Hezbollah has earned the enmity of many Lebanese citizens over the years with not only its terror attacks, but also its military conflicts with Israel, which have caused tremendous damage to the Lebanese infrastructure.
Even among Shi'ite followers, most gravitate to Nabih Berri's Amal Party. No need to reference mere "potential" - most Lebanese factions have been against Hezbollah for years.
Hezbollah is largely localized in its power base to south Lebanon.
Machsom Watch is a Jewish human rights organization, consisting largely of older Israeli females that stakes out IDF checkpoints and documents abuses carried out against Palestinians.
Following the 1967 Six Day War, many Christians from the West Bank immigrated into the United States from Chritian enclaves, such as Ramallah, to avoid living under IDF occupation and the checkpoints are a key reason for their leaving their homeland. Very few have returned.
I was acquianted with Maj. Gen Adolph McQueen, who served as a commandant of one of the camps at Guantanamo Bay - it may have been Camp Delta. I knew him as an investigator at the Michigan Attorney General's Office. His everday job was a Medicaid fraud investigator but he was attached to the U.S. Army Reserve in the military police section.
He was a polite fellow during my interactions with him, never discussed his work in Cuba, but did confirm that he was a major general.
Salim Hamdan was trumpeted as a "high-value" prisoner. He was convicted of being Osama Bin Laden's chauffeur. In a ruling that was almost completely unreported in the mainstream media, the United States Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia Circuit on October 16, 2012, vacated his conviction under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 noting that the conduct he was convicted for was not criminal in nature when they were committed, thereby rendering it an ex post facto prosecution violative of the United States Constitution.
The International Committee of the Red Cross inspected GITMO in June of 2004. The ICRC inspectors accused the U.S. military of using humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes and other proscribed conduct constituting torture - the U.S. government rejected these findings.
The FBI inspected GITMO and also found human rights violations.
By May 2011, at least six suicides occurred at GITMO.
GITMO has had numerous detainees under the age of 18, in violation of international law.
Guantanamo Bay was chosen upon recommendation of legal experts in the Bush administration for the reason its location - leased space in Cuba - would make it, in their opinion, outside the jurisdiction of the United States legal system, thus giving the Defense Department an apparent free hand in doing what it pleased to do - however the U.S. federal court system has reined in the U.S. government to a certain extent.
GITMO is as huge as an embarrassment to the U.S. in Cuba as the Abu Ghraib prison was in Iraq.
It would not surprise me that Yemeni casualties dying as "collateral damage" in drone attacks may include some who may be either naturalized U.S. citizens, native-born Americans, or U.S. permanent resident aliens.
The Yemeni-American community has flourished in Metro Detroit with a number being elected to public office and exercising influence via the Yemeni-American Political Action Committee(YAPAC).
There are legal implications for the killing of a U.S. citizen and the "standing" issue that the Department of Justice has previously invoked succesfully may not work if the estate of the deceased files a wrongful death suit in federal court - although the "political question doctrine" has also been cited in dismissing these cases; in other words, the decision to kill a person via drone attack is not subject to judicial review, however what is interesting is what if an American citizen is not a target but killed anyway? Can his estate sue in federal court?
"Israel has reached the limits of their military and does not know what to do."
The Israeli populace has shown that they will not tolerate any military conflict in which their forces face significant casualties.
In the Second Lebanon War, the opinion polls in Israel could be seen to drop preciptously as IDF casualties mounted. Two significant incidents in that war showed abrupt declines in those opinion polls. One was an incident in which 10 IDF soldiers had been instantly killed in a Katyusha missile strike and two more fatally wounded. It had been noted that the unit that suffered these casualties had ignored air attack sirens and many were not wearing helmets or flak jackets. The second incident occurred when the IDF's elite Golani and Givati infantry brigade units were ambushed as they entered the border city of Bint Jebayl by Hezbollah militiamen and sustained 30 dead and wounded within the first hour of battle.
"..Israel no longer has any edge when it comes to warfare."
The acquisition of sophisticated weaponry by Hezbollah turned the tide against Israel and prevented future military incursions against south Lebanon. Ehud Barak expressly recognized that Israel had no longer any "deterrent" effect on Hezbollah. The acquisition of radar-guided Chinese Silkworm missiles and Russian-designed anti-tank rockets by Hezbollah did much to level the playing field and the expected heavier casualties sustained by Israel caused opposition within Israel to that IDF incursion and consideration for future border crossings into that area.
The Fajr missile strikes from Gaza into greater Tel Aviv, although largely repelled by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, were a major psychological turning point for Israel as Tel Aviv residents had to take cover in the first missile strike it sustained since 1991. The key to Gazan deterrence to future IDF intervention will be to continue to acquire and deploy more sophisticated weaponry.
".......Neoconservatives were convinced that...the Shiite Iraqis as a functional minority would sympathize with Israel's Jews."
This is not accurate - the Shi'ite community in Iraq has no real affinity to Israel.
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most influential Shi'ite cleric within Iraq, strongly condemned Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which chiefly targeted the Shi'ite Islam community within Lebanon.
On his official website, Sistani had declared it impermissible to sell Israeli products or to purchase products from any company that donates part of its income to Israel:
In November of 2012, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, one of Israel's most vocal opponents, announced his plans to meet with Iraq's most prominent Shi'ite clerics.
Lavrov is correct in that the Palestinian question is central to a Middle East peace.
The proliferation of extremism among Jews and Palestinians has been fueled by the failure to settle this question.
On the other hand, the moderate Fatah organization in Gaza as well as moderate and leftist political parties within Israel have gained popularity in recent months following the November 2012 conflict betweeen Gaza and Israel and the 11/29/12 U.N. General Assembly resolution granting Palestine observer state status in the United Nations.
However, Hamas' assent is the key to any future peace agreement. Also, Likud will have to soften its position on the West Bank and give realistic independence to the Palestinians to achieve a true peace - not a state modeled after Bophutswana.
The recent First Amendment case involving Westboro Baptist Church protects those speaking on matters of public interest from liability. In that case, the public interest issue was gays in the military.
The First Amendment also protected the minister from Florida who wished to burn Korans.
The Arab International Festival in Dearborn had obnoxious "Christian missionaries" making offensive remarks about Islam. They recently obtained a settlement for their prosecution by the government.
The organizers of the Arab International Festival recently announced this year that this years event in Dearborn would be cancelled, despite being held successfully for many previous years.
Gulbuddin Hekmyatar was supplied and trained by the U.S. and Israel during the Operation Cyclone CIA attempt to subvert the Marxist pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan in the 1980s and into to early 1990s. There were reports members of his group were involved in the opium trade and that his group had only very limited support among the Afghan people.
Persident Reagan invited the Afghan rebel leadership into the Oval Office for a photo op in the 1980s and lauded them as freedom fighters.
He was a key rebel leader during that period and eventually became Afghan prime minister in 1994 after the Marxist president, Dr. Najibullah, was overthrown.
In 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency attempted to kill Hekmyatar in a drone strike; the missile missed him. He later placed a bounty on U.S. serviceman and announced his support for Al-Qaeda.
It is so ironic he was a key American ally during the Cold War and yet someone in the U.S. government later authorized killing him in a drone strike.
Someone should interview Hekmyatar so it can be substantiated how close he was to America's leadership during the Cold War and how that relationship soured.
Israel had mutual ideological interests with South Africa via apartheid and the two collaborated in producing atomic weaponry.
Look at South Africa's creation of an "independent" Bophutswana as a political model and comapre it to the current political model that Israel wants to promote for a West Bank Palestinian state - the two are similar in design.
The Palestinian Nakba ("catastrophe")is often compared to the plight of the American Indians - colonists subjugating an indigenous population.
Israel was very active in Latin America during the 1970s and 80s. Check the NY Times #1 best-seller "By Way of Deception" by a former Mossad case officer (Ostrovsky) where he describes the role of the Mossad in that area.
Israel was supplied Exocet missiles by Chile in exchange for training in covert operations of Chilean intelligence. Ostrovsky describes the disgust he had on seeing planes bearing the Star of David carry cocaine in Latin America. His allegations in his book were taken so seroiusly by Israeli government officials that he was questioned via deposition in a formal inquiry.
Israel also had ties to Panama's Manuel Noriega.
Israel's interest in promoting international arms sales is purely economic. The long-running civil war that had gone on in Sri Lanka between the Tamil Tigers and government forces that decimated that nation's population was fueled by Israeli arms distribution to both sides. It was a lucrative proposition for Israel, irrespective which side eventually won.
The irony is that the only nation in Latin America, Costa Rica, is also the most peaceful and stable.
Then-President Jimmy Carter, at significant cost to State Department foreign policy interests, criticized American allies in Latin America, such as Brazil and Argentina for their woeful record on human rights.
It was the Kennedy administration who inaugurated Operation Mongoose, following the Bay of Pigs, which was a joint CIA-Army project, to attempt to subvert the Castro regime in Cuba via covert paramilitary operations. Kennedy's foreign policy actions were not entirely "progressive" and he was, for political reasons, anxious to show the public he was not soft on communism.
The spike in U.S. supported anti-communist activity in Latin America came about after Pres. Carter left office. El Salvadoran President Duarte was a CIA asset and death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson was trained as an army intelligence officer at the School of the Americas, a training unit of the U.S. Army. The rise of Duarte and D'Aubuisson coincided with Reagan's assumption of the presidency in 1981.
Israel as a whole never took the Palestinian resistance issue seriously.
When stone throwing occcurred in the First Intifada, PM Yitzhak Shamir stated there would "not be a memory" left of the Palestinians if they used firearms as weapons against the occupation.
When in the late 1990s Israeli military analysts warned senior IDF officials of the possibility of guerillla war by Palestinian resistance groups, it was scoffed at.
The key to the militant resistance groups being successful in Palestine will be their capability to acquire heavy weaponry to employ against the IDF. The heavy casualties Israel sustained in the Second Lebanon War deterred further military adventurism by the IDF in South Lebanon; those casualties were due to sophisticated anti-tank weaponry, air-to-sea and surface-to-air missiles used by Hezbollah. In November of 2012, it was the Iranian-manufactured Fajr missiles with a 200lb warhead that inflicted significant panic in Tel Aviv.
"The AP's records were looked at in an attempt to find him, not to nail them."
The AP's right to privacy was still invaded.
There is also the question if the journalistic shield law applicable in that jurisdiction would also protect the AP's source(s) in this situation.
If the feds could sift through a journalist's telephone records to determine who was communicating with the press, it would unduly chill the First Amendment freedom of the press.
According to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post,
the Finance Ministry previously investigated the deployment of an Israeli equivalent of "Air Force One" and a committee approved this as economical since savings would recoup costs in five years in comparison to to projected costs continuing to use private commercial flights for the PM.
Netanyahu was reluctant to accept these recommendations for the purchase of a PM plane due to adverse publicity over its estimated total cost.
The PM knew he would be criticized if he deployed an "Israeli Air Force One" due to its projected cost yet he also faces criticism by using costly private commercial planes.
Look at the Iranian hostage crisis and Lebanon in the 1980s.
CIA personnel were held hostage. CIA agents can operate under embassy cover and diplomatic immunity when assigned to embassy or consular buildings. This is nothing new.
Remember Operation Mongooose where the CIA trained and led anti-Castro exiles in paramilitary operations?
The Central Intelligence Agency by law always must have one miltary/naval officer and one civilian intelligence officer hold the Director of Intelligence and Deputy Director position. Bobby Inman, as deputy director of the CIA, used to wear his admiral's uniform.
The CIA always has beeen a paramilitary as well as an intelligence organization.
"Leaders of Ansar Al-Sharia have denied that they directed their organization to attack the U.S. Consulate and have condemned the attack."
In fact, their has been substantial evidence of that group's involvemnt in the attack.
Not long after the attack New York Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick quoted a 20-year-old witness named Mohamed Bishari who gave his account that the attackers were members of Ansar Al-Sharia.
Paul Schemm of the Associated Press reported on October 27, 2012 that between 125-150 gunmen sealed off the streets with trucks bearing to logo of Ansar Al-Sharia before commencing the operation.
"Al-Qaeda is not for the most part not even a 'thing" in Libya."
In reality, there have been concerns expressed about Al-Qaeda endangering U.S. interests in Libya.
On September 14, 2012, CNN correspondent Arwa Damon discovered Ambassador Stevens diary at the unsecured site of the attack; that diary conveyed his worries of being on an Al-Qaeda "hit list".
CNN's Paul Cruickshank, in a March 5, 2015 report, indicated that an intercepted phone call from Benghazi linked a senior Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb commander to the attack.
The only thing clear about the attacks is that these were heavily armed individuals conducting a well-coordinated assault and that the Obama administration disseminated false information afterwards regarding the attack.
My guess is that Al-Qaeda had some involvement in the incident but that it was carried out by Ansar Al-Sharia at the operational level. The Al-Libi drone killing may have been the motivation for al-Qaeda initiating the retaliation and the three-month timeline between that incident and the consular attacks support this.
The concept of a joint operation between Al-Qaeda and another organization is not unprecedented. The Sinai hotel bombings targeting Israeli tourists that resulted in 60 deaths back in 2004 had been described by some as an Al-Qaeda operation that received logistical support by Hezbollah.
While its easy to cite the simple language of the Fourth Amendment and its Warrant Clause, the reality is that this Bill of Rights section has been interpreted in various ways by the United States Supreme Court over the last several centuries since 1787, when the United States Constitution was adopted as the supreme law of the land.
The Supreme Court in Katz versus United States in 1967 established the test is whether a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the communications device in question. The landmark Katz opinion established public pay telephones users as encompassing such protection against FBI wiretaps.
"Congressional legislation" is probably not needed since the Fourth Amendment protections always trump whatever an Act of Congress purports to do. However to the extent that courts agree with the Justice Department's above position, then the U.S. Congress can enact legislation to provide broader protections to citizens from privacy intrusions from law enforcement or other government actors.
According to investigative reporters at the NY Times who researched the issue, the U.S., via the Central Intelligence Agency, is actively involved in arming the rebels by brokering arms deals and arranging for Arab governments' military cargo planes to deliver weaponry to a Turkish airport. So it is clear that America is doing more than merely shipping non-lethal aid.
Secondly, this article correctly confirms the fact that Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate with a large portion of its fighters from Iraq, now controls large swaths of territory in northern Syria and is commanding respect from a significant percentage of civilians in Syria as well as segments of the Free Syrian Army due to their battlefield prowess - a scary prospect for America.
Syria appears deadlocked in a devastating civil war with no end reasonably in sight absent foreign intervention.
The Church of England has previously issued a boycott call, as have many British celebrities and groups.
In the U.S. the State of Washington has led the call for boycotting Israeli goods - largely due to sympathy of Olympia's Rachel Corrie.
The current battle for boycott endorsements against Israel have been in the student governments of the University of California campuses, including San Diego and Berkeley.
"He characterized the young Israeli protestors for social justice in summer, 2011 as a leftist Islamic Nazi plot...."
While much of the press internationally had been fixated on the putative grass roots nature of the social justice movement in Israel in which Dpahni Leef, a young woman who pitched a tent to protest eviction from her apartment, some were contending that Leef was a figurehead of leftists spearheaded by Dov Khenen a Hadash Party Knessset member in Israel - Hadash is a Marxist political party jointly led by both Jews and Arabs within Israel that regualrly holds a small number of seats in the Knesset.
The article is: "Communists Confess They Were Behind Israel's Social Justice Protests" by Daniel Greenfield in Front Page Magazine in its January 21, 2013 edition.
When some media outlets suggested that Ms. Leef was considering a run for mayor of Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem Post reported shortly thereafter in its January 6, 2013 edition that she had been indicted in a Tel Aviv court for a number of criminal charges, including obstructing an officer, arising out of the aforesaid Tel Aviv protest - her first trial hearing had been scheduled the day after the election (but Ms.Leef later indicated she would not seek the mayor's office).
George Marshall was brutally honest, effective, and intelligent military and political strategist, and a statesman who would have made an excellent president if Eisenhower had not made it before him.
Remember that Eisenhower was in awe of many of the accomplishments of Nazi Germany as he rode through the German lands after the conquest of Nazism. The Federal Interstate Highway Act he signed into law was inspired by his admiration of the Autobahn. Nazi spymaster Reinhard Gehlen was never prosecuted and negotiated his way into becoming the West German intelligence chief, with his opinions often were relayed almost verbatim to Eisenhower.
L. Fletcher Prouty has said that the CIA went far beyond its charter as a central repository for intelligence garnered by other agencies of government for organized transmission to the President or National Security Council, to becoming known for "black operations" that were often not approved by the appropriate authorities. His book, "The Secret Team" was one of the seminal texts on the organization of the U.S. intelligence community.
The National Security Agency never had any Congressional authorization. Today it is the largest intelligence-gathering entity in the free world.
America essentially adopted the then-advanced intelligence capabilities of the Nazi German and Soviet intelligence networks to compete in the Cold War. The CIA can also be credited with organizing and supplying major intelligence agencies throughout the free world. CIA counter-intelligence chief James Angleton helped to organize the Mossad and the U.S. gave it equipment. Iran's SAVAK was organized and trained by Norman Schwarzkopf, Ted Shackley supervised the creation of Operation Condor intelligence network in South America.
It is debatable on whether the U.S. intelligence community did more harm than good following WWII, but it is clear that there were many mistakes and, also, poor government oversight that led to a blowback against America in such regions as Iran and Afghanistan.
Yes, and this world empire's cost is a 17 billion-dollar national debt and a dependency on OPEC oil production that both choke the American economy.
Germany and Japan had no defense obligations after WWII and the international banking community had no problem about financing their industrial resurgence. The Rothschild Bank funded the Japanese steel industry after WWII and later also bankrolled Czech steel production following the the fall of the communism. Germany was rebuilt under the Marshall Plan. After the fall of communism the former East Germany also began enjoying prosperity in its union with its western counterpart. The standard of living in most Western European countries has surpassed that of America. Japan and Germany have taken the lead in having the most sophisticated auto production methods, employing a large percentage of its energy sources from solar power - while the U.S. focuses its scientific efforts on national defense.
Saudi Arabia's oil revenues were largely funded in America as part of a 10 trillion-dollar investment into real estate, Fortune 500 companies, including the largest railroads, banking, and waste transport companies, and other ventures. America is economically dependent on this Saudi investment. While everyone talks about the political influence of the Israel Lobby, there have been few books or journal articles on the vast influence Saudi Arabia has on the U.S. economy. Saudi Arabia has an estimated 160-billion in proven oil reserves and supplies 28% of American imports of crude oil.
Red China is fast becoming the world's most powerful nation economically. It has financed 26% of the U.S. national debt and holds 2 trillion dollars in U.S. funds. Its GNP rivals that of the U.S. Japan finances 21% of the U.S. national debt and has some of the largest world monetary bank reserves.
Our U.S. empire mentality gave us wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, and various other regions after WWII that drained trillions of dollars via defense and intelligence spending from our economy to retain our position as the "Arsenal of Democracy". We gave billions and billions of foreign aid to ensure other nations would vote the way we wanted them to at the U.N.
America will bankrupt itself to control the world.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights has reported that 42 Syrians have been confirmed dead and 100 or more missing as a resilt of the israeli air attacks.
However Israel could have major problems if Muslim fundamentalist elements, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, gain a controlling influence in a post-Assad government.
The potential toppling of Assad could leave a power vacuum in which extremist element opportunists could eventualy seize control. There are Free Syrian Army members who have gone on record as saying they will turn their guns on Jabhat al-Nusra the day after Assad leaves power. We then might have a situation not unlike Gaza where secular and religious militias battle for control of the region. Jabhat al-Nusra already occupies significant swaths of territory within northern Syria and has won praise by segments of the Syrian populace for their military prowess.
The Syrian National Coalition must do its best to stem potential future bloodshed if Assad is deposed. Their former chairman, Moaz al-Khatib, had attempted to get the U.S. State Department to rescind its designation of Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist organization.
The story was that a chemical waepons research facilty was struck near Damascus, but also two military bases farther away from Damascus near the Lebanese border were also bombed. This occurred at about 2:00a.m. Sunday local time according to residents.
The Syrian government has reported a number of dead and wounded in these attacks and is making a report to present to the United Nations.
While I believe that the plausible explanation of Israel is that they do not want arms shipments from Syria to Hezbollah, their assertion of neutrality is questionable.
The Syrian government has indicated that the airstrikes have occurred near areas where government forces are engagig the armed rebels.
I am sure the Israeli leaders see a democratically-elected post-Baathist Sunni government non-aligned with Hezbollah as advancing their interests, rather than Assad's pro-Hezbollah regime.
The initial reports are that a chemical weapons research facility was bombed outside of Damascus and also two military bases were hit with aerial bombardment.
Syria claims that rebels were fighting in the area and the bombing assisted them.
The Morsi government in Egypt has already denounced the airstrikes and an Israeli official in the PM's office has anonymously confirmed Israel authorized the bombings.
Israel's conduct in this episode does violate international law and the reality is that the U.N. Security Council is hamstrung due to the onmipresent U.S. veto on matters of condemnation against Israel.
Israel's air assault is a game-changer that could give Assad the excuse he needs to garner support for a retaliatory strike against Israel.
Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov will no doubt
denounce the airstrike as violative of international law.
Don't joke about drone usage in America. The legislature in Maine has been considering a bill to allow deployment of police aerial surveillance drones. It is being opposed by the ACLU.
The moral debate on drone use is reminiscent on the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Chester Nimitz both felt that using nuclear weapons on cities violated what they were ethically taught as officers.
Today many American leaders with military backgrounds are denouncing the aerial drone killing program.
The justification today for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was that it saved the lives of 100,000 U.S. servicemen. Today the moral rationale for drone use is that it saves American lives that may be lost if the government were forced to hunt and arrest drone targets.
The conservation of American lives is, politically, of paramount concern to the Obama administration and drone use furthers that compelling objective. Few Americans are shedding tears over the deaths of Yemeni, Afghan, Somali or Pakistani nationals in killer drone strikes and members of Congress receive few, if any, complaints from constituents over such drone use. If the targets were, on the other hand, suspected IRA members in Ulster, Basque separatists in Spain, Serb militiamen or other European armed resistance groups, you can guarantee federal elected representatives in the U.S. would be inundated with complaints.
The link to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism article referenced above cites concerns that other nations may embark on lethal drone programs. This is a danger. To have every country launching killer drones into other countries based on nebulous standards is a recipe for disaster.
General Cartwright's comments of ceding the "moral authority" via drone deployment before the Senate subcommittee are likewise well-taken.
It is also important that Congressional testimony be taken of residents of drone-targeted nations to substantiate the human cost and the fallible nature of decisions on whom should be targeted for drone assassination; the al-Muslimi testimony was welcomed.
Recall the Central Intelligence Agency involvement in Afghanistan during Operation Cyclone. The opposition rebels were Afghan tribesmen who often fought each other when they were not fighting the Marxist Afghan regime or the Soviet Red Army.
The rebels had high morale but lacked anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets neeeded to fight Russian tanks and helicopter gunships. They also needed durable automtic rifles. The CIA supplied them with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, ant-tank guns and Kalashnikov rifles. The result turned the tide against the Communist regime in Kabul and the Red Army of the USSR.
The collapse of Dr. Najibullah's Marxist goverement ended the Soviet influence in the region but brought years of infighting amongst the victorious Afghan fighters and eventual domination of the Pakistani ISI intelligence service via its Taliban movement it fostered.
Without the Operation Cyclone "victory" of the CIA, there would have likely been no growth of Al-Qaeda into the pre-eminent international terrorist organization, no 9/11 tragedy, no Taliban, no burgeoning of Afghan agriculture as the world's largest opium producer, no 9/9/2001 assassination of the charismatic Ahmad Shah Massoud - just ongoing civil war that would have likely prevented any one faction from taking over the country.
Jabhat Al-Nusra has become the first Al-Qaeda affiliate to have broad-based public support in its host state. How much CIA-brokered arms deliveries eventually found its way on the black market to that Jabhat al-Nusra? Note how the big Eric Harroun story disappeared from media attention overnight after Harroun's father reported the ex-American serviceman was a CIA operative.
The website is created by Kawther Salam, an award-winning journalist from the West Bank in Hebron who uncovered alleged corruption in the IDF that caused investigations by the Israeli government to be initiated. She later sought asylum in Europe due to threats she received as a rsult of her disclosures.
Her website exposes the backgrounds of Israeli Defense Forces officers who administer the West Bank and the conduct committed by the IDF against West Bank Palestinians.
Firstly, the Netanyahu government does not want a peace agreement. Their only position is a Bophutswana-modeled plan that divides the West Bank into "islands" of Palestinian Authority control with continued heavy IDF administration of roads and outlying areas. See Israeli Consul General Roey Gilad's speech to University of Michigan students as reported on in the Michigan Daily in its December 4, 2012 edition:
Thomas Friedman, in his award-winning book "From Beirut to Jerusalem", published in the late 1980s, indicated that it was the strategy of the Israeli government to maintain the status quo of IDF administration of the West Bank indefinitely. By submitting a peace plan that it knows will be rejected by the Palestinians is to achieve that status quo indefinitely.
Brown paper bags are not the best way between two governments to transact business. Obviously, the Central Intelligence Agency does not care what Karzai does with the cash - and if the esteemed president did pocket the money, it would be equally as valuable to the CIA - or even more to have a chief executive "on the take" as opposed to simply financing Afghan internal intelligence activities.
Is this being properly accounted for on the CIA's end?
It is my understanding from previous reports that Hamid Karzai has a net worth of about $20,000.00.
There were issues of inadequate accounting of CIA funding in the Sandinista-Contra conflict in Nicaragua.
Your citation of chemical weapons use by other governments being unpunished is well-taken.
The 462-page U.N. Goldstone Commission Report found credible proof of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Israel Defense Forces during Operation Cast Lead. Among the findings were the use of white phosphorus in an illicit manner against civilians within Gaza.
Nothing was done to punish the perpetrators. Where was the U.S.?
Iraq's use of poison gas against Kurds in Halabja was not punished until "Chemical Ali" was convicted and executed many years later - and only after the Saddam Hussein regime fell.
The most recent reports from Salim Idris the FSA commander, in an interview with CNN is that the poisonous gas used was in Homs, Aleppo, and Otaiba - which is a community outside of Damascus. There have been no reports of any gas attack within Damascus.
"......substantial intellignce establishing that chemical weapons have been used in the Syrian conflict."
I am sure that Obama and his advisors remember "Curveball" and his "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as well as Colin Powell's ill-advised speech to the U.N.
I agree that Sarin is likely being used in Syria, however Obama will most likely take advantage of "wriggle room" where at all possible. Further, I would anticipate only a very measured response by Obama to recent events - with a "boots on the ground" scenario being unlikely.
The use of sleep deprivation and torture was chronicled by the CIA in the "Family Jewels" report in connection with the detention of Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko. The report concluded that Nosenko was a bona fide defector and his detention possibly violated kidnapping laws.
Former FBI agent William Turner in the book "The Fish is Red" explained that the CIA often has a non-enforcement agreement with other federal, state, and local agencies of law enforcement in the event criminal conduct occurred and was discovered by those agencies. Turner argued that the Neutrality Act, federal explosives laws, and other statutes were routinely violated on U.S. soil during the Operation Mongoose activities directed against Cuba during the 1960s.
More recently, the Justice Department failed to seek criminal indictments against CIA personnel with respect to alleged torture activities against "enemy combatants" due to solely political considerations.
Without criminal accountability, there is no deterrence upon federal officials who authorize illegal interrogation.
This has all the hallmarks of a "Columbine-style" operation where some amateurish pair who have some beef with society and embark on a violent spree with guns and explosives.
The Ann Arbor Chronicle this week reported this week that the City Council in that municipality was considering an ordinance at its April 15th meeting that would regulate police surveillance, including unmanned "aerial vehicles".
It seems that American law enforcement seeks adoption of the drone as an aerial visual surveillance device. How long before someone in the United States begins advocating armed drones patrolling our cities in the name of law enforcement?
I do not believe that Christianity or Islam endorses either democracy or authoritarian forms of government.
Organizations that have been denoted as "Christian" such as the Moral Majority have, however, taken an intense role in politics.
Anyone who has ever attended a GOP political convention will see many ministers serve as party delegates out of their advocacy of religious convictions in areas such as abortion, freedom of religion, and opposition to communism.
American Muslims have generally shifted to the Democratic Party recently due to its inclusive nature and its support for immigration reforms.
I fully believe that a practicing Christian or Muslim is, as a matter of adherence to their respective faiths, not required to become politically involved.
Also see the January 17, 2012 article in Haaretz authored by Avi Issacharoff, "Hamas Brutally Assaults Shi'ite Worshippers In Gaza": link to wwrn.org
That article is quoted:
"Gazan sources told Haaretz that Islamic Jihad now contains a group of converts to Shia Islam. The group is led by Iyad al-Hosni, also a convert........"
Islamic Jihad in Palestine is composed of Sunni adherents in a religious sense, however their former leader Fathi Shaqaqi adopted the Shi'ite political model of Islamic revolution implemented in Iran as the standard for revolution for Sunni adhrents as well.
If you are referring to the poison gas employed at Halabja by the Saddam Hussein regime, the targets were not fellow Arabs but rather Kurds - who had been historically antagonistic to the Baathists in Iraq.
I do not believe that Assad would want to employ chemical weapons against Israel, which would provoke a massive retaliation from the Israeli government at a time when the Assad regime is trying to militarily undertake a counter-offensive against the rebels.
As to your second point:
I do not believe the limited, especially non-verifiable, use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army would cause Obama to initiate a military confrontation with Syria.
I believe that one of the key reasons Obama was re-elected was that he helped keep American servicemen out of harms way during his first term in office - and he realizes this.
The last thing that Obama would want to do is send the U.S. Armed Forces into combat against the Syrian army and create a backlash from left-leaning Americans that have helped him stay in power. The spectre of news reports of death tolls of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam, and later, Iraq and Afghanistan are things that remain anathema to the American public.
However, the mere supplying of arms to the Free Syrian Army via Turkish cargo transport planes cannot be equated with a military alliance between Israel and the Free Syrian Army. In other words Israeli influence would be minimal in the FSA under such a scenario.
My sentence relative to Hezbollah was partially cut-off inadvertently.
I meant to say that Hezbollah has gained a significant number of elected seats in the Lebanese parliament in addition to fielding a militia. The Amal political party, led by Nabih Berri, is an example of Shi'ite moderate elements who are also popular within Lebanon but believe in a secular form of government.
"...how does one in fact distinguish fundamentalist from non-fundamentalist groups? By their explicit claims to be tied to al-Qaeda groups?"
Not all Islamic fundamentalists are pro-al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim extemist death cult. It engages in no known diplomatic contacts with the West.
Hezbollah is a fundamentalist group that is Shi'ite in orientation that seeks to establish an Islamic state in Lebanon modeled after Iran; it enjoys not only popular support but has gained Islamic Jihad is a different Shi'ite group that is active in both Lebanon and Gaza that is extremist in orientation but has been known to involve itself in the political processes and is amenable to negotiation with Western interests.
It is important to distinguish between moderate and extremist elements within the various fundamentalist movements in the Islamic world.
There have been exponential gains in the size of the United States intelligence community since the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, which cretaed the Central Intelligence Agency and reorganized the American defense establishment.
During the Church Committee hearings, it was noted that the National Security Agency has no Congressional authority for its creation or organization and the vast majority of Americans are not even aware of its existence despite the fact that the CIA's existence is well-known to the American public. Today the National Security Agency is the largest intelligence-gathering organization in the free world. Its origin is through an obscure executive presidential order and it is headquartered at a massive facility in Fort Meade, Maryland. It's most recent publicized expansion was the construction of a 2 billion-dollar storage facility in Utah.
Some of the early books in the 1970s that exposed the U.S. intelligence community were "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" by Victor Marchetti and John Marks - the first book in U.S. history to be censored by a federal court. "The Secret Team" in 1973 by L. Fletcher Prouty, a former Air Force colonel and "Inside the Company: A CIA Diary" by Philip Agee, a former CIA case officer - the State Department sought to revoke Agee's passport and he eventually died in Cuba.
The 2008 book "Legacy of Secrecy" by Lamar Waldron described the CIA running amok during the time of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations due to the leadership of Richard Helms. Helms was promoted Deputy Director of Operations in the early 1960s, largely due to the fact he was unsullied by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and became second-in-command in 1965 and eventually Director of Intelligence in 1966, becoming the first career intelligence officer to head the CIA. Waldron suggests that Helms had projects authorized by the National Security Council and White House, but also had off-the-books unauthorized operations that he hid from the CIA Inspector General and Director of Inteligence while he was still a subordinate. There have always been questions about what JFK and LBJ knew about the "Executive Action" program that targeted world leaders including Fidel Castro for assassination, but it clear that Helms approved of of all these plans. Helms' closest aide was arguably E. Howard Hunt, who went on to Watergate infamy. A number of the CIA people that Helms led became top leaders within the CIA up through the 1980s almost to the present, including Porter Goss and Felix Rodriguez.
Undoubtedly, the U.S. intelligence community, in coordination with the Department of Defense, has become a multi-billion dollar government-within-a-government, and has largely succeeded in constructing a world empire. Islam has replaced communism as the focal enemy of the Free World as the rest of the U.S. goverment attepts to co-opt the Chinese people with Americanization and capitalism with fast-food restaurants and Coca-Cola.
LBJ was initially angry that the New York Times did not place the USS Liberty attack on the front page.
LBJ was reportedly outraged over the incident, however the story goes that he did want to accuse a close ally of intentional killing of sailors - and let the incident pass.
Supposedly a number of U.S. and foreign intelligence services had transcripts of the actual radio exchanges between the IAF pilots and their dispatcher in which a pilot in the Israeli air force stated that the American flag was clearly visible - to which the dispatcher replied to ensure the ship was sunk and to leave no survivors.
It was only the USS Liberty crew's ability to get off a distress signal that was picked up by US servicemen to cause US jets to scramble into the area that deterred the IAF from sinking the ship.
An American official had confronted the Israeli ambassador to the UN with the transcripts. Later those transcripts disappeared from government files however a number of U.S. government employees did come forward to verify their existence.
Benson Buffham, a retired National Security Agency deputy director, whose agency lost one of its civilian employees in the air assault, stated that he believed the attack was intentional. Bobby Inman, who served as NSA director said the same thing.
Ironically, not very far away in the Mediterranean Sea from where the USS Liberty was attacked, the Mavi Marmara incident occurred in which Israel PM Netanyahu now is apologizing for the "accidental" loss of life.
Dr.Baruch Goldstein in Israel is considered a hero by many in the Jewish settler movement.
Alan Goodman, the former Israeli Army reservist who opened fire near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in 1982, killing a Palestinian woman and wounding many others, had been sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years. He was given an unusual early parole after serving 16 years and moved back to his native Maryland after his release.
Many leaders in the Irgun and Stern terror gangs later became top government officials in Israel.
Many of Israel's top leaders had backgrounds in terror gangs or were alleged to have complicity in war crimes:
(1)Avraham Stern was killed by British police official Jeffrey Morton as he was being captured; he headed the Stern Gang and his top deputy was Yitzhak Shamir, who would be imprisoned in Sudan by the British for terror activities - Shamir would go onto service in the Mossad and become a prime minister in Israel.
(2)Menachem Begin took part in the planning of the Deir Yassin attack in 1948 and also was complicit in King David hotel bombing as leader of the Irgun terror gang; the British issued an arrest warrant for him which was active well into the 1970s - he was eventually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as PM of Israel and voted by the Israeli public as the second most beloved Israeli.
(3)Ariel Sharon led an IDF unit in Kibya that massacred scores of Palestinians in 1954; in 1983 the Kahane Commission found him guilty of negligence in the September 17, 1982 massacre of over 1,000 Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. He served as Israeli PM for over four years.
(4) Tzipi Livni has served as foreign minister and several high-ranking government posts in Israel; her father served in the IDF successfully as an high-ranking officer and also had been elected to the Knesset; he nevertheless requested that the Irgun emblem be engraved on his headstone since it was his service in that organization he was most proud of and wanted to be known for.
The decision on how to confront genocide has never been easy.
Pope Pius XII was criticized in some circles for not speaking out forcefully against Nazi practices.
FDR aserted accountability of Nazis would be demanded for those who implemented the Holocaust. He was criticized by some for not bombing the concentration camps.
These questions have arisen again and again in regions such as Biafra, Darfur, East Timor and many other places.
Following 1967, the West Bank came under martial law and later the "Civil Administration", a division of the Israel Defense Forces ruled the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Civil Administration issues its annual report and functions as the day-to-day governing body of the Palestinian people controlling every aspect of their lives. Its director is a brigadier general in the IDF and the West Bank is carved up into military districts each headed by an IDF colonel who is in essence a military governor of his district - that colonel is the most powerful political figure within the district and soldiers under his command set up checkpoints and ensure those Palestinians using roadways have their papers in order and ensure there is no untoward activity occurring.
The Palestinian people have no say in how the Civil Administration operates nor do they elect the military tribunal members that try their children with an almost 99.7% conviction rate by Israeli prosecutors.
It would be a gross understatement to suggest that the Palestinians do not like the Civil Administration. There were mass celebrations in Gaza in 2005 when the CA withdrew from Gaza. There were similar celebrations among Palestnians when the IDF miltary district commander of Judea was killed in a shooting in 2004.
The Civil Administration is quite unique - it has operated for decades in the West Bank despite the fact that it is non-democratic and completely unpopular as well as constituting an occupation in violation of international law.
Ironically, this is the 18th anniversary of the Waco tragedy.
The important aspect of recent revelations is that it appears these attacks were not the product of a major terror network, but only two isolated individuals working together for vague motives.
There are parallels between this violence and that which occurred at Columbine in 1999. Both occurred in late April by two persons who could be charitably called "outsiders". They appear to be indignant toward society for their perceived misforunes.
In the Boston case, the mother of the two young men had a larceny conviction. The eldest son dropped out of college to get married. They may have been profoundly alienated in the society in which they lived.
Ironically Cambridge, their home town, is filled with some of the most scholarly and successful students in America, and one of the brothers was employed as a lifeguard at Harvard University. Viewing this success likely instilled resentment and, indeed, one of the attacks occurred at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
There were political figures, such as Congressman Peter King, ludicrously suggesting, before any real facts were in, that this had all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack. These acts of violence were being improperly politicized to fan the flames of anti-Muslim bias. Some may try to link this case directly to the ongoing conflict in Chechnya, but the actual link is tangential at best.
This was simply two immigrant brothers angry at American society. They simply used radical Islam as a "cover" for their shame and rage and give the violence they committed a perverse aura of legitimacy.
Afghanistan had a series of Marxist leaders that were committing mass murder in the late 1970s in order to suppress political dissent starting with Nur Muhammad Taraki and later Hafizullah Amin. The death toll was in the tens of thousands at the hands of Soviet puppets.
Hafizullah Amin was a Columbia University-educated former schoolteacher who was executed by Soviet agents at the time that the USSR invaded in December of 1979.
On one hand, the Soviet Union were arming and training Balochi rebels in western Pakistan in the late 1970s in order to create a civil war within Pakistan with the intent of obtaining an eventual much-needed naval base on the Indian Ocean. Stemming this strategy was in the interest of the U.S.
On the second hand, the Afghan rebels had high morale and adept fighters but were badly in need of weaponry to fight the Afghan army. This need became more acute after the Red Army rolled into Afghanistan that late December in 1979 pursuant to the vaunted Brezhnev Doctrine. The CIA supplied the rebels with automaic rifles, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to combat the Red Army.
It was the Reagan administration that ramped up the aid to the rebels that led to the collapse of the Marxist government of Dr. Najibullah in 1992. The rebels that took power in post-Marxist Afghanistan eventually became the Northern Alliance after the Taliban assumed power in the late 1990s. It was this Northen Alliance, which included the charismatic leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, (who was assassinated two days before 9/11) that was responsible for forcing the Taliban out of power with the help of the U.S. Armed Forces.
The "Army of God" and "Sword, Covenant and Arm of the Lord" were supposedly-Christian entities designated within the U.S. as terror organizations that used the anti-abortion movement or white supremicism as their organizing principle.
Neither Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, nor other violent Muslim groups represent mainstream Islamic beliefs.
In Palestine, the Second Intifada's history of suicide bombers was inspired by a minority religious interpretation within Islam that allowed the bombers to target civilians in Israel as an acceptable form of resistance consistent with the Quran. The bombers were often young and religious, seeing their actions as heroic; in contrast al-Qaeda leaders, such as the Jordanian-born Zarkawi, had criminal records and were often non-observant of basic Islamic tenets.
One theory being bandied about is that this Boston episode may be the work of a lone extremist - much like Eric Rudolph, who was convicted for a series of attacks and is serving a life sentence in federal prison.
Where was the Bush administration when hundreds of innocent Gazan children were being killed in Operation Cast Lead?
Where was Obama and U.S. Congress when the 462-page Goldstone Commission report was issued by the United Nations finding credible proof of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Israel Defense Forces in that operation? Some Congressmen were trying to find ways to debunk the report even though Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued similar findings.
Israel is not a "democracy" - it has never had a constitution and its 21% Arab population has been de facto discriminated against since its inception; Arabs under occupation in the Territories live under martial law at the direction of the Civil Administration.
The Boston Marathon bombings, as horrific as they were to most Americans, acually had a death toll far less than the typical terror bombing in Iraq or Israel.
It was not uncommon to see 10-20 Israeli deaths in a bus bombing during the Second Intifada. The articles citation of 46 Iraqi deaths in recent bombings underscores the extent to which residents of that nation suffered and have suffered during the last few years.
However, there was a Pastor Hechler, a Protestant clergyman who was attached as a chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna, who strongly influenced to Zionist thought one of his Jewish friends, a Theodor Hirzl, who went on to become the key driving force in the convening of the World Zionist Congress in 1899 that established the general goal of creatng a Zionist state.
So it does appear that Christian Zionism did have a certain degree of influence toward the eventual creation of Israel in 1948.
Drs. George Habash and Hanan Ashrawi are examples of Christian activists. However Fatah's leadership, while secular in orientation, has been overwhelimngly Islamic since its inception - this would include Yasser Arafat, Abu Iyad, Khalil Wazir etc.
I have intervewed several Arab Christians who were in the Palestine in 1948 who have indicated that Palestinian Muslims were the most active in fighting the Jewish groups in the War of Independence.
I have found that even today, Palestinian-American Muslims are the most likely to assert Palestinian nationalism and activism where Palestinian-American Christians are most passive with respect to the current events in that region. I think the same may be said for Christians and Muslims currently residing within historical Palestine.
".....most of the past 2000 years there weere hardly any Jews in the sense of followers of the Judaic religion in Palestine."
There have been at least some Jews in Palestine at any given time over the last 2000 years.
The ones that were there in the early 20th century wore clothing that identified them with Arabs. The Jewish refugees from Europe that streamed in during the 1940s were culturally different as they were Westernized, for the most part. The native born Jews alraedy there were culturally absorbed into the European refugees - who founded Israel.
The creation of Israel was not necessarily Arab versus Jew.
The Arab Druzes, in large part, were allied with the Jewish Underground in the 1930s fighting the British. Some Druze units who fought the Jews in the War of Independence eventually switched sides after being defeated in battle.
Many Arabs in Palestine, especially Christians, were neutral.
You are correct that Zionism had a Christian origin.
Pastor John Hagee is likely one of the most prominent Christian Zionists today and has written how his father, also a minister, saw in 1948 the establishment of Israel as a fulfillment of the divine destiny of the Jewish people. It was something many Protestant clergymen predicted for centuries from their biblical readings.
The aftermath of the Holocaust and WWII presented a practical need for the world community to come up with a solution to absorb the Jewish refugees in Europe. This was the catalyst that created the State of Israel.
On of the great ironies in history is that Nazism in its failure helped create Israel.
The Israeli hardliners in Likud attempted from 1982 onward to destroy the P.L.O in Lebanon. Later on, they even launched commando-style raids and air attacks on Tunisia in the mid to late 1980s to wipe out the P.L.O. as an entity. By the end of that decade PM Yitzhak Shamir was trying to commence a dialogue with the P.L.O. to help stem the First Intifada.
The Palestinians became more radicalized, especially in Gaza with Hamas, in the 1990s. Islamic Jihad also grew in popularity.
Today, Hamas in Gaza is actually facing assassination of its leaders by extremist elements who are upset that it is too moderate. Arafat's Fatah organization is largely rejected by most Gazans and the more militant Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda groups within Gaza are have increased in popularity.
The key military aspect that will face Israel is the prospect of continued arming of Gazan militants with more deadly weaponry. The long-awaited "Tel Aviv rocket" has been acquired and used by Hamas against Israel last November.
It was IDF body counts in the Second Lebanon War in 2006 that turned the Israeli public against that war (112 IDF personnel killed in action). Israel has not returned to Lebanon since that conflict.
Israel has the ability to extend an economic and diplomatic "olive branch" to the Palestinan leadership but has avoided doing so.
There are no checks and balances to be enforced against the occupying power - Israel. So the Palestinians in the West Bank live under military rule by the Civil Administration. Israel, via its military, pretty much does what it wants.
"Roger and Me", the award wining documentary by Michael Moore also addressed Flint's GM and the impact upon the citizens of that city when the assembly line jobs were no longer there.
I used to drive through the city during the 1990s and a good percentage of the city's buildings were abandoned and crime was rampant.
The people who used to get the high-benefit UAW jobs at the big three during the 1960s and 1970s now work at Wal-Mart for $20,000 per annum with some limited medical insurance - if they are lucky.
The New York Times carried an article published on March 25, 2013 entitled "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, with CIA aid". This was a groundbreaking story carried internationally.
The article suggests that the rebels have vast support in the world community in acquiring weaponry. I do not believe the rebels are "folding". but recent events are sugestive of a protracted armed conflict.
Carbon dioxide emissions are a side-effect of geothermal energy. Other pollutants include mercury and antimony that can be released from the Earth's interior during the creation of usable geothermal energy.It is however worth exploring as an alternative resource if the noxious emissions can be reduced to environmentally safe levels.
Geothermal energy projects are being implemented in the Phillippines and Switzerland, among other diverse locations.
Chevron, the oil company, is one of the key corporate sponsors of geothermal energy as a viable alternative resource to fossil fuels.
Nice book just came out in February "The Delorean Story" by former Delorean Motor Company executive Nick Sutton, who claims to have been involved in negotiations to rescue the automaker in late 1982 with the British government. He indicated that 1,500 workers' jobs were lost when Margaret Thatcher refused to approve financing that would have saved the company after it had been placed in receivership.
"....economic coercion.......could prove more destructive than military force.."
The 200,000 deaths of Iraqi children under the age of five is a good example of the brunt of suffering falls not upon the perpetrators whom the sanctions are meant to deter, but upon innocents individuals who have little or no control over the offending conduct.
Same situation has happened in Gaza. Gaza, according to one study, has the world's lowest per capita GDP other than
the Republic of Zambia. A significant percentage of Gazan children suffer from malnourishment and other medical problems due to the Israeli embargo. The Gazan economy is ravaged by denial of fishing rights, bombings of banks, airport facilities, demolition of orchards, farms and other acts of destruction by the Israel Defense Forces. This embargo has done little to stop the violence but has reinforced support for the most extreme elements in Gaza.
I do not think that the Iranian people appreciate the imposition of sanctions any more than they liked U.S.-trained SAVAK agents in the 1960s and 70s torturing dissidents. The backlash will manifested via anti-Americanism sentiment and protests against America within Iran.
The link to the New York Times article that referenced "solaria" payments indicated funds for that the two dozen Iraqis killed at Haditha - one of the most notorious incidents of the war were about $38,000.00 - about $1,500 per victim.
Does anyone know if the family of Abeer Qasim Hamza received compensation for her rape and murder or the killings of her family by U.S. Army troops?
Any compensation for the Abu Ghraib detainees that were abused?
It seems to me there should be uniform standards enforced by military officials on such a program.
In the 1960s the US targeted Fidel Castro and Cuba with the Operation Mongoose covert operations program jointly run by the CIA and U.S. Army. Missiles were sent into Cuba by the U.S.S.R. as a deterrent, which was detected by a Cuban informant and transmitted to the CIA and later confirmed by satelllite photos. The Cuban Missile Crisis ensued.
The U.S. is not trying to overthrow North Korea's govenment.
I suspect that firing any missiles at U.S. interests or South Korea would be national suicide for the North. I also suspect the current North Korean government is manufacturing this controversy to draw attention away from the poor standard of living of North Koreans and focus attention on boosting morale among the people in North Korea.
The Temple Institute headed by Rabbi Chaim Richman is gearing toward reconstruction of the Third Temple; its operations have the Temple Foundation as a fund-rasing arm. Richman has closely communicated with Christians in the U.S. who see him as someone who will fulfill Israel's destiny as a nation.
Within the Christian Zionist community in America, there are very influential evangelists who have close ties to Israel's political leadership and the Republican Party. Prominent Christian Zionist evangelists include Pastor John Hagee of Texas, Rev. Jerry Falwell and Jack Van Impe of Metro Detroit. Their public statements and public writings contain vitually no criticism of Israel's blatant human rights violations against Palestinians - it is ignored. Their focus on Palestinians reference covenants in the P.L.O.'s charter calling for Israel's destruction and the general animosity of Arabs toward Israel. These Christian Zionists are predominantly Baptist and Pentecostal denominations.
Pastor John Hagee, in one of his books, concedes he is well aware that demolition of the Dome of the Rock may be necessary to construct the Third Temple and this will likely cause extreme violence by Islamic adherents, including a possible war against Israel.
These Christian Zionists do not care about Israel in a political sense nor bother themselves with the ongoing struggle for social equality in Israeli society, but see Israel's existence as a Christian theological imperative that must be supported as all costs.
This all is in stark contrast to the Roman Catholic Church who withheld diplomatic recognition of Israel until they committed themselves to move toward the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The Roman Catholic leadership has been primarily concerned with the welfare of Palestinian Catholics - as opposed to Jewish or Israeli interests. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem has made the human rights violations against Palestinians a top priority in pastoral letters.
The Quakers have also had a long and profound relationship with the Palestinian people that continue to this day. This includes the establishment of the top centers of learning in the West Bank. The first Quaker school in the West Bank was founded in 1869 in Ramallah. The Quaker community of Ann Arbor, Michigan spearheaded a boycott vote of Israeli goods at a local food co-op and have joined in protest demonstrations against Israel in front of Ann Arbor's largest synagogue.
The Christian Zionist movement has opposed the nomination of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary and exert great influence on Capitol Hill on Israel/Palestinian issues - unlike Catholics or Quakers. Falwell's Moral Majority was a key reason Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 and Jack Van Impe had a close relationship with George H.W. Bush. Pastor Hagee has been a personal friend of every Israeli PM since Menachem Begin and boasts of the time when Yitzhak Rabin, as prime minister, actually stood up and applauded him at a fund-raising dinner.
The pro-Third Temple Christian Zionist movement is not a "lunatic group" but a lobby that is extremely powerful and operates out of theological-based blind obedience to Israeli interests without due regard to the inequities of Israel's treatment of Palestinians or the admitted inflaming of Muslim communities that they recognize would occur by the destruction of the Dome of the Rock to construct the Third Temple as proposed.
Too many Americans view Israeli Jews as culturally monolithic however the truth is that Israel is a "melting pot" of various nationalities and religious denominations within Judaism. These distinct groups are of often varying political persuasions and often have had conflicts with each other.
Israeli society's treatment of Ethiopian Jews and, historically Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, have been discriminatory.
Ultraorthodox Jews are an example of a group under current criticism by political parties such as Yesh Atid for what has been viewed as receiving unjustified privileges.
The Operation Cast Lead adventure that commenced on December 27, 2008 and concluded on January 18, 2009 was timed in a very specific manner to maximize political gain with minimal interference:
(A)it was commenced after the U.S. presidential elections so lame-duck President George W. Bush would not be accountable to voters for any perceived inaction;
(B)it began after Christmas so not to interfere with the busiest tourist time for Israel when Christians visit the Holy Land;
(C)it started when the governments of many Western nations were largely closed down for the holidays;
(D)Knesset elections in Israel were approaching and Olmert's Kadima Party needed a popular military action to increase Kadima's standing in polls after the 2006 misadventure in Lebanon that resulted in the embarrassing findings of the Winograd Commission report;
(E)the military operation was halted on January 18, 2009 - two days prior to the inauguration of President Obama so as to avoid giving him a reason to publicly criticize Israel and also not to simultaneously capture international media attention with Obama , thus detracting from Obama's historic swearing-in.
Olmert's popularity in Israeli opinion polls actually dropped during Operation Cast Lead - which some suggest was due to the fact that Hamas was not destroyed as an organization, nor was Gilad Shalit located and rescued despte IDF search teams combing Gaza. Operation Cast Lead itself, however, had the support of 94% of the Israeli public.
In the end the Kadima Party was roundly defeated with Likud gaining control of the government with its coalition and Bibi Netanyahu ascending to his second term as PM.
The "instigation" was the killing of Ahmed Jebari in a targeted killing.
However, the "tiny home-made rockets" are not exactly accurate, as there are not only Katyushas but also Iranian-manufactured Fajr missiles with 200lb payloads.
There was a great psychological and tactical leap of technology when Gazan militants finally had a rocket capable of striking Tel Aviv. The scenes of thousands of Isralis in Tel Aviv scurrying for cover as air raid sirens blared had not occurred since 1991 when Scuds hit Israel from Iraq.
In the past Ehud Olmert gave a speech immediately following the conclusion Operation Cast Lead indicating that the Israelis would create "disproportionate" responses to future rocket attacks. Olmert was admitting planned conduct that violated international law.
If you study the genesis of the latestt missile firings they were in response to Israeli abuses, but in any event recent rocket attacks were not even tied to Hamas, but fringe groups of Islamic fundamentalists.
"The Israelis have......the best military in the region. Palestinians in Gaza have almost nothing."
Israel has indeed wreaked havoc in Gaza via air strikes and other incursions, but there has been damage to Israeli interests as well.
The city of Sderot, near the Gaza border is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy due to the ongoing conflict; outside Jewish donations had kept the municipality afloat until drying up later upon the perception that rocket attacks were no longer a problem. It is estimated over 70% of Sderot's children have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. One of Sderot's most prominent residents, Amir Peretz, known as a liberal of the Labor Party spearheading better relationships with Arabs, while he was defense minister had a Qassam rocket explode near his house that resulted in a relative having his legs amputated.
Six Israelis died and over 200 wounded during the November of 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense. Property damage was extensive.
While I believe that much of the violence toward Israel is being caused by their government's unjust and illegal blockade of Gaza, it is clear that innocent children and adults in Gaza as well as adjacent Israeli communities have also suffered significantly due to the ongoing violence.
This is looking a lot like the anti-Castro Cubans back in the 1960s who had countless splinter groups - Free Cuba Committee, Alpha 66, DRE, Cuban Revolutionary Council etc., etc., etc. that had varying degrees of relationships with the Central Intelligence Agency and were trying to subvert Fidel Castro.
In Syria, we began with the Istanbul-based longtime exile group known as the Syrian National Council - it got absorbed into a larger organization based in Qatar - where the U.S. has a massive military command infrastructure - and now yet another group pops up in Cairo that is serving as an umbrella group four several other anti-Baathist organizations. Who exactly are these people showing up in Cairo? Muslim fundamenatlists?
The Syrian National Coalition is the group that is diplomatically recognized by the Western world as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
What is now emerging in articles in the New York Times and other periodicals is the nature of the role the CIA is playing. Seems as though the CIA has been going into places such as Croatia to set up arms purchases and is otherwise facilitating weapons acquisition for the Free Syrian Army - supposedly to ensure arms stay out of the hands of Al-Qaeda-linked extremists. This is not really smart since many of the supposed FSA leaders are allegedly war profiteers seeking to resell weapons to the highest bidders without regard to whom they may be. Selling to the FSA does not, obviously, ensure that they are also resupplying Jabhat al-Nusra with the same weaponry. If the FSA are conducting joint operations against the Baathists it would only make sense that they make sure the jihadists are well-equipped.
What about Eric Harroun? Allegations that he was a CIA asset inside Jabhat al-Nusra come from his own dad. Shades of Eugene Hasenfus in Nicaragua in 1986.
My own guess is that the Syrian rebels are about as big as a CIA-run operation as Operation Mongoose was to Cuba or Operation Cyclone was in Afghanistan. The Senate Intelligence Committee should conduct investigations as to the scope of CIA involvement if they do not have a firm gauge as to what is going on already.
The legacy of a CIA "victory" in Syria may be similar to Afghanistan or Iraq - bitter and chronic post-Baathist sectarian violence and a wave of anti-Americanism. There is already severe infighting among the exile memebers sitting within the Syrian National Coalition that caused the resignation of Moaz al-Khatib, its chairman.
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Hezbollah has earned the enmity of many Lebanese citizens over the years with not only its terror attacks, but also its military conflicts with Israel, which have caused tremendous damage to the Lebanese infrastructure.
Even among Shi'ite followers, most gravitate to Nabih Berri's Amal Party. No need to reference mere "potential" - most Lebanese factions have been against Hezbollah for years.
Hezbollah is largely localized in its power base to south Lebanon.
Machsom Watch is a Jewish human rights organization, consisting largely of older Israeli females that stakes out IDF checkpoints and documents abuses carried out against Palestinians.
Following the 1967 Six Day War, many Christians from the West Bank immigrated into the United States from Chritian enclaves, such as Ramallah, to avoid living under IDF occupation and the checkpoints are a key reason for their leaving their homeland. Very few have returned.
I was acquianted with Maj. Gen Adolph McQueen, who served as a commandant of one of the camps at Guantanamo Bay - it may have been Camp Delta. I knew him as an investigator at the Michigan Attorney General's Office. His everday job was a Medicaid fraud investigator but he was attached to the U.S. Army Reserve in the military police section.
He was a polite fellow during my interactions with him, never discussed his work in Cuba, but did confirm that he was a major general.
A few facts need to be pointed out:
Salim Hamdan was trumpeted as a "high-value" prisoner. He was convicted of being Osama Bin Laden's chauffeur. In a ruling that was almost completely unreported in the mainstream media, the United States Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia Circuit on October 16, 2012, vacated his conviction under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 noting that the conduct he was convicted for was not criminal in nature when they were committed, thereby rendering it an ex post facto prosecution violative of the United States Constitution.
The International Committee of the Red Cross inspected GITMO in June of 2004. The ICRC inspectors accused the U.S. military of using humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes and other proscribed conduct constituting torture - the U.S. government rejected these findings.
The FBI inspected GITMO and also found human rights violations.
By May 2011, at least six suicides occurred at GITMO.
GITMO has had numerous detainees under the age of 18, in violation of international law.
Guantanamo Bay was chosen upon recommendation of legal experts in the Bush administration for the reason its location - leased space in Cuba - would make it, in their opinion, outside the jurisdiction of the United States legal system, thus giving the Defense Department an apparent free hand in doing what it pleased to do - however the U.S. federal court system has reined in the U.S. government to a certain extent.
GITMO is as huge as an embarrassment to the U.S. in Cuba as the Abu Ghraib prison was in Iraq.
It should be closed down ASAP.
It would not surprise me that Yemeni casualties dying as "collateral damage" in drone attacks may include some who may be either naturalized U.S. citizens, native-born Americans, or U.S. permanent resident aliens.
The Yemeni-American community has flourished in Metro Detroit with a number being elected to public office and exercising influence via the Yemeni-American Political Action Committee(YAPAC).
There are legal implications for the killing of a U.S. citizen and the "standing" issue that the Department of Justice has previously invoked succesfully may not work if the estate of the deceased files a wrongful death suit in federal court - although the "political question doctrine" has also been cited in dismissing these cases; in other words, the decision to kill a person via drone attack is not subject to judicial review, however what is interesting is what if an American citizen is not a target but killed anyway? Can his estate sue in federal court?
Regarding the "Riot Act".
This is a formal act of the British Parliament in 1714.
It should be capitalized.
See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Act
"Israel has reached the limits of their military and does not know what to do."
The Israeli populace has shown that they will not tolerate any military conflict in which their forces face significant casualties.
In the Second Lebanon War, the opinion polls in Israel could be seen to drop preciptously as IDF casualties mounted. Two significant incidents in that war showed abrupt declines in those opinion polls. One was an incident in which 10 IDF soldiers had been instantly killed in a Katyusha missile strike and two more fatally wounded. It had been noted that the unit that suffered these casualties had ignored air attack sirens and many were not wearing helmets or flak jackets. The second incident occurred when the IDF's elite Golani and Givati infantry brigade units were ambushed as they entered the border city of Bint Jebayl by Hezbollah militiamen and sustained 30 dead and wounded within the first hour of battle.
"..Israel no longer has any edge when it comes to warfare."
The acquisition of sophisticated weaponry by Hezbollah turned the tide against Israel and prevented future military incursions against south Lebanon. Ehud Barak expressly recognized that Israel had no longer any "deterrent" effect on Hezbollah. The acquisition of radar-guided Chinese Silkworm missiles and Russian-designed anti-tank rockets by Hezbollah did much to level the playing field and the expected heavier casualties sustained by Israel caused opposition within Israel to that IDF incursion and consideration for future border crossings into that area.
The Fajr missile strikes from Gaza into greater Tel Aviv, although largely repelled by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, were a major psychological turning point for Israel as Tel Aviv residents had to take cover in the first missile strike it sustained since 1991. The key to Gazan deterrence to future IDF intervention will be to continue to acquire and deploy more sophisticated weaponry.
".......Neoconservatives were convinced that...the Shiite Iraqis as a functional minority would sympathize with Israel's Jews."
This is not accurate - the Shi'ite community in Iraq has no real affinity to Israel.
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most influential Shi'ite cleric within Iraq, strongly condemned Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which chiefly targeted the Shi'ite Islam community within Lebanon.
On his official website, Sistani had declared it impermissible to sell Israeli products or to purchase products from any company that donates part of its income to Israel:
link to sistani.org
In November of 2012, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, one of Israel's most vocal opponents, announced his plans to meet with Iraq's most prominent Shi'ite clerics.
Lavrov is correct in that the Palestinian question is central to a Middle East peace.
The proliferation of extremism among Jews and Palestinians has been fueled by the failure to settle this question.
On the other hand, the moderate Fatah organization in Gaza as well as moderate and leftist political parties within Israel have gained popularity in recent months following the November 2012 conflict betweeen Gaza and Israel and the 11/29/12 U.N. General Assembly resolution granting Palestine observer state status in the United Nations.
However, Hamas' assent is the key to any future peace agreement. Also, Likud will have to soften its position on the West Bank and give realistic independence to the Palestinians to achieve a true peace - not a state modeled after Bophutswana.
The asteroid that struck the Moon as depicted in the video had an explosive force of 5 kilotons - almost one-third of the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
This explosion has questioned the wisdom of having astronauts inhabit a base on the Moon.
I would disagree.
The recent First Amendment case involving Westboro Baptist Church protects those speaking on matters of public interest from liability. In that case, the public interest issue was gays in the military.
The First Amendment also protected the minister from Florida who wished to burn Korans.
The Arab International Festival in Dearborn had obnoxious "Christian missionaries" making offensive remarks about Islam. They recently obtained a settlement for their prosecution by the government.
The organizers of the Arab International Festival recently announced this year that this years event in Dearborn would be cancelled, despite being held successfully for many previous years.
Gulbuddin Hekmyatar was supplied and trained by the U.S. and Israel during the Operation Cyclone CIA attempt to subvert the Marxist pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan in the 1980s and into to early 1990s. There were reports members of his group were involved in the opium trade and that his group had only very limited support among the Afghan people.
Persident Reagan invited the Afghan rebel leadership into the Oval Office for a photo op in the 1980s and lauded them as freedom fighters.
He was a key rebel leader during that period and eventually became Afghan prime minister in 1994 after the Marxist president, Dr. Najibullah, was overthrown.
In 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency attempted to kill Hekmyatar in a drone strike; the missile missed him. He later placed a bounty on U.S. serviceman and announced his support for Al-Qaeda.
It is so ironic he was a key American ally during the Cold War and yet someone in the U.S. government later authorized killing him in a drone strike.
Someone should interview Hekmyatar so it can be substantiated how close he was to America's leadership during the Cold War and how that relationship soured.
Israel had mutual ideological interests with South Africa via apartheid and the two collaborated in producing atomic weaponry.
Look at South Africa's creation of an "independent" Bophutswana as a political model and comapre it to the current political model that Israel wants to promote for a West Bank Palestinian state - the two are similar in design.
The Palestinian Nakba ("catastrophe")is often compared to the plight of the American Indians - colonists subjugating an indigenous population.
I meant to say re Costa Rica "the only nation in Latin America" without an army, was also the most peaceful and stable.
Israel was very active in Latin America during the 1970s and 80s. Check the NY Times #1 best-seller "By Way of Deception" by a former Mossad case officer (Ostrovsky) where he describes the role of the Mossad in that area.
Israel was supplied Exocet missiles by Chile in exchange for training in covert operations of Chilean intelligence. Ostrovsky describes the disgust he had on seeing planes bearing the Star of David carry cocaine in Latin America. His allegations in his book were taken so seroiusly by Israeli government officials that he was questioned via deposition in a formal inquiry.
Israel also had ties to Panama's Manuel Noriega.
Israel's interest in promoting international arms sales is purely economic. The long-running civil war that had gone on in Sri Lanka between the Tamil Tigers and government forces that decimated that nation's population was fueled by Israeli arms distribution to both sides. It was a lucrative proposition for Israel, irrespective which side eventually won.
The irony is that the only nation in Latin America, Costa Rica, is also the most peaceful and stable.
Then-President Jimmy Carter, at significant cost to State Department foreign policy interests, criticized American allies in Latin America, such as Brazil and Argentina for their woeful record on human rights.
It was the Kennedy administration who inaugurated Operation Mongoose, following the Bay of Pigs, which was a joint CIA-Army project, to attempt to subvert the Castro regime in Cuba via covert paramilitary operations. Kennedy's foreign policy actions were not entirely "progressive" and he was, for political reasons, anxious to show the public he was not soft on communism.
The spike in U.S. supported anti-communist activity in Latin America came about after Pres. Carter left office. El Salvadoran President Duarte was a CIA asset and death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson was trained as an army intelligence officer at the School of the Americas, a training unit of the U.S. Army. The rise of Duarte and D'Aubuisson coincided with Reagan's assumption of the presidency in 1981.
Israel as a whole never took the Palestinian resistance issue seriously.
When stone throwing occcurred in the First Intifada, PM Yitzhak Shamir stated there would "not be a memory" left of the Palestinians if they used firearms as weapons against the occupation.
When in the late 1990s Israeli military analysts warned senior IDF officials of the possibility of guerillla war by Palestinian resistance groups, it was scoffed at.
The key to the militant resistance groups being successful in Palestine will be their capability to acquire heavy weaponry to employ against the IDF. The heavy casualties Israel sustained in the Second Lebanon War deterred further military adventurism by the IDF in South Lebanon; those casualties were due to sophisticated anti-tank weaponry, air-to-sea and surface-to-air missiles used by Hezbollah. In November of 2012, it was the Iranian-manufactured Fajr missiles with a 200lb warhead that inflicted significant panic in Tel Aviv.
"The AP's records were looked at in an attempt to find him, not to nail them."
The AP's right to privacy was still invaded.
There is also the question if the journalistic shield law applicable in that jurisdiction would also protect the AP's source(s) in this situation.
If the feds could sift through a journalist's telephone records to determine who was communicating with the press, it would unduly chill the First Amendment freedom of the press.
According to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post,
the Finance Ministry previously investigated the deployment of an Israeli equivalent of "Air Force One" and a committee approved this as economical since savings would recoup costs in five years in comparison to to projected costs continuing to use private commercial flights for the PM.
Netanyahu was reluctant to accept these recommendations for the purchase of a PM plane due to adverse publicity over its estimated total cost.
The PM knew he would be criticized if he deployed an "Israeli Air Force One" due to its projected cost yet he also faces criticism by using costly private commercial planes.
The PM is in a lose-lose situation.
Look at the Iranian hostage crisis and Lebanon in the 1980s.
CIA personnel were held hostage. CIA agents can operate under embassy cover and diplomatic immunity when assigned to embassy or consular buildings. This is nothing new.
Remember Operation Mongooose where the CIA trained and led anti-Castro exiles in paramilitary operations?
The Central Intelligence Agency by law always must have one miltary/naval officer and one civilian intelligence officer hold the Director of Intelligence and Deputy Director position. Bobby Inman, as deputy director of the CIA, used to wear his admiral's uniform.
The CIA always has beeen a paramilitary as well as an intelligence organization.
"Leaders of Ansar Al-Sharia have denied that they directed their organization to attack the U.S. Consulate and have condemned the attack."
In fact, their has been substantial evidence of that group's involvemnt in the attack.
Not long after the attack New York Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick quoted a 20-year-old witness named Mohamed Bishari who gave his account that the attackers were members of Ansar Al-Sharia.
Paul Schemm of the Associated Press reported on October 27, 2012 that between 125-150 gunmen sealed off the streets with trucks bearing to logo of Ansar Al-Sharia before commencing the operation.
"Al-Qaeda is not for the most part not even a 'thing" in Libya."
In reality, there have been concerns expressed about Al-Qaeda endangering U.S. interests in Libya.
On September 14, 2012, CNN correspondent Arwa Damon discovered Ambassador Stevens diary at the unsecured site of the attack; that diary conveyed his worries of being on an Al-Qaeda "hit list".
CNN's Paul Cruickshank, in a March 5, 2015 report, indicated that an intercepted phone call from Benghazi linked a senior Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb commander to the attack.
The only thing clear about the attacks is that these were heavily armed individuals conducting a well-coordinated assault and that the Obama administration disseminated false information afterwards regarding the attack.
My guess is that Al-Qaeda had some involvement in the incident but that it was carried out by Ansar Al-Sharia at the operational level. The Al-Libi drone killing may have been the motivation for al-Qaeda initiating the retaliation and the three-month timeline between that incident and the consular attacks support this.
The concept of a joint operation between Al-Qaeda and another organization is not unprecedented. The Sinai hotel bombings targeting Israeli tourists that resulted in 60 deaths back in 2004 had been described by some as an Al-Qaeda operation that received logistical support by Hezbollah.
While its easy to cite the simple language of the Fourth Amendment and its Warrant Clause, the reality is that this Bill of Rights section has been interpreted in various ways by the United States Supreme Court over the last several centuries since 1787, when the United States Constitution was adopted as the supreme law of the land.
The Supreme Court in Katz versus United States in 1967 established the test is whether a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the communications device in question. The landmark Katz opinion established public pay telephones users as encompassing such protection against FBI wiretaps.
"Congressional legislation" is probably not needed since the Fourth Amendment protections always trump whatever an Act of Congress purports to do. However to the extent that courts agree with the Justice Department's above position, then the U.S. Congress can enact legislation to provide broader protections to citizens from privacy intrusions from law enforcement or other government actors.
Two points:
According to investigative reporters at the NY Times who researched the issue, the U.S., via the Central Intelligence Agency, is actively involved in arming the rebels by brokering arms deals and arranging for Arab governments' military cargo planes to deliver weaponry to a Turkish airport. So it is clear that America is doing more than merely shipping non-lethal aid.
Secondly, this article correctly confirms the fact that Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate with a large portion of its fighters from Iraq, now controls large swaths of territory in northern Syria and is commanding respect from a significant percentage of civilians in Syria as well as segments of the Free Syrian Army due to their battlefield prowess - a scary prospect for America.
Syria appears deadlocked in a devastating civil war with no end reasonably in sight absent foreign intervention.
The Church of England has previously issued a boycott call, as have many British celebrities and groups.
In the U.S. the State of Washington has led the call for boycotting Israeli goods - largely due to sympathy of Olympia's Rachel Corrie.
The current battle for boycott endorsements against Israel have been in the student governments of the University of California campuses, including San Diego and Berkeley.
Re: The Israel Lobby:
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel organization, has already published objections sent to Hawkings over his position.
See: http://www.spme.net
"He characterized the young Israeli protestors for social justice in summer, 2011 as a leftist Islamic Nazi plot...."
While much of the press internationally had been fixated on the putative grass roots nature of the social justice movement in Israel in which Dpahni Leef, a young woman who pitched a tent to protest eviction from her apartment, some were contending that Leef was a figurehead of leftists spearheaded by Dov Khenen a Hadash Party Knessset member in Israel - Hadash is a Marxist political party jointly led by both Jews and Arabs within Israel that regualrly holds a small number of seats in the Knesset.
The article is: "Communists Confess They Were Behind Israel's Social Justice Protests" by Daniel Greenfield in Front Page Magazine in its January 21, 2013 edition.
Here's the link: link to frontpagemag.com
Daphni Leef alleged police brutality when her hand was broken in a protest in Tel Aviv in 2012. See the June 23, 2012 Times of Israel article:
link to timesofisrael.com
When some media outlets suggested that Ms. Leef was considering a run for mayor of Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem Post reported shortly thereafter in its January 6, 2013 edition that she had been indicted in a Tel Aviv court for a number of criminal charges, including obstructing an officer, arising out of the aforesaid Tel Aviv protest - her first trial hearing had been scheduled the day after the election (but Ms.Leef later indicated she would not seek the mayor's office).
Here's the article: link to jpost.com
Yes, 17 trillion.
The old Sen. Everett Dirksen line "...a billion here, a billion there.." (and soon you are talking about a lot of money), is, of course, obsolete.
The 160 billion I referred to in Saudi oil reserves was in barrels - having a current value which could pay almost off the U.S. national debt.
I could not have said it better myself.
George Marshall was brutally honest, effective, and intelligent military and political strategist, and a statesman who would have made an excellent president if Eisenhower had not made it before him.
Remember that Eisenhower was in awe of many of the accomplishments of Nazi Germany as he rode through the German lands after the conquest of Nazism. The Federal Interstate Highway Act he signed into law was inspired by his admiration of the Autobahn. Nazi spymaster Reinhard Gehlen was never prosecuted and negotiated his way into becoming the West German intelligence chief, with his opinions often were relayed almost verbatim to Eisenhower.
L. Fletcher Prouty has said that the CIA went far beyond its charter as a central repository for intelligence garnered by other agencies of government for organized transmission to the President or National Security Council, to becoming known for "black operations" that were often not approved by the appropriate authorities. His book, "The Secret Team" was one of the seminal texts on the organization of the U.S. intelligence community.
The National Security Agency never had any Congressional authorization. Today it is the largest intelligence-gathering entity in the free world.
America essentially adopted the then-advanced intelligence capabilities of the Nazi German and Soviet intelligence networks to compete in the Cold War. The CIA can also be credited with organizing and supplying major intelligence agencies throughout the free world. CIA counter-intelligence chief James Angleton helped to organize the Mossad and the U.S. gave it equipment. Iran's SAVAK was organized and trained by Norman Schwarzkopf, Ted Shackley supervised the creation of Operation Condor intelligence network in South America.
It is debatable on whether the U.S. intelligence community did more harm than good following WWII, but it is clear that there were many mistakes and, also, poor government oversight that led to a blowback against America in such regions as Iran and Afghanistan.
Yes, and this world empire's cost is a 17 billion-dollar national debt and a dependency on OPEC oil production that both choke the American economy.
Germany and Japan had no defense obligations after WWII and the international banking community had no problem about financing their industrial resurgence. The Rothschild Bank funded the Japanese steel industry after WWII and later also bankrolled Czech steel production following the the fall of the communism. Germany was rebuilt under the Marshall Plan. After the fall of communism the former East Germany also began enjoying prosperity in its union with its western counterpart. The standard of living in most Western European countries has surpassed that of America. Japan and Germany have taken the lead in having the most sophisticated auto production methods, employing a large percentage of its energy sources from solar power - while the U.S. focuses its scientific efforts on national defense.
Saudi Arabia's oil revenues were largely funded in America as part of a 10 trillion-dollar investment into real estate, Fortune 500 companies, including the largest railroads, banking, and waste transport companies, and other ventures. America is economically dependent on this Saudi investment. While everyone talks about the political influence of the Israel Lobby, there have been few books or journal articles on the vast influence Saudi Arabia has on the U.S. economy. Saudi Arabia has an estimated 160-billion in proven oil reserves and supplies 28% of American imports of crude oil.
Red China is fast becoming the world's most powerful nation economically. It has financed 26% of the U.S. national debt and holds 2 trillion dollars in U.S. funds. Its GNP rivals that of the U.S. Japan finances 21% of the U.S. national debt and has some of the largest world monetary bank reserves.
Our U.S. empire mentality gave us wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, and various other regions after WWII that drained trillions of dollars via defense and intelligence spending from our economy to retain our position as the "Arsenal of Democracy". We gave billions and billions of foreign aid to ensure other nations would vote the way we wanted them to at the U.N.
America will bankrupt itself to control the world.
Here's another try at that link:
link to jamestown.org
Red China has historically supported the Palestinian cause.
See: link to jamestown.org
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights has reported that 42 Syrians have been confirmed dead and 100 or more missing as a resilt of the israeli air attacks.
However Israel could have major problems if Muslim fundamentalist elements, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, gain a controlling influence in a post-Assad government.
The potential toppling of Assad could leave a power vacuum in which extremist element opportunists could eventualy seize control. There are Free Syrian Army members who have gone on record as saying they will turn their guns on Jabhat al-Nusra the day after Assad leaves power. We then might have a situation not unlike Gaza where secular and religious militias battle for control of the region. Jabhat al-Nusra already occupies significant swaths of territory within northern Syria and has won praise by segments of the Syrian populace for their military prowess.
The Syrian National Coalition must do its best to stem potential future bloodshed if Assad is deposed. Their former chairman, Moaz al-Khatib, had attempted to get the U.S. State Department to rescind its designation of Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist organization.
The story was that a chemical waepons research facilty was struck near Damascus, but also two military bases farther away from Damascus near the Lebanese border were also bombed. This occurred at about 2:00a.m. Sunday local time according to residents.
The Syrian government has reported a number of dead and wounded in these attacks and is making a report to present to the United Nations.
While I believe that the plausible explanation of Israel is that they do not want arms shipments from Syria to Hezbollah, their assertion of neutrality is questionable.
The Syrian government has indicated that the airstrikes have occurred near areas where government forces are engagig the armed rebels.
I am sure the Israeli leaders see a democratically-elected post-Baathist Sunni government non-aligned with Hezbollah as advancing their interests, rather than Assad's pro-Hezbollah regime.
PM Netanyahu's father supported the dream of a Greater Israel, however Bibi denies he shares the same viewpoint.
@JamesL:
The initial reports are that a chemical weapons research facility was bombed outside of Damascus and also two military bases were hit with aerial bombardment.
Syria claims that rebels were fighting in the area and the bombing assisted them.
The Morsi government in Egypt has already denounced the airstrikes and an Israeli official in the PM's office has anonymously confirmed Israel authorized the bombings.
Israel's conduct in this episode does violate international law and the reality is that the U.N. Security Council is hamstrung due to the onmipresent U.S. veto on matters of condemnation against Israel.
Israel's air assault is a game-changer that could give Assad the excuse he needs to garner support for a retaliatory strike against Israel.
Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov will no doubt
denounce the airstrike as violative of international law.
Don't joke about drone usage in America. The legislature in Maine has been considering a bill to allow deployment of police aerial surveillance drones. It is being opposed by the ACLU.
The moral debate on drone use is reminiscent on the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Chester Nimitz both felt that using nuclear weapons on cities violated what they were ethically taught as officers.
Today many American leaders with military backgrounds are denouncing the aerial drone killing program.
The justification today for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was that it saved the lives of 100,000 U.S. servicemen. Today the moral rationale for drone use is that it saves American lives that may be lost if the government were forced to hunt and arrest drone targets.
The conservation of American lives is, politically, of paramount concern to the Obama administration and drone use furthers that compelling objective. Few Americans are shedding tears over the deaths of Yemeni, Afghan, Somali or Pakistani nationals in killer drone strikes and members of Congress receive few, if any, complaints from constituents over such drone use. If the targets were, on the other hand, suspected IRA members in Ulster, Basque separatists in Spain, Serb militiamen or other European armed resistance groups, you can guarantee federal elected representatives in the U.S. would be inundated with complaints.
The link to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism article referenced above cites concerns that other nations may embark on lethal drone programs. This is a danger. To have every country launching killer drones into other countries based on nebulous standards is a recipe for disaster.
General Cartwright's comments of ceding the "moral authority" via drone deployment before the Senate subcommittee are likewise well-taken.
It is also important that Congressional testimony be taken of residents of drone-targeted nations to substantiate the human cost and the fallible nature of decisions on whom should be targeted for drone assassination; the al-Muslimi testimony was welcomed.
This is an excellent article.
Recall the Central Intelligence Agency involvement in Afghanistan during Operation Cyclone. The opposition rebels were Afghan tribesmen who often fought each other when they were not fighting the Marxist Afghan regime or the Soviet Red Army.
The rebels had high morale but lacked anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets neeeded to fight Russian tanks and helicopter gunships. They also needed durable automtic rifles. The CIA supplied them with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, ant-tank guns and Kalashnikov rifles. The result turned the tide against the Communist regime in Kabul and the Red Army of the USSR.
The collapse of Dr. Najibullah's Marxist goverement ended the Soviet influence in the region but brought years of infighting amongst the victorious Afghan fighters and eventual domination of the Pakistani ISI intelligence service via its Taliban movement it fostered.
Without the Operation Cyclone "victory" of the CIA, there would have likely been no growth of Al-Qaeda into the pre-eminent international terrorist organization, no 9/11 tragedy, no Taliban, no burgeoning of Afghan agriculture as the world's largest opium producer, no 9/9/2001 assassination of the charismatic Ahmad Shah Massoud - just ongoing civil war that would have likely prevented any one faction from taking over the country.
Jabhat Al-Nusra has become the first Al-Qaeda affiliate to have broad-based public support in its host state. How much CIA-brokered arms deliveries eventually found its way on the black market to that Jabhat al-Nusra? Note how the big Eric Harroun story disappeared from media attention overnight after Harroun's father reported the ex-American serviceman was a CIA operative.
Here's another nice link:
link to kawther.info
The website is created by Kawther Salam, an award-winning journalist from the West Bank in Hebron who uncovered alleged corruption in the IDF that caused investigations by the Israeli government to be initiated. She later sought asylum in Europe due to threats she received as a rsult of her disclosures.
Her website exposes the backgrounds of Israeli Defense Forces officers who administer the West Bank and the conduct committed by the IDF against West Bank Palestinians.
One more try on that link:
link to michigandaily.com
Firstly, the Netanyahu government does not want a peace agreement. Their only position is a Bophutswana-modeled plan that divides the West Bank into "islands" of Palestinian Authority control with continued heavy IDF administration of roads and outlying areas. See Israeli Consul General Roey Gilad's speech to University of Michigan students as reported on in the Michigan Daily in its December 4, 2012 edition:
link to michigandaily.com
Thomas Friedman, in his award-winning book "From Beirut to Jerusalem", published in the late 1980s, indicated that it was the strategy of the Israeli government to maintain the status quo of IDF administration of the West Bank indefinitely. By submitting a peace plan that it knows will be rejected by the Palestinians is to achieve that status quo indefinitely.
Here's a link on some of the things UNICEF does in Palestine: link to unicef.org
There is a local connection to the tragedy.
annarbor.com reports one of the fatalities was Ypsilanti, Michigan resident Michael Sheets.
National Air Cargo operates out of Willow Run Airport in Ypsilanti.
Brown paper bags are not the best way between two governments to transact business. Obviously, the Central Intelligence Agency does not care what Karzai does with the cash - and if the esteemed president did pocket the money, it would be equally as valuable to the CIA - or even more to have a chief executive "on the take" as opposed to simply financing Afghan internal intelligence activities.
Is this being properly accounted for on the CIA's end?
It is my understanding from previous reports that Hamid Karzai has a net worth of about $20,000.00.
There were issues of inadequate accounting of CIA funding in the Sandinista-Contra conflict in Nicaragua.
Your citation of chemical weapons use by other governments being unpunished is well-taken.
The 462-page U.N. Goldstone Commission Report found credible proof of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Israel Defense Forces during Operation Cast Lead. Among the findings were the use of white phosphorus in an illicit manner against civilians within Gaza.
Nothing was done to punish the perpetrators. Where was the U.S.?
Iraq's use of poison gas against Kurds in Halabja was not punished until "Chemical Ali" was convicted and executed many years later - and only after the Saddam Hussein regime fell.
The most recent reports from Salim Idris the FSA commander, in an interview with CNN is that the poisonous gas used was in Homs, Aleppo, and Otaiba - which is a community outside of Damascus. There have been no reports of any gas attack within Damascus.
See: link to cnn.com
The Syrian government has claimed use of poison gas by rebaels.
In any event, the allegations and preliminary proof warrant further investigation, an UN ispection teams are being suggested.
Russia's foreign miniter, Sergei Lavrov, has also warned the U.S. not to jump the gun, citing the Iraq precedent.
"......substantial intellignce establishing that chemical weapons have been used in the Syrian conflict."
I am sure that Obama and his advisors remember "Curveball" and his "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as well as Colin Powell's ill-advised speech to the U.N.
I agree that Sarin is likely being used in Syria, however Obama will most likely take advantage of "wriggle room" where at all possible. Further, I would anticipate only a very measured response by Obama to recent events - with a "boots on the ground" scenario being unlikely.
The use of sleep deprivation and torture was chronicled by the CIA in the "Family Jewels" report in connection with the detention of Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko. The report concluded that Nosenko was a bona fide defector and his detention possibly violated kidnapping laws.
Former FBI agent William Turner in the book "The Fish is Red" explained that the CIA often has a non-enforcement agreement with other federal, state, and local agencies of law enforcement in the event criminal conduct occurred and was discovered by those agencies. Turner argued that the Neutrality Act, federal explosives laws, and other statutes were routinely violated on U.S. soil during the Operation Mongoose activities directed against Cuba during the 1960s.
More recently, the Justice Department failed to seek criminal indictments against CIA personnel with respect to alleged torture activities against "enemy combatants" due to solely political considerations.
Without criminal accountability, there is no deterrence upon federal officials who authorize illegal interrogation.
Agreed.
This has all the hallmarks of a "Columbine-style" operation where some amateurish pair who have some beef with society and embark on a violent spree with guns and explosives.
"Greenwald also talks about the limitations of government surveillance as an anti-terrorism tactic.........and drone attacks."
Drones are coming to America and creating a firestorm with opposition coming from the ACLU:
link to bangordailynews.com
The Ann Arbor Chronicle this week reported this week that the City Council in that municipality was considering an ordinance at its April 15th meeting that would regulate police surveillance, including unmanned "aerial vehicles".
It seems that American law enforcement seeks adoption of the drone as an aerial visual surveillance device. How long before someone in the United States begins advocating armed drones patrolling our cities in the name of law enforcement?
I do not believe that Christianity or Islam endorses either democracy or authoritarian forms of government.
Organizations that have been denoted as "Christian" such as the Moral Majority have, however, taken an intense role in politics.
Anyone who has ever attended a GOP political convention will see many ministers serve as party delegates out of their advocacy of religious convictions in areas such as abortion, freedom of religion, and opposition to communism.
American Muslims have generally shifted to the Democratic Party recently due to its inclusive nature and its support for immigration reforms.
I fully believe that a practicing Christian or Muslim is, as a matter of adherence to their respective faiths, not required to become politically involved.
Also see the January 17, 2012 article in Haaretz authored by Avi Issacharoff, "Hamas Brutally Assaults Shi'ite Worshippers In Gaza": link to wwrn.org
That article is quoted:
"Gazan sources told Haaretz that Islamic Jihad now contains a group of converts to Shia Islam. The group is led by Iyad al-Hosni, also a convert........"
Islamic Jihad in Palestine is composed of Sunni adherents in a religious sense, however their former leader Fathi Shaqaqi adopted the Shi'ite political model of Islamic revolution implemented in Iran as the standard for revolution for Sunni adhrents as well.
As to your first point:
If you are referring to the poison gas employed at Halabja by the Saddam Hussein regime, the targets were not fellow Arabs but rather Kurds - who had been historically antagonistic to the Baathists in Iraq.
I do not believe that Assad would want to employ chemical weapons against Israel, which would provoke a massive retaliation from the Israeli government at a time when the Assad regime is trying to militarily undertake a counter-offensive against the rebels.
As to your second point:
I do not believe the limited, especially non-verifiable, use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army would cause Obama to initiate a military confrontation with Syria.
I believe that one of the key reasons Obama was re-elected was that he helped keep American servicemen out of harms way during his first term in office - and he realizes this.
The last thing that Obama would want to do is send the U.S. Armed Forces into combat against the Syrian army and create a backlash from left-leaning Americans that have helped him stay in power. The spectre of news reports of death tolls of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam, and later, Iraq and Afghanistan are things that remain anathema to the American public.
My concern exactly.
However, the mere supplying of arms to the Free Syrian Army via Turkish cargo transport planes cannot be equated with a military alliance between Israel and the Free Syrian Army. In other words Israeli influence would be minimal in the FSA under such a scenario.
My sentence relative to Hezbollah was partially cut-off inadvertently.
I meant to say that Hezbollah has gained a significant number of elected seats in the Lebanese parliament in addition to fielding a militia. The Amal political party, led by Nabih Berri, is an example of Shi'ite moderate elements who are also popular within Lebanon but believe in a secular form of government.
"...how does one in fact distinguish fundamentalist from non-fundamentalist groups? By their explicit claims to be tied to al-Qaeda groups?"
Not all Islamic fundamentalists are pro-al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim extemist death cult. It engages in no known diplomatic contacts with the West.
Hezbollah is a fundamentalist group that is Shi'ite in orientation that seeks to establish an Islamic state in Lebanon modeled after Iran; it enjoys not only popular support but has gained Islamic Jihad is a different Shi'ite group that is active in both Lebanon and Gaza that is extremist in orientation but has been known to involve itself in the political processes and is amenable to negotiation with Western interests.
It is important to distinguish between moderate and extremist elements within the various fundamentalist movements in the Islamic world.
There have been exponential gains in the size of the United States intelligence community since the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, which cretaed the Central Intelligence Agency and reorganized the American defense establishment.
During the Church Committee hearings, it was noted that the National Security Agency has no Congressional authority for its creation or organization and the vast majority of Americans are not even aware of its existence despite the fact that the CIA's existence is well-known to the American public. Today the National Security Agency is the largest intelligence-gathering organization in the free world. Its origin is through an obscure executive presidential order and it is headquartered at a massive facility in Fort Meade, Maryland. It's most recent publicized expansion was the construction of a 2 billion-dollar storage facility in Utah.
Some of the early books in the 1970s that exposed the U.S. intelligence community were "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" by Victor Marchetti and John Marks - the first book in U.S. history to be censored by a federal court. "The Secret Team" in 1973 by L. Fletcher Prouty, a former Air Force colonel and "Inside the Company: A CIA Diary" by Philip Agee, a former CIA case officer - the State Department sought to revoke Agee's passport and he eventually died in Cuba.
The 2008 book "Legacy of Secrecy" by Lamar Waldron described the CIA running amok during the time of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations due to the leadership of Richard Helms. Helms was promoted Deputy Director of Operations in the early 1960s, largely due to the fact he was unsullied by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and became second-in-command in 1965 and eventually Director of Intelligence in 1966, becoming the first career intelligence officer to head the CIA. Waldron suggests that Helms had projects authorized by the National Security Council and White House, but also had off-the-books unauthorized operations that he hid from the CIA Inspector General and Director of Inteligence while he was still a subordinate. There have always been questions about what JFK and LBJ knew about the "Executive Action" program that targeted world leaders including Fidel Castro for assassination, but it clear that Helms approved of of all these plans. Helms' closest aide was arguably E. Howard Hunt, who went on to Watergate infamy. A number of the CIA people that Helms led became top leaders within the CIA up through the 1980s almost to the present, including Porter Goss and Felix Rodriguez.
Undoubtedly, the U.S. intelligence community, in coordination with the Department of Defense, has become a multi-billion dollar government-within-a-government, and has largely succeeded in constructing a world empire. Islam has replaced communism as the focal enemy of the Free World as the rest of the U.S. goverment attepts to co-opt the Chinese people with Americanization and capitalism with fast-food restaurants and Coca-Cola.
LBJ was initially angry that the New York Times did not place the USS Liberty attack on the front page.
LBJ was reportedly outraged over the incident, however the story goes that he did want to accuse a close ally of intentional killing of sailors - and let the incident pass.
Marxism incorporates the philosophy of dialectical materialism - which denies the existence of religion.
Supposedly a number of U.S. and foreign intelligence services had transcripts of the actual radio exchanges between the IAF pilots and their dispatcher in which a pilot in the Israeli air force stated that the American flag was clearly visible - to which the dispatcher replied to ensure the ship was sunk and to leave no survivors.
It was only the USS Liberty crew's ability to get off a distress signal that was picked up by US servicemen to cause US jets to scramble into the area that deterred the IAF from sinking the ship.
An American official had confronted the Israeli ambassador to the UN with the transcripts. Later those transcripts disappeared from government files however a number of U.S. government employees did come forward to verify their existence.
Benson Buffham, a retired National Security Agency deputy director, whose agency lost one of its civilian employees in the air assault, stated that he believed the attack was intentional. Bobby Inman, who served as NSA director said the same thing.
Ironically, not very far away in the Mediterranean Sea from where the USS Liberty was attacked, the Mavi Marmara incident occurred in which Israel PM Netanyahu now is apologizing for the "accidental" loss of life.
Dr.Baruch Goldstein in Israel is considered a hero by many in the Jewish settler movement.
Alan Goodman, the former Israeli Army reservist who opened fire near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in 1982, killing a Palestinian woman and wounding many others, had been sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years. He was given an unusual early parole after serving 16 years and moved back to his native Maryland after his release.
Many leaders in the Irgun and Stern terror gangs later became top government officials in Israel.
Many of Israel's top leaders had backgrounds in terror gangs or were alleged to have complicity in war crimes:
(1)Avraham Stern was killed by British police official Jeffrey Morton as he was being captured; he headed the Stern Gang and his top deputy was Yitzhak Shamir, who would be imprisoned in Sudan by the British for terror activities - Shamir would go onto service in the Mossad and become a prime minister in Israel.
(2)Menachem Begin took part in the planning of the Deir Yassin attack in 1948 and also was complicit in King David hotel bombing as leader of the Irgun terror gang; the British issued an arrest warrant for him which was active well into the 1970s - he was eventually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as PM of Israel and voted by the Israeli public as the second most beloved Israeli.
(3)Ariel Sharon led an IDF unit in Kibya that massacred scores of Palestinians in 1954; in 1983 the Kahane Commission found him guilty of negligence in the September 17, 1982 massacre of over 1,000 Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. He served as Israeli PM for over four years.
(4) Tzipi Livni has served as foreign minister and several high-ranking government posts in Israel; her father served in the IDF successfully as an high-ranking officer and also had been elected to the Knesset; he nevertheless requested that the Irgun emblem be engraved on his headstone since it was his service in that organization he was most proud of and wanted to be known for.
The decision on how to confront genocide has never been easy.
Pope Pius XII was criticized in some circles for not speaking out forcefully against Nazi practices.
FDR aserted accountability of Nazis would be demanded for those who implemented the Holocaust. He was criticized by some for not bombing the concentration camps.
These questions have arisen again and again in regions such as Biafra, Darfur, East Timor and many other places.
There is no easy answer.
Following 1967, the West Bank came under martial law and later the "Civil Administration", a division of the Israel Defense Forces ruled the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Civil Administration issues its annual report and functions as the day-to-day governing body of the Palestinian people controlling every aspect of their lives. Its director is a brigadier general in the IDF and the West Bank is carved up into military districts each headed by an IDF colonel who is in essence a military governor of his district - that colonel is the most powerful political figure within the district and soldiers under his command set up checkpoints and ensure those Palestinians using roadways have their papers in order and ensure there is no untoward activity occurring.
The Palestinian people have no say in how the Civil Administration operates nor do they elect the military tribunal members that try their children with an almost 99.7% conviction rate by Israeli prosecutors.
It would be a gross understatement to suggest that the Palestinians do not like the Civil Administration. There were mass celebrations in Gaza in 2005 when the CA withdrew from Gaza. There were similar celebrations among Palestnians when the IDF miltary district commander of Judea was killed in a shooting in 2004.
The Civil Administration is quite unique - it has operated for decades in the West Bank despite the fact that it is non-democratic and completely unpopular as well as constituting an occupation in violation of international law.
Ironically, this is the 18th anniversary of the Waco tragedy.
The important aspect of recent revelations is that it appears these attacks were not the product of a major terror network, but only two isolated individuals working together for vague motives.
There are parallels between this violence and that which occurred at Columbine in 1999. Both occurred in late April by two persons who could be charitably called "outsiders". They appear to be indignant toward society for their perceived misforunes.
In the Boston case, the mother of the two young men had a larceny conviction. The eldest son dropped out of college to get married. They may have been profoundly alienated in the society in which they lived.
Ironically Cambridge, their home town, is filled with some of the most scholarly and successful students in America, and one of the brothers was employed as a lifeguard at Harvard University. Viewing this success likely instilled resentment and, indeed, one of the attacks occurred at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
There were political figures, such as Congressman Peter King, ludicrously suggesting, before any real facts were in, that this had all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack. These acts of violence were being improperly politicized to fan the flames of anti-Muslim bias. Some may try to link this case directly to the ongoing conflict in Chechnya, but the actual link is tangential at best.
This was simply two immigrant brothers angry at American society. They simply used radical Islam as a "cover" for their shame and rage and give the violence they committed a perverse aura of legitimacy.
Afghanistan had a series of Marxist leaders that were committing mass murder in the late 1970s in order to suppress political dissent starting with Nur Muhammad Taraki and later Hafizullah Amin. The death toll was in the tens of thousands at the hands of Soviet puppets.
Hafizullah Amin was a Columbia University-educated former schoolteacher who was executed by Soviet agents at the time that the USSR invaded in December of 1979.
On one hand, the Soviet Union were arming and training Balochi rebels in western Pakistan in the late 1970s in order to create a civil war within Pakistan with the intent of obtaining an eventual much-needed naval base on the Indian Ocean. Stemming this strategy was in the interest of the U.S.
On the second hand, the Afghan rebels had high morale and adept fighters but were badly in need of weaponry to fight the Afghan army. This need became more acute after the Red Army rolled into Afghanistan that late December in 1979 pursuant to the vaunted Brezhnev Doctrine. The CIA supplied the rebels with automaic rifles, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to combat the Red Army.
It was the Reagan administration that ramped up the aid to the rebels that led to the collapse of the Marxist government of Dr. Najibullah in 1992. The rebels that took power in post-Marxist Afghanistan eventually became the Northern Alliance after the Taliban assumed power in the late 1990s. It was this Northen Alliance, which included the charismatic leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, (who was assassinated two days before 9/11) that was responsible for forcing the Taliban out of power with the help of the U.S. Armed Forces.
The "Army of God" and "Sword, Covenant and Arm of the Lord" were supposedly-Christian entities designated within the U.S. as terror organizations that used the anti-abortion movement or white supremicism as their organizing principle.
Neither Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, nor other violent Muslim groups represent mainstream Islamic beliefs.
In Palestine, the Second Intifada's history of suicide bombers was inspired by a minority religious interpretation within Islam that allowed the bombers to target civilians in Israel as an acceptable form of resistance consistent with the Quran. The bombers were often young and religious, seeing their actions as heroic; in contrast al-Qaeda leaders, such as the Jordanian-born Zarkawi, had criminal records and were often non-observant of basic Islamic tenets.
One theory being bandied about is that this Boston episode may be the work of a lone extremist - much like Eric Rudolph, who was convicted for a series of attacks and is serving a life sentence in federal prison.
"....lacking mention of the Palestinians...."
Where was the Bush administration when hundreds of innocent Gazan children were being killed in Operation Cast Lead?
Where was Obama and U.S. Congress when the 462-page Goldstone Commission report was issued by the United Nations finding credible proof of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Israel Defense Forces in that operation? Some Congressmen were trying to find ways to debunk the report even though Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued similar findings.
Israel is not a "democracy" - it has never had a constitution and its 21% Arab population has been de facto discriminated against since its inception; Arabs under occupation in the Territories live under martial law at the direction of the Civil Administration.
The Boston Marathon bombings, as horrific as they were to most Americans, acually had a death toll far less than the typical terror bombing in Iraq or Israel.
It was not uncommon to see 10-20 Israeli deaths in a bus bombing during the Second Intifada. The articles citation of 46 Iraqi deaths in recent bombings underscores the extent to which residents of that nation suffered and have suffered during the last few years.
Good question.
I see no evidence that it did.
However, there was a Pastor Hechler, a Protestant clergyman who was attached as a chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna, who strongly influenced to Zionist thought one of his Jewish friends, a Theodor Hirzl, who went on to become the key driving force in the convening of the World Zionist Congress in 1899 that established the general goal of creatng a Zionist state.
So it does appear that Christian Zionism did have a certain degree of influence toward the eventual creation of Israel in 1948.
I do agree that many were and are.
Drs. George Habash and Hanan Ashrawi are examples of Christian activists. However Fatah's leadership, while secular in orientation, has been overwhelimngly Islamic since its inception - this would include Yasser Arafat, Abu Iyad, Khalil Wazir etc.
I have intervewed several Arab Christians who were in the Palestine in 1948 who have indicated that Palestinian Muslims were the most active in fighting the Jewish groups in the War of Independence.
I have found that even today, Palestinian-American Muslims are the most likely to assert Palestinian nationalism and activism where Palestinian-American Christians are most passive with respect to the current events in that region. I think the same may be said for Christians and Muslims currently residing within historical Palestine.
".....most of the past 2000 years there weere hardly any Jews in the sense of followers of the Judaic religion in Palestine."
There have been at least some Jews in Palestine at any given time over the last 2000 years.
The ones that were there in the early 20th century wore clothing that identified them with Arabs. The Jewish refugees from Europe that streamed in during the 1940s were culturally different as they were Westernized, for the most part. The native born Jews alraedy there were culturally absorbed into the European refugees - who founded Israel.
The creation of Israel was not necessarily Arab versus Jew.
The Arab Druzes, in large part, were allied with the Jewish Underground in the 1930s fighting the British. Some Druze units who fought the Jews in the War of Independence eventually switched sides after being defeated in battle.
Many Arabs in Palestine, especially Christians, were neutral.
You are correct that Zionism had a Christian origin.
Pastor John Hagee is likely one of the most prominent Christian Zionists today and has written how his father, also a minister, saw in 1948 the establishment of Israel as a fulfillment of the divine destiny of the Jewish people. It was something many Protestant clergymen predicted for centuries from their biblical readings.
The aftermath of the Holocaust and WWII presented a practical need for the world community to come up with a solution to absorb the Jewish refugees in Europe. This was the catalyst that created the State of Israel.
On of the great ironies in history is that Nazism in its failure helped create Israel.
One more try at the second link:
link to presstv.ir
January 28, 2013 article by Hazem Balousha in Al- Monitor: "Fatah Still Cannot Challenge Hamas in Gaza".
See: link to al-monitor.com
October 5,2012 article by Ashaf Shannon in Press TV: "Palestinians Commemorate Islamic Jihad Founding Anniversary".
See:www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/10/5/265011/palestinianscommemorateislamicjihadfoundinganniversary/
Agreed.
The Israeli hardliners in Likud attempted from 1982 onward to destroy the P.L.O in Lebanon. Later on, they even launched commando-style raids and air attacks on Tunisia in the mid to late 1980s to wipe out the P.L.O. as an entity. By the end of that decade PM Yitzhak Shamir was trying to commence a dialogue with the P.L.O. to help stem the First Intifada.
The Palestinians became more radicalized, especially in Gaza with Hamas, in the 1990s. Islamic Jihad also grew in popularity.
Today, Hamas in Gaza is actually facing assassination of its leaders by extremist elements who are upset that it is too moderate. Arafat's Fatah organization is largely rejected by most Gazans and the more militant Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda groups within Gaza are have increased in popularity.
The key military aspect that will face Israel is the prospect of continued arming of Gazan militants with more deadly weaponry. The long-awaited "Tel Aviv rocket" has been acquired and used by Hamas against Israel last November.
It was IDF body counts in the Second Lebanon War in 2006 that turned the Israeli public against that war (112 IDF personnel killed in action). Israel has not returned to Lebanon since that conflict.
Israel has the ability to extend an economic and diplomatic "olive branch" to the Palestinan leadership but has avoided doing so.
Absloute power corrupts absolutely.
There are no checks and balances to be enforced against the occupying power - Israel. So the Palestinians in the West Bank live under military rule by the Civil Administration. Israel, via its military, pretty much does what it wants.
It has been this way since 1967.
"Roger and Me", the award wining documentary by Michael Moore also addressed Flint's GM and the impact upon the citizens of that city when the assembly line jobs were no longer there.
I used to drive through the city during the 1990s and a good percentage of the city's buildings were abandoned and crime was rampant.
The people who used to get the high-benefit UAW jobs at the big three during the 1960s and 1970s now work at Wal-Mart for $20,000 per annum with some limited medical insurance - if they are lucky.
Oops!
That link should be: link to wsws.org
The New York Times carried an article published on March 25, 2013 entitled "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, with CIA aid". This was a groundbreaking story carried internationally.
Here's the link: link to wsws.org
The article suggests that the rebels have vast support in the world community in acquiring weaponry. I do not believe the rebels are "folding". but recent events are sugestive of a protracted armed conflict.
Carbon dioxide emissions are a side-effect of geothermal energy. Other pollutants include mercury and antimony that can be released from the Earth's interior during the creation of usable geothermal energy.It is however worth exploring as an alternative resource if the noxious emissions can be reduced to environmentally safe levels.
Geothermal energy projects are being implemented in the Phillippines and Switzerland, among other diverse locations.
Chevron, the oil company, is one of the key corporate sponsors of geothermal energy as a viable alternative resource to fossil fuels.
Nice book just came out in February "The Delorean Story" by former Delorean Motor Company executive Nick Sutton, who claims to have been involved in negotiations to rescue the automaker in late 1982 with the British government. He indicated that 1,500 workers' jobs were lost when Margaret Thatcher refused to approve financing that would have saved the company after it had been placed in receivership.
"....economic coercion.......could prove more destructive than military force.."
The 200,000 deaths of Iraqi children under the age of five is a good example of the brunt of suffering falls not upon the perpetrators whom the sanctions are meant to deter, but upon innocents individuals who have little or no control over the offending conduct.
Same situation has happened in Gaza. Gaza, according to one study, has the world's lowest per capita GDP other than
the Republic of Zambia. A significant percentage of Gazan children suffer from malnourishment and other medical problems due to the Israeli embargo. The Gazan economy is ravaged by denial of fishing rights, bombings of banks, airport facilities, demolition of orchards, farms and other acts of destruction by the Israel Defense Forces. This embargo has done little to stop the violence but has reinforced support for the most extreme elements in Gaza.
I do not think that the Iranian people appreciate the imposition of sanctions any more than they liked U.S.-trained SAVAK agents in the 1960s and 70s torturing dissidents. The backlash will manifested via anti-Americanism sentiment and protests against America within Iran.
The link to the New York Times article that referenced "solaria" payments indicated funds for that the two dozen Iraqis killed at Haditha - one of the most notorious incidents of the war were about $38,000.00 - about $1,500 per victim.
Does anyone know if the family of Abeer Qasim Hamza received compensation for her rape and murder or the killings of her family by U.S. Army troops?
Any compensation for the Abu Ghraib detainees that were abused?
It seems to me there should be uniform standards enforced by military officials on such a program.
This is not another "Cuban Crisis".
In the 1960s the US targeted Fidel Castro and Cuba with the Operation Mongoose covert operations program jointly run by the CIA and U.S. Army. Missiles were sent into Cuba by the U.S.S.R. as a deterrent, which was detected by a Cuban informant and transmitted to the CIA and later confirmed by satelllite photos. The Cuban Missile Crisis ensued.
The U.S. is not trying to overthrow North Korea's govenment.
I suspect that firing any missiles at U.S. interests or South Korea would be national suicide for the North. I also suspect the current North Korean government is manufacturing this controversy to draw attention away from the poor standard of living of North Koreans and focus attention on boosting morale among the people in North Korea.
These are hardly "lunatic groups".
The Temple Institute headed by Rabbi Chaim Richman is gearing toward reconstruction of the Third Temple; its operations have the Temple Foundation as a fund-rasing arm. Richman has closely communicated with Christians in the U.S. who see him as someone who will fulfill Israel's destiny as a nation.
Within the Christian Zionist community in America, there are very influential evangelists who have close ties to Israel's political leadership and the Republican Party. Prominent Christian Zionist evangelists include Pastor John Hagee of Texas, Rev. Jerry Falwell and Jack Van Impe of Metro Detroit. Their public statements and public writings contain vitually no criticism of Israel's blatant human rights violations against Palestinians - it is ignored. Their focus on Palestinians reference covenants in the P.L.O.'s charter calling for Israel's destruction and the general animosity of Arabs toward Israel. These Christian Zionists are predominantly Baptist and Pentecostal denominations.
Pastor John Hagee, in one of his books, concedes he is well aware that demolition of the Dome of the Rock may be necessary to construct the Third Temple and this will likely cause extreme violence by Islamic adherents, including a possible war against Israel.
These Christian Zionists do not care about Israel in a political sense nor bother themselves with the ongoing struggle for social equality in Israeli society, but see Israel's existence as a Christian theological imperative that must be supported as all costs.
This all is in stark contrast to the Roman Catholic Church who withheld diplomatic recognition of Israel until they committed themselves to move toward the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The Roman Catholic leadership has been primarily concerned with the welfare of Palestinian Catholics - as opposed to Jewish or Israeli interests. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem has made the human rights violations against Palestinians a top priority in pastoral letters.
The Quakers have also had a long and profound relationship with the Palestinian people that continue to this day. This includes the establishment of the top centers of learning in the West Bank. The first Quaker school in the West Bank was founded in 1869 in Ramallah. The Quaker community of Ann Arbor, Michigan spearheaded a boycott vote of Israeli goods at a local food co-op and have joined in protest demonstrations against Israel in front of Ann Arbor's largest synagogue.
The Christian Zionist movement has opposed the nomination of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary and exert great influence on Capitol Hill on Israel/Palestinian issues - unlike Catholics or Quakers. Falwell's Moral Majority was a key reason Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 and Jack Van Impe had a close relationship with George H.W. Bush. Pastor Hagee has been a personal friend of every Israeli PM since Menachem Begin and boasts of the time when Yitzhak Rabin, as prime minister, actually stood up and applauded him at a fund-raising dinner.
The pro-Third Temple Christian Zionist movement is not a "lunatic group" but a lobby that is extremely powerful and operates out of theological-based blind obedience to Israeli interests without due regard to the inequities of Israel's treatment of Palestinians or the admitted inflaming of Muslim communities that they recognize would occur by the destruction of the Dome of the Rock to construct the Third Temple as proposed.
This is a good study.
Too many Americans view Israeli Jews as culturally monolithic however the truth is that Israel is a "melting pot" of various nationalities and religious denominations within Judaism. These distinct groups are of often varying political persuasions and often have had conflicts with each other.
Israeli society's treatment of Ethiopian Jews and, historically Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, have been discriminatory.
Ultraorthodox Jews are an example of a group under current criticism by political parties such as Yesh Atid for what has been viewed as receiving unjustified privileges.
The Operation Cast Lead adventure that commenced on December 27, 2008 and concluded on January 18, 2009 was timed in a very specific manner to maximize political gain with minimal interference:
(A)it was commenced after the U.S. presidential elections so lame-duck President George W. Bush would not be accountable to voters for any perceived inaction;
(B)it began after Christmas so not to interfere with the busiest tourist time for Israel when Christians visit the Holy Land;
(C)it started when the governments of many Western nations were largely closed down for the holidays;
(D)Knesset elections in Israel were approaching and Olmert's Kadima Party needed a popular military action to increase Kadima's standing in polls after the 2006 misadventure in Lebanon that resulted in the embarrassing findings of the Winograd Commission report;
(E)the military operation was halted on January 18, 2009 - two days prior to the inauguration of President Obama so as to avoid giving him a reason to publicly criticize Israel and also not to simultaneously capture international media attention with Obama , thus detracting from Obama's historic swearing-in.
Olmert's popularity in Israeli opinion polls actually dropped during Operation Cast Lead - which some suggest was due to the fact that Hamas was not destroyed as an organization, nor was Gilad Shalit located and rescued despte IDF search teams combing Gaza. Operation Cast Lead itself, however, had the support of 94% of the Israeli public.
In the end the Kadima Party was roundly defeated with Likud gaining control of the government with its coalition and Bibi Netanyahu ascending to his second term as PM.
The "instigation" was the killing of Ahmed Jebari in a targeted killing.
However, the "tiny home-made rockets" are not exactly accurate, as there are not only Katyushas but also Iranian-manufactured Fajr missiles with 200lb payloads.
There was a great psychological and tactical leap of technology when Gazan militants finally had a rocket capable of striking Tel Aviv. The scenes of thousands of Isralis in Tel Aviv scurrying for cover as air raid sirens blared had not occurred since 1991 when Scuds hit Israel from Iraq.
Proportionate?
In the past Ehud Olmert gave a speech immediately following the conclusion Operation Cast Lead indicating that the Israelis would create "disproportionate" responses to future rocket attacks. Olmert was admitting planned conduct that violated international law.
If you study the genesis of the latestt missile firings they were in response to Israeli abuses, but in any event recent rocket attacks were not even tied to Hamas, but fringe groups of Islamic fundamentalists.
"The Israelis have......the best military in the region. Palestinians in Gaza have almost nothing."
Israel has indeed wreaked havoc in Gaza via air strikes and other incursions, but there has been damage to Israeli interests as well.
The city of Sderot, near the Gaza border is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy due to the ongoing conflict; outside Jewish donations had kept the municipality afloat until drying up later upon the perception that rocket attacks were no longer a problem. It is estimated over 70% of Sderot's children have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. One of Sderot's most prominent residents, Amir Peretz, known as a liberal of the Labor Party spearheading better relationships with Arabs, while he was defense minister had a Qassam rocket explode near his house that resulted in a relative having his legs amputated.
Six Israelis died and over 200 wounded during the November of 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense. Property damage was extensive.
While I believe that much of the violence toward Israel is being caused by their government's unjust and illegal blockade of Gaza, it is clear that innocent children and adults in Gaza as well as adjacent Israeli communities have also suffered significantly due to the ongoing violence.
This is looking a lot like the anti-Castro Cubans back in the 1960s who had countless splinter groups - Free Cuba Committee, Alpha 66, DRE, Cuban Revolutionary Council etc., etc., etc. that had varying degrees of relationships with the Central Intelligence Agency and were trying to subvert Fidel Castro.
In Syria, we began with the Istanbul-based longtime exile group known as the Syrian National Council - it got absorbed into a larger organization based in Qatar - where the U.S. has a massive military command infrastructure - and now yet another group pops up in Cairo that is serving as an umbrella group four several other anti-Baathist organizations. Who exactly are these people showing up in Cairo? Muslim fundamenatlists?
The Syrian National Coalition is the group that is diplomatically recognized by the Western world as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
What is now emerging in articles in the New York Times and other periodicals is the nature of the role the CIA is playing. Seems as though the CIA has been going into places such as Croatia to set up arms purchases and is otherwise facilitating weapons acquisition for the Free Syrian Army - supposedly to ensure arms stay out of the hands of Al-Qaeda-linked extremists. This is not really smart since many of the supposed FSA leaders are allegedly war profiteers seeking to resell weapons to the highest bidders without regard to whom they may be. Selling to the FSA does not, obviously, ensure that they are also resupplying Jabhat al-Nusra with the same weaponry. If the FSA are conducting joint operations against the Baathists it would only make sense that they make sure the jihadists are well-equipped.
What about Eric Harroun? Allegations that he was a CIA asset inside Jabhat al-Nusra come from his own dad. Shades of Eugene Hasenfus in Nicaragua in 1986.
My own guess is that the Syrian rebels are about as big as a CIA-run operation as Operation Mongoose was to Cuba or Operation Cyclone was in Afghanistan. The Senate Intelligence Committee should conduct investigations as to the scope of CIA involvement if they do not have a firm gauge as to what is going on already.
The legacy of a CIA "victory" in Syria may be similar to Afghanistan or Iraq - bitter and chronic post-Baathist sectarian violence and a wave of anti-Americanism. There is already severe infighting among the exile memebers sitting within the Syrian National Coalition that caused the resignation of Moaz al-Khatib, its chairman.