of the Democratic National Committee, told Katz, who had said he wanted to donate $100,000 to AIPAC-supported candidates.

Katz told the Washington Times that he taped the conversation because “as someone Jewish, I am concerned when a small group has a disproportionate power. I think that hurts everyone, including Jews. If David Steiner wants to talk about the incredible, disproportionate clout AIPAC has, the public should know about it”

–Washington Report on Middle East Affairs; “Jews and Israel, AIPAC President Resigns”

December/January 1992/93, Page 69

“In his [Powell’s] own State Department there was a keen awareness of the strength of the Jewish lobbyists. Secretaries of State did not usually meet with lobbyists, but both Jewish officials and Jews that did not officially represent specific groups from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League to Ronald Lauder, could meet with Powell on short notice…. At the State Department, Foxman had an aura of omnipotence. He was held responsible for the appointment of Indyk as Undersecretary of State under Clinton, and was thought to have played a role in the appointments of Secretaries of State Christopher and Albright. Powell related to Foxman almost as if he were someone to whom he must capitulate. Once Foxman told one of his deputies that Powell was the weak link. When the Secretary of State heard this he began to worry. He knew that in Washington a confrontation with the Jewish lobby would make his life difficult. Once he arranged a meeting with Foxman, but the busy Foxman postponed the meeting three times. When they eventually met, the head of the Anti-Defamation League apologized to the Secretary of State [for the postponements]. “You call, we come,” replied Powell, paraphrasing a well known advertisement for a freight company. That statement had much more meaning than just a humorous polite reply.

–Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, “Boomerang: The Failure of Leadership in the Second Intafada”, page 132-133

Let us analyze some aspects of the Jewish Triangle:

1. GOVERNMENT:

Jewish Americans usually dominate top government positions on economic and foreign policy, especially as it relates to the Middle East. During the Clinton Administration the National Security Advisor was Sandy Berger (followed by Anthony Lake) with James Steinberg as his Deputy. Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller, and Martin Indyk served as MidEast envoys. Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State with Stuart Eizenstat, Peter Tarnoff, and James Rubin (son of Robert Rubin) as top Under Secretaries and Deputies. Wililam Cohen was Secretary of Defense.

“The American people…understand the real gamble is having the same old folks doing things over and over and over again and somehow expecting a different result.” —President Elect Barack Obama

BUT: His appointees reflect the recycling of Jewish Americans most responsible for the deregulation of Wall Street that led to our economic meltdown. Not one of the 23 Senators or 133 members of the House of Representatives who voted against the Iraq War (his campaign hallmark) are on Obama’s transition team or been among the appointees thus far.

Examples of Top Positions held by Jewish Americans in Government:

White House Chiefs of Staff: Second most powerful position in the White House. All Jews.

–Reagan: Ken Duberstein

–Bush: Joshua Bolten

–Obama: Rahm Emanuel (who volunteered to serve in the Israeli army, not America’s)

–V.P. Cheney: I. Scooter Libby

–V.P. Joe Biden: Ron Klain (former Chief of Staff to V.P. Al Gore)

Additionally: V.P. Al Gore had Leon Fuerth, National Security Advisor

Treasury Secretaries:

–Bill Clinton: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers

–Obama: Timothy Geithner, (President of the New York Federal Reserve: dealt with meltdown of Wall Street Banks, Insurance Companies, and Financial Service Companies). Served as Treasury Under Secretary under both Rubin and Summers.

Director, National Economic Council:

–Bill Clinton: Robert Rubin, Gene Sperling, Stephen Friedman

–Obama: Lawrence Summers

Federal Reserve Chairmen: All Jews

–Carter to Reagan: Paul Volcker

–Reagan (1987) to George W. Bush (2006): Alan Greenspan

–George W. Bush: Paul Wolfowitz; Ben Bernanke

Barack Obama has nominated Paul Volcker as Chariman of the newly created “Economic Recovery Advisory Board”.

Currently 5 out of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank Districts in the country are led by Jewish Americans. (Four others are reported to be Jewish, but couldn’t be confirmed) All Jews.

–Eric S. Rosengren (Boston); Timothy Geithner (New York City, now nominated as Treasury Secretary); –Jeffrey M. Lacker (Richmond); Gary H. Stern (Minneapolis); Janet Yellin (San Francisco)

World Bank:

Always headed by an American has enormous power over third world country’s political and economic stability. Seen as an extension of U.S. foreign policy.

–Recent World Bank Presidents: James Wolfensohn, Paul Wolfowitz, currently Robert Zoellick (Jews)

(Zoellick was previously a managing director of Goldman Sachs, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, and Bush’s U.S. Trade Representative).

Congress:

Congress is the premier institution where the Jewish/Israel lobby has its most influence. It’s been called an “Israeli Occupied Territory” and “The Little Knesset”. In reality, it’s Congressmen who lobby the Jewish/Israeli Lobby for financial, political, and good public relation favors. It is the most damning shameful display of a superpower surrendering and pandering its dignity, and honor to a Pro Israel Lobby. When Congress has to choose between U.S. and Israel’s interests it adopts Israel’s interests.

One Example of Who Congress Really Serves:

June 11, 2008: Americans denied more Unemployment Benefits.

According to an Associated Press Report the House of Representatives defeated an attempt to give unemployed Americans an extra three months of jobless benefits, i.e. extending the average $300 a week benefit check for 13 weeks for all unemployed Americans.

June 27, 2008: Instead, Israel gets the money

According to an A.F.P. report, just sixteen days later the Congress approved a 170 million dollar increase in security assistance to Israel as part of its new 10-year, 30 billion dollar defense aid commitment to the Jewish state. The legislation gained final approval in a 92-6 Senate vote.

Israel’s automatic access to our tax dollars began in 1948 with a $100 Million grant by President Truman, an extraordinary amount in those days.

While Israel sends Israel $30 Billion ‘EXTRA” in aid, that same amount was denied to expand America’s Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), to the 3 American automakers whose industry employs over 1.3 million Americans, and to extend unemployment benefits suffering American families during this Wall Street manufactured economic meltdown. But, in good government fashion Wall Street is getting trillions while Joe the Plumber has to sell his plunger to eat.

“Unbeknownst to most Americans, Israel’s westernmost settlement is not located in Palestine-Israel, but is 6000 miles away on the high ground overlooking Foggy Bottom in Washington D.C. This Capital Hill settlement of pro-Israel lobbies and think tanks strategically controls the high ground overlooking the United States’ Middle East policy landscape by having made kibbutzniks of most members of the executive and legislative branches of the government—including President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden (a wannabe Zionist), and future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (a born Zionist).”

–Robert Weitzel, “Israel’s Settlement on Capitol Hill, Counterpunch, November 28, 2008: MUST READ

“An attack on Israel is an attack on America, in my estimation. My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.”

–Richard “Dick” Armey, former House of Representatives Majority Leader (1995-2003), in an interview with Jake Tapper, New York Times, “The Way we live now 9-1-02: Questions for Dick Armey, Retiring, Not Shy”, September 1, 2002

–On MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews”, May 1, 2001, Rep. Dick Armey called for the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied territories.

“It’s almost political suicide . . . for a member of Congress who wants to seek reelection to take any stand that might be interpreted as anti-policy of the conservative Israeli government.”

–President Jimmy Carter, “Palestine—Peace or Apartheid”

Former chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, wrote in his 2006 book, “Target Iran:

“Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.”

“You can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here,”

–Former Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) on Senate Floor upon leaving office, Congressional Record – Senate, May 20, 2004, pages S5921-S5925.

“The real cost of our so-called “strategic relationship” with Israel is not just in dollars but in American lives. AIPAC, as Israel’s chief representative in Washington, promotes an agenda that undermines U.S. credibility and threatens to draw us into more needless wars in Iran and Syria.”

–Former Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL): author of “They Dare to Speak”, and, “Deliberate Deceptions”; and Founding Chairman of the “Council for the National Interest” (http://cnionline.org/)

“The U.S. Congress is not even handed for “domestic political reason”; and, “Israeli leaders understand our system very, very well [and] because they understand our system they can exploit it.”

–Former Congressman Lee Hamilton, was ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee speaking at a Middle East Symposium October 22-23 on “Conflict and Peace in the Middle East

at Carbondale, IL.

Mr. Hamilton was Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission. In an article by Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute, 9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks, August 7, 2006; Mr. Eland wrote:

“As both the Bush administration and its client government in Israel, with their invasions of Arab states in Iraq and Lebanon, respectively, make the United States ever more hated in the Islamic world, a new book by the chairmen of the 9/11 commission admits that the commission whitewashed the root cause of the 9/11 attacks—that same interventionist U.S. foreign policy……Former Governor Tom Kean and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairmen of the 9/11 Commission—have written a tell-all book, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (Knopf, Aug. 15, 2006)… makes the shocking admission that some commission members deliberately wanted to distort an even more important issue. Apparently, unidentified commissioners wanted to cover up the fact that U.S. support for Israel was one of the motivating factors behind al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Although Hamilton, to his credit, argued for saying that the reasons al Qaeda committed the heinous strike were the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and American support for Israel, the panel watered down that frank conclusion to state that U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. policy on Iraq are “dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.”

111^th Congress: 100 Senators: 435 House Representatives

Jews: <2% style=""> 13 Senators; 32 Members of House of Representatives.

African Americans: 13% of Population: 0 Senators, 42 Members of the House of Representatives.

Hispanics: 14% of Population: 3 Senators, ~25 Members of House of Representatives.

In the Senate’s entire History only 5 African Americans have been Senators, including Obama.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

The most important Congressional Committee serving Israel’s interests is the Foreign Relations Committee in both the Senate and House.

–Senate Chairs of Foreign Relations Committee: Joe Biden (I am a Zionist), to be followed by John Kerry (of Jewish descent), staunch Israeli supporter.

–House Chairs of Foreign Relations Committee:

–Tom Lantos (deceased): Israel’s premier Congressman and sponsor/co-sponsor of every Congressional Resolution supporting Israel and attacking Arab nations.

–Howard Berman: In a Jerusalem Post interview, June 23, 2008, the following was reported:

””Howard Berman likes to joke that he became a Zionist before he became a Democrat.. He has the helm of one of the most powerful bodies shaping US foreign policy, and he says his decision to run for Congress and focus on international relations while in office was intimately connected to his Jewish background and ties to the Jewish state. “Israel’s security and the US-Israeli relationship is for me an issue that shapes my whole agenda [in] Congress, and guides it,”.

Senator Carl Levin (Jewish) is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

–Oversee all Military budgets and policies (ensures military aid to Israel)

Sub-Committee Chairs of House Foreign Relations Committee:

(Below, Jews Chair 4 out of the 7 Sub-Committees). Notice the influence on the Middle East, Terrorism, and Western nations.

–Rep. Gary Ackerman: Sub-Committee on Middle East and Asia

–Rep. Brad Sherman: Sub-Committee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Trade

–Rep. Eliot Engel: Sub-Committee on Western Hemisphere

–Rep. Robert Wexler: Sub-Committee on Europe

Additionally Rep. Henry Waxman (Jewish) replaced Rep. John Dingell (Catholic, been Congressmen for 53 years) as Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senator Joe Lieberman despite his opposition to Obama kept his Chairmanship of the powerful Homeland Security Committee. Do you think the Senate feared the Lobby’s backlash if they removed Joe “the traitor” Lieberman?

The following officials are responsible for Homeland Security, Justice Department, Terrorism, and Financial Intelligence. They have access to the most sensitive intelligence, military, technology, and international financial transactions. All Jews.

–Michael Chertoff: Secretary of Homeland Security

–Sen. Joe Lieberman: Chair of Senate Committee on Homeland Security

–Michael Mukasey: Attorney General of the Justice Department

–Stuart Levey: Under Secretary Treasury Department for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

Man most responsible for closing most Muslim Charities in U.S. that assist Palestinians; accusing any Pro Palestinian individual or organization of Terrorism and imprisoning such persons for years (Dr. Sami Al Arian) without charges; and limiting the access and services of the Arab Bank in New York City.

Two Jews who’ve served as Chairs of both the Democratic and Republican National Committees. (there have been others such as Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, Chair of DNC in 2000)

That’s Jewish power.

Steve Grossman (Jewish): Chair of Democratic National Committee

Went from Chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party (1990-1992)—to-Chairman of AIPAC (Israel’s powerful lobby; 1992-1997)—to—Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC: 1997-1999). Only in America can the head of a lobbing group for a foreign nation become chair of one of the two major political parties.

According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency , January 17, 1997 (AIPAC’s Steve Grossman takes Democratic Post), Grossman, in a phone interview, stated: “One part of my life will always be dedicated to grass-roots activism in the Jewish community….”My commitment to strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship is unwavering.”

Kenneth Mehlmen (Jewish). Chair of Republican National Committee

Served as campaign manager for George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. Became Chairman of the Republican National Committee (2005-2007).

In addition:

Rahm Emanuel (Jewish):

Served as Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (decides which candidates gets election funds: a controlling power) for the 2006 election. After the Democratic Party regained control of the House, he was elected as the next Chairman of the Democratic Caucus becoming the fourth highest-ranking Democrat in the House after the Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Rep. Eric Cantor (Jewish):

Within 2 years of being elected to the House of Representatives he was selected to serve as Chief Deputy Majority Whip, the highest appointed position in the House of Representatives. On November 19, 2008, he was elected to the position of Minority Whip for the 111^th Congress becoming the second highest-ranking Republican in the House.

He’s on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which is the chief tax-writing committee of the House with broad responsibilities on several programs.

He’s also the Chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.

Additionally, Representative Sander M. Levin (Jewish) Chairs the Subcommittee on Trade of the Ways and Means Committee.

2. BANKING/FINANCE:

Referring to Vanity Fair’s 100 List of the world’s most powerful people, the Jerusalem Post reports:

“It’s a list of “the world’s most powerful people,” 100 of the bankers and media moguls, publishers and image makers who shape the lives of billions. More than half its members, at least by one count, are Jewish….Joseph Aaron, the editor of The Chicago Jewish News, thinks it’s a list his readers should “feel very, very good about….Talk about us being accepted into this society, talk about us having power in this society,”

–Jerusalem Post, Oct. 11, 2007, “Jewish Power Dominates at Vanity Fair”,

Wall Street Banks, Insurance Companies, and Financial Centers were mostly founded by Jews and usually have Jewish executives:

All institutions below are part of the Wall Street economic meltdown, either going bankrupt, failing, or restructuring. The U.S. taxpayer has poured over $8 Trillion into Wall Street’s financial institutions. It’s an enormous asset to these mainly Jewish firms that their executives rotate in and out of the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and Securities and Exchange Commission. Many sit on each other’s Board of Directors.

1. Goldman Sachs: (Jewish) founded in 1869 by German Jewish immigrant Marcus Goldman. Later joined by his son in law Samuel Sachs to form Goldman Sachs. Henry Paulson was Chair and CEO before leaving to become Bush’s Treasury Secretary. Robert Rubin was a Co Senior Partner.
2. Lehman Brothers: (Jewish) founded by Henry and Mayer Lehman. CEO: Richard S. Fuld, Jr. (Jewish) who also is a member of the New York Federal Reserve Bank along with Michael Geinther, Obama’s Treasury Secretary.
3. Citigroup: Robert Rubin served as Chairman and now is a Director and Senior Counselor. Served as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. Was mentor to Obama’s economic team and is Obama’s financial advisor. Sanford A. Weill was CEO and later Chairman of Citicorp. He also was a Director of the N.Y. Federal Reserve Board…
4. AIG: (American International Group) Maurice R. Greenberg, Chairman for 35 years.
5. Bear Stearns: (Jewish), Alan D. Schwartz, President and CEO, Alan Greenberg, Chairm.

The quote below is from an article published in the Jewish Ledger March 19, 2008.

“Bear Stearns” will always be associated with financial failure rather than with its long history of success, a history from which the Jewish community was a major beneficiary….Through it all and until recently, Bear was also Wall Street’s quintessential Jewish firm. That says much in an industry that was distinguished by so many great Jewish names and fortunes: The Seligmans, Hallgartens, Goldman Sachses, Wertheims, Kuhn Loebs, Lehmans, Warburgs, Neubergers, Baches and many others had Jewish roots”.

Software and Internet: Below All Jews.

* Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft

* Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founder of Google

* Lawrence Ellison, founder of Oracle Corporation

* Philippe Kahn, founder of Borland

3. HOLLYWOOD/MEDIA: Jews founded all the Hollywood Studios and the 3 Major Television Networks.

Hollywood:

Hollywood has historically portrayed minorities in a negative often barbaric fashion beginning with Native Americans and ending with today’s Arab/Muslim villains. (Read Prof. Jack Shaheen’s “Reel Bad Arabs”). Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians are constantly portrayed as terrorists, barbaric, evil, dirty, and oppressors of women. Dehumanizing a people legitimizes wars, invasions, colonialism, and occupation.

According to the historian Neal Gable, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, “Jews invented Hollywood”.

“Hollywood studios were founded by a few Jewish immigrants like Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky (Paramount Studios; Carl Laemmele (Universal); Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn and the Schenks (MGM), Harry Cohn (Columbia); William Fox (Fox Film Corporation); Brothers Harry, Sam, Jack , and Albert Warner (Warner Brothers); Marcus Loew (Loew’s Theatres}, along with a dominance of Jewish attorney’s and talent agents in Hollywood”.

“It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture,” acknowledges Michael Medved, a well-known Jewish author and film critic. “Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names.”

–Michael Medved (Jewish), “Is Hollywood Too Jewish?,” Moment, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1996), p. 37.

Jonathan J. Goldberg, editor of the influential Jewish community weekly Forward. in his 1996 book, “Jewish Power”, wrote:

“In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation”.

–Jonathan Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 280, 287-288. See also pp. 39-40, 290-291.

MEDIA:

Mostly owned, controlled, and run by Jewish publishers, executives, editors, and a plethora of Jewish journalists.

“In the world according to U.S. Media, the high moral ground in the Middle East belongs to Israel’s government—even when it slaughters Lebanese civilians as a matter of policy. In news coverage , Israeli casualties are apt to have names, faces, and bereaved relatives, while Arab victims are likely to be fleeting images: nameless, faceless, distant….Israel’s most crucial allies include the mass media of the United States. Together with top official in Washington, news outlets keep reinforcing the assumption that the Israeli government can do little wrong”.

–Norman Solomon & Jeff Cohen, “Wizards of Media Oz”; p. 243 (courageous Jewish journalists)

–Founders of the 3 Television Networks: All Jews

–William S. Paley: founder of CBS

–David Sarnoff: founder of NBC

–Leonard Goldenson: founder of ABC

“The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media. Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives—not by journalists—whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers. Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home”

–Prof. Paul Craig Roberts, “What We Know and Don’t Know About 9/11”, Vdare.com, August 16, 2006

Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration,

THE BIG FIVE Media Conglomerates:

Conglomerates are responsible for over 80% of all news, editorial, sports, and entertainment information in the U.S. Each conglomerate owns many television, cable and radio stations, movie studios, daily newspapers, weekly magazines, and publishing companies in the U.S. and around the world. Below is only a small list of the overwhelming Jewish executives in all facets of these Conglomerate Medias.

–Viacom (CBS): Sumner Redstone (Jewish), Chairman

39 television stations, 185 radio stations, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, UPN, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster

–Les Moonves, (Jewish): CEO of CBS Television

–Zev Shalev (Jewish): Executive Producer of CBS “The Early Show” (daily morning show)

–60 Minutes: Don Hewitt (Jewish), Executive Producer for 36 years) followed by Jeff Fager, main Jewish Correspondents: Mike Wallace (retired), Leslie Stahl, Bob Simon, Morley Safer (attacked CBS for not showing Prophet Muhammad’s cartoons, called it cowardly): ALL Jewish

–Time/Warner (CNN): Jeffrey Lawrence Bewkes, President and CEO (Jewish)

Time Warner Cable, Warner Bros. Pictures, TNN, HBO, Warner Music Group, Time Publishing (Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and Money Magazine).

–Jonathan Klein (Jewish) President of CNN/U.S.

–Barry Meyer: (Jewish) Chairman and CEO, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

–Richard Stengel (Jewish) Time Magazine’s Managing Editor.

–News Corporation: Rupert Murdoch, Chair and CEO (gentile, but some report Jewish mother)

Here’s what the editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, “How now, Dow Jones?”, May 5, 2007 said of Rupert Murdoch.

“Murdoch is popular in the pro-Israel community for his newspaper’s and network’s unflinching support for Israel, and he should be. The Journal’s editorial writers also tend to take Israel’s side. But opinion is opinion, and fact is fact. You can rely on the columnists and editorial writers at Murdoch’s New York Post for a rousingly pro-Israel take on the day’s news…..For years the Post’s Israel correspondent was Uri Dan, a right-hand man to Ariel Sharon”.

Murdoch:

Owns Fox Entertainment Group, includes Fox Television (owns 60 television stations with 188 affiliates), Fox Cable (sports, movie channels, National Geographic Channel, 20^th Century Fox Movie Studio). World’s largest publisher of english language newspapers, including the New York Post, owns Harper Collins Publishers.

–Peter Chernin (Jewish) President, and Chief Operating Officers of News Corp.; Chair and CEO of Fox Group.

– Roger Ailes (Jewish). President of Fox News Channel and Chair of Fox Television Stations Group

In an interview with the Vindicator paper of Youngstown Ohio, November 11, 2008, Roger Ailes was quoted as saying: “I defend the United States, Israel and the Constitution.”

–“The Weekly Standard”: most influential right wing magazine is owned by Rupert Murdoch with a Jewish Neocon Editor, William Kristol

–General Electric: Jeff Zucker (Jewish); President & CEO of NBC Universal (NBC, MSNBC, CNBC)

NBC serves 220 affiliated TV stations, operates 28 TV broadcasting stations, four cable/satellite networks around the world, investments in the Internet, multimedia, cable television, Universal Studios, plus owns Telemundo, one of the two largest Hispanic broadcasting networks.

–Mark Hoffman, (Jewish): President of CNBC (Business channel):

–Ben Silverman, (Jewish): Co-Chair, NBC Entertainment and NBC Universal TV Studio

–Ron Meyer, (Jewish): President and Chief Operating Officer, Universal Studios

–Walt Disney Company: Robert Iger (Jewish): President and CEO

Operates ABC Network with 226 affiliated stations, Cable TV including ESPN Sports Network, Movie Studios, International Stations, Retail Store, Internet, Music, Theatres, Theme Parks, ABC Radio Networks with the largest radio sports network in the country; also owns 10 television stations, 44 AM and 18 FM Radio Stations. Publishing, Magazines,

–David Westin (Jewish), President of ABC News

–George Bodenheimer, (Jewish): President of ESPN (Sports Network)

According to a research and network analysis done by Sonoma University on the Boards of Directors of the ten big media organizations, only 118 people comprise the membership of all ten boards. These 118 persons also sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. In fact, eight out of the ten big media giants share common memberships on boards of directors with each other.

This is the greatest and purest monopoly of power, influence, and intimidation by a small cabal of men and women who run the world’s access to information. They formulate public opinion, create or destroy governments and careers, and regularly shape and influence government policy.

This is the greatest danger to democracy, not the terrorism of a few thousand murderous fanatics.

Jewish media power is not limited to the U.S. but is found in Europe, Canada, Australia, and other nations.

Major Jewish Newspapers: New York Times, Washington Post (Owns Newsweek), Wall Street Journal

–Tribune Company: Sam Zell (Jewish), Chairman, President and CEO

Owns the following papers: Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Sun Sentinel (South Florida), Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, Morning Call and Daily Press (among others)

All three major News Magazines are owned or run by Jews:

–TIME: Jewish Chairman of Time/Warner

–Newsweek: Owned by the Washington Post, a Jewish owned Media Company

–U.S. News and World Report: Owned by Jewish billionaire, Mortimer Zuckerman; who also served as President of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; a staunch supporter of Israel.

Special Mention:

1. Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Chair, Cheryl Feldman Halpern (Jewish)

–CPB was created by Congress in 1967 under the Public Broadcasting Act. It receives federal funding and in turn funds PBS and NPR (National Public Radio). Ms. Halpern was appointed by Bush to this post in 2005. Previously she was Chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition for eight years. As such she was a strong critic of NPR, accusing the public network of anti-Israel bias. Now America’s public radio networks are run by a Zionist. That’s power.

2. M.E.M.R.I.: Middle East Media Research Institute, headquartered in Washington D.C.

Founded in 1998 by former Israeli military intelligence officer, Yogi Carmon, and the Israeli born Dr. Meyrav Wurmser (left for the Hudson Institute), wife of David Wurmser, former Middle East Advisor to V.P. Dick Cheney and now Director of Middle East Studies at the American Enterprise Institute

–The sole purpose of this organization is to “translate” Arab and Persian media reports into English and other languages. It’s highly inflammatory, selective, wrong and biased translation is done deliberately to further antagonize western governments and peoples against Arabs and Muslims to further entrench Israel’s sole narrative as a victim of hate and violence. Expectedly MEMRI has received wide flung mention, praise, and free propaganda in the Jewish owned media such as the New York Times.

THINK TANKS

Jews, Neocons, and Pro Israel supporters dominate the landscape of Washington “think?” tanks that basically provides the “thinking” for the White House and Congress. Their policy papers, talking points, and dominance on television news programs as “experts” as well as columnists and opinion writers for the major papers is overwhelming. They’re funded by Jewish philanthropists and wealthy conservative foundations.

A review of their board of directors and advisors reads like a who’s who of the Executive, Legislative, Judicial branches of government; corporate America, media owners, editors, columnists, television broadcasters, academia, entertainment personalities, even foreign governmental officials.

As one example, let’s take the AIPAC founded (Martin Indyk) Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

Its Executive Director is Robert Satloff (Jewish), who served on Richard Perle’s Defense Policy Board in the Pentagon (reported to Paul Wolfowitz called the “Architect” of the Iraq War) that pushed for the Iraq War. Dennis Ross (Clinton’s Bush, and Obama’s Mideast Envoy) is a Consultant.

Shockingly, the Board of Directors of this AIPAC formed “think tank” has 4 (bipartisan) Former Secretaries of State: Warren Christopher, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, and George Shultz.

Plus Robert McFarlane, former National Security Advisor, R. James Woolsey, former CIA Director, Richard Perle, James G. Roche, former Secretary of Air Force, and Publisher Mortimer Zuckerman.

The same goes for other Pro Israel think tanks as well; like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI: Chairman Bruce Kovner, Jewish), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA: Chair, Mark Broxmeyer, Jewish), Project for the New American Century (Chair, William Kristol, Jewish), Council on Foreign Relations (President: Richard Haass: Jewish); Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (President: Clifford May: Jewish); Center for Security Policy (President: Frank Gaffney, Jewish)

Obama, especially with Hilary “Zionist” Clinton as Secretary of State, will not be able to waver from the path of allegiance to Israel. He talks the talk but he walks the Zionist walk. He projects confidence but in reality has shown the same insecurity, lack of confidence, and willingness to sell his political soul and nation to powerful Pro Israel Jews who’ve surrounded him and built him up from the very beginning.

Given America’s propensity to avoid confrontation, to seek a happy medium, it’s general ignorance on all matters political, especially on “foreign affairs”; coupled with the high education, wordsmith eloquence, assertiveness and projection of confidence by the “Jewish” elite who swarm around every politician; Americans willingly surrender the purview of political “expertise” to such an elite trusting that they know what’s best for America. The Cabal Jews tell America—-trust us— we know money, and we know Arabs and Muslims, we know their violent faith, their addiction to terrorism, and the fact that they only understand power.

So trust us, America, we know what’s good for them and what’s best for you. Amen, Shalom.

“Until Israel’s hilltop settlement in our nation’s capital is dismantled, allowing for the possibility of a just and lasting peace in Palestine-Israel, its influence on both branches of our government and its insidious affect on US Middle East policy will continue to make willing—or unwitting—kibbutzniks of all Americans. We will be held as complicit, and as culpable, as the citizens of the country whose leaders sat in the dock at Nuremberg. .The world will ask, “Why didn’t you do something to stop it?”

–Robert Weitzel, “Israel’s Settlement on Capitol Hill”, Counterpunch, November 28, 2008 (a must read)

America, our manufactured friend, a friend that loves us to death, that even wallows in the murder of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 as long as it benefits its interests—-with friends like these….well you know the rest.

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,”

–Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Haaretz, April 16, 2008, “Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks GOOD for Israel (as quoted in Ma’ariv )

As an American who loves freedom and justice for all people I pledge to first work for the freedom of our nation from such foreign influence and betrayal by the few, the rich, the shameless, who commandeer our national interests to serve their allegiance to Israel, not America.

Americans have long endured in silence and ignorance the power of the few who’ve fostered in our psyche a herd mentality that absorbs their lies, myths, and propaganda without question causing this great nation to serve and further the political interests of a foreign nation with the blood and fortunes of our young generation.

In honoring the dead at Gettysburg, President Lincoln left a recording for history on this nation’s eternal vigilance for freedom, equality, and liberty: “that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”

The time for Israel and its Lobby’s stranglehold on our government and future is soon to be over.

Can you hear the Liberty Bell ring again?

“Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.” Henri Amiel

MUST WATCH VIDEOS:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2451908450811690589 (MUST SEE DOCUMENTARY) “Occupation 101” on Israel’s Founding, Terrorism, and Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians out of their land)

http://ahmedismailibrahim.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/for-those-who-want-to-see-the-ugly-truth-of-israel-you-gotta-see-this-video-shot-in-1950/ (A Moving Video of Palestinian ethnic cleansing filmed in 1950)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vWZTTrceV8

BBC’s “THE WAR PARTY—Zionism and in Neocon Foreign Policy”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20155.htm (Must watch Danish Video on: THE ISRAEL Lobby)

Sources:

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0591/9105017.htm (Truman on having Jewish, not Arab, Constituents)

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/moshe_dayan.html (Moshe Dayan Quote on American aid)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20443.htm (jAlan Hart, ICH, June 8, 2008: Mr. Hart was a BBC journalist, an author, and researcher)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7729487.stm

Eviction in battle for East Jerusalem, November 15, 2008 (Fawzia al-Kurd)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081119/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictexpulsionjerusalem

Tent of expelled Jerusalem Palestinian family torn down, November 19, 2008

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3560118,00.html

(Obama ‘s Letter to Bush: Hamas must recognize Israel 6?25/08 )

http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3598462,00.html

(Obama in a Conference call with 900 Rabbis: Israel’s security is “sacrosanct”, Ynet, 9/18/08)

http://www.aipac.org/Publications/SpeechesByPolicymakers/Barack_Obama_-_AIPAC_Policy_Forum_2007.pdf (AIPAC: Barack Obama’s Speech: March 2, 2007)

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/86530.htm (State Dept. Website and the Daniel Pearl Story)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E05E7DB1E3CF932A3575AC0A9649C8B63

(Interview with Dick Armey, NYT, Sept 1, 2002: The Way We Live now, Questions for Dick Armey—‘an attack on Israel is an attack on America”

http://www.counterpunch.org/armey0502.html

(Counterpunch: “Rep. Dick Armey Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians, May 2, 2002)

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neoconQuotes.html

(Empire Builders: NeoConservatives and their Blueprint for U.S. Power: Almost all are Jewish)

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/11/lets-dont-be-naive-about-obama-and-the-jewish-establishment.html (Avraham Burg Quote)

http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2008/11/13/1000960/ders

“Dershowitz: I Helped Keep Carter Silent”, Jewish Telegraph Agency; November 13, 2008

http://njdc.typepad.com/njdcs_blog/2007/12/steve-sheffey-g.html

(December 04, 2007; “DEMOCRATS & ISRAEL” A summary of Democrats pandering to Israel)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=280279&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

(White Man’s Burden, Ari Shavit; Haaretz), May 4, 2003)

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=648 (How the Jewish Lobby Pushed for the Iraq War)

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0410-34.htm

“Abraham Foxman and Intimidation of Colin Powell”

Book by two Israeli Journalists: Drucker, Raviv and Shelah, Ofer, Boomerang…, Keter, 2005, pps. 132-133.

http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/owners/ (Columbia Journal Review) “Who Owns What” in Media)

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0624-25.htm

Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America, 6/24/08)

(Sonoma University Research: 118 people compost membership of boards of directors of 10 biggest media)

http://www.corp-research.org (Info on Top 5 Media Conglomerates)

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Media-conglomerate

(Comprehensive Info on Media Conglomerates)

http://www.weeklystandard.com/

“The Weekly Standard”/ Owned by Rupert Murdoch, William Kristol, Editor

http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/5306/edition_id/98/format/html/displaystory.html (On Steve Grossman)

http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/051007/edcolHowNow.html

(Editor of New Jersey Jewish News on Rupert Murdoch)

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery04102003.html

Uri Avnery, “The Night After”, April 10, 2003

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1785

“9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks, August 7, 2006;”

http://www.newamericancentury.org/

“Project for American Century” (List of signatories of Letter to Clinton, June 3, 1997 to attack Iraq)

Elliott Abrams Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad I. Lewis Libby Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle Peter W. Rodman Stephen P. Rosen Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld Vin Weber George Weigel Paul Wolfowitz

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1292/9212069b.html

Washington Report on the Middle East, Jews and Israel, AIPAC President Resigns After Being Taped Boasting of negotiating “Sect of State” for Clinton”; December/January 1992/93, Page 69

http://jta.org/news/article/2008/11/05/1000795/the-chosen-jewish-members-in-the-111th-us-congress

“The Chosen: Jewish members in the 111th U.S. Congress”, Jewish Telegraph Agency, Nov. 5, 2008

List of 13 Jewish Senators and 32 Members of House of Representatives

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214132663714&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

“Time to Rethink”; Jun. 23, 2008 Interview with Rep. Howard Berman

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1191257286817

On Vanity Fair’s List of 100 most powerful men and women in the world (51% Jewish)

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/newestablishment/ (Vanity Fair 100)

http://www.jewishledger.com/articles/2008/07/17/editorials/edit930.txt (On Bear Stearns, Jews in Wall Street)

http://www.cjh.org/education/essays.php?action=show&id=10 Center for Jewish History)

“All That Glitters is not Goldwyn: Early Hollywood Moguls”

http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/Barrier_Report_July_2008.pdf (United Nations: The Humanitarian Impact of Israel’s Wall))

http://www.kibush.co.il/datapage.asp?lang=1%20&section=10

(Occupation Magazine: Articles, Maps, Stats)

http://jinsa.org/ (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs)

http://aipac.org/index.asp

“America’s Pro Israel LOBBY” (quote from its website)

http://adl.org/ (Anti Defamation League)

http://www.conferenceofpresidents.org/

“Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations” – See List of 50 Major Jewish Organizations; Malcolm I. Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/clinton-obama-and-the-jews/

“Clinton, Obama and the Jews”, Feb. 1, 2008: “an embarrassment of riches for Jews to have both these candidates)

http://www.aei.org/

(American Enterprise Institute:

President Bush proudly proclaimed that he had 20 of AEI’s members in his administration

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateI01.php (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)

http://www.heritage.org/

Heritage Foundation: A Conservative Think Tank

http://www.cato.org/

Cato Institute: funded by two Jews: Charles Koch and Murray Rothbard

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1296.html

Good Search Site on Right Wing persons and organizations

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/

Center for Foundation of Democracies: President, Clifford May (Jewish)

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propaganda1sep04.htm

“Tentacles or Rage: The Republican propaganda mill, a brief history”; MUST READ

Lewis Lapham / Harpers Magazine v.309, n.1852, September 2004 1sep04

http://www.vindy.com/news/2008/nov/11/fox-news-chairman-ailes-comes-home-discusses/

“Interview with Roger Ailes, Nov 11, 2008: “I defend…Israel”

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/060816_what_know.htm

Prof. Paul Craig Roberts, “What We Know and Don’t Know about 9/11)

http://www.jewishachievement.com/domains/ceos.html

Overview of Jewish CEO’s, past and present

http://jiw.blogspot.com/2008/11/good-news-about-obama-appointments.html MUST READ

(Jewish Issues Watchdog)

“Good News About Obama Appointments”. November 24, 2008

From Middle East Forum, by Steve Rosen, Wed, 19 Nov 2008:

Previous postings raised questions about potential nominees to Obama Administration positions regarding their views on Israel, Iran, the Palestinians, and other issues. Today, I focus on reasons to have confidence that the incoming team will do positive things in the Middle East. Many of the candidates already nominated or rumored to be likely appointees, are well known to and highly regarded by AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations. My colleagues, and in some cases I, had contacts and dealings with each of these people over the years, and we had evidence that gave us confidence. This includes

* Rahm Emmanuel, Chief of Staff to the President;

* Ron Klain, Chief of Staff to Vice President Biden;

* Jim Steinberg, likely to be Deputy National Security Adviser or National Security Adviser to Obama;

* Tony Blinken, likely to be National Security Adviser to the Vice President;

* Greg Craig, White House Counsel;

* Pete Rouse, White House adviser;

* Jim Messina, Deputy Chief of Staff to the president;

* Phil Schiliro, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs;

* Dennis Ross, rumored for several top diplomatic positions;

* Jack Lew, rumored to head the National Economic Council;

* Jane Harman and Tony Lake, rumored for top intelligence positions;

* Janet Napolitano, who will head the Department of Homeland Security;

* Richard Danzig, probable Deputy Secretary of Defense;

* Richard Clarke, rumored for a ntational security post,; and many others.

Not to mention Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama. That certainly doesn’t mean we never had disagreements or will never, but this looks like it will be an Administration full of people quite capable of making wise decisions in the Middle East.

That said, I will continue to look for potential problems among possible nominees and policy developments.

Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC foreign policy chief who now writes a blog hosted by the Middle East Forum.

He has been under federal indictment since August 4, 2005 for alleged violations of the Espionage Act in the conduct of AIPAC’s work

http://www.counterpunch.org/weitzel11282008.html

Robert Weitzel, Israel’s Settlement on Capitol Hill, Counterpunch, Nov. 28, 2008: MUST READ)

http://www.masada2000.org/shit-list.html

List of Self Hating Israel Threatening Jews

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Note: some will agree with Mohamed Khodr, others will not. My point in re-printing this piece here is not to endorse it (nor is this note intended as a way to denounce it). My point is to offer it to your attention in the hope, as usual, of generating an interesting discussion.

The Saker